DZIGA VERTOV XVIII
Grand piano: Antonio Coppola
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 15 Oct 2004
Prog. 18
K SCHASTLIVOI GAVANI / [TO THE HAPPY HAVEN] (Sovkino, USSR 1930)
Dir: Vladimir Erofeev; ph: Grigorii (Yuri) Stilianudis; 35 mm, 1971 m, 78’ (22 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
Aleksandr Deriavin, Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "Looking at Soviet documentary filmmakers of the 1920s and 30s, perhaps only Vladimir Erofeev (1898–1940) can be said to have matched Vertov in talent and ideas. Erofeev’s career may look unusual, but it was not too unusual for that unusual time. Born into a well-to-do family of a Moscow doctor, he joined the Communist Party at the age of 20, worked as a journalist for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), and in 1923 became a film critic, a quite influential one. Erofeev was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Cinema (ARK), and a co-founder and one-time editor of the newspaper Kino. As a critic, Erofeev became an active and serious opponent of Vertov’s theory — serious in the sense that distinct from some other opponents he took Vertov’s work seriously. Erofeev’s position on Vertov can be summed up this way: as a practical filmmaker Vertov is often brilliant, but his extreme theories do damage to his own films. Grounds exist for us to believe that it was as a result of his polemics with Vertov that Erofeev decided to try his hand at filmmaking."
"Our book Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties presents examples of the Erofeev-Vertov debate, two points of which are worth quoting here as well. Erofeev’s 1924 review of Kino-Eye (published in Kino, of which Erofeev was editor-in-chief) ends with this verdict: "After watching this film it becomes absolutely clear that the sharp kino-eye of Vertov and his nimble hands lack a guiding Communist head." Vertov (who, unlike Erofeev, never joined the Party, but who nevertheless thought his head was Communist, all right) responded with an elaborate joke: "The struggle for the kino-eye has already been going on for several years, and has its own history. I won’t dwell on the various stages of this arduous struggle. For even now, chained hand and foot, taking an enforced rest after the first issue of Kino-Eye, I am fated to listen to the hypocritical remarks of that same Erofeev: ‘Your theory is at odds with your practice.’ I recall that once Comrade Erofeev assured me that he could jump over his editorial chair without difficulty. I tied his legs, took away the chair, and became convinced that his ‘theory was at odds with his practice’. This did not happen, but I can do this experiment with everyone who wants to get into my skin and jump with their legs tied. What is Kino-Pravda? It is strong jumps with your legs tied." The message of Vertov’s parable boils down to this: You think you know how to make films? Then try it yourself. Erofeev tried, and Vertov was forced to admit that his critic meant what he was saying."
"Erofeev’s method (exposed in his writings, and tested in documentary films, which he started to make in 1927) was like a negative image of Vertov’s: in contrast to the latter, Erofeev treats cinema not as the all-powerful tool of a better-than-human vision, but as a weak tool incapable of penetrating reality as fully and profoundly as the human eye can. He swore against using camera tricks and montage effects, and countered Vertov’s motto of "life off-guard" byprofessing non-intrusive attention to reality, untainted by the presence of the camera. This reality-fidelity program may not be immediately evident to us in Erofeev’s 1930 masterpiece To the Happy Haven (the fourth film he made), for the "montage effects" its director was against in theory are visibly present, but we need to remember two things. First, 1930 was still the high season of the montage era, and many things that we perceive as editing tricks in Erofeev’s film may not have been perceived as tricks in the epoch of Eisenstein’s October, Dovzhenko’s Earth, or Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. Secondly, Erofeev’s idea of looking at reality with an unbiased eye was, as all such ideas, just an ideological construct. To use that phrase from his review of Vertov, Erofeev’s work on To the Happy Haven "was guided by a Communist head" — but who will blame him for this, knowing that this film is about Germany on the eve of its becoming fascist."
