Boris Godunov

Whether as Pushkin's play, or as Mussorgsky's opera (derived in the main from Pushkin), Boris Godunov has a central place in Russian Culture. Not at least in its cinema, for the first Russian feature film (1907) was a version of the Pushkin tragedy. It was more or less inevitable then, that when Soviet Cinema in the 1950's was casting around for subjects that were ideologically approved, Mussorgsky's opera should present itself as a possibility. Vera Stroyeva cut and reordered the libretto to suit the requirements of cinema, which makes this film not a mere recreation of some staged performance, but a genuinely cinematic version.