My Apprenticeship

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My Apprenticeship ★★★ 1939

The second film of Donskoi's trilogy on Maxim Gorky has the writer earning his living, at the age of eight, as an apprentice to a bourgeois family. Although they promise him an education, Gorky is forced to learn to read on his own and eventually sets off on a series of land and sea voyages. He recognizes that the poverty and abuse he has suffered is typical of the lives of most Russians and he encounters the beginnings of revolution. In Russian with English subtitles. Preceded by “My Childhood” and followed by “My Universities.” 100m/C VHS . RU Varvara O. Massalitinova, Aleksei Lyarsky, Irina Zarubina, Ivan Kudryavtsev; D: Mark Donskoi; W: Mark Donskoi; C: Pyotr Yermolov; M: Lev Shvarts.