Say it ain’t so, Joe… Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932)/In Spring (1929), Silent Film Days Bonn 2023

S. Pel’tik

This year’s festival announced its support for Ukraine and included a number of films made when the country was part of the USSR during the early days of Stalin’s reign. These two were made during his first five-year plan a time of increasing hardship with forced collectivisation and a continuation of the “Dekulakization” of the countryside – forcing the so-called “wealthier” farmers off their land. There were thousands of revolts against the process but all were suppressed and thousands died in the process as the Moscow government prioritised Ukrainian grain for export and not domestic consumption with a famine, the Holodomor, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands a day*…

So, it’s against this backdrop that we have to view any films made during this period, one that is just part of the ongoing struggle between Russia and the Ukraine.

Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932), with Meg Morley

Directed by Їvha Hryhorovych, the only Ukraine-based woman directing films during this period, others having gone to Moscow, this film is a remarkably accomplished study of women and children in a school trying to balance education with the Communist Party’s stipulations about extra-curricular activity.

A. Zajčenko

Hryhorovych graduated from the VUFKU Odesa Film School in 1928, and her independent filmmaking career began in 1929, at a time when the USSR government decided on priority production of agitprop and educational films in support of collectivisation and industrialisation. Every film made during this time was heavily reviewed and censored . Compulsory primary education was introduced in 1930 aimed at "educating a generation capable of ultimate establishment of communism" and the regional soviet government decided on setting up a children’s film section of the Ukrainfilm production company.

This was the backdrop for Hryhorovych’s Congratulations on Your Promotion (1932), for which she also wrote the script promoting the Soviet educational reform and the polytechnicization of school education. Despite of this tight brief, she manages to make an emotionally satisfying film that is full of rich characters whose main concern is each other. This is not a didactic film but one that examines how positive process can be made, fulfilling the criteria set but not ignoring the difficulty of the project and the joys of understanding, patience and collaboration.

We begin with two children taking advantage of a sunny day after school, Alyosha (A. Zajčenko), “a passionate fisherman…” and Katya (V. Javorskaja) who, as we shall learn, likes to stick her nose into other people’s business… A third, Vanya (S. Pel’tik) is in a nearby shed, inventing things, his nickname is “Edison” and it is fascinating in itself that the great patent collector’s fame had spread so far and persisted.

The friendly face of collectivisation: K. Dombrovskaja

At school, this inventor is struggling as the Headmistress Nina Petrovna (M. Sidorova) makes clear and outside of school, he is a member of the Pioneer Organization of Ukraine, an organisation for Soviet Ukrainian children aged 10 to 15. The leader (K. Dombrovskaja), who I think is Alyosha’s mother, can also see his dissatisfaction as they head out to help count the grain.

 

He's a lazybones, he neglects his studies and the extra work!

Vanya takes off and the Pioneers discuss it, Alyosha suggesting he needs help with his work whilst Katya is more forthright.  Vanya takes a jump into the river and causes concerned teacher Akim Avanovich (A. Charlamov) to make sure that he’s alright, the lad was just taking a break from the Pioneers but the two talk and the old man realises he needs some help.

Katya disapproves of what she sees as favouritism and when she is humiliated in class by teacher Akim – who proves she doesn’t know all of the answers – she bites back, accusing him of being “old fashioned” in an article penned in her exercise book: “this is not a pre-revolutionary school… nowadays you should teach the children something rather than expelling them from class…” Katya, of course, wasn’t even born before the revolution.

V. Javorskaja, showing Katya's nosiness

She falls out with everyone and spies on Vanya at Akim’s house but what she doesn’t know is that the boy is demonstrating an idea he has for mechanising farming, exactly what Stalin ordered. Akim’s offers to help but stresses that the youngster needs to learn the basics as well and support the Pioneers if he’s to be a man…

 

Even visionaries need to work hard and collectively. Vanya has left the Pioneers but he comes to realise the value of collaboration as do they all…

 

Meg Morley accompanied with lines that merged seamlessly with the dialectic whilst also recognising the collective’s dramatic tension and the passion of children upon whom the whole future was to rest. There was something deeper too as none of us can really watch a film of this situation without considering the outcomes…

 

In Spring (1929), with Misha Kalinin and Roksana Smirnova

In Spring (1929) was based in and around a Kyiv earlier in the period of forced collectivisation/industrialisation and was following a lighter propagandist remit to Hryhorovych. Filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman’s fast-paced spectacle shows the people as much as the landscape and the industry and their spirit says everything both historically and in terms of the daily lives. The work is as hard as it ever was and yet there’s joy amongst the enterprise and cycle-riding, sometimes backwards too.

