My Apprenticeship

The second film of the trilogy adapted from the memoirs of Maxim Gorky begins where the first part, about his childhood, left off. Sent by his grandmother to a relative to learn drawing, Alyosha Peshkov is given nothing but household chores. Unable to bear the unfairness around him he leaves; he wants to join the barge haulers but is not strong enough, works as a dishwasher on a steamboat and learns to love books there. Then he grinds pigments in an icon painting workshop, and quits when he is asked to inform on the craftsmen. The film is not about how a writer became famous but about how a boy found his own measure. Aleksei Lyarsky and Varvara Massalitinova appear in Mark Donskoy’s hundred minute Soviet production, completed in 1939.