Seventeen Moments of Spring
Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973) ("Семнадцать мгновений весны" in Russian), also Seventeen Instants of Spring is a Soviet TV miniseries. It was filmed at Gorky Film Studio, directed by Tatiana Lioznova and based on the eponymous series of books by the novelist Yulian Semyonov. It is divided into 12 parts, with each part being 70 minutes and the whole series being 840 minutes long.
The series is about the life of Soviet spy Maksim Isaev operating in Nazi Germany under the name Stirlitz, played by the Soviet actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov. Other leading roles were played by Leonid Bronevoy, Oleg Tabakov, Rostislav Plyatt, and Vasily Lanovoy.
The show is centered around Stirlitz's (ultimately successful) orchestrations aimed at thwarting negotiations between SS General Karl Wolff, representing Walter Schellenberg and Himmler, and American intelligence operative Allen Dulles in Bern, Switzerland during the final months of the Second World War. The Dulles portrayed in the show, acting without the authorization of the President, is interested in reaching a peace agreement with Nazi Germany that would leave many Nazi institutions in place in order to prevent the rise of "Bolshevism" in Germany and Northern Italy. The negotiations are conducted, of course, in secret and behind the back of both Hitler and, more importantly for Stirlitz, the USSR.
The series was immensely popular in the Soviet Union and it originated many popular phrases as well as an entire genre of anecdotes, the latter having seemingly taken a life of its own. The show is still frequently aired on Russian television. Stirlitz is sometimes referred to as a Russian James Bond, even if the comparison is not entirely warranted. It is certainly true that the show is anything but ideologically subversive and that it also contains some relatively unbelievable elements (could a Russian really pass for a German for twenty years?). However, it nonetheless strives for a much more realistic version of foreign espionage, with Stirlitz carefully playing on rivalries within the SD and SS, cautiously seeking out friendly contacts, prudently developing alibis for his covert activities and very rarely resorting to force or gadgetry.
The music for the movie was written by Georgian-born composer Mikael Tariverdiev.
Plans were discussed to build a monument to Stirlitz in the city of Gorokhovets, his birth place in the series.
A Polish television series with a very similar theme, More Than Life at Stake (Polish: Stawka większa niż życie) (with Captain Kloss being the analogous character to Stirlitz) was made in 1967-1968.
67.86.28.70 02:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)External links */ ==External links==