Heart of a Dog (1988 film)
9 /10 1 Votes
Directed by Vladimir Bortko Music by Vladimir Dashkevich Initial release 20 November 1988 Music director Vladimir Dashkevich | 89% Rotten Tomatoes Screenplay by Natalya Bortko Cinematography Yuri Shajgardanov Director Vladimir Bortko Production company Lenfilm | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Based on Heart of a Dog
by Mikhail Bulgakov Starring Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev
Boris Plotnikov
Vladimir Tolokonnikov
Nina Ruslanova Awards Prix Italia for TV – Drama Cast Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev, Vladimir Tolokonnikov, Boris Plotnikov, Nina Ruslanova, Roman Kartsev Similar Dog's Heart, The Idiot, The Master and Margarita, Afghan Breakdown, Taras Bulba | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Heart of a Dog (Russian: Собачье сердце, translit. Sobachye serdtse) is a black-and-white 1988 Soviet television film directed by Vladimir Bortko. It is based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel Heart of a Dog.
Contents
Plot
The film is set in Moscow not long after the October Revolution where a complaining stray dog looks for food and shelter. A well-off, well-known surgeon Phillip Phillippovich Preobrazhensky happens to need a dog and lures the animal to his big home annex practice with a piece of sausage. The dog is named Sharik and well taken care of by the doctor's maids, but still wonders why he's there. He finds out too late he's needed as a test animal: the doctor implants a pituitary gland and testicles of a recently deceased alcoholic and petty criminal Klim Chugunkin into Sharik. Sharik proceeds to become more and more human during the next days. After his transition to human is complete, it turns out that he inherited all the negative traits of the donor - bad manners, aggressiveness, use of profanity, heavy drinking - but still hates cats. He picks for himself the absurd name Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, starts working at the "Moscow Cleansing Department responsible for eliminating vagrant quadrupeds (cats, etc.)" and associating with revolutionaries, who plot to drive Preobrazhensky out of his big apartment. Eventually he turns the life in the professor's house into a nightmare by stealing money, breaking his furniture, a water ballet during a cat chase and blackmailing into marriage a girl he met at the cinema. The professor with his assistant are then urged to reverse the procedure. Sharikov turns back into a dog. As Sharik he does remember little about what has happened to him but isn't much concerned about that. To his content he is left to live in the professor's apartment.
Cast
Details
