Creative team
Written by Algirdas Araminas, Icchokas Meras
Cinematography by Donatas Pečiūra
Music by Algimantas Apanavičius
Art directors Algirdas Ničius
Costume design Viktorija Bimbaitė
Cast
Gediminas Karka, Vytautas Kernagis, Henrika Hokušaitė, Elena Remišauskienė, Elena Savukynaitė, Julija Kavaliauskaitė, Kazimieras Valaitis, Dalia Krikščiūnaitė, Linas Kriščiūnas, Bronius Babkauskas, Jonas Kavaliauskas, Juozas Miltinis
About the film
- Best directing award in Baltic, Belarusian and Moldovan Film Festival in Minsk (1969).
The plot of the film centres around the story of first love between high school graduates Tomas (Linas Krikščiūnas) and Eglė (Julija Kavaliauskaitė) that begins after the two skip a school excursion to an exhibition. The most important characteristic of the film is that it is permeated with a spirit of youth. Its core value lies in the depiction of exhilarated and spontaneous following of intoxicating sensations and experiences of first love, even if marred by the anguish of jealousy and disappointment, that lead to extraordinary moments such as soaring high on horses or water skis, long meanderings around Vilnius at night or dawn or escaping to nature. When the film first appeared on screens, it received criticism for the young protagonists’ passive position of life, detachment from the socialist reality and tendencies of the time. Despite that, When I Was A Child remains one of Algirdas Araminas’ most outstanding films that accurately conveys both the then era and the universal problems and moods of a young person’s coming-of-age rite of passage.
More about the film
The best films by director Algirdas Araminas, among which undoubtedly is When I Was A Child (1969), are marked by spontaneity, unrestrained shifts in mood, intuitive creativity, a sense of the spirit of the time and that of style. His films speak not only in the words of dialogues – the unspoken, glances, gestures, lyrical images and music appear to be more eloquent. These elements are exactly what unlocks the characters’ inner world ruled by powerful feelings, complex psychology and existential angst. This trait connects Araminas’ films with an important tradition of European cinema - to reveal the miracle of humanness, to give the characters human dimension: their doubts, mistakes, pains, love.
In the features When I Was A Child and A Small Confession (1971), the director authentically conveys the worldview of a young person undergoing a coming-of-age rite of passage, their rising rebellion against the truths of adults that are being imposed on them, their anxiety about the future. These films, Araminas’ best, which have deservedly become classics of Lithuanian cinema and which are still being watched and remembered, have been described as “films about youthful angst”.
Based on the motifs of the novel Farewell, Yellow Cat by Estonian writer Mati Unt, When I Was A Child, which tells a seemingly unexceptional story of first love, “became an emblematic work of the sixties,” according to film critic S. Macaitis. “With some concession, it could be listed alongside the first films by François Truffaut and Milos Forman about teenagers just like those portrayed by Araminas.”
The director wrote the screenplay together with the prose writer Icchok Mer. It is composed of seemingly random, not always interrelated events. The most important characteristic of the film is that it is permeated with a spirit of youth. Its core value lies in the depiction of exhilarated and spontaneous following of intoxicating sensations and experiences of first love, even if marred by the anguish of jealousy and disappointment, that lead to extraordinary moments such as soaring high on horses or water skis, long meanderings around Vilnius at night or dawn or escaping to nature.
The plot of the film centres around the story of first love between high school graduates Tomas (Linas Krikščiūnas) and Eglė (Julija Kavaliauskaitė) that begins after the two skip a school excursion to an exhibition. Their spontaneous and somewhat childish behaviour - an escape from a dull formal environment - is also mirrored by a minor character in this scene, a simple man, who had accidentally wandered into the exhibition, played by one of the renowned actors of Panevėžys Drama Theatre, Bronius Babkauskas. The man enjoys what he sees just like a child, marvelling at it and trying to touch and truly experience it... It is a completely improvised scene that was not originally included in the script. But oh how those two parallel manifestations of childish naturalness and liveliness in a crushing, insensitive, ideologised environment come to shine and echo each other in the film.
Eglė and Tomas escape from the exhibition to a country stable the keeper of which is played by the legendary founder of the Panevėžys Drama Theatre, director Juozas Miltinis. He offers the young people not only a ride on horseback but also to taste the intoxicatingly enticing “kumis, mare’s milk champagne”… Carried by the feeling of freedom and their dreams, the two sweethearts ride on horseback as if on a boundless prairie to the sound of the Western-like music by Algimantas Apanavičius.
In this feature, just like in the work of Araminas in general, music is of particular importance as it best reveals the inner world of the protagonists, their feelings, thoughts and moods. For example, the paraphrase of the melody from the popular musical Hello, Dolly, which we hear during the youngsters’ first date at home, perfectly creates a light, romantic, somewhat ironic atmosphere of this scene. The motifs of the classical Ave Maria heard in the Vilnius Cathedral that had been turned into a picture gallery colour the young people’s love with hues of eternity and sacredness. However, their first non-verbal row, a separation, also takes place against that same background, symbolically. The music here is a nod to the increasingly modern style of cinema, particularly influenced by the French “new wave”, to cultural currents of the time.
The source of disappointment in love and the anguish of jealousy becomes an artist who teaches Eglė drawing, played by another legend of the Lithuanian art world, sculptor Teodoras Kazimieras Valaitis. Donatas Pečiūra, the film’s cinematographer, mesmerisingly and precisely captured his expressive face, hands and movements.
The torturous moralising by adults, such as the strict aunt and teachers, provokes Tomas’ desire to rebel, to disobey the oppressive environment and boring routine. Vytautas Kernagis, who embodies Tomas’ classmate, plays the guitar and sings as an expression of agreement, while the TV in the background harps on about the evils of the “rotten capitalist world” of the West. The director sensitively, if at times with a somewhat declarative emphasis, depicts the fury experienced by young people, their despair towards the reality they witness.
When I Was A Child is a story of a young person coming of age, their transition from the time “when I was a child” into the adult world. The film begins with an expressive long shot framing Tomas’ gaze as he looks through the window covered with raindrops - it is anxious and hopeful. What awaits him in the future when he “will no longer be a child”? It is no coincidence that throughout the film the two main protagonists keep noticing a “lucky coin”, which at the end is symbolically carried by the roaring rainwater into the unknown.
We see Tomas’ long gaze again when, feeling despondent, he paints a mime’s mask on his face and looks in the mirror, thus “trying on” masks worn by adults.
Between those two gazes lies a personality-shaping life experience, a farewell to childish naivety, that rather rose-coloured view of the world. It is simply growing up.
When the film first appeared on screens, it received criticism for the young protagonists’ passive position of life, detachment from the socialist reality and tendencies of the time. Despite that, When I Was A Child remains one of Algirdas Araminas’ most outstanding films that accurately conveys both the then era and the universal problems and moods of a young person’s coming-of-age rite of passage.
– Film critic Neringa Kažukauskaitė
