«Dog Heart» by Dr. Vladimir Bortko, USSR, 1988. In the roles of Eugene Evstigniev, Boris Plotnikov, Vladimir Toloconnikov, Nina Ruslanov and others.
The appearance on the television screen of Vladimir Bortko’s film gave rise to an incredible interest in the audience: it has found phenomenal popularity that has not faded until today. The prose of Bulgakov, formerly the domain of a narrow circle of intellectual readers, literally stepped into the widest popular masses. The premiere was accompanied by violent press articles: old-fashioned activists demanded that the film be filmed and that Bortko not work in the movies. However, the restructuring was under way, and two years later «Dog Heart» was recognized as a significant artistic achievement and the director received the State Award.
Today, Bortko’s film is hardly the top ten of the best Soviet films; the lines of characters have been taken to quote and aforism («becoming memes,» in today’s language), and the names of heroes have become punitive. The fact that many viewers learned Bulgakov’s tale through the television screen led to its filming being inextricably linked to the original story.
