The Master and Margarita - subtitles

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Films in our subtitle project

Here you can watch an example of the English subtitles made by the webmaster of this website for various screen adaptations of works by Mikhail Bulgakov.


The TV-series of Vladimir Bortko

We decided to make subtitles by ourselves since we noticed that various suppliers offered a DVD-set of the TV-series Master i Margarita by Vladimir Bortko with English subtitles on the internet, but the quality of those subtitles is very poor. Many people who bought it were really deceived. Which is a pity, since it was the most successful TV-series ever on the Russian television, but the official distributor didn't bother about subtitling it.

That's why, in 2009, we decided to make subtitles ourselves. And not only in English, but also in French, Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch.


The film of Yuri Kara

Yuri Kara's film The Master and Margarita (1994) was for a long time the most discussed but least watched Russian film ever. For 17 years, the film didn't get officially released. There existed bootleg versions of it though, but again without subtitles. In 2011, after 17 years of discussions à la russe, the film was finally released. But it was in a much shorter version and also without subtitles.

So we subtitled both versions of this film. The quality of the images of the long original version from 1994 is not as good as the shorter version from 2011. Yet it is an interesting historical document.

In 2021, the Russian film enthusiast Vadim Anokhin skillfully intertwined the two versions of Yuri Kara's film into one version. The result is a film of 3 hours and 22 minutes, with 1 hour and 58 minutes in very good image quality, and 1 hour and 24 minutes in a slightly lesser quality, but with smooth transitions from one version to another. It is also striking how the disturbing background noise from the old version has been skilfully removed.


The film of Michael Lockshin

Michael Lockshin's 2024 film has a long history, eventually resulting in shootings that started on July 5, 2021 - when the title of the film was Woland. The expectations were high, especially because of the input of the American production company Uiversal Pictures. The role of the cat Behemoth could be presented very vividly with the most modern animation technologies that had previously been used in the film adaptation of The Lion King in 2019.

However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 threw a spanner in the works on two fronts (pun intended). Uiversal Pictures withdrew, and director Michael Lockshin openly spoke out against the war. Because of this, the film experienced many problems in post-production. Despite the fact that your webmaster does not really like this film, he still wanted to make it available to the widest possible audience by subtitling it in Dutch, English, French, German and Italian.


The film of Aleksandar Petrović

Those who did read the novel before watching thi film, will have real bad moments. The master on this film is an appreciated, succesful, and quite assertive author. So his work on Pontius Pilate is not his first work. It's no novel, by the way, but a theatre play, and it is on the bill together with famous plays by William Shakespeare, Gorky and Sophokles.

In 1972, director Aleksandar Petrović was a Yugoslav, and he has made this film originally in Serbian. The difference with the more famous Italian version is not only the language, but also the fact that in the Serbian version you can't hear the music composed by Ennio Morricone. You can hear Russian songs, which also can be heard in the Italian version, but only sporadicly and fragmentarily, as they are often pushed away by the Morricone's soundtrack. In the Serbian version, they come into full play.

For the Italian spoken version, your webmaster made subtitles in English, French, German and Dutch.


The TV-series of Maciej Wojtyszko

One of the hidden gems in the area of ​​the film versions of The Master and Margarita is definitely the Polish TV series Mistrz i Malgorzata realized by director Maciej Wojtyszko in 1988, and shown on the Polish TV channel TVP in 1990. Until recently, those who wanted to watch this series could only rely on substandard VHS tapes of poor quality. They were offered on Amazon with vague, blurred images, a poor sound quality and lousy English subtitles.

Fortunately, in the autumn of 2014 TVP got quite unexpectedly the idea to release the series on DVD. Your webmaster made subtitles in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.


The White Guard

In the spring of 2012, the Russian TV channel Rossia 1 broadcast the impressive TV-series The White Guard by director Sergey Snizhkin, based on the eponymous novel by Mikhail Bulgakov. The beautiful renderings of some of the best Russian actors bring this series to unprecedented height


A Dog's Heart

On demand of many visitors of this website, we also subtitled A Dog's Heart, another very good film made by Vladimir Bortko and based on a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov.


Morphine

In 2008, film director Aleksey Balabanov made a screen adaptation of the stories which Mikhail Bulgakov wrote about his life as a country doctor in A Young Doctor's Notebook. The film Morphine was never released on DVD, but we could get hold of a copy, and made subtitles for it in English, French and Dutch.


A Young Doctor's Notebook

In 2012, Alex Hardcastle directed A Young Doctor's Notebook, a four-episode TV series of the same stories for the British TV channel Sky Arts 1. The older Vladimir Bomgard is played by Jon Hamm (Don Draper in Mad Men), the younger by Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter). Radcliffe is an avid fan of The Master and Margarita. Due to the success of the first season, a second season of four episodes followed in 2013 directed by Robert McKillop. Your webmaster subtitled this English spoken series in Dutch and French.


Ivan Vasilievich

In 1973, film director Leonid Gaidai made a screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's theatre play Ivan Vasilievich changes professions. Actor Yuri Yakovlev (1928-2013) plays a brilliant double role in it. We made subtitles for it in English, French and Dutch.


The Days of the Turbins

In 1976, film director Vladimir Basov made a screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's theatre play The Days of the Turbins. This play was Mikhail Bulgakov's own theatre adaptation of his novel The White Guard. We made subtitles for it in English, French and Dutch.


The Flight

In 1970, the film directors Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov made a screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's theatre play The Flight. One of the most remarkable roles is played by Mikhail Ulyanov, the actor who was also Pontius Pilatus in Yuri Kara's film Master of Margarita. We made subtitles in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and French for this film.


Cuore di cano

In 1976, eleven years before the novel Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov was even published for the first time in the Soviet Union, and twelve years before Vladimir Bortko adapted the story into a highly acclaimed mini-series, the Italian director Alberto Lattuadda had already made a film of it.

Cuore di Cane was highly praised for the acting performances. Not only for Max von Sydow as professor Preobrazhensky, but also for Mario Adorf (Doctor Bormenthal) and Cochi Ponzoni (Bobikov), and certainly for the work of dog trainer Luciano Spinelli, who prepared the dog Whisky to leave an unforgettable mark. We made subtitles in English, Spanish, Italian, French and Russian for this film.


Black Snow

In 2003, the film directors Oleg Babitsky and Yuri Goldin made a film adaptation of Bulgakov's last - and unfinished - work Theatrical Novel, also known as Black Snow and A Dead Man's Memoir or Notes of a Dead Man. We made subtitles in English, French and Dutch for this film.



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