Trailer
Plot summary
Three wandering monks and icon painters, Andrei, Daniil and Kirill, leave the Andronikov Monastery and head toward Moscow. Caught in heavy rain, they take shelter in a barn where villagers are entertained by a jester who mocks the boyars, until soldiers arrive, arrest him, knock him out and break his instrument. Kirill visits the workshop of Theophanes the Greek, who is impressed by his understanding and invites him to work on the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Kirill accepts, provided Theophanes tender the offer in person before the whole brotherhood. A messenger comes to the monastery, but hires Andrei instead. Daniil refuses to go with Andrei, then repents and blesses him. Kirill, jealous, leaves the monastery, accusing his fellow monks of greed.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Andrei Rublev (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the Tatar raid in Andrei Rublev, a cow was set alight wearing an asbestos-covered coat so it was not harmed, but one scene shows a real horse dying: it falls down a flight of stairs and is then stabbed with a spear.
- Soviet officials allowed Andrei Rublev into the 1969 Cannes Film Festival only out of competition, screening it a single time at 4 a.m. on the final day; it still won the FIPRESCI critics' prize.
- Goskino demanded cuts to Andrei Rublev for its length, negativity, violence and nudity: the first cut, finished in July 1966, ran over 195 minutes, and five years passed before the film was widely released in the Soviet Union.
- In 1973 Soviet television aired a 101-minute Andrei Rublev that Tarkovsky did not authorise, cutting the Tatar raid and the naked pagan ritual; the icon epilogue ran in black and white because Soviet TV had not yet gone colour.
- Tarkovsky cast unknown Sverdlovsk stage actor Anatoly Solonitsyn as Andrei Rublev, wanting a face viewers would not associate with other parts; Solonitsyn had read the script in Iskusstvo Kino, travelled to Moscow at his own expense and declared no one could play the role better.
- According to Tarkovsky's sister Marina, the film's editor Lyudmila Feiginova secretly kept a print of the 205-minute cut under her bed; Criterion's transfer came from a film print that Martin Scorsese acquired while visiting Russia.
- The budget was cut from 1.6 million roubles to one million (War and Peace had 8.5 million), scrapping a planned opening Battle of Kulikovo scene, and heavy snowfall disrupted shooting from November 1965 to April 1966, pushing the final cost to 1.3 million.
