Pavel Luspekaev’s Smile

The Soviet Cult Classic, White Sun of the Desert (1970) boasts plenty of colorful talented people. The film is so well known and so much liked that it became the part of national consciousness. It went even further, in fact, as Russian astronauts took the film into space.

The film owes great part of its charm to one colorful and brilliant actor, Pavel Luspekaev, apparently admired even by Laurence Olivier, who saw him performing in Leningrad Theater.

Luspekaev's father was Armenian (Luspekaian) and mother -- from Don's Cossacks. The young Pavel fought in the war, and had been severely wounded there. Consequently, by the time he was shooting the film, his both feet were amputated, so he could barely move, and needless to say, his movement caused him tremendous pain. Yet, he persevered, doing every trick except one in this physical role.

He died the same year as the film was released, without any chance of basking in its glory. He was only forty three.

I suspect he was so successful in this film because he was partly playing himself. This active, energetic guy, who got into the fight during the shooting of the film (you can see his knife wound in the film) just could not imagine his life in passivity and restriction, exactly like the protagonist whom he plays.

This amazing protagonist -- Vereschagin -- is a dashing tsarist custom house officer somewhere on Caspian Sea, who refuses to take side and resigns himself to passivity as the Red Army fights the local warlord and his guerilla fighters.

Vereschagin is bored to death as he has nothing to do except drinking, raising peacocks, and listening to the banter of his wife. Who, for obvious reason, hates his desire to get back into the saddle. But eventually he did. Provoked by the mockery and cruelty of the war-lord who'd killed a young and helpless Red army soldier, Vereschagin decides to join the fight on the sides of Reds.

He never smiled before in the film, but then -- as he joins in -- he gets shot, and this wound finally provokes his smile, which gets even bigger, as he gets into a ship and charges full speed ahead... toward his final battle.

I love to see his smile. The smile of a man who has found himself. Who is doing what he has to do, and let's the chips fall where they may. How many of us smile this smile?

And he is an April man to boot. Born on April 20, died on April 17 from heart attack.

Below are the pictures of Vereschagin’s smile, and his sadness, provoked by the mockery of the warlord, Abdula, and by his wife’s decision to drop all his weapons into the sea.

“Ready for the Battle.”

Warlord tells Vereschagin that it is time to retire.

Vereschagin’s sadness