Cadaveri eccellenti / The Context / Illustrious Corpses

Arvokkaita ruumiita / Utsökta lik / Excellenta lik. IT/FR © 1975 United Artists Corporation. Year of release: 1976. PC: P. E. A. Produzzioni Europee Associate (Rooma) / Les Productions Artistes Associés (Pariisi). P: Alberto Grimaldi. D: Francesco Rosi. SC: Francesco Rosi, Tonino Guerra ja Lino Januzzi – based on the novel Il contesto by Leonardo Sciascia. DP: Pasqualino de Santis – Technicolor – 1,85:1. PD: Andrea Cristanti. Cost: Enrico Sabbattini. M: Piero Piccione. Frédéric Chopin: "Marche funèbre" (from his piano sonata No. 2, Op. 35, 1839). Tango ”Jeanne et Paul”, comp. Astor Piazzolla. ED: Ruggero Mastroianni. C: Lino Ventura (ispettore / tarkastaja / inspector Amerigo Rogas), Charles Vanel (yleinen syyttäjä / Procurator Vargas), Fernando Rey (turvallisuusministeri / Security Minister), Max von Sydow (korkeimman oikeuden presidentti / Supreme Court President Riches), Tino Carraro (poliisipäällikkö / chief of police), Marcel Bozzuffi (joutilas mies / the lazy), Paolo Bonacelli (Dr. Maxia), Alain Cuny (Judge Rasto), Tina Aumont (the prostitute), Maria Carta (Madame Cres), Luigi Pistilli (the left-wing journalist Cusan), Renato Salvatori (police commissary), Paolo Graziosi (Galano), Anna Proclemer (Nocio's wife), Carlo Tamberlani (Archbishop). Loc: Palermo and Agrigento (Sicily), Museo Napoleonico and Palazzo Spada (Roma), Naples. Helsinki premiere: 14.1.1977 Adlon, released by UA – telecast: 17.5.1985 Yle TV1 – VET 85010 – K16 – 3280 m / 119 min
    A SFI-FA print with Swedish subtitles by Gun Muresu and e-subtitles in Finnish by Lena Talvio viewed at Cinema Orion (Francesco Rosi in memoriam), 17 Dec 2015

Cadaveri eccellenti is Francesco Rosi's visually most powerful film. It seems like he and his regular cinematographer Pasqualino de Santis have seen The Parallax View directed by Alan J. Pakula and shot by Gordon Willis. They do not imitate them, but there is a new eerie dimension in the imagery of Rosi and de Santis. I sense a spiritual affinity, a new way to convey modern conspiracy.

Inspector Rogas is investigating a series of murders of distinguished judges. At first he senses that the killer must be a victim of a miscarriage of justice, the pharmacist Cres, but then he discovers a much larger conspiracy using Cres as their front. He finds incriminating evidence of corruption around the murdered judges but is asked to investigate the crimes only in the context of leftist terrorist groups. The establishment is collaborating with the Communist Party, and the terrorists are a useful common enemy.

There is an international top cast: Lino Ventura, Charles Vanel, Fernando Rey, Max von Sydow, Alain Cuny, Tina Aumont, Renato Salvatori... all speaking perfect Italian thanks to the country's incredibly talented synchronization professionals.

There is a haunting rhythm of quiet and meditative passages of threat and persecution alternating with huge and noisy crowd scenes (banquets, demonstrations). In the beginning there is also a recurrent motif of funerals.

Until this film Rosi's political films had been firmly rooted in reality, documented by thorough research. Cadaveri eccellenti is not based on documentary realism and although it has a powerful paranoid nightmare atmosphere its substance is not as convincing as in Rosi's Brechtian Lehrstücke.

Memorable: - Procurator Vargas in the passage of the dead, the catacomb of the mummies, the site of communicating with the dead - the obsession of Vargas with jasmine - Vargas knew all the secrets of the city - the chalkline of judge Sanza on the highway - "he was the one who took care of expropriation" - we see the new city of modern block-houses - the immense tango record collection of pharmacist Cres - Astor Piazzolla's "Jeanne et Paul" becomes the sound of death - President Riches's lecture: "there is no miscarriage of justice" - decimation is also justice in martial circumstances - "and we are at war" - the white Swiss Mercedes Benz, the car of death - the sound of the tanks at night - the final murders at the National Gallery amongst Roman statues - the dead inspector Rogas is framed as the murderer, having "gotten mixed up and lost his mental balance in his investigations of conspiracy" - "the truth is not always revolutionary" is the darkly dystopian final statement in the closing scene of "historical compromise".

The final ironical disclaimer states that the film has no connection with reality.

The print is complete of this visually exceptionally ambitious movie. There is the regular look of a print which is some generations removed from the negative. Although the factory is Technicolor there is some fading and bleaching of the colour. A strong visual experience nevertheless.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON DAVID A. OVERBEY:

Tvoy sovremennik / Your Contemporary

Твой современник. Киноповесть, 2 серии / Tvoi sovremennik / [Sinun aikalaisesi]. SU 1968. Year of production: 1967. PC: Mosfilm. P: Y. Rogozovsky. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Jevgeni Gabrilovitsh / Yevgeni Gabrilovich, Juli Raizman. DP: Naum Ardashnikov - black and white - ш.-э. = Sovscope 2,35:1 (also shot in an Academy 1,37:1 version). PD: Georgi Turyljov / Georgi Turylyov. Cost: M. Abar-Baranovska. Makeup: Yelena Lomova. ED: Klavdiya Moskvina. Incidental music incl. "Letkajenkka" (comp. Erik Lindström, 1922-2015). S: Sergei Minervin. C: Igor Vladimirov (Vasili Gubanov), Nikolai Plotnikov (Professor Maksim Petrovich Nitochkyn, a Member of the Academy), Tatyana Nadezhdina (Katya Chulkova), Antonina Maksimova (Yelisaveta Kondratyeva), Nina Gulyaeva (Zoika / Zoyka), Nikolai Zasukhin (Georgi Kuzmich, varapääministeri / Deputy Chairman of the Soviet of Ministers / [Deputy Prime Minister]), Arkadi Arkayev (Stepan Ignatyevich, Minister), Yuri Leonidov (Sergei Aleksandrovich Kolesnikov, Minister), Mikhail Ladygin (Vladimir Sergeyevich, Deputy Minister), Sergei Smirnov (Referent), Yuri Svirin (Arkadi Arkadyevich Serebryakov, Member of the Academy), Lyudmila Maksakova (guest at the café), Nikolai Kuzmin (Samokhin, Secretary of the Beryovski Regional Committee), Mikhail Debyatkin (doorman), Nadezhda Fedosova (Mariya Sergeyevna, Deputy), Anastasiya Georgiyevskaya (floor hostess), Aleksei Borzunov (Misha Gubanov), journalists Edmund Stevens, Tilly Young, Peter Young, Gilbert Luttweit, and Derek Lambert as themselves. USSR premiere: 15.1.1968 (IMDb), 22.1.1968 (Sov. hud. filmy). Imported by Kosmos-Filmi (but not released nor telecast in Finland). IMDb: 140 min - Sovetskije hudozhestvennyje filmy [VI] 1966–1967: pervaya seriya: 1631 m, vtoraya seriya 2830 m = 4461 m / 162 min
    A vintage KAVI print (deposited by Kosmos-Filmi), Academy version, 144 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with e-subtitles by Mia Öhman (Part I) and Marja Holstila (Part II), Paul Éluard's "La mort, l'amour, la vie" translated by Aale Tynni, 16 Dec 2015

J'allais vers toi j'allais sans fin vers la lumière
La vie avait un corps l'espoir tendait sa voile
Le sommeil ruisselait de rêves et la nuit
Promettait à l'aurore des regards confiants
Les rayons de tes bras entrouvraient le brouillard 
- Paul Éluard: "La mort, l'amour, la vie"

Your Contemporary is the second film in Yuli Raizman's Gubanov trilogy (The Communist, Your Contemporary, Time of Wishes) covering three generations of a Russian family in the Soviet Union. The first Gubanov was a storage manager. His son, Vasili Gubanov, the protagonist here, is an internationally acknowledged chemist. He never knew his father.