 

Kaufman was Dziga Vertov’s brother and had been cameraman on Man with a Movie Camera; the two falling out over the final cut. Here he shows the same deft touches, the ability to make connections and convey dozens of micro-narratives within an over-arching “symphony” of the city and surrounds. The angles are acute, the cutting highly energised and the overall effect is remarkable focused on the one city. Man With a Movie Camera covered four cities, Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv and Moscow, and there’s definitely more of a narrative coherence here, as the city wakes up from Winter slowly and with no little effort.

Writing in Sight and Sound, Pamela Hutchinson quoted a number of very positive contemporary reviews including this from Mykhailo Makotynskyi, the president of the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration, “If I were a poet, I would have written lyrics for this movie… I have watched hundreds of thousands of metres, but I’ve never felt anything similar to this impression.”

 

I’d previously seen the Ukrainian musicians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin accompanying this film at Hippfest earlier this year. Now, as then, they created a deceptively spaced soundscape interchanging leading lines between Roksana’s piano and Misha’s effects-laden guitar. The connection between the modern invention and the century old film not only served the traditional purpose of accompaniment but obviously re-contextualised the essential continuities of a society now under so much threat. A heartfelt, beautiful and moving act of connection and, as the Bonn Festival stated, we are all as one with Ukraine even lacking these musician’s personal connection.

 

* A 2015 study from the Ukrainian Institute of Demographic and Social Studies, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, estimated around 3.9 million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor of 1932-33.

 

The Hounds of Love… Hippfest 2023 Day Four

I’m no expert but I reckon the best pace to appreciate an ovation, apart from the stage of course, is up in the gods, with a view of the stalls erupting with cheers and applause whilst all around you in the wide sweep of the second tier join in even as you find yourself whooping. At the best festivals the applause accumulates through the day as the feeling moves in the face of fascinating presentations and high-quality programming and we saw it today, from the genius of Charlie Chase at the start through revelations of early women animators to stunning Ukrainian documentary and onto one of the canon, the iconic gothic neo-horror of The Man Who Laughs.

Neil Brand, John Sweeney, researcher Mindy Johnson, Ukrainian players Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin then finally Meg Morley and Frank Bockius built up a momentum of good will and, indeed, vibrations throughout this splendid Saturday that reached a crescendo at the end of Conrad Veldts’/Gwynplaine’s great escape – with the aid of his dog Homo of course; have there ever been so many heroic hounds on one screen? The Hippodrome is circular in construction, built when Picture Houses had yet to find a set design, and that’s perfect for the acoustic and emotional response that built high into the rafters as the evening closed, a swirling storm of appreciation under the concave roof.

The day had started with a classic one-two from Charley Chase with Dog Tired (1926) and the mighty Mighty Like a Moose (1927) a work of World-cultural significance. Charlie’s the white collar comic, as Neil Brand suggested, a Basil Fawlty figure who always trips himself up with his over elaboration and yet who wins us back with his charm and self-depreciation; he knows what a fool he’s been. Things also tend to work out for Charley, he gets the girl (Mildred June) thanks to the unlikeliest of coincidences in Dog Tired and even after trying to bath her intended groom, a rich but untrustworthy duke (Stuart Holmes) after confusing him with the dog, also called Duke.

Vivien Oakland and Charley Chase

In Mighty Like a Moose, Charley and his wife, Vivien Oakland, both get plastic surgery on the same day, he for his buck teeth and she for her nose. They bump into each other and, failing to recognise themselves, embark on an illicit flirtation which culminates with Charley having to pretend to have discovered his own interlope and battling himself for his wife’s honour in the bathroom. It’s meta and it’s hilarious.

I’m definitely in the doghouse for missing Rin-Tin-Tin in his debit feature, Where the North Begins (1923) but, to be honest, I prefer his later stuff… this did leave me refreshed for the revelations in Mindy Johnson’s talk about early women animators. This is ongoing research but it’s clear that women we as involved in this line of work as they were in the whole film industry in the teens and early twenties before male corporate oppression. The focus was on Bessie Mae Kelley who worked with and inspired the likes of Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Walter Lantz, not to mention some young fella named Walt Disney. As ever the prime movers in collaborative enterprises like film are hard to untangle but without doubt Bessie Mae deserves recognition and more will come as Mindy’s research continues.

