Russian Film Final Paper, by Christie Gibbons, December 16, 2004, page 1

Heart of a Dog

Mikhail Bulgakov was born in Kiev in 1891, and lived through a time in the Soviet Union when domination of nature was something persistently pursued and highly praised. Bulgakov himself practiced medicine, but later gave up the profession for a writing career. As a writer he was constantly criticized by Soviet officials and finally, in 1930, was completely prohibited from publishing anything else. With the recent fall of the Soviet Union, his work has been rehabilitated in Russia and throughout the world. One of his most famous novels, Heart of a Dog, was adapted into a film by Vladimir Bortko in 1988. Both the book, and Borko’s film, which remains very true to the book, ridicule the Soviet Union’s obsession with science, and the belief in dominating and transforming nature that was so prevalent in early Soviet years.

Bortko’s film begins with sepia tone long shots of trolleys going to and fro on a main street in Soviet Moscow in 1924. His decision to begin the film with shots of mass transportation is his attempt to show the technologically advanced nature of the Soviet Union in the 1920s. These opening shots occur in the heart of a winter blizzard. The sound of wind whistling sharply is heard throughout these shots. Dirty snow is seen everywhere, its banks littered with trash. A horse-drawn buggy goes by and the horse’s hooves are shown slipping on the ice. (Such images are in contrast to the efficiency, even beauty, of the technological supremacy of the day.) A group of men, probably belonging to the military, marches right by the stray dog, taking no notice of him. A bit later, the dog is kicked and swept away by a local shopkeeper’s broom. There is a shot of a fire burning in an alley, which the dog could use to stay warm, but he longs for a home where he will be taken care of. Many of the shots Bortko uses are point-of-view shots, done with shallow focus, from the perspective of the stray dog, who has recently had hot grease dumped on his side by an angry cook, and is now caught out in the bitter wind, left to die. We further get the dog’s perspective as he narrates his thoughts throughout the first few scenes of the film.

A petite, young typist comes to pet the dog and gives him a little bit of food that is tucked away in her coat. She stoops down to his level, looking at him with sympathetic eyes. Yet, she cannot take him home. So she returns to her home to escape the biting wind. This small typist gives him the name Sharik, which in Russian means: the son of an aristocrat who is round and plump. This is in stark contrast to his actual state as a stray mutt who is shaggy, wounded, scrawny, and quite filthy.

His physical condition, though,  is no matter for Professor Philip Philipovich Preobrazhensky, who sees Sharik huddled in a gateway and feeds him some Cracow sausage. Philip Philipovich is filmed standing over Sharik, like a lord, or master, standing over his subject, or in this case, his project. He is shown as having dominion over this poor, mangy dog. While the dog, rendered almost entirely helpless, is at the mercy of the professor, he who holds the life-sustaining sausage. Of course, Sharik follows him home.

When they reach the front door of Philip Philipovich’s apartment, they are greeted by the friendly doorman, Fyodor, who is wearing a fur-collar coat. Fur is a prominent occurrence within Bortko’s film. Almost all of the characters portrayed have on some sort of fur, leather, or feathers as part of their attire. Professor Preobrazhensky’s coat, too, is lined with silver fox fur. This is one way in which Bulgakov and Bortko further present the ridiculousness of human domination over nature.

Such ridicule is extended even further when the inside of the professor’s extravagant seven-room apartment is shown. The first thing to notice is a stuffed owl, which Sharik later tears to pieces, that is perched on a twig just above the inside of the front door. The owl’s eyes light up each time someone rings the doorbell. Just below the owl is a jungle of potted plants. There is also a leather sofa in the living room. Condoning of blatant domination of nature is evident throughout the film in these household images.

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