Scenes from the Film I Am Twenty (Mne dvadtsat' let)

The exact date of this episode is unknown. We've filled in the date above with a placeholder. What we actually have on record is: 1965-uu-uu.

This production of Radio Moscow highlights the 1965 film I Am Twenty (Mne dvadtsat' let), and dramatizes a selection of scenes from the film in English.

The film, directed by Marlen Khutsiev, follows Sergei, a young man recently returned home from serving in the military. He reconnects with his friends only to find that they are drifting apart into their own version of adulthood. He meets Anya during a May Day parade, and as their relationship becomes more serious, they struggle to find common ground between his modest, working-class world, and her urban intellectual world.

The host in this recording applauds the filmmaker, "There are film directors who turn out movies as quickly as they are forgotten by the audiences. There are others, however, who work long and painstakingly on a picture. Their films can rightly be considered works of art. This is true of the young soviet director Marlen Khutsiev, who has only three films to his credit, but all of them have had a great impact on our audiences."

Though liberally rewritten to fit with nationalist doctrine, the scenes dramatized by Radio Moscow illustrate Sergei's post-war existential crisis. In the first scene Sergei and Anya reject the bourgeois lifestyle of her parents. This contrasts with the next scene in which Sergei's mother describes digging for potatoes on the front lines to feed her hungry family during WWII, after misplacing food rations. This causes Sergei to explode with anger in the following scene, at Anya's birthday party, when one of her friends dismissively steps on a potato. In the final scene, Sergei confronts the ghost of his father, a soldier who died during WWII. Sergei begs him for guidance on how to live his life, "...I was only 21, so how can I advise you," he responds.

The radio adaptation attempts to bring a resolution to the film. As his father disappears Sergei proclaims, "...the most important thing in life is not to be alone. Alone one is helpless. I must live for Mother, for Vera, for Anya. I must live for all people and only then I will be a real person." The film, however, is purposefully vague. The audience does not see what becomes of Anya and Sergei. Like these characters, we are left to decide for ourselves.

[Most likely recorded in the mid-1960s]

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection

WNYC archives id: 150292
Municipal archives id: T4062