With all this talk of Todd Phillip’s latest talkie, Joker
(pronounced Joke-err…) perhaps it was appropriate that two of today’s
most interesting films addressed the mind in the context of traumatic events.
In place of a psychopathic comic book villain we have a traumatised soldier, Filimonov
(Fyodor Nikitin) who has missed the biggest change in his country’s history.
Directed by Fridrikh Ermler, Fragment of an Empire
(1929) takes an almost magical-realist look at the impact on this man as he is
release from his pre-revolutionary shell-shocked amnesia into a Russia well
into the Soviet project – Stalin was now in charge and the first Five Year Plan
was well underway as forced industrialisation led to famine on an unimaginable
scale in Ukraine and other rural areas.
Filimonov is, of course, a remnant of the old era himself and
his observations on the New Russia are meant to make the audience appreciate them
anew – revolutionary gains not to be taken for granted and still goals to be
worked hard for. Further sacrifice is always going to be necessary and the
personal must be subservient to the political. It’s propaganda that, despite of
the censors’ eagle eyes, not only takes its audience seriously (like Powell and
Pressburger) but which also allows for a range of interpretation: you ask if Ermler
is for the Soviet or against? Ask yourself what you must do for Russia?!
Like the film the answer is complex and laced with humour;
respecting the intellectual contribution required as much as the sacrifice for
the communist state to achieve anything like its aims. Historian’s caveat: it
must be presumed, unless otherwise shown, that Fridrikh Ermler was not aware of
the inner workings of Stalin’s top-level strategies and that he, like 200
million others, could only view things from his own perspective. Which brings
us straight back to the everyman Filimonov.
 |
| What happened? |
Yes, dear reader, this is history as film and film about
history as history, and you can never judge the efforts of the artists to try
and find a way through for their meaning on the basis of subsequent knowledge
of their time and place. This is one of the great films made about the interior
life in a totalitarian state: and there’s another 80,000 words needed to fully
cover that – if funding is available, I’ll give it a go.
The film’s opening says all you need to know about Ermler’s
humanity. In a snowy night-time with rows and rows of soldiers’ bodies and the
observation of one character that there are “so many boots...” Amongst the
useless bodies and recyclable footwear there is a wounded soldier who is hefted
into a barn by a kindly comrade - Filimonov. The soldier is thirsty and in
desperation he suckles a dog, pushing her pups out of the way… he’s discovered
by the enemy and an officer who shoots the dog dead: if that’s how they treat
animals, imagine how they treat humans?
The rest is a whirlwind of some beauty, as Filimonov
gradually comes to terms with modern life, his modern wife and sees exactly
what remains of the old empire…
 |
| Why change your wife? |
I had previously seen the dream team of Stephen Horne and
Frank Bockius accompanying this film (and their music is on the new Flicker
Alley Blu-ray) but tonight featured the original score from Vladimir Deshevov,
played by the Orchestra San Marco and conducted by Gunter A. Buchwald who also
had to tweak the score to make it fit the running time. He did an amazing job
and the score was richly enjoyable reflecting the tumult of emotions with some
gorgeous lines and the hard-hitting proto metal of contemporary Soviet composition.
Like Joker, it’s a film you want to analyse and externalise.
Unlike Joker, it is an undeniable classic.
Elsewhere the Giornate’s waters were relatively calm with
the exception of those around Kador where a devious guardian is trying to rob
his ward of her life, love and inheritance in The Mystery of the Kador Cliffs (1912). Directed by Léonce Perret it is not
so much a who-dunnit but a how-he-who-dunnit-gets-caught… a bit like Columbo
only a bit snappier, with more forensic method and fewer cigars: Sherlock-Columbo
if you will.
Suzanne de Lormel (Suzanne Grandais) must make it to 18
without going mad or else she will lose all of the inheritance to her uncle and
tutor the Comte Fernand de Kéranic (Perrett).
It’s the usual troublesome arrangement that can lead to trouble…
I’ve always loved the sweet-hearted appliance of science in the
film’s denouement involving Professeur Williams (Émile Keppens), a man who has
a reputation for solving the seemingly un-solvable psychiatric cases through
revolutionary use of cinematic techniques! Todd Phillips take note.
 |
| Filiming to catch the criminal of Kador! |
Elsewhere today we had another cheerfully sexy dose of Ita
Rina as a member of an opera chorus in Mario Bonnard’s sumptuous Das letzte
Souper (1928). The stakes are high as a very strong cast take part in a
murder we are sure to happen as opera director and shameless Lothario Boris Stroganoff
(Heinrich George), lines up a list of his potential killers with unremitting bad
behaviour. In detective terms this is like Hercule Poirot with more patience…
end result, the same.
We also had more of the reliably conflicted William S Hart who
was especially impressive in Wolf Lowry (1917), with , Exhibitor’s Trade
Review raving “Exciting gun play, love interest, the sweep of the great
out-of-doors country and the spirit of self-sacrifice exemplified in the
central character…” in short, everything expected from this genre
master at the time.
Neil Brand played as if he had 100 western themes to incorporate
at will in improvisations informed by so much classic scores of the genre: Hart
brought a shooter to a gunfight but Mr Brand had a piano: bang-bang (in “C”).
 |
| William S Hart faces another moral conundrum in Wolf Lowry |
Last, but not least, we had Wait and See (1928) a very strong – i.e. funny – British
comedy from Walter Forde, which was basically Trains, Planes and Automobiles
as Walter pursues his love interest Pauline Johnson (Jocelyn Winton), in a
break-neck mash-up of mechanised transport. Walt plays Monty Merton who is
pranked by co-workers fed up with his groundless ambitions, into believing he
has a fortune to collect. This flimsy device snowballs until Walter’s successful
pursuit may well generate enough investor support to save his firm and
guarantee his future and love life.
Schrodinger’s Comedy Cat OR Brexit Fever 1920’s style? You decide.
Either way it was made all the more enjoyable by Stephen Horne and Frank Bockius' accompaniment clanging along wonderfully well with Walter's weaving.
 |
| Boris Stroganoff before the off... |
.JPG)
No comments:
Post a Comment