Reviews

The filmography of director Aleksandr Askoldov lists a single film, Commissar. After a single viewing of the film it is easy to assess why no further works exist from Askoldov. Commissar is an ambitious, gutsy, and subversive film. Askoldov had to have been cognizant of the imminent danger it posed against his young career. This (likely) awareness of the inevitability of personal ruin seemingly emboldened Askoldov to move far beyond apoliticism, which was relatively acceptable, to the unthinkable, open hostility.

When trivially compared to Chapaev, the pinnacle of socialist realism thirty years prior, it is apparent just how indifferent and even spiteful Commissar is towards certain parts of Soviet society. Both films share the backdrop of the Russian Civil War; that is where the similarities end. Commissar not only avoids socialist realism in a time period supposedly ripe for the projection of Soviet heroism, it turns the idea on its head. While Chapaev embraces the breadth of the Soviet cause against the Whites, Commissar narrowly focuses on Klavdia Vavilova and the Jewish family that hosts her during her pregnancy. The fronts of each film are portrayed very differently. Chapaev embraces revolutionary romanticism. Impassioned speeches are given and camaraderie is instilled in the troops from the legendary figure himself. The only scene where Klavdia is shown with her unit, she essentially condemns a man to death. She is moody, heavy set, and emotionally withdrawn from her comrades. The defining difference, the one that provokes the comparison to begin with, is Commissar's complete inversion of socialist realism's journey of the hero. Instead of the spontaneous good-hearted hero being politically educated by a Communist figure, here the Communist figure undergoes a form of social education by simple, good-hearted peasants. Though Vavilova verbally recites the dogma of Communism throughout the film, we see how the tenderness Yefim and Maria introduce create intense internal conflict for Vavilova. The film suggests that war and the ideologies guiding them strip individuals of their inherit humanity. The family setting is an attempt at rehabilitation. Vavilova starts off talking about abortion and how she perceives her child as a parasite growing within her. Much later, after living among a loving family, she delivers her baby. In one of the most touching sequences of the film Vavilova paces around her room (as Maria puts, "…like a caged animal") carrying her baby and singing a lullaby. The duality of her character here, the callous (dutiful) commissar and the loving mother, is perfectly illustrated by Nonna Mordyukova's nuanced, complex performance. If the enlightenment of Communism is social construction, the film attempts to deconstruct, to reduce life to a simpler, more sincere form.

Buried under the mountain of clichés that typically entail a war film (although perhaps not so pronounced for the era), Fate of a Man is a genuinely emotional, well crafted movie that deftly handles the subjects of loss and resolve. What differentiates Bondarchuk's film from the litany of uninspired works, from any nationality, is the prowess with which he employs said mountain of clichés not just as a device to prop the plot upon, but instead as a means to explore the depths of the human trauma that results from war.

Under the relative creative freedom the "Thaw" provided, Bondarchuk's work is highly subjective and seemingly draws influence from Italian neorealism. Sokolov is a man who lived contentedly, before the war took everything from him. The story is divulged from his first person account, intimately executed through voice over. Each shot is visual progression in his emotional journey. The neorealist value of characters' space and their movement through it realizes this sense of progression. To cite an example, we simply have to look at buildings and characters' relation to them. Solokov meets his wife constructing a home. Prewar life is warmly attached to these buildings (homes and factories), a sense of fulfillment and love residing within. Returning home after the war we see shots of lumbering skeletons of bombed out factories, everyday life stripped of the flesh that once gave it meaning. This sequence culminates in Sokolov's discovery of the crater where his family home once was. Attention to small details such as a bed frame sticking out of the puddle of water in the crater make it especially heart wrenching. Speaking more specifically about physically inhabiting a space, there are a couple of striking shots. One example is in the scene where the Nazi's call out men from a line for execution. After the doctor who helps Sokolov is removed from his place in the line, the camera lingers on the empty space where he once was for several seconds. It's small moments like these that make the audience really internalize the sense of loss rather than just sigh a quick mandatory, "Awww."

There are moments in the film where the melodrama reaches distasteful limits, along with some poorly conceptualized and executed editing (ex. Water on the lens to fade in and out of early flashbacks). However, Fate of a Man is a special film, improperly served in this brief review.

The value of producing a spectacle in cinema knows no geographical borders or ideological fault lines among audiences. This is the appeal of Circus, a film that confidently rivals the production value and visual audaciousness of Hollywood films while also challenging the 'American Dream' of capitalist society with its own mythos.

