The Color of Pomegranates (1969) on Netflix
NR19691h 19mBiographyDramaHistory
Sayat-Nova, an Armenian poet and troubadour of the 18th century, is the subject. His life is revealed poetically, and at a prince's court he falls in love with a tsarina.
- Netflix4.2/5
- IMDb7.5/1017,136 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes94%
Trailer
Plot summary
The film is a biography of Sayat-Nova, an Armenian bard of the 18th century, and it aims to show his life visually and poetically rather than literally. Dialogue is rare; the sound is music and occasional singing. His life appears as a series of tableaux arranged in chapters, each one introduced by a title card: Childhood, Youth, and the Prince's Court, where he loves a tsarina. The images come from his poems and from the imagination of the filmmaker, and the telling draws on the Armenian illuminated miniature. Soviet officials objected to the stylized treatment and complained that it did not teach the public about the poet, so the title was changed and the poet's name removed from the chapter headings.
Cast
- Melkon Alekyanas Poet as a child
- Hovhannes Minasyanas Prince
- Onik Minasyanas Prince
- Yuri Amiryan
- I. Babayan
- Medea Bibileishvili
- T. Dvali
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Color of Pomegranates (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Soviet censors and Communist Party officials objected to Parajanov's poetic treatment of Sayat-Nova's life, saying it failed to educate the public, so the film's title was changed from Sayat-Nova to The Color of Pomegranates and all references to the poet's name were cut from the credits and chapter titles of the Armenian release.
- Filmmaker Sergei Yutkevich, a reader on the State Committee for Cinematography's script board, recut the film and wrote new Russian chapter titles to make it more palatable to the authorities, cutting minutes of footage, some for its religious content, and reordering sequences.
- Nicolas Jaar released the album Pomegranates without permission in 2015 as an "alternative soundtrack" to the film, and a 2017 Los Angeles screening with a live Jaar performance was replaced by the original soundtrack after objections from the Parajanov-Vartanov Institute and The Film Foundation.
- Madonna's 1995 music video for "Bedtime Story" restages scenes from the film, including a child lying in a fetal position on a pentagram and a naked foot crushing grapes on an inscribed tablet.
- Lady Gaga's music video for her song "911", released in September 2020, is openly influenced by Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates.