Next up we went to Ukraine for a poignant documentary In Spring (1929) based in an around a Kyiv during the punishing first of Stalin’s five year plans, not that you would know it from a film with a no-doubt propagandist remit. That said, filmmaker Mikhail Kaufman’s face-paced spectacle shows the people as much as the landscape and the industry and their spirit says everything both historically and in terms of the daily lives. The work is as hard as it ever was and yet there’s joy amongst the enterprise and cycle-riding, sometimes backwards too.

 

Kaufman was Dziga Vertov and had been cameraman on Man with a Movie Camera; here he shows the same deft touches, the ability to make connections and convey dozens of micro-narratives within an over-arching “symphony” of the city and surrounds. The angles are acute, the cutting highly-energised and the overall effect is remarkable.

 

The same can be said of the accompaniment from Ukrainian musicians Roksana Smirnova and Misha Kalinin who created a deceptively space soundscape interchanging leading lines between Roksana piano and Misha’s effects-laden guitar. The connection between the modern invention and the century old film not only served the traditional purpose of accompaniment but obviously re-contextualised the essential continuities of a society now under so much threat. A wondrous humanistic statement and Alison Strauss in her introduction once again found just the right words to capture our support and sympathy; this festival has some heart.

Promotional poster for In Spring

 

After some tea and cake – Scotland you’re treating me – we took our seats for today’s big finish and the combination of Conrad Veidt’s teeth, Mary Philbin’s sweetness and Olga Baklanova’s erm, everything guaranteed the entertainment, not to mention Zimbo the Dog who plays Homo, the Dog!

 

An American film about seventeenth century England, based on a French novel, starring one extraordinary German and directed by another, The Man Who Laughs is a truly international picture. Made at the peak of silent film technique it represents a Hollywood high-point of expressionist unease from Paul Leni, the man who directed Waxworks and The Cat and the Canary. It says much for contemporary sensibilities that audiences were attracted to the dark disturb of this tale. Connie plays Gwynplaine a man scarred for life from childhood by a group of travellers led by Dr Hardquanonne (George Siegmann) who specialised in cosmetic disfigurement in order to create oddities suitable for circus performers. In this case the latter’s brother and successor James II (Samuel de Grasse ) has ordered the mutilation as revenge on the boy’s father who has displeased him. The father, Lord Clancharlie, is mercilessly squished in the Iron Lady and the boy’s face will forever be locked in an horrific grin… laughing at his father’s betrayal… or some-such evil.

 

On paper it sounds daft as all get out but the film’s style and substance begins to work its uncanny rhythm and hope emerges as the boy, cast adrift even from his tormentors, rescues a blind baby from the bitter cold and finds sanctuary with an itinerant circus performer called Ursus (Cesare Gravina) who lives in a caravan with his pet wolf Homo. Now that’s a modern family!

 

Connie and Mary

The years pass and naturally Gwynplaine’s clown-face has made him the most popular clown in town – people just can’t help but laugh when they see his hysterical smile but, in spite of the gadgetry and painful false teeth he wore, Veidt’s eyes give so much more away: pain but also something more, his love for blonde, beautiful and blind Dea (Mary Philbin) who loves him back. But she has never seen his disfigurement nor felt his smile… Gwynplaine cannot believe that she would still love him if she knew what he actually looked like.

 

Gwynplaine’s father may be long gone but he has an inheritance and a peerage he knows nothing about.  The current beneficiary is one Duchess Josiana (Olga Baklanova – so good in von Sternberg’s Docks of New York and on fire in this film) who leads a life of carefree debauchery and expressive bathing as a servant’s key-hole view of her bathroom reveals. The Queen’s evil aid, Barkilphedro (Brandon Hurst having A Ball!), has found out that Gwynplaine is the rightful owner of the Duchess’ land: for her to retain her title and property she will need to marry him. The Queen orders his capture and immediate ennoblement…

 

A baddy, yesterday

Things are complicated by the Duchess Josiana’s response on seeing Gwynplaine’s show, she cannot decide whether to laugh or lust… there’s something more deeply intriguing about Gwynplaine’s unrelenting grin and she is determined to explore the possibilities.

 

The intrigue ramps up as Queen Anne appoints the clown to the House of Lords – I know! – and responsibility of state and political machinations once again threaten the happiness of all citizens… perhaps only Homo can save the day??

 

Meg Morley and Frank Bockius absolutely raised the bloody roof on this one with two hours of playful accompaniment with so much swing and propulsive charm – I love to hear their jazz sensibilities in this kind of endeavour and there’s was not a hit or a note out of place. Magnificent and everyone else in the room agreed with me!!

 

Bravo Hippesfest!