en Unfinished Story

Unfinished Story
Unfinished Story
	Russian: Неоконченная повесть
Directed by	Fridrikh Ermler
Written by	Konstantin Isaev
Produced by	Tamara Samoznayeva
Starring	Elina Bystritskaya; Sergey Bondarchuk;
Cinematography	Anatoli Nazarov
Music by	Gavriil Popov
Production; company	Lenfilm
Release date	October 17, 1955;
Running time	100 min.
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

Unfinished Story (Russian: Неоконченная повесть, romanized: Neokonchennaya povest) is a 1955 Soviet romantic drama film directed by Fridrikh Ermler.^[1]^[2]^[3]

Plot

The local doctor Yelizaveta Maksimovna is a beautiful woman and a wonderful sympathetic person. She is lonely, although she is cared for by a confident and promising colleague. Yelizaveta Maksimovna has one patient, a manly, full-energy ship builder Yershov, chained to the bed with a paralysis of both legs.

All doctors recommend him rest, and Elizaveta Maksimovna advises to work and not feel sorry for herself. Yershov with all his heart falls in love with his doctor, and she loves him, but she does not dare to say her feelings, Ershov thinks that he has no hopes.

Cast

Elina Bystritskaya as Yelizaveta Muromtseva^[4]
Sergey Bondarchuk as Yuri Yershov
Sofia Giatsintova as Anna Yershova, Yuri's Mother
Yevgeny Samoylov as Aleksandr Aganin
Yevgeni Lebedev as Fyodor Ivanovich
Aleksandr Larikov as Grandpa Spirin
German Khovanov as Vasili Spirin
Yuri Tolubeyev as Nikolai Sladkov
Erast Garin as Koloskov
Antonina Bogdanova as Aunt Polya
Vladimir Voronov as Ponomaryov
Boris Leskin as patient simulator^[5]

Release

Fridrikh Ermler's film watched 29.3 million viewers, which is 406 results in the history of Soviet film distribution.^[6]

Criticism

Éric Rohmer wrote in 1959: The Unfinished Story is not a production without finds. Ermler lacks Barnet's sense of humor or Donskoy's pictorial skill, but some episodes of his painting are excellent examples of Russian school cinema: inept courtship of a doctor colleague, a family feast, a night meeting with singing students. The Soviets should have stuck to this warm everyday intonation, developed it — although, to tell the truth, they never abandoned it.^[7]