Your Contemporary belongs to the self-critical Soviet genre of production films. One of the most famous of them was Sergei Mikaelyan's Premiya / Bonus (1974). The masterpiece of the genre was perhaps the very first one, Ghiorgobistve / Listopad / Falling Leaves (1966) directed by none other than Otar Iosseliani. Those films examined fundamental questions of why the planned economy did not work.

In this film engineer Gubanov marches to meet the Government regarding a magnificent construction site of chemical industry led by himself at Beryozovka. He requires that it must be shut down immediately because the technology on which the factory is based is getting obsolete and there is much better technology available. The consequences would be enormous, affecting 250 other factories in the five year plan.

The situation is shocking and dramatic for everybody. Gubanov is backed by his friend, the Academician Nitotchkyn, who is sharing a room with him at the hotel. The main narrative is about production and government. There are long meetings and debates. They are never boring.

Gubanov belongs to the Raizman protagonists who have trouble in their private lives. In Moscow he meets his ex-wife and his estranged son Misha who has never had a real father figure. The young Misha has interrupted his studies and gotten married with a more mature woman who is also a single mother. Gubanov tries to establish a contact with them but he reproaches them in a way which is deeply insulting for both and perhaps estranges them fatally and irrevocably. We realize that Gubanov has profoundly misunderstood them.

Nitotchkyn (Nikolai Plotnikov) is an interesting character, inspired by Indian philosophy. He talks with Gubanov about avoiding rush. You should bite carefully when you eat. First then you really taste food. Breathing is the most important thing. "One must live more passionately", is also one of his principles. And: "Every invention begets new inventions. That is progress".

Gubanov belongs to Raizman's workaholics. He is always focused on work. He is also a communist by conviction. "I believe in the victory of communism. Bad organization should not be elevated to a principle". "Communism is not about understanding everything and keeping silent. It means transcending oneself".

The characters are not simple and linear. Expecting to meet Misha and his wife Gubanov gets acquainted with Zoya, a young woman full of life but without a sense of direction. Somehow Gubanov takes Zoya to a dance palace. He does not have that swing. It is to Zoya that Gubanov tells his life's story. Zoya: "You seem to be a man of ideas. You totally confuse me. You are so strange. So polite". More than once there is a remark about today's young men who are not chivalrous.

In the final sequence Gubanov meets Western journalists. He tells them that he hates war. He considers US standard of living very high. He sees no prospect of a backlash to the Stalin cult. US literature he hardly knows. His Russian favourite writers include Chekhov, Tolstoy, Fedin, Simonov, and Isakovsky. Of Western writers he only mentions Paul Éluard whom he does not know but who has been quoted to him by Misha. He confesses that he has made an error in Beryozovska, will probably be fired and be a rank engineer from now on. "The end of your career". "We build a lot. We also build communism. It is not so important to what task one is assigned. I am a communist".

Your Contemporary belongs to Raizman's key films of communist self-definition. It is also a record of the political atmosphere after the Thaw in the early period of Brezhnevian stagnation. Gubanov's tired and resigned but stubborn visage is a face of the age.

Raizman's approach is matter-of-fact, based on simple and alert observation, psychological and social. Raizman tests the limits of freedom available within the constraints of Soviet cultural self-censorship.

The visual approach is urban, realistic, with a sociological passion in the milieux observed, not far from documentary. The spaces of power are exact replicas built on Mosfilm studios.

The key sequence takes place at Alexei Kosygin's office, partly shot on location, partly in the Mosfilm replica. The film was shot in 1967, a year before the crushing of the Prague Spring by Warsaw Pact tanks (which Kosygin opposed). It was the beginning of the Brezhnev Doctrine and the beginning of the end of the Communist rule in the Eastern bloc.

Like But What If This Is Love? also Your Contemporary was shot in black and white and scope.

Our print, however, is not in scope but in Academy, and the image has low contrast. It looks like it might be a print made for television. It is clean and looks like it has never been screened before. According to the official Soviet filmography the original version was 18 minutes longer than the one we screened.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

Chastnaya zhizn / Private Life

Чaстная жизнь / Tshastnaja zhizn / Yksityiselämä. SU 1982. PC: Mosfilm. EX: Vladimir Tseitlin / Vladimir Zeitlin. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Anatoli Grebnev, Yuli Raizman, [Mikhail Ulyanov n.c. according to Wakeman ]. DP: Nikolai Olonovski / Nikolai Olonovsky - colour - 1,37:1. PD: Tatjana Lapshina / Tatyana Lapshina. Cost: Vera Romanova. Makeup: I. Kirejeva / I. Kireyeva. M (theme music): Vyacheslav Ganelin. Incidental music: Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No. 2. "Mighty Quinn". S: Igor Urvantsev. ED: Valeriya Belova.
    C: Mihail Uljanov / Mikhail Ulyanov (Sergei Nikitich Abrikosov), Ija Savvina / Iya Savvina (Natalya Ilyinichna Abrikosova), Irina Gubanova (Nelli Petrovna), Tatjana Dogileva / Tatyana Dogileva (Vika), Aleksei Blohin / Aleksei Blokhin (Igor), Elena Sanaeva (Marina), Lilya Gritsenko (Marya Andreyevna).
    Telecast in Finland: 18.1.1983 Yle TV2, imported by Kosmos-Filmi -102 min
    A Gosfilmofond print.
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with e-subtitles by Jertta Ratia-Kähönen operated by Mia Öhman, 13 Dec 2015

Mikhail  Ulyanov becomes the incarnation of the stagnation era of the Soviet Union in this psychologically convincing account of a big boss who steps down (or is asked to leave) and gets a personal retirement package when two companies merge (at his own initiative, but he had been expecting to be nominated himself).

Ulyanov, one of the most notable actors in Soviet theatre and cinema, was known for his portrayals of great men of respect such as the protagonist in The Chairman, Marshal Zhukov, and even Lenin whom he portrayed repeatedly. This background provides extra gravity for this quietly devastating movie directed by Yuli Raizman.

Private Life is a specifically Soviet story yet with universal relevance as an account of an ageing man who faces retirement, modern times - and private life. Ulyanov was amazed that he won the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival. Private Life was also the only Raizman film nominated for the Academy Awards (Best Foreign Language Film). Ulyanov's performance made me think about Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt and Antti Litja in Mielensäpahoittaja / The Grump.

The sober judgement in the observations, the witty but restrained dramatization, and the combination of elegy and a sense of humour made me think of Anton Chekhov, both his great plays and his great tales such as "A Dreary Story (Notes by an Old Man)". Raizman's storytelling is simple and laconic, but there is always a dramatic tension in the scenes.

Sergei Abrikosov is a man of experience who defines himself as belonging to a generation with ideals. He belongs to the work-committed protagonists in Raizman's oeuvre together with Rogachev (The Pilots), The Knight of the Golden Star, Gubanov (The Communist), and Sergei Romashko (A Lesson in Life). All sacrifice private life for public life. It is possible to do so for a while. The lesson in A Lesson in Life is that there can be no consistently successful public life without a balance in private life.

When Sergei retires it is a catastrophe for the family. It is less harmful that they lose the datcha and the company car. The big trouble is Sergei himself who has become a stranger in his own family. Sergei finds hardly anything positive to say about his children.

Sergei visits the doctor and learns that his health is excellent. "You could fly to space".

Sergei learns to walk in the city, pay attention to traffic lights, and use public transportation.

