MY UNIVERSITIES 1940 Mark Donskoy, Maxim Gorky Nikolai Valbert 2 STILLS

2 Original 1954 Contemporary Films Release 8 1/8 inch by 6 inch Stills of NIKOLAI VALBERT in the 1940 Mark Donskoy Biographical Drama MY UNIVERSITIES (MOI UNIVERSITITY ), based on the book “Out in the World” by Maxim Gorky.

My Universities (Moi universiteti) is the last installment of Russian director Mark Donskoy’s “Maxim Gorki” trilogy. Having endured a painful youth in My Childhood (1938) and a torturous sojourn as a serf in My Apprenticeship), future writer Gorki (Alexei Lyarsky) reaches maturity with an insatiable desire for personal and artistic freedom. The “university” of the title is actual the school of Hard Knocks, as Gorky goes to work in the shipyards and commisserates with the hard-drinking, philosophical dockworkers. Donskoy’s depiction of street life under the Czarist regime of the late 19th century as unrelentingly depressing, filled with disenfranchised derelicts. This, of course, was meant to be a contrast to the “perfection” of the Stalin years.The stills are in very good condition with a cast list tacked to the reverse.