Passport to Moscow : Boris Frumin : A Soviet director restores his 1977 film and hopes it will lead to a new career in the U.S.

While Hollywood directors waited anxiously to see who would get the ultimate film prize this week, Soviet emigre director Boris Frumin wrestled with a more modest goal. He is hoping his recently released “Errors of Youth”--made in 1977--will be a ticket to work again as a director.

The film was shown recently in the New Directors series at the Museum of Modern Art and museum film curator Laurence Kardish advised the world premiere audience: “We have shown many films with strange histories, but none quite as extraordinary as this.”

The 12-year saga of “Errors of Youth” reads like Kafka with a glasnost twist--a happy ending tacked onto a story about an individual caught in the coils of a faceless, repressive bureaucracy.

Frumin, who left the Soviet Union in 1978 believing his film was consigned to oblivion and he to the blacklist, returned triumphantly to Leningrad last year to supervise the restoration of his 87-minute film.

The New York Times complained that the film’s male lead--a Soviet James Dean type--never explains why he is so moody and that the story line drifts. A Newsday reviewer praised the film’s premiere in New York as a “most revealing portrait of Soviet society.”

But the story of how the film wound up on the New York screen may reveal even more about Soviet society of the ‘70s and today.

“It was a nightmare,” said Frumin on a stormy afternoon in his apartment near Washington Square.

The tale begins at Lenfilm in the mid-1970s, where Frumin had gone after a year’s army service and graduation from the national film academy. At the time, the studio, headed by Viktor Blinov, was home to a group of independent-minded directors--almost all of whom were to suffer problems with state censorship.

“The studio was in constant conflict with the party in Leningrad. . . . You were facing constant party censorship,” Frumin said.

Frumin said he was the youngest director in Soviet film when he joined Lenfilm. By 1977, not yet 30 years old, he had two feature films under his belt, movies with politically sensitive themes about contemporary Soviet society.

Next, Frumin wanted to portray the difficulties of a working-class youth finding his place in a Soviet society with all-too-obvious blemishes. The script showed the lead actor mustering out of the army, making a brief return home to the countryside and involved in an unhappy love affair while working on a construction project in Siberia and getting married in Leningrad.

“At that time, you would find very, very few movies about young people in the Soviet cinema. Contemporary topics were dangerous to touch,” Frumin said.

To get script approval from Goskino, the state film agency, he worked in Bolshevo, a special film makers colony in the countryside not far from Moscow. “It was a little bit like a prison,” Frumin said. “There was a big stone fence. You look from your window and you see film makers walking silently, thinking about their films.”

Every two days or so, he would head into Moscow, meet with script reviewers from Goskino, and argue about the script, line by line.

“Then we had to get approval of the army censorship. They read the first few pages and said, ‘No way. Remove army from the script. We will never approve,’ ” Frumin said.

The army objected to scenes showing the hazing of new recruits, depicting officers being stupid and rude and showing marching soldiers singing a non-army song. Blinov said to start without army approval.

But before shooting could start, the uneasy officials took the unusual step of approving the film’s casting. “Usually, they don’t send people from Moscow to Leningrad to approve or reject, but somehow they sent two people from Moscow to watch casting,” Frumin said.

He lost his first choice for the male lead. “They didn’t like his eyes . . . not friendly enough.”

On location, Frumin and his film crew had to fool the army to get around the lack of approval: “When we went to the south of Russia, they didn’t know that the script wasn’t approved by the army. They assumed all the bureaucratic approvals were there.”

“They gave us a colonel to help us. We tried not to let him read a copy of the script. We never left a copy unattended, but he was a World War II veteran and he found a copy and he said, ‘Guys, I will go into retirement at the end of the year, so I will close my eyes, but I don’t envy your situation after you finish. They will never let you show it.’ ”

By the time the film crew had finished shooting in Siberia, Goskino had heard enough.

“We were told to come to Moscow with the dailies from the north. They said, ‘We don’t like what you are doing. We are stopping production.’ ” The officials were upset that the film showed people working on the gas line construction project mainly engaged in drinking, fighting and making love.

