Social disease… Child of the Big City (1914)

It’s Russia in 1914 and you know what’s coming you just don’t know when… then, as the two main characters enjoy a drink in a busy night club it happens:  there’s movement behind a curtain at the far wall revealing a stage, a dancer emerges and as your eyes get drawn to her undulating arms, the camera literally follows your gaze, moving past the couple – who reveal their diverging emotions at the same time – and heading towards the dance.

It’s an expert dolly shot perfected by Yevgeni Bauer and used to give his films an extra depth few contemporaries in World Cinema could rival. He created beautiful sets and moved his actors around them with the same expert precision as his cameras to weave richly-morbid morality tales that may or may not have reflected the turmoil enveloping his country: you know his characters will face life-changing moments and that a happy ending is far from assured.

The camera shows their distance...

But, whatever the trajectory, Bauer will tell his story in a style that avoids the melodramatic through restrained direction and a focus on subtle signifiers rather than grand gestures… well, to a large extent and even when he does use the broader strokes he does so in a way that might confound expectation…

In Child of the Big City we are led immediately in the wrong direction as the story begins showing a poor child Manetschka (Nina Kosljaninowa) watching her mother die of consumption. Six years later and Manetschka has grown up into a striking young woman called Mary (Elena Smirnova) who works as a seamstress while daydreaming of the rich life beyond her… There’s a lovely close up as Mary sits at the window; the outside world going about its business happily without her.

Arseniy Bibikov and Michael Salarow

Meanwhile we meet a young man called Viktor (Michael Salarow) who is looking for a woman with more depth than his well-schooled social circle – here’s a man of integrity in spite of the crude urgings of his extrovert pal Kramskoi (Arseniy Bibikov). He sits disconsolate in his drawing room half-heartedly reviewing snaps of young socialites. Needless to say, this is a Yevgeni Bauer drawing room with many objects positioned to not only illustrate the depths of Viktor’s intellect but also to create superior depth of field as the actors move diagonally through the frame… you’re drawn in (to the drawing room…).

Window shopping

After work Mary tortures herself by window shopping in the more expensive parts of town: we hope she gets what she wants. She encounters Kramskoi outside a jeweller's shop whilst Viktor looks on… and accepts his forward invitation to dine with them at.

Mary steps open-eyed into their bourgeois world only to be repeatedly mauled by Kramskoi she runs to Viktor for protection and succumbs readily to his more whole-hearted embrace. So far, so good… surely Mary has found her fortune in the arms of this serious young man?

But then we see them at the night club and as the camera moves through the scene we can see their relationships fault line all too clearly: Mary smiles to herself as she downs her champagne as Viktor looks on with concern... distanced. Then an overhead shot reveals the bawdy scene in full and Mary accepts an overly-familiar greeting from another man in a top hat.

Viktor is soon driven to financial ruin by Mary’s insatiable requirements for possessions and parties. He sits in his study contemplating the very worst course of action… by the time he gets to Mary’s rooms he finds her in the arms of a servant (Leonid Jost): her passion has run wild. Viktor shoots his pistol in impotent rage and collapses in front of them…

Now, Viktor dreams of winning Mary back from the sparse darkness of his tiny new lodgings whilst Mary carries on living the high life supported by an ever-increasing circle of well-heeled admirers. He pleads for a last chance – one last meeting – will Mary stop to think or has her careless accumulation of wealth and experience inured her to the concerns of common humanity?

Viktor finds Mary in a compromising embrace...

Child of the Big City offers little comfort to those who expect natural justice from their films and as the title makes clear, sees society as the issue and not the individuals. Mary is just as much the victim of consumerist culture as Viktor is of his naive search for pure love: perhaps the need to possess endangers us all?

Elena Smirnova makes for a delightfully flighty Mary, winning our sympathy then throwing it back in our face whilst Michael Salarow’s Viktor begins his fateful tailspin luxuriating in self-indulgent introspection.

There’s a nice cameo from Lidiya Tridenskaya as Mary’s cheeky maid servant whilst Emma Bauer provides the decadent dance in the nightclub.

Viktor's desperate letter is read...