The ambitious nature of the film is evident in every frame. Though it might not have been the proper way to view it, I watched the color version of the film and really can't imagine it any other way. The camera work, the choreography, and stunts exude a sort of brilliance that really calls for the admiration of the viewer in a way that goes beyond the typical fourth wall breaking of musicals. The flamboyance borders on modernist filmmaking, but is still somehow different. The conceptual cuts and transitions between scenes along with the conspicuous employment of the camera (in addition to the aforementioned qualities) seem to be a proud projection of socialist realism rather than an auteur calling attention to his own individual style. An example of this is a scene that opens overhanging a balcony with a great view of Moscow while the performers Marion Dixon and Ivan Martinov sing a patriotic number. The camera dollies into the apartment past a vase of flowers before settling on the performers at the piano. These are essentially three carefully framed shots neatly wrapped into one. To refrain from loquaciousness, the technical savvy here (as well as later in the scene when the camera rotates 180 degrees on Dixon's and Martinov's reflection in the piano) is a celebration of the Soviet craftsman (technician) rather than an introspection of an artist.

Soviet life is conveyed in the monumental vision socialist realism required. There are no problems with Soviet life; the conflict of the story is imported. Marion Dixon is trapped under the thumb of a German circus director and carries the guilt imposed by American society. The satire plays on the inversion of the 'American Dream'. Only in the enlightenment of Soviet society can Dixon break away from purely being a performer to actually become who she really is. This does raise a bit of an odd question though. The film builds to Kneishutz revealing to the circus audience Dixon's interracial child born out of wedlock. As an American who knows the context of the time period in America, I understood why Dixon wanted to keep it a secret and as the viewer braced for the social repercussions. As a result, the circus audience's response is a pleasant twist. However, to a Soviet audience wouldn't the payoff be nonexistent if their society was truly progressive about race relations? Or was the film meant to be instructive?

The House on Trubnaya faces a dilemma that seems a frequent occurrence in my limited exposure to Soviet Cinema; how do you balance art and entertainment, while concurrently sowing the seeds of ideology during an age of social reconstruction? Because of the difficulty of successfully maintaining multiple positions (the entertainer, the artist, the politician), the overall strength of a film is diminished through its diffusion of themes (by modern non-Soviet standards at least). All this isn't to say that the film isn't enjoyable in parts. As a comedy, the film successfully produces a few laughs especially in the first half of the movie. Paranya, the protagonist, is a very sympathetic character as the rural peasant girl in the big city of Moscow. The combination of the actress' performance, her wardrobe, and the basket she carries her duck in produce a feeling of internal warmness; perhaps (from an outsider's perspective) indicative of the monolithic essence of the hard but simple national character. She arrives in Moscow a relic of recent history in a modernizing city of bustling crowds and machines. The differences of every day life in the city and countryside create much of the humor and establish possibly the film's greatest sequence, during which Paranya chases her duck through the traffic of Moscow's streets. The chase's conclusion and subsequent narrative backtracking, is really pretty shocking for a film in an era where the vast majority of films followed an unflinching track of linear progression. (The sequence is echoed much later in Fernando Meirelle's City of God in the chicken chase through the streets of Brazil).

The aforementioned balancing act becomes problematic in the second half of the movie when we realize that Paranya isn't actually the protagonist. The worker's union is supposed to be the real hero of the story. Paranya is minimized to the face representing the collective. As a maid, she is exploited and berated by her employer, Golikov, for the majority of the film's remaining time. Her subsequent empowerment through the worker's union is supposed to be a consolation to the viewer. Golikov is told by a government official that Paranya is to be paid for her unused vacation days in addition to him serving jail time. Unfortunately this doesn't come off as much more than cheap ideological comfort in the place of emotionally engaging narrative. For the time period during which it was released, I can understand how the film was successful. The film is technically polished and has a couple of set pieces that are incredibly well done (the stair case with its strata of life and the aforementioned duck chase).In addition, the film is fairly informational regarding the rights of the common worker, allowing it to serve as a simple educational tool for the masses. However, compared to another Soviet film like Bed and Sofa, its unabashed tendentiousness blankets its potential as a truly rewarding work of entertainment or art.

In one of Eisenstein's writings pertaining to his theory on montage he quotes Japanese poet Yone Noguchi's view of haiku, "it is the readers who make the haiku's imperfection a perfection of art". In Strike Eisenstein employs this borrowed principle throughout, creating a film that is as much about what exists between frames as what is actually visible in each shot.

