Andrei Rublev (film) - Distribution

Distribution

The first cut of the film was completed in July 1966 and was named The Passion According to Andrei and ran 205 minutes. Goskino demanded cuts to the film, citing its length, negativity, violence, and nudity. After Tarkovsky completed this first version, it would be five years before the film was officially released in the Soviet Union.

The ministry's demands for cuts first resulted in a 190-minute version. Despite Tarkovsky's objections expressed in a letter to Alexey Romanov, the chairman of Goskino, the ministry demanded further cuts, and Tarkovsky trimmed the length to 186 minutes. The film premiered with a single screening at the Dom Kino in Moscow in 1966 for film professionals. Audience reaction was enthusiastic, despite some criticism of the film's naturalistic depiction of violence. In February 1967, Tarkovsky and Alexei Romanov complained that the film was not yet approved for an official release and refused to cut further scenes from the film. Tarkovsky's refusal resulted in Andrei Rublev not being released for years, despite being a topic of discussion at the top level of Mosfilm, Goskino and even during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

Andrei Rublev was invited to the Cannes Film Festival in 1967 as part of a planned retrospective of Soviet film on occasion of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. The official answer was that the film was not yet completed and could not be shown at the film festival. A second invitation was made by the organizers of the Cannes Film Festival in 1969. Soviet officials accepted this invitation, but they only allowed the film to screen at the festival out of competition, and it was screened just once at 4 A.M. on the final day of the festival. Audience response nevertheless was enthusiastic, and the film won the FIPRESCI prize. Soviet officials tried to prevent the official release of the film in France and other countries, but were not successful as the French distributor had legally acquired the rights in 1969.

In the Soviet Union, influential admirers of Tarkovsky's work—including the film director Grigori Kozintsev, the composer Dmitri Shostakovich and Yevgeny Surkov, the editor of Iskusstvo Kino—began pressuring for the release of Andrei Rublev. Tarkovsky and his second wife, Larisa Tarkovskaya wrote letters to other influential personalities in support of the film's release, and Larisa Tarkovskaya even went with the film to Alexei Kosygin, then the Premier of the Soviet Union.

Despite Tarkovsky's refusal to make further cuts, Andrei Rublev finally was released on December 24, 1971 in the 186-minute 1966 version. The film was released in 277 prints and sold 2.98 million tickets. When the film was released, Tarkovsky complained in his diary that in the entire city not a single poster for the film could be seen but that all theaters were sold out.

Despite the cuts having originated with Goskino's demands, Tarkovsky ultimately endorsed the 186-minute cut the film over the original 205-minute version:

Nobody has ever cut anything from Andrei Rublov. Nobody except me. I made some cuts myself. In the first version the film was 3 hours 20 minutes long. In the second — 3 hours 15 minutes. I shortened the final version to 3 hours 6 minutes. I am convinced the latest version is the best, the most successful. And I only cut certain overly long scenes. The viewer doesn't even notice their absence. The cuts have in no way changed neither the subject matter nor what was for us important in the film. In other words, we removed overly long scenes which had no significance.

We shortened certain scenes of brutality in order to induce psychological shock in viewers, as opposed to a mere unpleasant impression which would only destroy our intent. All my friends and colleagues who during long discussions were advising me to make those cuts turned out right in the end. It took me some time to understand it. At first I got the impression they were attempting to pressure my creative individuality. Later I understood that this final version of the film more than fulfils my requirements for it. And I do not regret at all that the film has been shortened to its present length.

In 1973, the film was shown on Soviet television in a 101-minute version that Tarkovsky did not authorize. Notable scenes that were cut from this version were the raid of the Tartars and the scene showing naked pagans. The epilogue showing details of Andrei Rublev's icons was in black and white as the Soviet Union had not yet fully transitioned to color TV. In 1987, when Andrei Rublev was once again shown on Soviet TV, the epilogue was once again in black and white, despite the Soviet Union having completely transitioned to color TV. Another difference from the original version of the film was the inclusion of a short explanatory note at the beginning of the film, detailing the life of Andrei Rublev and the historical background. When the film was released in the U.S. and other countries in 1973, the distributor Columbia Pictures cut it by an additional 20 minutes, making the film an incoherent mess in the eyes of many critics and leading to unfavorable reviews.

In the mid-1990s, Criterion Collection released the original, 205-minute version of Andrei Rublev on laserdisc, which Criterion re-issued on DVD in 1999. (Criterion advertises this version as the "director's cut," despite Tarkovsky's stated preference for the 186-minute version.) According to Tarkovsky's sister, Marina Tarkovskaya, one of the editors of the film, Lyudmila Feiginova, secretly kept a print of the 205-minute cut under her bed. Criterion's producer from the project stated that the video transfer was sourced from a film print that filmmaker Martin Scorsese had acquired while visiting Russia.