He seeks old friends, but many are dead. His loyal secretary welcomes him, but with his clumsy manners Sergei manages to offend even her. "I have never seen you laugh", she says. Sergei notices a portrait of a man. "My man. Not officially. He had a family. I was happier than many who are married". Sergei starts to leave. "I do not know how to live. My wife spends her time who knows where."

His devoted wife (from a second marriage) Natalya (Iya Savvina) now does have a life of her own. As a true Raizmanian protagonist Sergei has urged her to study ("You created me", admits Natalya), and she now has a successful academic career of which Sergei knows nothing. Physical tenderness has disappeared. Natalya refuses to let Sergei see her naked or even to touch his hand ("Don't be foolish").

Sergei fails to communicate with his daughter from his first marriage, and as daughters tend to do, she tells him the truth: "You are out of touch of what is going on in your own house". "Neither of us love anybody".

But even Natalya finally speaks out. "You hurt me and the children repeatedly". "I cannot speak with you". "You never listen". "Leisure is important. You never had any". "Sundays were just a gritting of the teeth".

Natalya takes Sergei to the circus. For once, he laughs. The circus was the place where they were dating while Sergei was still married to his first wife. During the break Sergei finally asks, "How are you?" And even: "Do you have someone?" Natalya: "We have never asked questions like that. It does not matter." She is devoted and committed to the marriage. But: "You have been away for a long time".

There is a wartime personal autographed gun which Sergei takes with him in a cigar box from the office. His son Igor takes it away from him in secret. Contrary to Chekhov's maxim nobody fires it.

Sergei's first wife dies in a nursing home. Sergei drives to tell the news to their daughter. The sequence is the most moving in the film, displaying both emotional power and restraint.

There is a call from the ministry. Briskly Sergei changes to his smartest dress, helped by Natalya. His movements slow down, and we realize his contradictory feelings. In the mirror he sees an old and bitter man.

There is a slightly dull touch in the colour world. In the fifties there was stylized or juicy colour in Raizman's films. What If This is Love? was shot in crisp black and white scope. In the Private Life the light and the colour are not bright. Rachmaninoff''s Second Piano Concerto during the credits is a bit off; soon we realize that it is played on the radio.

The print is quite good.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

A yesli eto lyubov? / But What If This Is Love?

А если это любовь? / A jesli eto ljubov? / A esli eto lyubov? / [Jos se onkin rakkautta?] / [Rakkauttako?] / If This Be Love. SU 1961. PC: Mosfilm. EX: J. Rogozovski. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Iosif Olshanski / Iosif Olshansky, Nina Rudneva, Yuli Raizman. DP: Aleksandr Haritonov / Aleksandr Kharitonov - black and white - scope 2,35:1. PD: Ippolit Novoderezhkin, Sergei Voronkov. Cost: Lidiya Novi. Makeup: Vera Rudina. M: Rodion Shtshedrin / Rodion Shchedrin. ED: Klavdiya Moskvina. S: Sergei Minervin. C: Zhanna Prohorenko / Zhanna Prokhorenko (Ksenija / Ksenya), Igor Pushkarjov / Igor Pushkaryov (Boris), Nadezhda Fedosova (Tatyana, Ksenya's mother), Aleksandra Nazarova (Nadya), Nina Shorina (Rita), Sofya Pavlova, Andrei Mironov (Pyotr), Evgeni Zharikov (Sergei), Anatoli Golik (Igor), Viktor Khokhryakov (Pavel, Boris' father), Mariya Durasova (Anastasiya, school director), Anna Pavlova (Boris' mother). Soviet premiere: 19 March 1962. The film was not released in Finland - 102 min
    A Gosfilmofond print.
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with e-subtitles by Mia Öhman, 12 Dec 2015.

An unhappy tale of young love realized with an approach of sober and tender understanding.

A lost page from a love letter creates a scandal at school. There is an agitated debate at the senior common room. A model Komsomol student girl is asked to inform if she finds out who wrote it.

At the school hall someone reads aloud from the letter, the deeply offended lovers recognize it, and there is a fight.

The rumour spreads all over the school and at home on the huge courtyard between the high rises.

Ksenya and Boris, the "culprits", refrain from going to school the next day. Instead they go to the forest. It starts to rain and they find shelter in a ruined church, a place dear to their grandparents. "My father did not let me be baptized". They playfully enact church ceremonies. He kisses her. "Never go any further".

Ksenya's mother is one of the worst. She hits Ksenya in public on the courtyard. "You do not eat, you do not sleep". "They are all after that one thing". "Love is but a sweet word for that thing".

The worst is the German teacher who created the scandal in the first place about the lost page of the letter which is a sweet and beautiful confession of love.

Ksenya and Boris defy the world and walk together openly but cringe every time someone is laughing. They think they are the cause of the laughter.

The black and white scope cinematography by Aleksandr Kharitonov is completely different from the previous Yuli Raizman films that I have seen. Common to them is the obvious inspiration of neorealism. The visual look is crisp, almost graphic. There are some striking compositions as that of six schoolmates walking side by side, filling the scope screen. Some extraordinary distant shots have an aspect of abstraction that fleetingly reminds me of Marienbad. During the (First of May? Victory Day?) feast Ksenya and Boris find a private tryst, and a street lamp swinging in the wind creates mysterious moving shadows. Mostly the scope frame is used to emphasize the sociological milieu of the intimate story.

People live in apartment blocks that have just been built, and there are new construction sites everywhere. I recognize here something familiar from my own childhood at the same time on the other side of the iron curtain in the city of Tampere at Sammonkatu when we moved to a house that had just been built and across Joukahaisenkatu the next block was still under construction.

On the highway the students have to cross there is a non stop traffic of discourteous truck drivers transporting building elements. Towards the conclusion trees are being planted on the wide empty courtyards.

The students find the fuss about the letter amusing. "In every book the topic is love. In life it is such a shame?"

The scene in the ruined church is not blasphemous. Instead there is a sense of something sacred that has been lost.

There are those who understand. Most of the teachers, including the headmaster, find nothing wrong in Ksenya and Boris. The classmates start to display tact and solidarity, but it is too late. "I don't want love", Ksenya finally says. "I just want to study and work". The pressure of conformity is overwhelming.

The film is based on a true story of two young lovers who committed suicide. Here Ksenya tries to poison herself but is saved. There is no future for the love of Boris and Ksenya. Boris leaves for Kursk with his father. Ksenya is heading for Novosibirsk.

Raizman's psychological insight is impeccable. Ksenya and Boris are mysteries to themselves, and their Platonic love affair is a stage in their journey of self-discovery. In their correspondence they write about love. "We write letters like that. When we meet we talk about something completely different".

This beautiful and serious film is an affirmation of privacy, love and freedom, and an accusation against authoritarianism, prejudice, conformity, group pressure and informer mentality.

The print is brilliant and looks like it might have been struck from the negative.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

Urok zhizni / A Lesson in Life

Урок жизни / Elämän oppitunti / Livets lärdom / Conflict. SU 1955. PC: Mosfilm. EX: Z. Rogozovski / Z. Rogozovsky. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Jevgeni Gabrilovitsh / Yevgeni Gabrilovich. DP: Sergei Urusevski / Sergey Urusevsky - colour. PD: Levan Shengeliya. Cost: M. Zhukova. Makeup: V. Rudina. M: Arkadi Filippenko. ED: Klavdiya Moskvina. S: Sergei Minervin. C: Valentina Kalinina (Natasha), Ivan Pereverzev (Sergei Romashko), Olga Aroseva (Raija / Raya), Georgi Kulikov (Kostja / Kostya), Marina Jurjeva / Marina Yuryeva (Lilja / Liliya), Viktor Avdjushko / Viktor Avdyushko (Vasja), I. Aktasheva (Liza), F. Shimanski (Suteikin), Jevgeni Vesnik / Evgeni Vesnik (Pjotr Zamkovoi / Pyotr Zamkovoy), Nikolai Parfenov (engineer), Valentina Ananina (domrabotnitsa), Aleksandr Hanov / Aleksandr Khanov (in a bit role). Helsinki premiere: 17.8.1956 Capitol, released by Kosmos-Filmi - VET 44316 - 112 min
    A KAVI 2K DCP scanned for this screening from our vintage nitrate print with Finnish / Swedish subtitles.
    Introduced by Mia Öhman (a general overview of the film career of Yuli Raizman).
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman), 12 Dec 2015.