”

Frumin had to add some scenes showing the extent of the construction. Goskino officials then asked to see the locations for countryside scenes and complained that they were not bucolic enough.

By the time the crew got to filming scenes in Leningrad, everyone assumed the film never would be screened.

So, with “nothing to lose,” the crew filmed the script the way it was written. “We shot people drinking in public places. Today, this looks regular but then (officials) told us, ‘Guys, no way, no way, drinking in public places, no way.’ ”

It took a while for the final rejection of the film to come down.

The head of censorship at Lenfilm, a post filled by the party, was outraged.

“He very patiently and sweatingly explained to me why the film was bad and should be banned. It was like talking to a deaf man. . . . Always the last argument of his was, ‘I will not be the person who brings this film to the party or to Moscow.’ ”

The complaints were so many that Frumin does not remember them all.

Moreover, the studio party committee, after a screening of the film, abolished the Lenfilm Studio’s entire artistic council for approving the film for release.

The purge extended to Blinov, who was sacked. But by this time, a blacklisted Frumin had emigrated, leaving behind all evidence of his career as a director. He didn’t even ask for permission to bring his films.

Once in New York, he said, “I tried to break in. They said, ‘Find an agent.’ The agent said, ‘What do you have? Show us your films.’ ”

Frumin got a job teaching film at the New York Institute of Technology. Using $7,000 in savings and his own apartment, he made a short comic film, titled “English Lesson,” as a calling card. He applied for an opening at NYU and was hired as an associate professor five years ago.

Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union, shortly after “Errors” was shelved, its lead actor, Stanislav Zhdanko, was found dead with a knife in his stomach. A young woman he loved was held by police for a time, then released. The case remains unsolved. (“Errors” has been dedicated to Zhdanko’s memory.)

About the time that Frumin joined NYU, someone who had been biding time in Leningrad decided it was time to strike at the film that had been left behind.

The edited version of “Errors” was kept in the offices of Tamara Denisova, Frumin’s film editor. “When she went on location, which she does very rarely, about five years ago, two people in uniform came there and got the film. Since then, until today, nobody knows who did it, and the film disappeared,” Frumin said.

But under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Filmmakers Union ousted the old guard and set up a commission to review films that had not been released.

But “Errors” was not being considered.

“Errors” photographer Alexei Gambarian was enlisted. After searching archives in Moscow to no avail, he finally went to the Lenfilm lab. “He searched the vaults until he found these metal boxes with “Errors of Youth.” Then he asked people why it was in the lab. They told him they were supposed to reprocess it for the silver. But they said, ‘It was too much film. We don’t have the time.’ ”

Editor Denisova found an edited version of the print but without the first 10 minutes--”probably,” Frumin said, “because the army was in the first 10 minutes.”

The two persuaded Lenfilm to budget a restoration of “Errors.” Lenfilm went to Goskino, which now objected that the film is not on the list of movies to be put back on the screen. This time, the film makers had the upper hand and Goskino acquiesced.

Lenfilm sent Frumin a telex last summer: Please come back. We want you to put your film back together.

He went for two weeks in the summer, then for four weeks last December and January to finish it.

The final screening at Goskino was a contrast to the screening that had preceded its rejection.

Ten years ago, the official in charge was rude. “When he saw what we brought, he started to scream and yell and used dirty language,” Frumin said.

This time, most of the people who had voiced objections earlier were still there, Frumin said. But no one talked during the screening and afterwards, they used the polite form of address. “Boris Mikhailovich,” an official said, “we don’t have any questions for you. Do you have any questions for us?”

Frumin said no.

They said, “Then we accept this picture.”

Since the screening at the Museum of Modern Art, distributors have been calling Frumin. Officials with the Cannes and American Film Institute film festivals now are weighing the film as a possible entry.

Frumin is optimistic that the interest will lead to a new film for him.

“I came to this country to direct,” said Frumin.

“When the chance comes, I will direct.”