Critically important – Newspaper Kommersant No. 66 (7511) of 04/15/2023

At the age of 87, film critic and film critic Yuri Bogomolov, the author of many books and articles, scientific papers on cinema and television, passed away.

Yuri Bogomolov belonged to the second, if not the third, generational wave of sixties critics, along with Viktor Demin, Valentin Mikhalkovich, Tatyana Khloplyankina, and the now living Elena Stishova, who have passed away. After graduating from the film studies department of VGIK, he served as a researcher at the State Film Fund, and later worked and published in many publications related to cinema, from the Soviet Screen and Soviet Culture to Film Studies Notes, in the newspapers Izvestia, Moskovskie news” and “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, in the magazine “Seance”.

His voice in film criticism was one of the most lively, sober and convincing. At the same time, he could afford to express opinions that differed from the generally accepted ones and fully met the criteria of political correctness.

I remember his long analytical article on Georgian cinema and the sensational discussion that followed it in the Art of Cinema magazine, in which I also happened to take part. The freedom-loving spirit of Georgian cinema annoyed the Soviet officialdom, and they wanted to use Yury Aleksandrovich’s article against it. But he did not write it by order, but because he had his own, sometimes critical considerations regarding certain Georgian films.

This is very typical of that era: for example, Viktor Demin spoke rather harshly in his book about Tarkovsky’s “Mirror”, and the “progressive public” suspected him of serving the authorities.

But in the end, everything was decided by the authority of the critic, and Bogomolov possessed it to the full, and no one could deny him the right to his own opinion.

As a result, by joint efforts, the discussion turned out to be for the health of Georgian cinema, although it was supposed to be “for the rest”.

Bogomolov wrote monographs on Mikhail Schweitzer and Pyotr Todorovsky, Mikhail Kalatozov, Andrei Konchalovsky and Roman Balayan. In all, the author’s inclination to consider specific artistic phenomena through the prism of the history and theory of art was obvious – not only cinematographic, but also literature, theater, and painting. For many years Bogomolov worked at the Institute of Art History (now the Institute of Art Studies), where the best film critics of the country, expelled from the Institute of Cinematography during the period of stagnation, gathered in the mass communications sector. In this sector, under the leadership of Anri Vartanov, they were engaged in the study of television – and this was a partisan way of analyzing the aesthetics of cinema in its relationship with other screen forms, without ideological blinders. Gradually, Bogomolov became interested in a new subject and devoted himself to the study of the phenomenon of television in the broad context of modern media.

However, ideology caught up with him in this territory as well.

Before our very eyes, television was turning from an experimental field of aesthetic searches into an instrument of propaganda and manipulation of public opinion. All the more valuable was the balanced and deep analysis of Bogomolov, to which he subjected this process.

An honest man of principle, true to democratic convictions, he took to heart everything that happened in our country and in its culture.

Andrey Plakhov