We screened back to back The Knight of the Golden Star and A Lesson in Life, the two consecutive films by Yuli Raizman which he directed with a pause of five years in between. During those five years Stalin died and the Thaw began. From anti-realistic and anti-truthful propaganda Raizman returned towards reality, inspired by the Thaw and perhaps by Italian Neorealism.

Raizman also returned to collaborating with his favourite screenwriter Yevgeni Gabrilovich who had already written The Last Night (1936) and Mashenka (1942) for him.

The ace cinematographer Sergei Urusevsky who had co-created the Potemkin village of totalitarian propaganda for The Knight of the Golden Star started to bloom in Thaw realism. Pudovkin's final film The Return of Vasily Bortnikov (1953) was a transition film moving forward from the ossification of the malokartina period, and Mikhail Kalatozov discovered Urusevsky for The First Echelon (1955). After A Lesson in Life Urusevsky had his international breakthrough in Chukray's The Forty-First (1956) and Kalatozov's The Cranes Are Flying (1957). Beyond neorealism, there was a new approach of flamboyant and baroque stylization in the cinematography, innate for Kalatozov since his early years in Georgia. In contrast, Raizman's approach was more sober, although he was also always interested in trying something new.

The story is contemporary, the age is that of magnificent building projects of cities. The post-war reconstruction, urbanization and modernization is going on everywhere.

Sergei is an engineer who is getting promoted to a big boss of immense building projects all over the country.

At a students' ball he meets Natasha who studies to become a teacher. She is the top student of her class.

Sergei and Natasha are incompatible but cannot resist each other even though the distance is great. Five years pass: they are married with a little son. Natasha has given up her studies.

Sergei is so single-mindedly focused to his projects that he ignores everything else. He forgets to provide the trucks needed for the workers' holiday excursion, important for Natasha. On Sunday he arranges an urgent meeting that lasts until midnight. At home after midnight he expects a warm dinner.

Natasha: "I am ashamed of you". Sergei: "I am building Communism". Natasha: "People don't like you".

"We do not have a family". Sergei promises a wedding anniversary trip on the Volga but forgets about that, too, and Natasha takes the trip alone with her son. She meets the old gang of the student days.  There has been a triangle story from the start. Kostya has never married.

With her best friend Natasha discusses Sergei. "He is honest, talented, and sincere". "But other people mean nothing to him".

Sergei keeps hearing truths from his real friends: "You are rude". "Sycophants thrive in your company". He does not listen, he does not get the message.

All the time Sergei keeps trying to reform. Natasha agrees to move with him to Kharkov (now in Ukraine). The apartment is spacious and lucrative. But the festive dinner where the biggest boss fails to appear turns into a disaster. This sequence is the anthology piece of the movie. Power has soaked into Sergei's brain and he acts like a tyrant. "I am not the lady of this house", Natasha exclaims.

There is a party committee meeting discussing Sergei's wanton behavior. He gets a warning and is fired from his position.

Natasha has finished her studies and becomes a teacher. Sergei is now at the bottom. But when he comes home at night he finds his estranged little son playing outside. He and Natasha have come back once again. "Can one re-build one's life from the start?" "You can do it". In the final images the private and the social are merged: the reconstruction of public and private life mirror each other.

There is a strong epic sense in the movie. The images of the huge construction sites are memorable. Typically for Raizman, the intimate story is even more impressive. The characters are unpredictable and interesting.

Mia Öhman considers A Lesson in Life perhaps the first Soviet film to criticize the cult of personality. Ivan Pereverzev creates of Sergei an intriguing Soviet anti-hero: a big boss who does not really care about other people (yet without being selfish in the sense of greedy).

Valentina Kalinina creates a complex character of Natasha. A Lesson in Life belongs to Raizman's pre-feminist films. For a change, the male protagonist does not urge the woman to study. She finishes her studies regardless.

The 2K DCP scanned from our vintage nitrate print gave a pretty good impression of Soviet colour cinematography in 1955. The colour feels right. There is a slightly soft and duped quality but the visual experience is agreeable all the same.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

Kavaler Zolotoi Zvezdy / [The Knight of the Golden Star]

Кавалер Золотой Звезды / Kultaisen tähden ritari / Gyllene stjärnans riddare / Riddaren av gyllene stjärnan / Dream of a Cossack. SU 1950. PC: Mosfilm. EX: J. Rogozovski. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Boris Tshirskov / Boris Chirskov - based on the novel by Semjon Babajevski. DP: Sergei Urusevski / Sergey Urusevsky - Magicolor. PD: Aleksei Parhomenko / Aleksei Parkhomenko. Makeup: J. Lomova. M: Tihon Hrennikov / Tikhon Khrennikov. ED: T. Lihatsheva. S: V. Leshtshev. C: Sergei Bondartshuk / Sergey Bondarchuk (Sergei Tutarinov), Kira Kanajeva / Kira Kanaeva (Irina Lyubasheva), Anatoli Chemodurov (Semyon Goncharenko), Nikolai Komissarov (Khokhlakov), Boris Tshirkov (Kondratyev), Nikolai Gritsenko (Artamashov), Vladimir Ratomsky (Ragulin), N. Sevelov (Ostroukhov). SU premiere: 9 July 1951. Helsinki premiere: 28.9.1951 Capitol, released by: Kosmos-Filmi Oy – VET 33841 – S – IMDb: 95 min, 118 min - 3100 m / 113 min
    KAVI 2K DCP scanned for this screening from our vintage nitrate print with Finnish / Swedish subtitles. Bonus: from the Mosfilm YouTube release the extra epilogue of 6 min
    Introduced by Velipekka Makkonen.
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman), 12 Dec 2015

During Stalin's last years Yuli Raizman was assigned the job to direct one of the most false and infamous propaganda films of the period.

In continuation to Ivan Pyriev's The Cossacks of the Kuban also The Knight of the Golden Star is a story of "prosperous progress" immediately after WWII - also by the Kuban river.

The images of happiness and abundance are so contrary to reality that there is a feeling of an almost superstitious spectacle of wish-fulfillment so that the audience can forget the misery of life at least for the duration of the screening. (The prime audience member being Stalin himself who based his knowledge of Soviet reality on watching films like this).

In High Stalinist film fantasy gloss there is also an affinity with the Chinese model opera films of the Cultural Revolution. They created for the audience a parallel dream world. (Which is what MGM musicals also did in their more innocent fashion: the Hollywood musical was not the only truth).

Having seen Raizman's Thaw era movie Kommunist (made seven years later) yesterday I'm struck by parallels in the stories. (1) There is a story of the relationship by the energetic Communist and the hesitant young woman. (2) Rumours start circulating which seriously upset the woman (although nothing has happened). (3) The workaholic man neglects the woman, making the situation even worse. (4) In both films, the project is to build a power plant. (5) The man urges the woman to study (here she studies electronics, to become a technician, "a goddess of light" in the man's eyes).

As always with Raizman, the keyword in the account of human relationships is tact - even in a propaganda piece like this.

