Deaf Crocodile and Vinegar Syndrome have announced that they will be releasing the 1956 medieval epic ILYA MUROMETS (THE SWORD & THE DRAGON) on Blu-Ray on May 31, 2022. A digital release will also follow in collaboration with Grasshopper Films. From director Aleksandr Ptushko, the Blu-ray edition of the film contains a new commentary track by comics artist (Swamp Thing), film historian, and author Stephen R. Bissette and a reprint of film scholar Alan Upchurch’s pioneering essay on Aleksandr Ptushko from Video Watchdog magazine, plus Ptushko’s own essay on the making of ILYA MUROMETS. ILYA MUROMETS was recently restored in 4K by Mosfilm studio utilizing the original 35mm camera negative. Get the details below!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1A8FbJWlQ8]
Synopsis: Legendary fantasy filmmaker Aleksandr Ptushko’s sweeping, visual FX-filled epic is one of his most enchanting achievements: a stunning Cinemascope ballad of heroic medieval knights, ruthless Tugar invaders, wind demons and three-headed fire-breathing dragons. The film stars Boris Andreyev as the bogatyr (warrior) Ilya, a mythic figure in the Kyivan Rus’ culture that pre-dated both modern Ukraine and Russia (much of the film’s action is set in Kyiv, and Ilya’s relics are held today in the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery). Based on a series of famous byliny (oral epics), the film follows Ilya as he wages a decades-long battle against the Tugars who threaten his homeland, kidnap his wife, and raise his own son to fight against him. Ptushko began his career in the 1930s and went on to become a combination of Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen, and Mario Bava for his dazzling, bejeweled fantasies including THE STONE FLOWER, SADKO, SAMPO, and RUSLAN & LUDMILA. The first Cinemascope film produced in the Soviet Union, ILYA MUROMETS was released in a truncated, dubbed version in the U.S. at the height of the Cold War as THE SWORD & THE DRAGON, downplaying the epic poetry and lyricism of the original.
“On one level, ILYA MUROMETS is a pure fantasy, one of Ptushko’s greatest — but even a fantasy can have political implications,” says Dennis Bartok, Deaf Crocodile’s Co-Founder and Head of Distribution & Acquisitions. “Although ILYA MUROMETS was made in 1956 at the height of the Cold War and was set in a mythical landscape nearly a thousand years earlier, it has unmistakable parallels to today’s world and the war in the Ukraine. Ilya was a legendary hero of the Kyivan Rus’ which encompassed modern Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus in the 9th to 13th centuries. That idea of somehow returning to a mythical “united Rus’” has been used as a tragic justification for the war today — and of course when ILYA MUROMETS was made in 1956, it would have been seen as a call for a united Soviet Union at the time.”
- Region A Blu-ray
- Audio commentary track by Steve Bissette
- Remembering Russian Film Scholar Alan Upchurch by Dennis Bartok
- Russian Fantastika Part One by Alan Upchurch
- The Making of The Sword and the Dragon by Aleksandr Ptushko (translated by Alan Upchurch)
- New restoration trailer
- English SDH subtitles
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Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
