And Still I Believe

Mikhail Romm set out to make a documentary on a large scale. Its subject was where the twentieth century had come from. The film was first called World 68. Later that title changed. Romm wanted to look at the moments in which the century was made. His disappointment with his own time was part of the work. It was left unfinished when he died. Younger colleagues took it over. Marlen Khutsiyev, Elem Klimov and German Lavrov completed it. They used the footage he had left. Passages from an earlier documentary of his were added as well. The whole thing is built on archive material. The wars, the leaders and the crowds of the century pass across the screen. It closes on a hopeful line of Romm’s. He says he believes people will come back to reason in the end. Archive footage of Albert Einstein appears in the hundred and twenty minute documentary, a Soviet production finished in 1974.