Much like most early Soviet films, propaganda is at the forefront of the plot. This is made apparent from the beginning when it opens with a prominently featured quote from Lenin stressing the importance of organization among the proletariat. The film subsequently reinforces Lenin's sentiment through both Eisenstein's direction and editing. The story follows the futile efforts of factory workers to become marginally more empowered under the strain of the colluding forces of the czarists and capitalists. The conflict seeps from the premise into each shot. While the costume, set dressing, and casting all lend themselves towards creating stark contrasts between classes, Eisenstein's use of space and shot selection serve the purpose as well. Open and closed space within the compositions provide social commentary. Crowds often overfill the frame with their movements that seemingly flow hectically forward, comparable to a river (a comparison that a futurist might loathe). The meeting of the factory owners is filmed with closed space, the composition neatly placing them all within the frame, suggesting an insulation of privilege within baroque unmovable walls.

As mentioned earlier, Eisenstein's editing creates subtext. The film is a sort of violent (and occasionally heavy handed) haiku in its subject matter and in the rhythm of cuts. Two sequences involving the brutality of the police illustrate Eisenstein's social commentary in parallel editing. The first one involves the police rounding up the strikers and forcing them to disband, while at the same time the factory owners read the worker's terms of negotiation in a mansion. While the police rule out their commands one of the capitalist squeezes a lemon in a press with a title card saying "you must get all the juice" (obviously drawing a comparison between the workers and the lemon). The other sequence is the famed slaughter sequence where the gunning down of workers is intercut with the actual slaughter of a bull, once again a commentary on the czarists disregard for human life. There is much more to commend the film for.

It's a film that could easily provoke a much larger discussion beyond the politics of agitka by simply being a great movie.

After an initial viewing, Esfir Shub's Fall of the Romanov Dynasty appeared fairly unremarkable in its presentation. Concerning structure, the film chronologically moves towards the fate that is predestined in its title with title cards giving context to the scenes. Without a score to accompany it (the version I watched), it is a fairly dry viewing experience after watching Vertov's 'documentary' Man With a Movie Camera. However, the comparison here isn't very appropriate considering that the aims of the filmmakers were not closely aligned at all. Shub's film compiles archival footage with the intention of forming a coherent historical record. Her objectivity is certainly debatable. The aloofness of the nobility is inter-cut with the toil of laborers in the fields. The full regalia of Russia's leading military men and the white, virginal dresses of noble women are put against the humble shawls of impoverished city dwellers. The individual leaders of the monarchists are featured prominently while crowds of dissidents replace the screen time of the Bolshevik leaders, an attempt by Shub to play on the revolution as populist movement. While the misleading nature of the film is a little off putting (for example capitalists are explicitly blamed for World War I), Shub's patience in the editing room and her ability to showcase tension between estranged classes of people visually redeem the film as a whole.

Evgenii Bauer's "After Death" is a film that seems like a work typical to the artist and era with a few aesthetic embellishments that were absent in his later film, "The Dying Swan". Once again, Bauer is obsessed with death, a theme that lasted through his career (from what I understand). The characters belong to an upper part of society, where the day to day physical strife of the common worker is replaced by the afflictions of ample free time and the painful facial contortions of melancholy. With this combination of death and melodrama, only tragedy can result. A tragedy that I felt was undermined once again, by how shallow the characters and their relationships are presented. Andrei (the reclusive student) and his love Zoia (the performer) are more or less reduced to symbols for the ideas at work (much like the characters of "The Dying Swan"). Death, madness, and the love's brief window of opportunity are Bauer's main concerns.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Bauer shows much more visual prowess in this film than "The Dying Swan". Technically, the film is exceptionally made. Bauer is able to convey ideas effectively through camera work alone. For example, Andrei's seclusion in the beginning is shot with an unmoving frame, emphasizing the emotional stagnation of being alone. Later when he is introduced to the soirée attendees, the camera tracks him as he moves throughout the room. The dynamism of life is reintroduced to him, culminating with him meeting Zoia. I'd like to think of this scene as a very early precursor to Scorsese's famous Copa Cabana tracking shot. The aforementioned main ideas are shown just as skillfully. Bauer's somewhat romanticized version of death is shown through the staging of his actors, the low key lighting, and Zoia's translucent superimposition during dream sequences. The latter is especially effective. Zoia is radiant and has an otherworldly quality in Andrei's dark bedroom. Andrei's slip into madness is conveyed through the constant shifting in the film's tint towards the conclusion. Finally, one of my favorite moments in the film is a perfectly placed dissolve when Andrei first learns of Zoia's suicide. The film dissolve's away from Andrei's dark bedroom to the white, snowy park they last met in.

Although it is hard for me to appreciate the theatrical quality of the acting and wafer thin characters (a criticism directed more at the silent era in general), Bauer's direction is very easy to admire. He made a film that spoke the language of cinema in an era when there was yet to be a common language.