Cult movie The Deer Hunter's Russian scenes & motives EXPLAINED

‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978), directed by Michael Cimino, has won many awards and titles. It is one of the emblematic hits of the ‘New Hollywood’, the name given to a particular period in the history of the American movie industry (spanning the late 1960s to early 1980s) when directors briefly gained the upper hand over producers and movies bearing a director’s personal stamp were good at the box office.

It was also one of the first movies about the Vietnam War: Cimino successfully disproved the preconception that a movie on such a topic could not be of interest to a wide audience. Viewers flocked to the cinema and were not even put off by the film’s three-hour running time. It was for their roles in ‘The Deer Hunter’ that cult actor Christopher Walken received his only Oscar (Best Supporting Actor) and Meryl Streep her first Academy Award nomination.

‘Russian roulette’

How did the Russian theme appear in the movie in the first place? The original script, titled ‘The Man Who Came to Play’, featured neither Russians nor Vietnam. It was about Americans playing ‘Russian roulette’ in Las Vegas. It was Director Michael Cimino, who had been hired for the project and was one of the writers of the final version of the script that came up with the new twist. ‘Russian roulette’ became a metaphor for the military adventure in Vietnam, while the nationality of the protagonists was clearly suggested by the deadly game itself.

‘The Deer Hunter’ is also a movie about the “melting pot” of American society. Descendants of immigrants from the Russian Empire, brought up on American values, go to fight communists in Vietnam. To reinforce this angle, the director spends the first third of the film giving a detailed portrayal of the lives of the close-knit Russian diaspora in Pennsylvania - that’s why their performance of the song ‘God Bless America’ in the finale sounds so poignant.

Admittedly, Cimino had to invent the everyday life and customs of this diaspora to a large extent. Both the director and the principal actors devoted just one week to immersing themselves in the circumstances of the lives of the heroes of their future movie - they traveled to out-of-the-way places by car and even “gatecrashed” a real Russian wedding. But, this trip only took place at the end of the period of preparations, after the script had long been written. 

Cimino was an Italian American and, of course, could much more realistically have portrayed the Italian American community. Francis Ford Coppola had, by that time, shot two parts of ‘The Godfather’, however. This gangster saga had established a new benchmark in the portrayal of Italian Americans. In addition, ‘The Deer Hunter’ has certain dramatic similarities to the first ‘The Godfather’ film, which also dealt with the topic of the American melting pot in the context of war (World War II in the latter case) and a very large role in the plot is played by family events and ceremonies. In particular, Cimino and Coppola both began their movies with long wedding sequences. Finally, the director cast Robert De Niro in the role of deer hunter Michael Vronsky - who also played the godfather, Vito Corleone, as a young man in ‘The Godfather Part II’.

By adopting a Russian theme, Cimino was able to distance himself as far as possible from the other hit movie and avoid unwanted comparisons.

Wedding guests sing ‘Katyusha’

Eclecticism rules throughout the movie. Take the names of the main protagonists. The Robert De Niro character clearly owes his surname to Leo Tolstoy and the novel ‘Anna Karenina’, but the name is more Polish than Russian. The Ukrainian-Byelorussian surname of Christopher Walken’s character - Nika (Nikanor) Chebotarevich - is pronounced, plainly in error, with a ‘V’ and written Chevotarevich. Stanley - the final role of actor John Cazale - is known to his friends as Stosh in the Polish manner. The characters speak a mixture of Slavic languages and use a “Russian” toast traditional for Hollywood: “Na zdrowie!” The wedding of the Pushkovs - Steven (John Savage) - was filmed in the St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral and Lemko Hall in Cleveland, where there was an immigrant community of Carpatho-Rusyns. Members of the community were recruited as extras.

A separate oddity is the choice of music. For instance, the wedding guests break into a dance resembling a traditional ‘Kazachok’ to the accompaniment of not the most obvious soundtrack - the drawing room ballad ‘Troika’ by tsarist-era composer Pyotr Bulakhov. And, towards the end of the evening, everyone starts singing ‘Katyusha’ in chorus.

This is a popular Soviet song that émigrés of that time would hardly have known by heart (the movie is set in the late 1960s - in other words, the protagonists came to the U.S. before or immediately after the October Revolution or these are their children). It was a fanciful choice, albeit quite appropriate to the plot. The ‘Katyusha’ of the song hankers after her beloved, who, somewhere “on a faraway border… protects his native land”. It is the same here, too, for the wedding reception is also a leaving do - the groom and two of his friends are to ship out to Vietnam a few days later.

It is also telling that of all the actors playing important roles in the story, there are only two who could be described as émigrés from the former Russian Empire and they are given far from key roles. There is Rutanya Alda (Steven’s wife), who is actually Latvian, and the actor George Dzundza (a friend of the main protagonists), who, in real life, is the son of Ostarbeiter parents - a Ukrainian father and Polish mother, who were forcibly deported to Germany for factory labor during World War II.

To be fair, it is worth noting that some of the eclecticism in the movie is perfectly realistic. For instance, we are shown an Orthodox wedding ceremony, but everyone, including the priest, speaks English; and tin cans are tied to the newly-weds’ car - a very American custom. Overall, it is clear that Cimino was not striving for historical accuracy - he was trying to convey a parable more than a drama, and as a result regularly sacrificed verisimilitude for artistic truth. And not just in the Russian scenes.

The premiere of ‘The Deer Hunter’ at the Berlin Film Festival itself ended in controversy - the Soviet delegation walked out of the screening room in protest. However, they were not at all outraged by the bogus portrayal of the Russian diaspora, but, rather, by the movie’s demonization of the communist Vietnamese.