Tri pesni o Lenine / Three Songs of Lenin

Dziga Vertov: Tri pesni o Lenine / Three Songs of Lenin (1935/1938). V Fi 337. Frame Enlargement. Trauerndes Mädchen. Photo: Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Collection Dziga Vertov.

DZIGA VERTOV XIX
Grand piano: Phil Carli
Cinema Ruffo, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM), 16 Oct 2004

Prog. 19

TRI PESNI O LENINE / [TRE CANTI SU LENIN / THREE SONGS OF LENIN] (Versione muta / Silent version; Mezhrabpomfilm, Moscow, USSR, 1935/1938)
Author-Leader: Dziga Vertov; ph: Dmitrii Surensky, Mark Magidson,
Bentsion Monastyrsky; asst. dir: Elizaveta Svilova; lunghezza originale / orig. length: 2100 m; 35 mm, 1474 m, 58’ (22 fps), RGAKFD.
Didascalie in russo / Russian intertitles.

Aleksandr Deriabin (GCM): "The two years given as the dates of this film reflect the history of the existing print. The sound version of Three Songs of Lenin was ready in 1934, the silent one in 1935. In 1938 Vertov was told to re-edit both versions: in the meantime, Stalin’s purges had reached their height, and "enemies of the people" who had been physically eliminated by the late 1930s now needed to be removed from the film, too. The original versions (1934 and 1935) do not exist, but we may surmise they did differ greatly from the versions now available."

"The sound version of Three Songs of Lenin premiered at the Venice film festival in the summer of 1934; that same summer it was shown to the delegates of the First All-Union Congress of Writers in Moscow. Released into general distribution that November (half a year after it was finished), the film enjoyed a considerable success at home and abroad. British writer H. G. Wells (who had met Lenin personally) said that even though he saw the film without any translation he understood every word of it. The silent — 1935 — version was made for provincial theatres not equipped for sound (in Russia, silent movies were still shown as late as the end of the 1940s). Silent versions were generally considered inferior; it was known that they were made by assistant directors, and so as a rule they remained unreviewed. In the case at hand, however, the silent version was not just a poor relative of the sound one: we know that Vertov and Svilova themselves worked on it, and the two versions differ considerably — not in quality, but in content and in the principle of montage."

"The sound version of Three Songs of Lenin consists of three parts, each based on folklore material that Vertov had collected. Part 1 portrays the Leader through folk songs and tales; Part 2 is a requiem mourning Lenin; Part 3 (the optimistic one) asserts Lenin’s immortality through the immortality of his ideas. For Vertov, Lenin was a new god, and this reflects Vertov’s new, Communist religiosity. The film evokes Lenin as one might a messiah, someone who not only showed Russia its new path, but who could also help it to keep going — from beyond the grave."

"It is propaganda, but not only that. Vertov called the kind of editing used in this film "spiral" — and even gave a spiral shape to its titles. Vertov’s dream (announced in his many manifestos) had always been to use the power of film to create the New Man (or, as Vertov used to call him, the New Adam) — in this film Lenin is Vertov’s Future Adam, and the spiral montage is his genome, discovered by Vertov before it was by geneticists. Vertov tried to do what the Internationale promised in words, and what Bolsheviks failed to do in practice: build the New World on the debris of the Old. The film was Vertov’s triumph, but not the kind of triumph that opens new ways for one’s career. Those in power made sure Vertov would never get another chance to make a messianic movie like this."

"The silent version of Three Songs of Lenin leaves out the synch-recorded interviews for which the sound version became famous. But the silent version is not the sound Songs minus sound. The titles are the same overall, but there are new scenes, while some of the known scenes use alternate takes of the shots used for the sound version. Vertov also makes use of his own previous work on the Lenin theme. Like his 1921 Lenin Kino-Pravda, the silent version begins with a (silent) address by a worker to the audience. The worker claims to be the person who captured Fanny Kaplan, the would-be assassin who shot Lenin in 1918 — a subject that became topical anew, given that one of the top men in the Soviet government, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated in December 1934. The silent version also boasts some impeccable shots we do not find in its sound prototype, and its editing is silent Vertov at his best. If the sound version was Vertov’s inspired hymn to the New Man, the silent one, much in the spirit of the Vertov of the 1920s, is a hymn to New Cinema." – ALEKSANDR DERIABIN

AA: *  A highlight. Vertov's last great film revisited. A beautiful print, with a frameline issue, a Movietone print 1,2:1, screened with a single projector at Cinema Ruffo. The duration of the screening was longer than announced at 1:03' 31" = 64 min.