I watched the Milestone Early Russian Cinema Volume 7 DVD which features the BFI restoration from the early 1990s which comes complete with splendid accompaniment from a young Neil Brand: he’ll go far! It’s available direct from Milestone along with the other volumes of their comprehensive overview of Russian cinema.

Vera and Yevgeni join the party… Children of the Age (1915)

Vera Kholodnaya

This is the most overtly political of the films I have seen directed by Yevgeni Bauer and clearly shows his involvement in the contemporary Russian discourse on social equality and unprincipled capitalism. Children of the Age (Deti veka) may not be a long film but it packs a lot into its 38 minutes: class conflict, sexual violence, corruption… and the human misery derived from all.

Bauer’s trademark touches are all in evidence with the backdrop to every scene beautifully constructed not just for the interiors but also with locations showing Moscow and its surrounding countryside. Deti veka is a feast for the eyes throughout with perfectly judged camerawork and cutting allowing an expressive cast to flourish.

Vera Kholodnaya and V. Glinskaya

Two old friends run into each other in Moscow’s Gostinnyi Dvor, a chic shopping arcade off Red Square – the Petrovskii Passage. One is the happily married Maria Nikolaevna (panda-eyed Vera Kholodnaya) who lives in a modest apartment with her baby and husband: a junior bank clerk (Ivan Gorskij). The other is Lidija Verkhonskaja (V. Glinskaya) a woman of means who feels that her friend could have done better. She decides to help her and with friends like these, Maria won’t need any enemies…

Members of the revolutionary garden party...

Lidija invites her beautiful friend to meet her wealthy social set and to enjoy their parties and other pleasurable past-times – picnics, boating and gypsy concerts (gypsies were all the rage at the time!). It’s obviously a good time to be young and wealthy in Moscow and the consumption is conspicuous… so far away from the conflict with Germany (Russia's Great Retreat stared in July 1915 and Kholodnaya's husband had been drafted in 1914) and the suffering of large sections of society.

Mr Nikolaevna fits less easily in with his wife’s new associates and after the first garden party in which his ignored whilst Maria attracts all the attention, he leaves her to it. From the first event onwards, she falls under the gaze of the acquisitive and unprincipled industrialist Lebedev (Arseniy Bibilov) who determines to have her for himself… and friend Lidija is all too willing to help matters along: is she also under the rich man’s control?

Bauer's typically lavish set design: Lebedev pursues his prey...

Lidija arranges for Lebedev to be alone with Maria in a park but she evades his leacherous advances, quickly walking back to Lidjia. But this is only a temporary respite as the elder man reaches in to affect Maria’s life in ways she cannot begin to understand, arranging for her husband to lose his job so as to try and persuade him into giving up his wife and child in exchange for money.

Lebedev is not to be denied and pursues Maria at a picnic after getting her drunk: we are left in no doubt as to the outcome as the two are driven back to Moscow in the old letch’s chauffeur-driven limousine.

No escape for Maria...

This sequence is still harrowing and as Lebedev is mauling Maria, she manages to escape but no one will help her especially after his monied molester plays it all down by claiming that she’s “having hysterics…” Thus the word of the rich counts for all and Maria slumps back into the car defeated –  it’s quite genuinely horrible and not something you’d expect to see in an American film perhaps.

Her will is broken and she returns home dishevelled and ashamed. But that’s not the end and she is about to have her last avenue of escape closed off… Her husband is called to a meeting with Lebedev’s attourney, ostensibly to discuss a new job but when he arrives it is only to offered money to leave his wife and child in exchange for a fee. He refuses and rushes to return home…his world closing down on him.

Ivan Gorskij and Vera Kholodnaya

Spoilers: As he heads home in a defeated daze, Bauer intercuts with scenes of Maria taking their baby away to a life with Lebedev and his strange acolyte Lidija… The car stalls but it won’t offer a reprieve… young Nikolaevna arrives home to find everyone gone…with no future left he writes a note and shoots himself…

So complete is Lebedev’s victory that the viewer’s mind inevitably slips forward a couple of years to when Russian society finally snapped. This is not to say that Bauer was a communist sympathiser or any shade of revolutionary, but the revolution had been building for decades and all walks of life had their own sense of injustice, including bourgoise film makers.

