RF Ministry of Culture Film Department and "DAGO" Studio
present
"A Cat and a Half" Sketches for a film based on literary works and drawings of Joseph Brodsky
Once upon a time there was a little boy. And there was a city.
The most beautiful city on the face of the earth.
With an enormous grey river hanging over its deep bottom,
just like the sky above the river itself.
Along the river stood majestic palaces
with wonderfully ornate facades.
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His Spirit is.
If the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water,
the water is bound to reflect it.
That's the reason of my weakness for water - for its folds, creases and patterns,
and, since I come from the north, for its greyness.
I simply think that water is the image of time.
And we, I think, are partly synonymous with water.
reflected in 1000s of square meters of silver sparkles,
the city seems to be constantly photographed by the water,
and the filmed footage, on a sunny day, looks like an archive of those blinding scenes.
So it doesn't make sense to me to try to be consecutive here.
Life never looked to me like a set of clearly marked transitions; rather, it snowballs.
Now look, here's a cat, right? A cat!
He doesn't give a damn whether "Pamyat" society exists,
or the propaganda department of the Central Comittee.
Also, he doesn't care about the President of the United States.
Am I any worse than the cat?
Akhmatova's neighbours had a cat -
a huge, red, exceptionally noisy tom.
She would say: "You know, it is not just a cat, it is a cat and a half."
And sometimes she would say: "Doesn't it seem to you that Joseph is very much like it?"
By the way, I even dubbed several animated films.
Whose part?
Try to guess...
a cat and a half
JOSEPH BRO
JOSEPH BRODSKY
SKETCHES
I remember one day - the day I had to leave after a month in Venice.
I had just had lunch in some small trattoria, grilled fish a half a bottle of wine.
And squinting at the sun I suddenly felt: I am a cat. A cat that has just had fish.
Had anyone adressed me at that moment, I would have meowed.
I was absolutely beastly happy.
I must have been a cat in a past life. And I would like to remain one in my next one.
Hullo. Is that you, Kitty?
What have I had for lunch?
Turkey and rice, some fish and strawberries and cream for dessert.
In May, 1972 they suggested that I should leave the country.
They gave me only a few days to pack.
They don't generally make such offers in Russia, and if they do,
it means just one thing:
I think no one is delighted being thrown out of his home.
But however you leave it, it is still your home.
Masya, go on the balcony with Osya. I'll take a photo to remember you by.
And then, you can take one of us.
Come on, Masya, shoot: taxi's waiting, the cat's fretting.
- Os'ka, stop scratching... - Os'ka, be a good boy, keep still...
This is one of my first photos.
My father took it when we were living as evacuees in Tcherepovets.
I've never forgotten that I am the son of a photographer
and that my memory simply develops a film.
In the same way that others mark their child's growth in pencil marks on a door frame,
every year on my birthday my father took me out to our balcony and photographed me there.
The background was usually this square -
The Cathedral of the Lord's Transfiguration of all the Guards
I can still see - on the arm-chair's back - my father's dark blue Navy tunic with its golden epaulettes...
...on the chair there is my mother's kimono with its dragons.
And "Una furtiva lagrima" in the air.
My father brought those records from Shanghai.
Good luck. Write to us from every town, son, you hear?
Ok, ok.
Will you stop taking pictures? Who do you think I am? Another Tamara Makarova?
It seems I've already told you that I love water.
I was crazy about the Navy since my boyhood years.
To this day, I think that the country would do a hell of a lot better
if it had for its national banner the flag of the Russian Navy...
...our glorious, incomparable beautiful flag of St. Andrew.
and not that two-headed cowardly Imperial bird,
or the halfway-Masonic hammer and sickle.
"La Cumparsita" is the greatest piece of music of our time, as far as I'm concerned.
I've never learned to dance, but I could listen to these twangs for hours...
...and, when there was no one around, move to its tempo.
