Andrei Rublev (1966)

Andrei Rublev (1966, Soviet Union) (aka Andrei Rublyov, or The Passion According to Andrew)

In Andrei Tarkovsky's dramatization of the life of the great religious icon painter Andrei Rublev (Anatoli Solonitsyn), who took a "vow of silence" and lived through a turbulent period of 15th Century Russian history, presented in eight acts, with its spectacular eighth episode finale:

• set in the Russian countryside, the sequence of the expensive and lengthy creation of a great bronze bell; the film watched over the digging of a pit, the choice of clay, the pouring of the molten metal, the casting, the removal of the bell from its mold, and the hoisting (installation) of a great bronze bell into a wooden tower
• the sequence observed by Andrei Rublev, and conducted by the deceased bellmaker's teenaged son Boriska (Nikolai Burlyayev), who allegedly had received the secrets of bell-casting from his master artisan bell-making father; they were under a deadline - to complete the work in time for an inauguration ceremony for the Grand Prince and his entourage when the bell was to be blessed by the priests
• the tension of the sequence, because if the bell's swinging clapper failed to ring, the entire work crew and Boriska would be beheaded
• the moment of Boriska's relief when the bell's sound came forth - his collapse into the mud of exhaustion and relief - and his shocking admission to Rublev that he had lied and bluffed about receiving bell-making secrets from his father; moved by the boy's creative all-consuming drive and faith to create the bell, Rublev broke his "vow of silence"
• the film's conclusion reverted to Technicolor, exhibiting in a collage the beautiful icon paintings of Rublev