That this all plays out against a backdrop of Bauer’s typically opulent stages somehow makes everything worse. Wealth doesn’t bring true class or happiness and Lebedev having everything, simply wants more.

Maria is betrayed by her old friend and swept up into a world of manipulation in which neither she or her husband has a chance: the kind of hopeless, almost casual injustice that drives desperate solutions. She fights all along the way but in the end is sucked in as a means of securing the welfare of her child… and we can only guess at what lies she has been told about her husband’s response to his pay off. Maybe this is the only way she can think of protecting him too?

Arseniy Bibilov plays the villain with aplomb and Ivan Gorskij is good as the hapless husband. But it’s The Queen of Screen you watch, Vera Kholodnaya, who has a very modern beauty as well as a dancer’s grace (she trained as a ballerina) and an acting style perfectly suited to the screen. Her premature death from flu in 1918 rocked Russia and robbed them of one of their greatest actors.

Sadly only one of her films is currently available commercially – A Life for a Life, also directed by Bauer, which is reviewed elsewhere on this blog – it is to be hoped that Deti veka and her other surviving films are given a western release at some point. Only five survive out of at least fifty features...

For the moment, a fair copy of Children of the Age is available on youtube.

Yevgeni Bauer’s debut - Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913)

Nina Chernova

This is a striking debut from Bauer and one of the most advanced films I’ve seen from 1913.

There are some wonderful compositions using the director’s typically well-designed sets through which his actors move through amazing shifts in light and tone. It also features possibly the earliest tracking shot as the camera follows the main character, pulling the viewer and their sympathy behind the troubled young woman.

The first dolly?

As ever with Bauer it is somewhat unsettling to view his tales of aristocratic ennui in a country that hardly knew itself. Within a few years, the way of life he depicts will have disappeared forever as Russian society – perhaps the most divided in Europe – is re-worked by the Great War and the Bolshevik revolution. Sadly the director himself was to face oblivion before this event was settled.

Bauer did have sympathy for the revolutionary cause as his later films show and, whilst here he depicts some of the underclass as criminal, there's none more listless and decadent than the idle rich, with their pointless parties and affordable morality...

Depth, design and despair

The film centres on Vera Dubovskaja (Nina Chernova) a bored young woman who has lost her taste for the endless frivolity of her privileged lifestyle. Her mother cajoles her through a party which takes place in amongst the first of what was to become Bauer’s trade- mark multi-layered sets.

Vera is seen reluctantly joining in with the party and then breaks away from the dancing and moves camera-forward to rest on a chair where she is briefly harassed by two male admirers. Shoo-ing them away she stands and walks down set to be followed briefly by Nikolai Kozlovski’s camera – a short, stunning moment of film history.

Let there be more light...

But even without his moving lens, Bauer used lighting, mis-en-scene and well-choreographed performers to create a real sense of depth and movement. In Vera’s bedroom she is almost detached from the World bathed in blue-tinted light behind a gauze drape, she gets up and moves through the flimsy barrier to open her curtains and be illuminated by the daylight streaming through.

Vera’s mother takes her to give aid to the poor who seem pre-occupied by drinking and gambling… society no doubt to blame but… In the shadowy loft they encounter Maksim Petrov (V. Demert) who pretends to have injured his arm, Vera’s applies a bandage and Maksim correctly spies a sucker.

Vera in the slums

He leaves her a letter – breaking into her room in the dark and tells her he is in need of help. We see Vera making her way through the slums as Maksim looks down from his loft. There’s great shot from on top the building tracking Vera’s hesitant progress she looks afraid and very vulnerable…

In Maksim’s flat the tale takes its pivotal turn as Vera is raped and ends up killing her assailant as he falls into a drunken stupor… Bauer doesn’t show specifics but enough to make the audience aware what outrage has taken place.

V. Demert and Nina Chernova

Vera returns home knowing that nothing will ever be the same again… she stands distraught in the former comfort of her room.

