From On the Shore of Lake Sevan to The Secret of Mountain Lake: the History of Alexander Rou’s Film

Abstract

The article introduces into scholarly discourse valuable archival material – an album dedicated to the film On the Shore of Lake Sevan (The Secret of Mountain Lake) which is comprised of photos and reviews of the Soviet and foreign press. The authors analyze the content of the archival find, the plot structure and the pictorial treatment and determine the place of the film in the history of cinema. The children’s film about the exposure of magic shows the fairy tale codes and the specific features of Rou’s cinematography. The authors analyze the performance of the actors and the camera crew, the ways of representing the legend on the screen, and the role of the natural landscape and identify the most effective methods of working with an adventure story in the historical and cultural conditions of 1953-1954. They reveal the ways of including folklore motifs in the narrative and the techniques of self-citation used by the director. The authors come to the conclusion that the fantastic, ecological and didactic components are organically interwoven in the film. The published archival materials make it possible to reconstruct the historical and cultural context of the perception of Rou’s film and determine its significance for the development of Russian and Armenian cinema.

Keywords

• fairytale film
• soviet film
• armenian film
• children’s cinema
• alexander rou