Heart of a Dog (1988 film)

Lore & Background

The film is set in Moscow shortly after the October Revolution. A stray dog is lured by a piece of sausage into the apartment of Professor Philipp Philippovich Preobrazhensky, a well-known surgeon. The professor implants the pituitary gland and testicles of a deceased alcoholic and petty criminal, Klim Chugunkin, into the dog, named Sharik. Over the following days, Sharik transforms into a human, inheriting the donor's negative traits: bad manners, aggressiveness, profanity, and heavy drinking. His hatred of cats, however, remains a dog trait, not inherited from the donor.

Reader's Guide

Heart of a Dog is significant for its faithful adaptation of Bulgakov's satirical novel, a rarity in Soviet cinema of the era. The director famously used the novel's text as the script, crossing out only descriptions of nature and other details. The film won several awards, including the Prix Italia in 1989 and the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR in 1990. Its legacy lies in its unflinching portrayal of the dangers of social and scientific experimentation, mirroring the political upheaval of post-revolutionary Russia. The film remains a touchstone for discussions of adaptation fidelity and Soviet-era filmmaking.

Did You Know?

• The director used the novel's text as the script, crossing out only descriptions of nature and other details.
• Some scenes, including spir

A Near-Verbal Translation of Bulgakov

This 1988 screen adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov's novel is widely noted for its extraordinary commitment to the original text. Rather than commissioning a traditional screenplay, director Vladimir Bortko handed the cinematographer a magazine containing the novel itself. When the crew member expressed confusion, Bortko returned the following day with the same text, but with passages describing nature and similar atmospheric details crossed out. Practically nothing was excised in the process, making the film feel like a direct visual transcription of the book. A small number of scenes, however, draw from Bulgakov's earlier short stories rather than the novel proper: a spiritualism sequence, a prophetess appearing at a circus, and a Soviet-style christening ritual dubbed an "Octobering." These insertions enrich the narrative while maintaining the author's voice, and the overall effect is a screen version that treats the source material with near-devotional respect.

Satire, Chaos, and the Reversal

Set in Moscow in the immediate aftermath of the October Revolution, the film follows a stray dog lured into a professor's apartment by a piece of sausage. Surgeon Philipp Preobrazhensky, needing a test subject, transplants the pituitary gland and testicles of a deceased alcoholic criminal named Klim Chugunkin into the animal, named Sharik. Over subsequent days Sharik transforms into a human, but inherits every flaw of his donor: profanity, aggression, heavy drinking, and poor manners. He christens himself Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, takes a job at the Moscow department for stray-animal extermination, and aligns himself with the new Bolshevik building administration, which is already scheming to seize part of the professor's large flat. Sharikov's tenure turns the household into a nightmare—stealing money, smashing furniture, flooding the apartment during a cat chase. When Preobrazhensky discovers Sharikov has tried to denounce him to the Soviet secret police, he orders him out. Sharikov draws a revolver; assistant Dr. Bormental subdues him in a violent scuffle. Preobrazhensky reverses the procedure, and Sharik, remembering little, contentedly resumes life as a dog.

Production and Broadcast

Heart of a Dog is a black-and-white, two-episode television film classified as a comedy-drama with science-fiction elements, produced in the Soviet Union and directed by Vladimir Bortko. Its premiere broadcast took place on 20 November 1988 at 18:45 on the Central Television Programme One channel. The film subsequently crossed borders, airing at 8:00 PM on the ABC network in 1989. The two-part structure allowed the narrative to unfold with the pacing of a stage play across two sittings. The decision to shoot in monochrome reinforced the period setting—Moscow in the years immediately following the October Revolution—and lent the production a timeless, almost theatrical quality that complemented Bortko's near-verbatim adaptation approach. The film's format as a television event, rather than a theatrical release, meant it reached a broad domestic audience in a single evening, a distribution model that was both practical and culturally significant in the late Soviet period.

Recognition and Place in Adaptation History

The film's fidelity to Bulgakov's text and its sharp satirical edge earned it recognition on multiple fronts. It received awards at several domestic and international film festivals, most notably the Prix Italia in 1989. The following year, in 1990, it was honored with the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR, a significant domestic accolade. In the broader landscape of screen adaptations of Heart of a Dog, Bortko's version stands alongside the 1976 joint Italian-German comedy directed by Alberto Lattuada, which also drew on Bulgakov's novel but carried a purely comedic genre label. The 1988 film has continued to generate interest in the years since its release; a documentary was produced specifically about its making, and a June 29, 2016 episode of the television programme Secrets of Our Cinema revisited the production, keeping the film in public conversation well after its initial broadcast.