But, over time, she returns to society and meets the handsome Prince Dolskij (A. Ugrjumov). The two start a romance but Vera starts having visions of the man she murdered and falls ill. Recovering she prepares herself to tell her love the truth…

But the Prince, seemingly prepared to forgive her anything, is unable to process the full extent of her news… particularly the fact that she has “known” another, no matter the circumstances – in the context of the time an obviously difficult situation as the film acknowledges.

The Prince casts Vera out of his life and by the time he relents and realises the mistake he’s made, it is too late and she has gone. He spends a fortune on trying to find her but the private detectives comes can find nothing.

A. Ugrjumov and Nina Chernova

Spoilers ahead: The years pass and Vera has changed identity becoming a famous actress. There are some stunning shots of her curtain call – a confusion of pink light – and her dressing room, again bathed in pink.
By chance an almost exhausted Prince has been persuaded to attend the theatre and he looks on in astonishment recognising his lost love.

Will they be reconciled? And is it the twilight for more than one person’s soul?

A fascinating historical document, Twilight of a Woman's Soul shows how many of Bauer's techniques were already in place as well as how far he would travel by his later films – After Death (1915) and A Life for a Life (1916) are covered elsewhere on the blog.

Nina Chernova acts well as the tortured star and never drifts overboard... understated and naturalistic.

What a remarkable culture Russia had at this time, so sophisticated and European – the nobility often spent more time in France than Moscow – and yet so near to societal collapse. The seeds of revolutionary wildfire were laid long before this period though and the fateful catalyst was mere months away when this film was released.

I watched the BFI DVD which contains The Dying Swan along with After Death and a nifty video essay by Bauer expert Yuri Tsivian. It's available direct from the BFI site.

Vera Kholodnaya ‘The Queen of Screen’ … A Life for a Life (1916)

Yevgeni Bauer was the leading film director in pre-revolutionary Russia and it’s a joy to uncover more of his work. He operated on a similar level to the Scandinavians and Americans of this period in terms of setting out and defining film language with increasing depth and sophistication.

Watching A Life for a Life ( Zhizn za zhizn) from 1916 it doesn’t appear initially to be that ground-breaking or much different from many melodramas from the period but… the more you watch the clearer it becomes that Bauer is controlling almost every aspect of what you see with vision and verve.

Now this sounds obvious (and maybe it is) but I’ve rarely been as conscious of the actors acting when not centre stage - or of their movement and positioning indicating important issues of character or plot. The spaces they are in seem to be indicators both of emotion as well as circumstance.

As with the earlier After Death Bauer builds real spaces in which to act his dramas – they are spacious sets and built to the very edge of his relatively fixed camera frame and filled to brimming with flowers and ornaments. The actors use every inch of the stage and move around each other to be revealed in different parts of the set – reinforcing the impression of depth, solidity and the “real”.

The actors are in nearly constant motion and move back and forth and across the screen to signify different moods or developments in their relationships… I suppose you could call Bauer economical: no space goes unfilled and the actors’ movements not only tell the story they also create its rhythm.

Based on the novel by French writer, Georges Ohnet, Bauer sets the story in the Russian upper class set. Mrs Khromova (Olga Rakhmanova) is a wealthy industrialist who runs her factory very effectively – a strong female character and one you might not find in some other cultures at this time? She has a birth-daughter, the winsome but naive Musya (Lydia Koreneva) and another she has adopted, the beauteous Nata (played by Vera Kholodnaya famously Russia’s first film star ) .

Both girls are of marrying age and, whilst Nata has attracted the attention of the wealthy merchant Zhurov, (Ivane Perestiani) she does not love him. Into their lives comes the wastrel Prince Vladimir Bartinsky (Vitold Polonsky looking a little like an over made up Peter Capaldi…), who has no money and plenty of debts. He woos Musya as she is the only daughter who will inherit from their mother, yet, he has lost his heart to Nata who has no money nor, being adopted, the rights to any.

A bargain is struck between the two men and Zhurov offers to help the Prince marry Musya in return for having a free run at Nata… thus do both men abuse the trust of the family. Zhurov makes the Prince’s case to Madame Khromova but she is only finally swayed by the affection her daughter shows for this dubious character. Musya hardly knows what she’s getting into and her mother warily takes the chance.