Raizman seems constitutionally unable to be anything but gentle and considerate. There is tenderness and sensitivity in the encounters. That is the main difference with Pyriev and The Cossacks of the Kuban, which rolls along in high gear from start to finish. On the other hand, in Pyriev's Kuban film there is a passionate undercurrent of profound grief which is probably the source of its emotional force. Remarkably, Pyriev creates a manifestly matriarchal tale while Raizman's world is patriarchal (but pre-feminist, Raizman being always a partisan for equal rights for women). Raizman is subtle and Pyriev is passionate, both with their dimensions of emotional truth in tales of public falsehood.

Sergei Urusevsky was about to become world famous during the Thaw with The Cranes Are Flying, Soy Cuba, and The Letter That Was Never Sent. Here he is already flexing his cinematographic muscles with soaring crane shots and long tracking shots. The takes are often long and ambitious, and there is already that flying, dizzying touch. The mise-en-scène is full of life in huge crowd sequences. There is a feeling of grandeur in the footage of the construction site of the power plant.

The Knight of the Golden Star is a fairy-tale about the victory of light. The power plant is finished, and the lights are turned on all over the valley. "See what a light is rising over our land". "Can you feel communism coming near?" Those are the last words of the original version of this film which we screened. From Mosfilm YouTube we even showed the epilogue shot later with features of the future already happening: efficient irrigation on the fields, a huge and shiny modern cowhouse - and the powerplant seen as a miracle palace from dreams.

Sergei Bondarchuk had his breakthrough as a film star in The Young Guard (1948) and The Knight of the Golden Star. Bondarchuk was ashamed of this account of the war veteran as a dashing hero gleaming with well-being. He envied the Italians who told the truth in their Neorealistic masterpieces. Bondarchuk revised utterly the image of the homecoming war veteran in his Thaw masterpiece The Destiny of a Man (1959).

Digitized from our vintage nitrate print the visual look is somewhat shabby and brownish, the Magicolor of the nitrate print by now being probably beyond salvation.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

Kommunist / [The Communist]

Коммунист / Aamunkoitteessa / I morgongryningen. SU 1957. PC: Mosfilm. EX: Yuzef (Zusman) Rogozovsky. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Jevgeni Gabrilovitsh / Yevgeni Gabrilovich. DP: Aleksandr Shelenkov and Chen Yu Lan - colour. PD: Mikhail Bogdanov and Gennadi Maslikov / Gennady Myasnikov. Cost: Valentin Perelyotov, N. Buzina. Makeup: V. Rudina. SFX: M. Semyonov. M: Rodion Shtshedrin / Rodion Shchedrin. ED: K. Moskovina. S: Sergei Minervin. C: Jevgeni Urbanski / Evgeni Urbanski (Vasili Gubanov), Sofja Pavlova / Sofya Pavlova (Anjuta Fokina / Anyuta Fokina), Boris Smirnov (Lenin), Jevgeni Shutov / Yevgeni Shutov (Fjodor Fokin / Fyodor Fokin), Sergei Jakovlev / Sergey Yakovlev (Denis Ivanovitsh), Valentin Zubkov (Stepan). Helsinki premiere: 29.1.1960 Capitol, released by: Kosmos-Filmi Oy – VET 52485 – K12 – Finnish release print 2650 m / 97 min - IMDb: 115 min - Wikipedia Russia: 111 min - Mosfilm official YouTube: 105 min

Yevgeni Gabrilovich was Yuli Raizman's most important screenwriter. Gabrilovich debuted as a scenarist with Raizman (The Last Night, 1937), and he became also a key scenarist for Romm, Yutkevich, Schweitzer, Panfilov, and Averbach. Films based on his scripts were discussing Communist ideals in a psychologically sophisticated way. One might say that they are an essential source of Communist self-definition in the cinema. They went as far as possible within the compass of official Party control.

In the Raizman-Gabrilovich collaborations the director usually had the idea, and the scenarist developed the full screenplay in close collaboration with him.

Kommunist belongs to the Thaw, and for a film with an official character (it became the film screened on tv on days of official mourning when Brezhnev, Chernenko, and Andropov died) it is interesting to observe that the main theme is self-sacrifice.

The difference is abrupt to The Knight of the Golden Star with its propaganda slogans imbued in the dialogue. Here what we see remains usually within the realm of plausibility. However, Kommunist has the character of a story remembered by someone who was a baby when all this happened, and there is a confession that he does not remember everything of even that anymore. "From those days my mother usually started her tale... " Kommunist is a legend, a foundation saga for the USSR, to be compared with Westerns and Civil War sagas in the USA.

The year is 1918. Chaos, poverty, and hunger are rampant. The white armies are superior, and they are closing in from every direction. There are so many fronts that people lose count. There are two assassination attempts against Lenin (the second one later proving lethal).

In the midst of all this a construction site of a huge power plant is launched. Our protagonist Vasili Gubanov is in charge of storage, but there is a desperate shortage of everything. "Nothing will happen without bribes and bootleg liquor". There are not even nails, and in a fairy-tale like turn in the story Lenin hears about the missing nails and fixes the situation via a few well-placed telephone calls.

There is a general sense of disorientation and frustration, but with his spirit Gubanov becomes a model for everyone. When 40 wagon loads of bricks arrive he rises to the occasion, becomes a tribune to the people, and inspires a spirit of enthusiasm, complete with music and dance, thanks to which the bricks are unloaded in one night in a wonderful subbotnik work party (talkoot in Finnish = working bee, barn raising).

The famine is getting worse, and there is a typhoid epidemic. A train stocked with food is missing, and Gubanov is assigned the task to find it. After a long walk he finds the train which has stopped midway as there are no logs in the engine anymore. The personnel is relaxing in a shack. Soon they hear the sound of an axe. Gubanov is single-handedly felling trees. The others observe the madman for a while, then join him. Again there is a work site.

There is also the story of Anyuta, the mother of the storyteller. She is married to Fyodor Fokin, a tough dealer and survivor in the chaos, running a network of theft. Anyuta is very discreet but people start to spread evil rumours about her and Vasily Gubanov (nothing has happened, but they are attracted to each other). The workaholic Gubanov neglects her, too, putting Anyuta in a very bad position. Even Anyuta's life is in danger as Fyodor abducts her, ties her with ropes, and beats her brutally, even seriously intending to kill her, as is the traditional custom around here in circumstances like this. Kommunist is, among other things, a tale of women's emancipation. Anyuta is illiterate, and Vasily urges her to study.

In the climax, as Vasily and his team have managed to stock the engine with logs, Fyodor's gang invades it for robbery. Alone against them all Vasily fights to save the food train, but Fyodor' gang shoots Vasily. In the conclusion Fyodor comes to ask Anyuta to come back but she walks on alone with her baby towards a new, unknown world. Lenin hears about the train robbery, but he has forgotten who Gubanov is.

The epic scenes are exciting and well directed.

As are the intimate scenes where Raizman gives the actors enough space and time to express complex and contradictory feelings.

A keyword about Raizman in his handling of human relationships even in a story about a brutal civil war: tact.

We screened our vintage print abridged at Mosfilm before the Finnish release. According to Mia Öhman, scenes missing in our print: (1) Gubanov is reluctant to take the job at the storage, (2) Fyodor sells a bolt of cloth in the midst of chaos, (3) when we learn that Lenin has been shot the beginning has been cut: Gubanov demands to know what is the attitude of a communist to love, (4) Denis arrives on a food train from Ukraine, (5) the montage of builders eating soup from one year to the next has been changed so that the temporal aspect is lost, (6) funeral speech. Besides [7], the Finnish board of film classification cut the scene of the killing of Gubanov.