"To the Happy Haven is a report on German life based on Erofeev’s personal experience — before he started filming in 1929, he had already been there for two years. If one needed to define the genre of this film, it could be called something like a satirical small-town symphony — polemically opposed to the great-city symphonies of Ruttmann or Vertov. Its very title, K schastlivoi gavani (To the Happy Haven) — the kind of title that sounds optimistically Socialist-Realist today — is in fact a mock title, the Russian translation of Zum Gluecks-Hafen — the kitschy name given to a beer garden in a German provincial Luna-Park. The surprise idea behind the whole film was, instead of showing another metropolis-Germany, or another Germany torn by class struggle (there were enough films like that, most famously Pudovkin’s Deserter), to present Germany as a sleepy, happily numb country — numbed by the bourgeois paradise and social peace professed by the Social Democrats. This is the surface image, to be sure, as is the image of the ghostly, almost visionary ideal city which Erofeev’s camera captures reflected in shop windows and mirrors. Under this surface, the film goes on to show, are tensions and oppression. It all sounds very cliché — but only on paper. Even if you are immune to propaganda, or resent political documentaries, this one is worth seeing — if only for a "live" — that is, unstaged — report of a street clash between German police, Rot-Front activists, and the new, little-known third force, Nazi Sturm brigades."
"But all this was not yet enough for a Soviet documentary to qualify as politically correct. In the eye of the Soviet authorities, propaganda needed to be humdrum, not subtle. Erofeev’s film was criticized for "an insufficient showing of the plight of workers in the West, for not paying enough attention to the proletarian quarters of the Capitalist city population", and the lack of other things Marxist critics expected to find in a film about Capitalist Germany. In other words, Erofeev’s film was accused of the same sin he had earlier found in Vertov: the lack of a guiding Communist head. Erofeev tried to rectify matters by adding straightforward, unambiguous intertitles. To no avail: the film was declared politically "dated". Just as it often happened with Vertov’s films, To the Happy Haven was taken out of distribution after just a few showings." – ALEKSANDR DERIABIN / YURI TSIVIAN
AA: A rewarding documentary film about Weimar Germany around 1929. The duration of the screening was much longer than announced: 1:25'12" = 86 min.
+ Very likeable.
Grand piano: Antonio Coppola
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 15 Oct 2004
Prog. 18
K SCHASTLIVOI GAVANI / [TO THE HAPPY HAVEN] (Sovkino, USSR 1930)
Dir: Vladimir Erofeev; ph: Grigorii (Yuri) Stilianudis; 35 mm, 1971 m, 78’ (22 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.
Aleksandr Deriavin, Yuri Tsivian (GCM): "Looking at Soviet documentary filmmakers of the 1920s and 30s, perhaps only Vladimir Erofeev (1898–1940) can be said to have matched Vertov in talent and ideas. Erofeev’s career may look unusual, but it was not too unusual for that unusual time. Born into a well-to-do family of a Moscow doctor, he joined the Communist Party at the age of 20, worked as a journalist for the Russian Telegraph Agency (ROSTA), and in 1923 became a film critic, a quite influential one. Erofeev was one of the founders of the Association of Revolutionary Cinema (ARK), and a co-founder and one-time editor of the newspaper Kino. As a critic, Erofeev became an active and serious opponent of Vertov’s theory — serious in the sense that distinct from some other opponents he took Vertov’s work seriously. Erofeev’s position on Vertov can be summed up this way: as a practical filmmaker Vertov is often brilliant, but his extreme theories do damage to his own films. Grounds exist for us to believe that it was as a result of his polemics with Vertov that Erofeev decided to try his hand at filmmaking."
"Our book Lines of Resistance: Dziga Vertov and the Twenties presents examples of the Erofeev-Vertov debate, two points of which are worth quoting here as well. Erofeev’s 1924 review of Kino-Eye (published in Kino, of which Erofeev was editor-in-chief) ends with this verdict: "After watching this film it becomes absolutely clear that the sharp kino-eye of Vertov and his nimble hands lack a guiding Communist head." Vertov (who, unlike Erofeev, never joined the Party, but who nevertheless thought his head was Communist, all right) responded with an elaborate joke: "The struggle for the kino-eye has already been going on for several years, and has its own history. I won’t dwell on the various stages of this arduous struggle. For even now, chained hand and foot, taking an enforced rest after the first issue of Kino-Eye, I am fated to listen to the hypocritical remarks of that same Erofeev: ‘Your theory is at odds with your practice.’ I recall that once Comrade Erofeev assured me that he could jump over his editorial chair without difficulty. I tied his legs, took away the chair, and became convinced that his ‘theory was at odds with his practice’. This did not happen, but I can do this experiment with everyone who wants to get into my skin and jump with their legs tied. What is Kino-Pravda? It is strong jumps with your legs tied." The message of Vertov’s parable boils down to this: You think you know how to make films? Then try it yourself. Erofeev tried, and Vertov was forced to admit that his critic meant what he was saying."