There’s a superb set piece at the wedding when Bauer swoops the camera towards the wedding banquet and then out again after the speech: this is the heart of the story and we can only guess how things will now unfold. The omens are not good as Nata breaks down and confesses her true love to her mother who asks her to never put Musya’s happiness under threat.

These scenes are well worked with the characters moving on and off the dance floor and a breeze gently blowing Nata’s wedding viel across her face… ‘tis and ill wind…

The Prince and Musya go off on an extended honeymoon and on their return it is clear that the Prince has continued his wayward lifestyle and is gambling his wife’s dowry away. To make matters worse, the Prince is soon reunited with Nata in spite of her protestations that she now hates him. She can’t resist him and begins to help him defraud her husband. This Prince is something like the male version of a “vamp” bringing destruction to all those he touches…

There’s an horrific moment in which he re-encounters Nata and she gives in once again to his advances. Musya opens a curtain to recoil in horror as the two make love. It’s a great reaction from Lydia Koreneva.

Spoilers ahead: Zhurov uncovers the fraud and quickly sees the truth of his wife’s relationship with the Prince. He and Madame Khromova agonise over what course of action to take. She wants the Prince disposed of and he wants to tell the police but this course will only bring shame on them all.

No one seems capable of resolving the situation and the Prince prepares to brazen his way out by saying that there is no way to prove his guilt. But he reckons without the superior moral courage of Madame Khromova who taking the gun intended for his suicide, shoots him dead from across the room and then has the presence of mind to plant the weapon in his dead hands.

My teenage daughter and I were high-fiving at this point, possibly inappropriately, but in recognition of Khromova’s strength of character and willingness to act. Her daughters are both distraught but the evil in their lives has been removed. Not such a morally-questionable resolution in Russia in 1916...and it's difficult to not see political overtones.

It is also really striking to find such a strong female character in a story from this period and to find none of the men heroic.

The five leads all play well, especially Olga Rakhmanova as the matriarch, whilst Vitold Polonsky is wonderfully weasily as the pointless Prince.

The stand out though has to be the powerfully-enigmatic Vera Kholodnaya who is remarkably beautiful and also a fine naturalistic actor. Her expressive face – huge illuminated eyes – is matched by a dancer’s poise (she had classical ballet training at the Bolshoi Theatre no less) which suited Bauer’s mobile agenda, and an expressive physicality. At one point she almost shivers with disgust – a violent shake of her shoulders – whilst at other times she is more understated than you’d expect: carrying a lot within even though in torment.

A Life for a Life was the film which inspired the actor/singer Alexander Vertinsky to dub her ‘the Queen of Screen’ – he was besotted along with many of his countrymen, and she went from strength to strength as world war gave way to revolution in Russia.

Kholodyana made over 50 films but sadly only five remain. She died in the spanish flu pandemic in early 1919 and the Milestone DVD I watched has footage from her funeral in Odessa; a sad coda to a film that shows her in such vibrancy. The attendance at her passing was huge and she was much loved yet by the mid-twenties the communist regime had ordered the destruction of most of her films. We are lucky that enough remains to show us her talent and to enable her to live on as an artist.

Vera’s other extant work is difficult to find but there are reasonable copies of the following on youtube…it may be a good time to learn Russian though…
Children of the Age - Deti Veka (1915)
Be Silent, My Sorrow, Be Silent - Molchi, grust... molchi (1918)
The other titles¸ The Mirages - Mirazhi (1915) and A Corpse Living - Zhivoy trup (1918), are proving harder to track down!

A Life for a Life is available direct from Milestone as Volume 9: High Society of their Early Russian Film collection. It is based on the BFI restoration from the early 1990s and features a stirring piano accompaniment from Neil Brand. In addition to the main feature there’s also a winsome short comedy, Autosha Ruined by a Corset … proof that the Russians were equally capable of laughing as crying.

Immensely spirited, Bauer and Kholodyana are deserved of more attention. Overcome by events and ill-health they were major figures of world cinema at a time of great advances as well as social and political instability.