Welcome to Hawaii
As for the navy, I was a true child of my father...
and at the age of fourteen applied for admission to a submarine academy.
I passed all the exams, but because of the fifth paragraph - nationality - didn't get in...
and my irrational love for navy overcoats with their double rows of gold buttons
like lamps over an alley at night, remained unrequitted.
And I once lived in a city Where statues grew on the houses,
And where through the streets, With cries of "Corrupt! Corrupt!"
Would run the local philosopher, Shaking his beard,
And the endless waterfront made life short.
I figure that free thought in the Soviet Union, and liberation of mind in general,
begins - at least for my generation - with Tarzan.
It was the first movie where we saw natural life. And long hair.
And that wonderful Tarzan's cry that filled the air over every Russian town.
We began to imitate Tarzan. That's how it started...
And I daresay that the four seasons of Tarzan alone
did more for de-Stalinization than all of Khrushchyov's speeches at the 20th Congress.
Come down before you break your fool neck!
Give it up!
They will come and getcha!
- Angel, we'd better go. - I'm not afraid.
But that's a 200 foot dive! He can't make it and live.
Boy, what nerve!
We'd better take you home...
When leaving Russia I took with me only my typewriter.
Customs at the airport disassembled it down to the last screw.
That was their way of saying "Farewell".
In the 1950s, every city youth had his own collection of so-called "bone music".
What was it, you ask?
A sheet of X-Ray film with a homemade copy of some jazz piece on it.
With our instinctive individualism and intolerance for all group affiliation,
we were more American than the Americans themselves.
I say this to you as someone who first tasted Coca Cola at the age of 32.
Stop, oh moment,
You are not so lovely As you are unrepeatable.
Our Pestel Street, which was once named Pantaleon,
after the Saint Pantaleon Church that stood beacon-like at its far end,
would take you into the Summer Garden.
Pushkin once lived on that part of the street,
and somewhere in a letter to his wife he says:
"The entire Summer Garden is my orchard.
Every morning, I go there in nightgown and slippers."
- Would you like one? - What is it?
- A cigarette. That's my D'Anthes.
- Thanks.
- Your house was #11, right? - No, wrong.
Ours was #27, and was over at that end, by the intersection with Liteyny Avenue.
I imagine how you, my friends, some 30 years from now,
will stand under my balcony after visiting my parents on account of my birthday,
having tasted pickled smelt, my mother's signature dish.
I remember how my father brought an amateur camera from China.
Later, that camera vanished somewhere together with its film,
which contained the pictures my dad had taken of us: me, my mother, ships...
Perhaps, this film will turn up somewhere one day... who knows?
My father managed to photograph me incessantly, even at breakfast.
Sometimes, I didn't like it.
To tell the truth, I was a rather wilful child.
Stretch down to your toes...
Stretch!... Stretch!...
That's enough.
Early in the morning the little boy would set off for school.
If the boy had two or three spare minutes,
he would walk 20-30 steps to the middle of the river.
All this time, he would be thinking about
what the fish were doing under such heavy ice.
"Leningrad is the cradle of the Revolution." Write, write.
Why aren't you writing, boy?
Pay attention, children: "The cradle of the Revolution"
And now we shall see a remarkable film.
It was, in fact, a plain coup d'etat, and a bloodless one at that.
The "real" battle on Palace Square,
with bodies falling left and right and projectiles criss-crossing the sky,
happened much later:
in that film by Sergei Eisenstein!
The Red Guards didn't meet any resistance;
they raped half of the female unit guarding the palace...
...and looted its chambers.
At that, one of them drowned in the wine cellars.
In the puritanical atmosphere of Stalin's Russia
one could get turned on by the 100% innocent Socialist Realist painting...
called "Admission to the Komsomol".
Boy at the first desk!
Yes, yes, you!
What are you thinking of?
Why don't you listen to your teacher?
Stand up and leave the classroom!
I'll show you the right way, my friend!