The print is clean, the colour is quite soft. Not brilliant but with the regular look of vintage Mosfilm of the era.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY MIA ÖHMAN:

Lyotchiki / The Pilots

Лётчики / Ljotshiki / [Lentäjät] / Men on Wings / [Aviators]. SU 1935. PC: Mosfilm. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. SC: Aleksandr Matsheret / Aleksandr Macheret [- contributions: Juri Olesha / Yuri Olesha and Isaak Babel, n.c]. DP: Leonid Kosmatov. AD: Georgi Grivtsov. M: Nikolai Krjukov / Nikolai Kryukov. S: N. K. Kryukov, Valentina Ladygina, Vladimir Bogdankevitsh / Vladimir Bogdankevich. C: Boris Shtshukin / Boris Shchukin (Rogatshov / School Commander Nikolai Rogachev), Jevgenija Melnikova / Yevgeniya Melnikova (Galja Bystrova / Student Galya Bystrova), Ivan Koval-Samborski / Ivan Koval-Samborsky (Beljajev / Student Commander Sergei Belyaev), Aleksandr Tshistjakov / Aleksandr Chistyakov (Hrushtshov / moustachioed mechanic Khrushchev), Grigori Levkojev / Grigori Levkoyev (doctor at airfield), Vladimir Lepko (barber), Zoya Fyodorova (nurse), Nina Fyodorova (aviator), Nikolai Hrjashtshikov / Nikolai Khryashchikov. SU premiere: 25 April 1935. 80 min
   "John Gillett attributes the movie's excellence partly to the laconic script by Alexander Macheret and Yuri Olesha. According to Jay Leyda an even more eminent writer, Isaac Babel, had a hand in the final draft, taking his salary but no credit - a choice he had cause to regret when the film became a success" (John Wakeman, ed., World Film Directors Vol. I, 1987)
    A previous archival screening in Finland: SEA 1978.
    A Gosfilmofond print.
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with e-subtitles by Mia Öhman based on Kirsi Tykkyläinen (1978), 11 Dec 2015.

Adapted from the Entsiklopedia otechestvennogo kino synopsis: "The daredevil pilot Sergei Belyaev takes a risk flying a plane which is not properly maintained and crashes dangerously, landing in hospital, his plane going up in smoke. The aviation student Galya Bystrova, having a crush with Belyaev, unfortunately tends to imitate him in the air. Later, heeding the advice of the wise headmaster Rogachev, they become experienced pilots. Bystrova is assigned to Pamir, and Rogachev, in love with her, is sent to Sakhalin."

Despite the fact that it was made during the grim decade of the 1930s Lyotchiki is not a film of militarism or hate against the enemy unlike Aerograd. Yet there is the significant detail of Commander Rogachev being sent to the island of Sakhalin in the end. Japan had attacked China in 1931 in the first prelude to WWII, conquering Manchuria, and establishing a war front on Russia's border. Sakhalin, belonging to Russia, was a strategically important island also claimed by Japan, a likely next target in its plan to conquer the Far East. In 1935 Germany and Japan were busy drafting the Anti-Comintern pact against Russia (1936). Meanwhile, Russia and China started to draft the Sino-Soviet Non-aggression Pact (1937), and Russia sold airplanes and ammunition to the Chinese against a further invasion by Japan. The Second Sino-Japanese War started in 1937.

Lyotchiki is a film visually dominated by sunshine, whiteness, and a sense of freedom in wide open spaces.

The film it most closely resembles is Jean Grémillon's Le Ciel est à vous, another symbolic celebration of freedom, one of the key French films during the Nazi Occupation. Howard Hawks might also be evoked: Lyotchiki is about dangerous action but the main emphasis is on the relaxed interplay between the characters. Compared with Hawksian women Galya Bystrova is even more modern and independent since she is an ace pilot herself. This is the earliest Yuli Raizman film I have seen which is based on the triangle between one woman and two men.

The story takes place at an aviation school. The commander Rogachev demands discipline. Both the other protagonists are rebels who defy discipline. The underlying philosophy seems to be that discipline is necessary, but without freedom and courage life does not go on.

The screenplay by Alexander Macheret is smooth and obviously inspired by classical Hollywood narrative. The director's approach is straight and sober, and there is a current of humour running throughout.

Yuli Raizman is a fine director of actors, and the performances are first-rate. The dashing Ivan Koval-Samborsky had already worked with Raizman in Sorok pervyi. The young and spirited Yevgeniya Melnikova is seen here at the start of a long career. The revelation is the screen debut of the veteran theatre actor Boris Shchukin as the ailing commander who has neglected his private life and is now sensitive about his age. His performance is film acting of a high order. He becomes a center of gravity in his portrayal of both authority and vulnerability (in the hospital sequence).

Raizman does not rush in scenes of importance. He gives the actors the time and the space to wait, reflect, and react. 

Leonid Kosmatov's cinematography is excellent, conveying the daring period of aviation in the 1930s in exciting aerial scenes. He is good in bird's eye perspective, and he also masters the technique of the long take when an extended tracking shot reveals the full extent and detail in a crowd scene.

I missed the very end of the film due to fatigue.

The visual quality is mostly brilliant, with some scenes with a more duped character.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY LAURI PIISPA:

Katorga / Penal Servitude

Katorga poster by the Stenberg brothers.

Каторга / [Kuritushuone] / Zuchthaus / Fængslet. SU 1928. PC: Gosvojenkino. D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. Ass D: Aleksandr Feinzimmer. SC: Sergei Jermolinski / Sergei Yermolinsky. DP: Leonid Kosmatov - silent - b&w. AD: Valentin Komardenkov.
    C: Andrei Zhilinski / Andrei Zhilinsky (Ilja Berts / Ilya Berts, the elder of the political prisoners' cell / староста камеры политических заключенных), Vladimir Taskin (Illarion Ostrobeilo / Illarion Ostrobeylo, collegiate assessor / коллежский асессор), Pavel Tamm (Peshehonov / Peshekhonov, chief warden / начальник тюрьмы), Vladimir Popov (Tshernjak / Chernyak, senior warden / старший надзиратель), Mihail Janshin / Mikhail Yanshin (telegraphist), Boris Lifanov (Katulski / Katulsky).
    Premiere: 27 Nov 1928 (SU). [Duration information online, 72 min, etc., may be based on the full-length version projected at sound speed.]
    Genre: историко-революционный фильм
    Film society screening in Finland: 2.4.1936 Joukola (Filmistudio Projektio).
    Gosfilmofond print, 1824 m /20 fps/ 79 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman) with Ilari Hannula at the piano and e-subtitles by Onni Nääppä, 10 Dec 2015

Yuli Raizman started his career as a film director with three silent films: Krug / Circle (lost), Katorga, and Zemlya zhazhdet / The Earth Thirsts. In Katorga he worked with the debuting screenwriter Sergei Yermolinsky embarking on a career full of interesting titles. Another significant and talented artist debuting in Katorga was the cinematographer Leonid Kosmatov.

The break from the sober traditional style of Yakov Protazanov is definitive. Raizman indulges here in avantgardistic approaches of the Russian montage school, FEKS eccentricism, and German expressionism.

Katorga starts at once with striking montage sequences of symbols of Russian Imperial power. We get to observe the architecture of power and coercion. Butyrskaya, Orlovskaya, the Irkutsk Highway... A cubist montage takes us to the heart of darkness in the middle of Siberian whiteness of blizzards in almost lethal freeze. Another montage introduces us the circumstances of the prison.

The year is 1917.

Raizman and Kosmatov use cinematic means with panache. There are pars pro toto images, silhouettes, striking angles and deep focus compositions. There are no Caligariesque distortions in the sets themselves, but "warning shadows" are often used imaginatively to create bizarre and threatening impressions. Even more impressive is the mise-en-scène in crowd scenes of hard labour and especially in the church where even the politicals are ushered by force.

Most of the performances are realistic. There is psychological depth in them. Even bit parts feel convincing; the insight here seems to be that of that "there are no bit parts". Andrei Zhilinsky creates a sober, masculine and underplayed performance as Ilya Berts, the fearless champion of the politicals who does not hesitate to defy his superiors.