"Erofeev’s method (exposed in his writings, and tested in documentary films, which he started to make in 1927) was like a negative image of Vertov’s: in contrast to the latter, Erofeev treats cinema not as the all-powerful tool of a better-than-human vision, but as a weak tool incapable of penetrating reality as fully and profoundly as the human eye can. He swore against using camera tricks and montage effects, and countered Vertov’s motto of "life off-guard" byprofessing non-intrusive attention to reality, untainted by the presence of the camera. This reality-fidelity program may not be immediately evident to us in Erofeev’s 1930 masterpiece To the Happy Haven (the fourth film he made), for the "montage effects" its director was against in theory are visibly present, but we need to remember two things. First, 1930 was still the high season of the montage era, and many things that we perceive as editing tricks in Erofeev’s film may not have been perceived as tricks in the epoch of Eisenstein’s October, Dovzhenko’s Earth, or Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera. Secondly, Erofeev’s idea of looking at reality with an unbiased eye was, as all such ideas, just an ideological construct. To use that phrase from his review of Vertov, Erofeev’s work on To the Happy Haven "was guided by a Communist head" — but who will blame him for this, knowing that this film is about Germany on the eve of its becoming fascist."
"To the Happy Haven is a report on German life based on Erofeev’s personal experience — before he started filming in 1929, he had already been there for two years. If one needed to define the genre of this film, it could be called something like a satirical small-town symphony — polemically opposed to the great-city symphonies of Ruttmann or Vertov. Its very title, K schastlivoi gavani (To the Happy Haven) — the kind of title that sounds optimistically Socialist-Realist today — is in fact a mock title, the Russian translation of Zum Gluecks-Hafen — the kitschy name given to a beer garden in a German provincial Luna-Park. The surprise idea behind the whole film was, instead of showing another metropolis-Germany, or another Germany torn by class struggle (there were enough films like that, most famously Pudovkin’s Deserter), to present Germany as a sleepy, happily numb country — numbed by the bourgeois paradise and social peace professed by the Social Democrats. This is the surface image, to be sure, as is the image of the ghostly, almost visionary ideal city which Erofeev’s camera captures reflected in shop windows and mirrors. Under this surface, the film goes on to show, are tensions and oppression. It all sounds very cliché — but only on paper. Even if you are immune to propaganda, or resent political documentaries, this one is worth seeing — if only for a "live" — that is, unstaged — report of a street clash between German police, Rot-Front activists, and the new, little-known third force, Nazi Sturm brigades."
"But all this was not yet enough for a Soviet documentary to qualify as politically correct. In the eye of the Soviet authorities, propaganda needed to be humdrum, not subtle. Erofeev’s film was criticized for "an insufficient showing of the plight of workers in the West, for not paying enough attention to the proletarian quarters of the Capitalist city population", and the lack of other things Marxist critics expected to find in a film about Capitalist Germany. In other words, Erofeev’s film was accused of the same sin he had earlier found in Vertov: the lack of a guiding Communist head. Erofeev tried to rectify matters by adding straightforward, unambiguous intertitles. To no avail: the film was declared politically "dated". Just as it often happened with Vertov’s films, To the Happy Haven was taken out of distribution after just a few showings." – ALEKSANDR DERIABIN / YURI TSIVIAN
AA: A rewarding documentary film about Weimar Germany around 1929. The duration of the screening was much longer than announced: 1:25'12" = 86 min.
+ Very likeable.
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