Hello to everyone who has been following this blog for many years - I'm still blogging, I'm just moving over to https://www.claireheffer.com/blog - please continue to follow and let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been kind enough to visit over the years. May the lists continue...

Sunday 20 July 2014



FILM 1174: STALKER

TRIVIA: According the film's Sound Designer, Vladimir Sharun, at least 3 members of the crew (including the director) died as a result of chemical contamination encountered on location in Estonia.

The original negatives were destroyed (by a processing error at the laboratory) and part of the film had to be shot again from scratch with a new director of photography.

The Zone of the film was inspired by a nuclear accident that took place near Chelyabinsk in 1957. Several hundred square kilometers were polluted by fallout and abandoned; of course there was no official mention of this forbidden zone at the time.

Tarkovsky built long film processing vat which had different temperatures along the way, allowing him to change the color tone over a long strip of film, over an extended take.

It is said that the rushes of the first version of the film were kept by editor Lyudmila Feyginova in her home for years. They were destroyed by fire, that also claimed her life.

Towards the end of the movie, the Stalker's wife smokes cigarettes from a carton that bears the same AT (Andrei Tarkovsky) insignia as the policeman's helmet.

When the Stalker is referred to as 'Chingachgook' and 'Leatherstocking', these are references to characters in James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans".


The scenes of the girl moving the object with her mind on the table at the end of the film, was honored in the video Bed Time Stories from Madonna.

Like Tarkovsky's other films, Stalker relies on long takes with slow, subtle camera movement, rejecting the use of rapid montage. The film contains 142 shots in 163 minutes, with an average shot length of more than one minute and many shots lasting for more than four minutes.

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