I haven't flown anywhere yet,
but already imagine myself sitting somewhere on the Hudson shore
and thinking about you.
It must be about noon where you are.
My dear Cats, they say you have frost there.
I beg you, sleep by turns on my cot to keep it warm.
You, Kitty, must be cooking lunch just now, Os'ka rubbing against your legs,
and Big Cat has begun writing the first letter to me.
Liteyny Ave. House 24, Apt. 28
O, how I liked to wander about the town during the white nights of summer.
I knew some places where magnificent views unfolded.
Mmm... yeah.
For goodbye - not a sound. Grammophone behind the wall.
This worldly separation Hints at what's yet to come.
For apart, not together, Must our eyes slowly close
Until death. And after, We won't lie side by side.
All our homes fall apart, And the thread breaks.
Of all that we were, and That which we couldn't save -
One stays silent, unwitting, Because as the days pass,
One remembers the pain Ever more than the joy.
For goodbye - not a sound. Only the Aonides' song.
So does death torment us Even while we yet live.
screenwriters Yuriy Arabov, Andrey Hrzhanovskiy
director Andrey Hrzhanovskiy
director of photography A. Feodorov
camera G. Drynitskiy, M. Sudarikov
production designers A. Boym, N. Krivulya
assistant director O. Dorman
animation N. Bogomolova, G. Zebrova, Ye. Malashenkova, L. Mayatnikova,
O. Panikona, N. Fedosova, T. Podgorskaya
cast Sasha Ginzburg, R. Kurkina, S. Yurskiy, V. Stonozhenko
Kasya the Cat
computer graphics S. Andrianova, A. Yevseyeva
assistant designers V. Averin, Y. Ivanova
editing R. Nazirov, N. Stepantseva
sound S. Gutman
producers D. Yurkov, A. Hrzhanovskiy
executive producer S. Shvidkaya
administrator A. Seleznyov
post-production managers O. Kurenkova, A. Kryukov
music by J. S. Bach, A. Vivaldi, G. Donizetti, S. Prokofyev, P. Tchaikovsky,
A. Schnittke, D. Shostakovich, W.C. Hardy, J. Matos Rodriguez
for help and archive materials special thanks to Z. Tamashevskaya,
Ye. Korobova, V. Golyshev, Y. Gordin, Ye. Kasatkina, M. Milchik,
M. and S. Volkova, N. and Y. Ivanov, E. Rein, V. Ufliand
and to M. Azyzian, P. Vail, D. Borovskiy, V. Gerasimov, N. Gutman, K and O. Kochubey
L. Leonskaya, Kitya Medvedeva, M. Neiman, Ye. Nikitin, T. Nikoskaya, M. Pekarskiy,
V. Roshchim, Ye. Stafyeva, I. Tumanian, I. Schnittke, S. Schulz
Anna Akhmatova museum in St. Petersburg and, personally, N. Popova
The Hermitage State Museum and, personally, M. Pyotrovskiy and V. Matveyev
The Central Navy Museum of St. Petersburg and, personally, M. Mushketov and E. Korchagin
The Museum of Cinema and, personally, N. Kleyman
The St. Petersburg History State Museum and, personally, E. Grishko
Summer Gardens and Palace - Peter I Museum and, personally, T. Kozlova
The Administration of School N1311 in Moscow and, personally, G. Lipman
TV and Radio State Foundation and, personally, A. Vystorobets
"Shat" Drama workshop "Anima-film" studio
Soyuzmultfilm studio M. Gorky studio
The tenants of Brodsky's former apartment in St. Petersburg
Processed by Salamandra Ltd.
The film is based on the literary works and drawings of Iosif Brodsky and the photos of Aleksandr Brodsky
Sponsored by the RF Ministry of Culture Film Department
Special thanks to Alfa Bank (c) DAGO 2002
subtitles from SHAR Studio's Youtube channel, improved by Niffiwan, 2023