Quiet Flows the Don

Even this five-and-a-half hour film isn't able to quite encompass Mikhail Sholokhov's mammoth 1934 novel, which sets the life of a single Cossack family (the Melekhovs of the village of Tatarsk in the Don River valley—particularly Grigori, the virile and womanizing eldest son) against the backdrop of Russian history from 1914 to 1921. But it's nice to finally have access to Sergei Gerasimov's 1957 epic in its original uncut form, rather than the puny 107-minute version released in the U.S. in 1960. Unfortunately, Quiet Flows the Don has the episodic quality of a meandering miniseries, punctuated by shots of the titular river to remind us of the locale. On top of that, the direction is at best workmanlike, the staging of the individual scenes is prosaic (minus the grandeur of the greatest Russian epics—or David Lean's Doctor Zhivago—with battle sequences that lack sweep and intensity), and the performances are so broad as to border on the cartoonish. This four-disc set features the complete film on the first three discs, with the fourth devoted to extras, including a “making-of” featurette, cast and historian interviews, a featurette on the novel, a program of Cossack folk songs and dances, and footage of Sholokhov accepting the 1965 Nobel Prize in Literature. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)