Sunday 15 March 2015

"Manuscripts don't burn"*

I am looking forward to tonight's broadcast adaptation of Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita". It will have to go some to improve on the effect of an earlier Radio 4 "Classic Serial" production starring Michael Maloney and Geraldine James.

What the novel cries out for is a new film. The Russians in that period of liberalism between the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putin produced a movie of the work of one of their own - but it was not released and it looks as if a similar venture is verboten under the present regime. I haven't seen it, but I doubt that Russian studio techniques could have reproduced the spectacular effects of the novel.  However, in the West, CGI has now advanced to a state where an enterprising producer and director can do justice to Bulgakov.

* See http://freethebooks.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/story-behind-name.html



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