#Russian espionage movie#

In the 1960s, the time for psychological spy thrillers had truly arrived, with ‘The Shield and the Sword’ going down in history as one of the best TV shows created in the Soviet Union.

Eighty million watched each part of the spy saga every night, with Stierlitz (portrayed by Vyacheslav Tikhonov) becoming the subject of cult and gossip in the Soviet Union. People would rush to get home from work to watch the next episode. ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’ hit TVs in 1973 and immediately became a massive success.

#Russian espionage movie#

It is Lioznova’s unequalled ability to capture the essence of human life and history that helped her create a movie where fictional characters live in harmony with real-life personalities. In the pursuit of historical truth, Lioznova directed her magnum opus using the principle of zooming in and out, rising above the historical events and at the same time observing them from the inside. READ MORE: Top 5 Soviet female movie directors The director infused her 12-part series, based on Julian Semenov’s detective novel of the same name, with a lot of historical footage, aimed at keeping it real. ‘Seventeen Moments of Spring’ took three years to shoot, with around 300 actors involved. Paradoxically enough, Lioznova’s 14-hour directorial tour de force gives viewers more insight into the Nazi period than any documentary has. What we see on screen is not a photogenic fight of good versus evil, with its infernal overtones, but the everyday face of fascism, something that German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt once called the “banality of evil”. It is an intense psychological conundrum, easy enough to grind into a television melodrama, but the movie director, Tatyana Lioznova, makes it forthright by conveying a dignity that leaves no room for pretentiousness and moral ostentation.