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Feb 03, 2022 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

By the early ‘80s, celebrated Soviet filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky had already been struggling to get a project produced in Hollywood for several years. After moving to Tinseltown at the behest of his friend, actor Jon Voight, Konchalovsky faced repeated failed starts despite his four-and-a-half-hour epic Siberiade (1979) winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, not to mention nearly two decades’ worth of credits on his own films and those of Andrei Tarkovsky. It didn’t help matters that was that he was Russian—and in the early ‘80s, the only significant roles Soviets played in Hollywood were as the bad guys who got punched, shot, or exploded by action heroes.

Enter the Cannon Group’s Menahem Golan—himself a Hollywood outsider. Golan spotted international starlet Nastassja Kinski eating at a restaurant, and approached the actress to offer her one of his famous film contracts drawn up on a napkin. She was dining with Konchalovsky at the time, where they were discussing her starring in a melodrama he was working on about a Yugoslavian soldier who returns home shell-shocked and unable to consummate his marriage to his high school sweetheart. Golan offered to produce the film on the spot – provided Konchalovsky changed the conflict to WW2, and shot it in the United States.

With Cannon’s modest budget behind him, Konchalovsky became the first Soviet filmmaker to direct a movie in Hollywood with Maria’s Lovers. The movie tells the tale of Ivan Bibic (The Deer Hunter’s John Savage), a shell-shocked Pacific theater vet who had been held in a POW camp by the Japanese. Welcomed home as a hero, he’s most interested in seeing one person: his childhood sweetheart, Maria (Kinski), who he finds making out on the front porch with her new boyfriend, hotshot fighter pilot Al Griselli (Alphabet City’s Vincent Spano).

Her new beau doesn’t stand as much of an obstacle for Ivan, however, and the two are soon wed. The problem is that Ivan can’t make love to his beautiful young wife. The trauma of war and his obsessive thoughts of her while overseas have rendered him impotent; that is, impotent only when he’s with her—he has absolutely no problem getting it on with a floozy neighbor lady (Anita Morris).

Meanwhile, the increasingly desperate Maria—who, in a cruel twist, works as a nurse in the local maternity ward, when all she wants is a baby of her own—blames herself for Ivan’s issues. On top of this, she has to repeatedly fend off the advances of every warm-blooded male in town, including Ivan’s own father (a reserved Robert Mitchum) and a horny, musical hobo hilariously named Clarence Butts, played by Keith Carradine.

Maria’s Lovers is full-blown melodrama, with wonderful photography, a nice score, and some great performances—and more than a handful of unintentionally hilarious lines. (The roster of four screenwriters included Pulitzer-winner Paul Zindel—and yet, lines like “Damn you, baby, and damn you too, clown!” still made it into the final picture.) In spite of these frequent, spit take moments, it’s a rather good film. Cannon gave the movie a last-minute Oscar-qualifying release, but when the film failed to receive any nominations, they seemed unsure of what to do with it—and chose to focus on the movie’s eroticism in their later marketing campaigns. To be fair, it doesn’t skimp in that department, but they greatly undersold the dramatic aspects of the film.

Keep your eyes out for a very young John Goodman and Harold & Maude’s Bud Cort in small roles as Ivan’s besties.

Code Red’s new Blu-ray of the film is wonderful to see, especially considering how difficult the film has been to find for some time now. Because the film was treated with a slight, sepia tiny job in post-production, it’s never going to be the most crisp or clear-looking film – but this here is easily the nicest it’s looked since original release. There’s an exciting pair of newly-recorded interviews with two of the film’s stars, John Savage and Vincent Spano, and fun reel of trailers for other Code Red releases.

(www.kinolorber.com/product/marias-lovers-blu-ray)