"The Cinema of Andrei Konchalovsky"

How did the brilliant Soviet director of such lyrical gems as The First Teacher and mammoth epics as Siberiade end up in Hollywood churning out the 1989 Kurt Russell/Sylvester Stallone turkey Tango & Cash? The retrospective of Andrei Konchalovsky's work showing this week -- February 27 through March 5 -- at the Coolidge Corner does not answer that question, but it does vindicate a filmmaker who has drifted into unfortunate obscurity and erratic productivity.

Certainly his debut feature didn't portend a future shaping the comic nuances of Homer and Eddie. The First Teacher (1965; screens Sunday and Wednesday at 9:15 p.m.) is a fable of pristine simplicity that recalls the work of such recent Iranian directors as Abbas Kiarostami. The film opens with bleak images of the Mongolian landscape and a primitive village -- the rustic equivalent of Michelangelo Antonioni's montage of technological anomie at the end of L'eclisse. Into this wasteland comes a young teacher appointed by the then fledgling Soviet government to enlighten its denizens. His only sign of authority is a hood with a homemade star; the villagers greet him with laughter.

Neither is he much of a teacher (instruction consists in part of chanting "Socialism! Socialism!"). But through sheer bullheadedness, and a disconcerting flirtation with a student (he's no Sidney Poitier from To Sir with Love), the teacher perseveres, sort of -- the climactic cutting down of a towering tree is symbolically ambiguous, though strangely resonant.

As critical as Teacher is of its village, the film demonstrates one of Konchalovsky's supreme virtues -- as the retrospective's title puts it, "the poetry of place." In Asya's Happiness (1967; Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday at 5:45 and 10 p.m., with a Saturday matinee at 1:30 p.m.), the star of the show is not the pregnant lame woman of the title but the stunning vistas of rural Russia and the tradition- and history-rich lives of the people who labor therein. With a cast of nonprofessionals from the area, the semi-documentary tapestry that emerges is poignant, impassioned, politically astute (which explains why it was banned for 20 years), and never sentimental.

The setting figures prominently in Konchalovsky's adaptation of Uncle Vanya (1970; Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday at 3:30 and 7:50 p.m.) -- its decaying dacha is an objective correlative of the fettered characters of the Chekhov classic. Here the director exercises another of his strengths: his skill with actors. With the exception of Louis Malle's Vanya on 42nd Street, it's the finest version of the play on screen.

Siberiade (1971; Sunday at 2 p.m.) may enjoy just a little too much space -- and time -- for its own good. Clocking in at more four hours, it made me feel every verst and generation of its six-decade saga of the winning of the wild East. It's kind of a cross between Bertolucci's 1900 and George Stevens's Giant -- but the relentless low comedy and the mugging performance by Konchalovsky's brother, Nikita Mikhalkov, put it in the deep freeze for me.

Not so one of his earlier Hollywood productions, and in many ways his masterpiece, Runaway Train (1985; Monday and Thursday at 3:30 and 8 p.m.). Starring Jon Voight (who initially lured Konchalovsky to Hollywood) as an escaped convict who stows away on a train with knuckleheaded sidekick Eric Roberts, it's the epitome of American genre filmmaking, triumphing as drama, spectacle, and harrowing allegory. The final image is one of the most beautiful Hollywood has produced; too bad they rewarded the filmmaker with Whoopi Goldberg.

-- Peter Keough