The Brooklyn Cossack

Another of the movies I watched off my DVR recently is the 1962 version of the Nikolai Gogol novel Taras Bulba.

Yul Brynner plays Taras Bulba, leader of a band of Cossacks in the late 16th century. The part of the world inhabited by the Cossacks is stuck between three powerful nations: the Ottoman Empire, Russia, and Poland. The various Coascak bands fight a lot; at the same time, there's also fighting with the Ottomans going on. In this case, it's a battle between Poland and the Ottomans, and the Cossack intervention on the side of the Poles saves the day. However, the Poles are duplicitous and take over the Cossack lands. Taras flees into the hills to escape the Polish yoke. (I thought this might be the Carpathians, which extend into Western Ukraine, although supposedly it's supposed to be the steppes even those are relatively flat.)

Taras and his wife have two children. They grow up to be the adults Andrei (Tony Curtis) and Ostap (Perry Lopez). Taras wants them to get a good education, so he sends them off to university in Kyiv, which is accepting Cossack students but is under Polish governance. The Poles don't particularly like the Cossacks, and treat Andrei and Ostap like dirt, subjecting them to disciplinary floggings and the like.

Worse for the brothers is that Andrei sees the lovely young woman Natalia (Christine Kaufmann). In and of itself, that wouldn't be such a big deal. But Natalia is a Polish princess. There's both class and nationality issues regarding any sort of relationship between her and a Cossack like Andrei, and if the the relationship became public, it would mean big trouble for Andrei. Unsurprisingly, the authorities do find out, and Andrei and Ostap have to beat a hasty retreat out of Kyiv and back to the old family home.

Dad is glad to see them, but in the mean time, the Cossacks have become relatively peaceful; indeed, we get to see them have a couple of celebrations. But the possibility of more fighting comes with the Poles asking the Cossacks to help them subdue the Baltics in exchange for the spoils of war. The Cossacks do go off and fight, but Taras has a trick up his sleeve. He's planning to turn on the Poles and take back the land the Poles stole from them all those years ago.

At the battle of Dubno, Taras puts his plan in motion, and is able to force the Poles to retreat inside the city walls where Taras can besiege them into surrendering. The fact that there's also a plague going through Dubno should only help the Cossacks, even though some of the people under Taras are not pleased with having to keep up a siege instead of fighting. And then it turns out that Natalia is in the city....

I have not actually read Gogol's original novel so I can only trust other reviewers who comment on how faithfully the movie follows the source material. In that light, I obviously can't make any complaints about the movie going off in its own direction. As a period action movie, it's not bad, although it certainly does have some problems. One is that it's too long, at just over two hours, and another is the casting of Curtis and Lopez as the two sons; both of them stick out like sore thumbs.

Yul Brynner, on the other hand, was born to play material like this, and does a fine job. There's also nice scenery. As I was watching, I was wondering whether this was another of those international co-productions that got made someplace like Yugoslavia which at the time was the most open of the Communist countries. When I looked it up, I discovered that filming was actually in Argentina. I guess the Pampas could easily substitute for the steppes.

All in all, Taras Bulba is not a bad movie to watch on a rainy day if you want action and something that's not overly demanding.