There is one glaring exception to the authenticity of the performances: that of Vladimir Taskin as the highest official in the Siberian prison system, the dread Ostrobeylo. His weird and grotesque interpretation can be compared with the classic tyrant performances of Werner Krauss and Rudolf Klein-Rogge in Weimar cinema. Ostrobeylo is a little chap playing the great dictator. I was thinking about Hume Cronyn in Brute Force (and even Charles Chaplin as Hynkel). There is an aspect of twisted, convulsive, and macabre comedy in the performance.

The account of the penal servitude in utter cold in heavy chains feels realistic.

Göran Schildt in his magisterial Alvar Aalto biography (Part Two: Modern Times) remembers the previous screening of Katorga in Finland in 1936. The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Etsivä keskuspoliisi) had an agent spying on the activity of Finland's first film society Projektio, and the screening of Soviet films such as Katorga was the last straw to the police organization then in the hands of the authoritarian right (not quite the Gestapo, but in friendly terms with them). Projektio was promptly banned. The grown-up Schildt is amazed that in his youth he found in Katorga only a film condemning the prison system of Imperial Russia while neglecting the fact that there was a far more terrible camp system now in Stalin's Russia.

But I think that many members of the audience in Russia and Finland were aware how things really were in Russia in the 1920s and the 1930s, and they were able to read the Troyan message in Katorga. Katorga, however, is not a particularly brutal film. The violence is always off-screen.

The finale is structured as a parallel montage. Ostrobeylo's coercive grip is getting tighter. There is a hunger strike. Finally, the political prisoners decide that one of them has to die to wake up the attention of the outside world. Ilya Berts, the elder of the politicals, is about to sacrifice himself in his isolated cell when there is a last minute rescue. The October revolution has won.

The print has been reconstructed from visually uneven sources. There is sometimes a duped quality but not destructively so. There are also passages of excellent quality, including images where one can observe the fine soft detail of hair, and deep focus passages. The very epilogue is a reconstructed montage of stills and bits of moving image. The 20 fps projection speed feels natural. All in all, we were grateful for the rare, remarkable, and striking film experience.

Our previous Yuli Raizman retrospective took place in December 1978 in the presence of Raizman himself. Five films were screened at the Finnish Film Archive: Zemlya zhazhdet, Lyotchiki, Poslednyaya noch, Mashenka, and Kommunist. In the context of the visit, The Culture and Science Institute of the USSR screened Berlin and Urok zhizhni. - We have screened previously also Nebo Moskvy and Kavaler Zolotoi Zvezdy. - In 1983, many Finnish newspapers interviewed Raizman in the context of the telecast of Private Life.

A good concise introduction to Raizman: John Gillett and Ian Christie / National Film Theatre / Oct-Nov 1984.

Based on it and enlarged: John Wakeman's entry in World Film Directors Vol. 1 (1987).

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY LAURI PIISPA:

Kuhle Wampe

Kuhle Wampe oder: Wem gehört die Welt? / Kuhle Wampe eli keiden on maailma [Finnish title on the print]. DE 1932. PC: Prometheus Film-Verleih und Vertrieb GmbH (Berlin). Fertiggestellt von: Praesens-Film GmbH (Berlin). P: Willi Münzenberg, Lazar Wechsler. P managers: Georg M. Höllering, Robert Scharfenberg. Aufnahmeleitung: Karl Ehrlich. D: Slatan Dudow. SC: Bertolt Brecht, Ernst Ottwald. DP: Günther Krampf - b&w - 1,2:1. AD: Robert Scharfenberg, Caarl Haacker. M: Hanns Eisler. Lyrics: Bertolt Brecht. Singer: Helene Weigel ("Das Frühjahr"). Singer: Ernst Busch ("Lied vom Roten Sport", "Solidaritätslied"). S: Peter Meyrowitz (editor). C: Hertha Thiele (Anni Bönike), Ernst Busch (Fritz), Martha Wolter (Gerda), Adolf Fischer (Kurt), Lilli Schönborn (Mutter Bönike), Max Sablotzki (Vater Bönike), Gerhard Bienert (reader of a newspaper at the S-Bahn), Erwin Geschonnek (sportsman), Willi Schur (Otto, guest at the betrothal). Dreharbeiten: 8.1931-2.1932 Berlin and its surroundings, Wedding, Kuhle Wampe (Müggelsee), S-Bahn. Uraufführung: 14.5.1932 Moscow. Telecast: Yle TV1 23.1.2011 - VET 76743 (Jyväskylän Kesä 8.7.1968) - S - 73 min
    Hanns Eisler: "Präludium" (credit sequence and after, marcato) (instr.),  "Rondo" ("Radfahrer-Szene", "Hetzjagd nach Arbeit") (instr.), "Montage Kran" (instr.), "Das Frühjahr" (ballad), "Lied vom Roten Sport", "Solidaritätslied".
    Radioprogramm Armeemärsche aus alter und neuer Zeit: "Schwarzenbergmarsch", "Deutsche Kaiserklänge". - A further march at the engagement party (not "Radetzky-March" but something similar).
    "Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo" sung by the guests at the engagement party.
    A KAVI print acquired by SEA from Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR in the 1970s with Finnish subtitles by Outi Nyytäjä, "Solidaritätslied" in the translation by Elvi Sinervo ("Solidaarisuus").
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (History of the Cinema: Weimar Germany, the Depression, Political Cinema), 10 Dec 2015

Revisited a classic film of the workers' movement. I had not seen it for a long time, and we had not screened our print during our 31 years at Cinema Orion at all.

Kuhle Wampe has aged well. It is more wise, humoristic and gentle than I remembered. It has bite that is profound because it is not a piece of single-minded propaganda.

Kuhle Wampe is the only Brechtian film fully approved by Bertolt Brecht himself.

The first main theme is unemployment, a theme still topical not least in Finland where we have had two severe depressions in recent times: a quick and brutal one in the early 1990s with wounds still unhealed, and the current, slower but equally agonizing one, still getting worse.

The second main theme is dignity: the working people must get together. They arrange a big sport event with music and cabaret performances. They organize a huge demonstration for their rights.

Kuhle Wampe is a montage film which presents social conditions in sharp montages and bullet titles.

It is also a story film which tells about a young woman, Anni, and a young man, Fritz, getting together, getting separated, and getting together again as Anni is expecting a baby.

There is tragedy. Anni's brother has lost all hope and commits suicide by jumping from the window of the high rise. He is careful to leave his wrist watch on the kitchen table. The family is evicted because they cannot pay the rent. Fritz helps them stay at a tent at Kuhle Wampe, the garden colony (since 1913) by Müggelsee, the biggest lake in Berlin.

There is comedy. Anni's father reads aloud a long and richly detailed article about the life and attributes of Mata Hari while in a montage sequence we can observe the prices of onions and other groceries. Further comical contrasts include incidental music selections such as rousing marches amidst scenes of laying low at Kuhle Wampe.

Towards the end there is a long ride on an S-Bahn city train. The ubiquitous Gerhard Bienert (I wrote remarks on his special presence in my comments to Varieté) makes his appearance here as the man who reads the newspaper. There is an article about 12 million kilograms of coffee being burnt in the main coffee port of Brazil. "And they call this world economy". "That is against common sense (der gesunde Menschenverstand)". There is a fiery political debate during the train ride. About whose world this is.

And those will also be the last words of this movie with no "The End" caption, from the "Solidaritätslied": "Wessen Morgen ist der Morgen? Wessen Welt ist die Welt?" - "Whose tomorrow is tomorrow? Whose world is the world?"

"Solidaritätslied" (by Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht) composed for Kuhle Wampe belongs to the great movie theme songs of all times. Hanns Eisler was here getting started on his distinguished career as a film componist. The entire Kuhle Wampe score is stirring and stimulating. It makes us wake up, not lulling us to dream.

