Delo s zastezhkami / [An Affair of the Clasps] (2020 digital transfer by La Cinémathèque de Toulouse)

 

Aristarkh Lentulov (1882–1943): Portrait of the Actress A. S. Khokhlova / Портрет актрисы А. С. Хохловой. 1919. Oil on canvas. 240 x 208 cm. Tretyakov Gallery. Source: http://www.kandinsky-art.ru/library/bubnoviy-valet14.html . https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/aleksandra-khokhlova-2/ . Photo and data from: Wikipedia.

Maxim Gorky: Дело с застёжками / Delo s zastezhkami.

 

Дело с застёжками / Delo s zastyozhkami.
    SU 1929. D: Aleksandra Chochlova / Aleksandra Khokhlova / Aleksandra Hohlova / Александра Хохлова. 40 min
    Sog.: dal racconto omonimo (1896) di Maksim Gorkij. Scen.: Aleksandra Chochlova. F.: Michail Vladimirskij. Scgf.: Arnold Vajsfeld.
    Int.: Galina Ivanovskaja (la vecchia), A. Bavrin (Miška, barbone), Pëtr Galadžev (Sen’ka, barbone).
    Prod.: Sovkino Moskva. DCP. Bn.
    Unreleased in Finland.
    Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020: Early Women Directors in the Soviet Union.
    2K DCP: La Cinémathèque de Toulouse.
    Digitized in 2K in 2020 by La Cinémathèque de Toulouse.
    Original subtitles in Russian with e-subtitles in English and Italian by Violetta Zardati.
    Introducono Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz.
    Digital piano: Antonio Coppola.
    Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 25 Aug 2020.

ALEXANDRA KHOKHLOVA

Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "The name of Alexandra Khokhlova (1897–1985) has been associated with that of Lev Kuleshov since their meeting in 1919. According to the title of their dual biography, their work together spans “50 years of cinema” (50 let v kino, Iskusstvo, Moscow 1975). Granddaughter of Pavel Tretyakov, founder of the gallery that bears his name, Khokhlova was part of artistic circles since early childhood, became an actress in 1916, and shared Kuleshov’s career with only one interruption. Since the essays by Eisenstein and Viktor Shklovsky, which were largely dedicated to her fundamental originality as an actress, little attention has been devoted to the rest of her work, and her brief career as a film director from 1929 to 1931 has been ignored. After the failure of Zhurnalistka (The Journalist), a film that Kuleshov built around a modern woman character (named after her), Khokhlova’s appearance on screen was tacitly but strictly forbidden. The official reason was that she was “ugly and skinny”. “For the second year in a row, Khokhlova is out of work. And for a second year Kuleshov is not filming”, her admirer Eisenstein objected. “The idea of a woman-master, of an artist equal in rights, is not given recognition” (Kak ni stranno – o Khokhlovoi, “Kino”, 30 March 1926, then However Odd – Khokhlova!, in Selected Works: Writings, 1922–1934, vol. 1, Tauris, London–New York 2010). Shklovsky suggested to Khokhlova that she should direct Delo s zastezhkami. After that she was offered Sasha, based on an original screenplay, which she would film in Leningrad. “At the time,” she wrote in her autobiography, “a woman film director was a rare thing, so the union asked me if I would like the whole crew (assistants, coworkers) of Sasha to be women. I had to answer that I wasn’t particularly delighted to have men on my team, but it all depended on which men and women, and that I only experienced social difference in regards to men once a year, on 8 March, and that other days I let both men and women work with equal rights”. After the documentary Igrushki (Toys), considered lost today, she went back to Kuleshov. She was an assistant on Gorizont (Horizon), and actress and assistant on Velikiy uteshitel (The Great Consoler). She stayed with him for the rest of his life, working as a ‘second director’ or ‘co-director’ in his last fiction films (from 1940 to 1944), and like him she returned to teaching. After Kuleshov’s death in 1970 she took care of the publication of his works." Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)

Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "It was Shklovsky who gave Khokhlova the idea of a programme composed of newsreels about Gorky’s return to Moscow and three adaptations of his short stories. Only one of them was made, Delo s zastezhkami, a religious satire published in 1896 with four characters: three hoboes and an old bigot. The writer approved of Khokhlova’s script. It was a difficult shoot, mainly using exteriors, and “marked by the search for the autumn sun” (Khokhlova, 50 let v kino). She applied Kuleshov’s preparatory methods. “When I delivered the film, one of the executives asked me where I found real tramps for the film”, said Khokhlova. “I had to admit that one of the tramps was Kuleshov’s very active actor and production designer Galadzhev and the other two were students at the GTK” (the Moscow Film School that later became VGIK). She put them opposite an experienced stage actress who played the role of the bigot. According to Ana Olenina (Aleksandra Khokhlova, Women Film Pioneers Project, Columbia University, New York 2014): “Kuleshov’s lessons in analytical editing and the rhetorical power of montage is there in a scene that creates an ironic perspective on the matron: multiple shots of her zealously kissing relics in church, are intercut with images of tired workers waiting outside. A sarcastic title card comments ‘The lady is accumulating sanctitude.’ In another scene, Khokhlova’s montage juxtaposes an angry conversation between the matron and her workers with shots of a boiling pot of jam, the steaming liquid becoming a metaphor for escalating tension, as a boiling kettle works in Po zakonu (By the Law)”. Irène Bonnaud and Bernard Eisenschitz (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)

AA: "The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon." This quote from Psalm 92 : 12 is a special favourite of the mighty old lady (Galina Ivanovskaya) who hires three tramps to demolish her dilapidated banya (sauna) and perform sundry errands on the side.

She studies the Scriptures from her ancient Bible that has been bound in silver covers, held together with impressive silver clasps (zastyozhkami). It's been said that she lives like a saint, but her table groans under the weight of delicious food.

Aleksandra Khokhlova portrays the milieu, the ambience and the atmosphere in impressive detail: the dominant role of the Church, the lively bustle at the town market, the poor ones losing their vigour in the lack of food and nourishment. The crushing impact of hunger is a major motif.

The contrast of the have and the have not is conveyed via a montage of looks. The hunger, the envy and the guilt. With deeds of charity, the righteous lady is "accumulating her virtue". The work montage of demolishing the rundown banya is vivid and expressive. 

This set-up is more complex that putting an evil capitalist against virtuous workers. One of them, Senka, steals the lady's silver Bible clasps. Another, the lazy loiterer Mishka, uses all his money to buy them back and to return them to the lady.

While others work, Mishka flirts with the lovely and industrious maid Palashka. She rewards him with a saucer filled with delicious crêpes with jam.

Delo s zastezhkami is a satire on religion, but the function of religious satire had changed in Stalin's Russia. When Tolstoy attacked the Church in Imperial Russia, he put himself in danger, and was excommunicated. When this film was made, the Church had already been crushed. There is a hypocritical tinge in this satire about hypocrisy.

I don't know whether this Maxim Gorky tale has been translated into Finnish. Much was being translated already before the Revolution, when Gorky was a personal friend of Finnish artists, soulmates in fighting Russian imperialism.

Aleksandra Khohlova proves to be a fine director in her own right, without Kuleshov, with talent in mise-en-scène, direction of actors, and of course, montage.

The DCP from Toulouse has been created from a source with a juicy and vivid visual quality.