We have screened in these weeks Brechtian films by Francesco Rosi such as Le mani sulla città and Il caso Mattei. To be noted in the exemplary Brechtian movie Kuhle Wampe: the protagonist is a woman, and care is taken to true human emotion in all sequences. The psychological approach is sensitive and convincing in the human relationships, both intimate and collective. The Brechtian approach includes (besides montage, epic theatre and the V-Effect) also good drama (tragedy and comedy) and many instances of warm lyrical feeling, especially in the "Das Frühjahr" ("Spring") sequence.

Kuhle Wampe belongs to the masterpieces of Weimar cinema, and the director Slatan Dudow is here in full command of his art and craft. There is at times an affinity with Fritz Lang's M (another Brechtian film) for instance in the sequence of the brother's suicide. Dudow's scenes of young love in Berlin are on the same wavelength as those in Menschen am Sonntag.

Kuhle Wampe was the last production of the remarkable Prometheus company.

Our print from the early 1970s still looks pretty good. It has a somewhat duped look, but one can still appreciate the excellent cinematography by Günther Krampf.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE FROM STAATLICHES FILMARCHIV DER DDR:

Black and Tan

US 1929. PC: RKO Radio Pictures. D+SC: Dudley Murphy. DP: Dal Clawson - 1,2:1 - b&w. AD: Ernst Fegté. ED: Russell G. Shields. M: Duke Ellington: "Black and Tan Fantasy", "Black Beauty", "The Duke Steps Out", "Cotton Club Stomp"; Jimmy McHugh: "Hot Feet", perf. Duke Ellington and the Duke Ellington  Orchestra / The Cotton Club Orchestra. S: Carl Dreher - mono (RCA Photophone System). P supv: Richard C. Currier. By arrangement with: Irving Mills. Studio: RCA Gramercy Studios, Astoria, Queens, New York City. Feat: Duke Ellington, The Cotton Club Orchestra, Fredi Washington.
    Duke Ellington (piano, band leader) and The Cotton Club Orchestra at the strength of 12 players including Barney Bigard (clarinet), Wellman Braud (bass), Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton (trombone), Arthur Whetsol (trumpet), Hall Johnson (choir leader).
    A KAVI first generation 35 mm print (a 1952 print from the nitrate) - 520 m / 19 min
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (History of the Cinema: early sound, Jazz Age, African-American / Harlem Renaissance), 10 Dec 2015

Duke Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy" is a funeral march.

Upon that basis Dudley Murphy created his legendary musical short film giving both Duke Ellington and Fredi Washington their screen debuts.

Duke Ellington pounds the march rhythm on his piano. Arthur Whetsol (tbc) starts to play the theme tune on his trumpet, creating his personal sound con sordino. We have here fantastic visual documentation from the birth years of the unique, mesmerizing jungle sound of Ellington's Cotton Club Orchestra.

Comedy intrudes: two bumbling repossession men come to take away Duke's piano, but Duke's girlfriend Fredi Washington manages the situation with a bank note and some strong drink: "there was no one at home". Fredi has landed them all a gig at a night club. Duke is concerned for Fredi's weak heart.

We see a fantastic succession of music and dance numbers at the night club: "Black Beauty", "The Duke Steps Out", "Cotton Club Stomp", and "Hot Feet".

Meanwhile, Fredi is getting weaker. She sees everything in a prismatic view, in caleidoscopic shots. Woman is an object of spectacle here but even more importantly a subject (she saved them all) and an object of identification and empathy. We feel her pain and agony. Fredi dances her jazz age number, and collapses, experiencing a heart attack. For a while Duke keeps playing as the show must go on but then he orders his band to stop.

The finale is at Fredi's deathbed. As Fredi is dying she asks the band to play "Black and Tan Fantasy". Duke starts to pound the march rhythm, Arthur Whetsol (tbc) plays his magical trumpet solo, there is a choir singing the melody, and Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton (tbc) creates a trombone solo.

This is a special interpretation of the "Black and Tan Fantasy" composition created for this film. As Fredi dies Duke's face gets blurred and fades away.

When my mother died last spring, "Black and Tan Fantasy" was one of the main tunes playing in my mind. It is a funeral march with a sense of a passion of life.

Dudley Murphy combines footage of a straight performance record and ideas of special visualization (including shadows and silhouettes) very well.

A good, often brilliant print.

Il caso Mattei / The Mattei Affair / The Mattei Case

[Mattein tapaus] / Fallet Mattei. IT 1972. PC: Vides, Verona Produzione. EX: Gino Millozza. P: Franco Cristaldi. D: Francesco Rosi. SC: Rosi ja Tonino Guerra – in collaboration with Nerio Minuzzi and Tito De Stefano – based on the story by Rosi and Guerra. DP: Pasqualino de Santis, Mario Cimini (Technicolor). AD: Andrea Crisanti. M: Piero Piccioni. S: Franco Caretti. ED: Ruggero Mastroianni. C: Gian Maria Volontè (Enrico Mattei), Luigi Squarzina (a liberal journalist), Peter Baldwin (McHale), Gianfranco Ombuen (engineer Ferrari), Franco Graziosi (minister), Elio Jotta (head of the investigation commission), Edda Ferronao (Mrs. Mattei), Luciano Collitti (Bertuzzi). Loc: Italy (Milan, Sicily, etc.), Saudi Arabia, Iran, New York, Libya, an oil rig. 116 min
    A vintage SFI/FA 35 mm print (deposited by Sandrews) with Swedish subtitles by Stig Björkman (114 min) viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Francesco Rosi in memoriam) with e-subtitles in Finnish by Lena Talvio, 9 Dec 2015

IMDb synopsis: "Enrico Mattei helped change Italy's future, first as freedom-fighter against the Nazis, then as an investor in methane gas through a public company, A.G.I.P., and ultimately as the head of ENI, a state body formed for the development of oil resources. October 27, 1962, he died when his private airplane crashed, one minute before it should land at Milan airport. Officially, he died of a flight accident. Actually, many journalists explored other plausible reasons for the untimely landing of the small aircraft. - Written by Artemis-9."

The second film in Francesco Rosi's true-story trilogy of ruthless men of power (Salvatore Giuliano - Il caso Mattei - Lucky Luciano) has also significant affinities with Le mani sulla città. All abstain from traditional entertainment fiction formulae. The connection between Le mani sulla città and Il caso Mattei is that both are key films about the Italian economic miracle after WWII. "The era of singing Italians is about to be consigned to the museum of memories" says Mattei in the film.

Il caso Mattei belongs to Rosi's Brechtian films even more prominently than Le mani sulla città. The temporal structure is broken. Il caso Mattei is a montage film, a collage. We follow the life of Enrico Mattei, but instead of identification we have distanciation, the classic Brechtian V-Effect (Verfremdungseffekt = distanciation effect). Even Francesco Rosi appears as himself in this meta-cinematic project of investigative journalism. The film-making itself becomes a thriller, putting the investigators in danger. In September 1970 three men took with them Rosi's key expert, the journalist Mauro de Mauro. He was never heard from again. "I have a scoop that is going to shake Italy" he told before he disappeared. "There is the handprint of Corleone", it is said in the movie about the disappearance. Il caso Mattei was released in the same year as The Godfather.

There is a similarity in the cubist structure to Citizen Kane (Mattei even launches his own newspaper). There are multiple screens, multiple interpretations. It starts with the death of the protagonist, and there is an investigation which snatches us deep into post-WWII Italian history and politics, also global oil affairs which means global politics, not least in Arab countries. "Who deals in oil deals in politics" (Mattei). The film feels very topical today, in a time of high turmoil in Middle East. Tensions set a hundred years ago during WWI as the Ottoman Empire crumbled are now exploding.

Mattei is a tough bastard, a patriot and a defender of the people in his own country and in third world countries, too. He makes enemies everywhere. The international oil cartel, "the seven sisters", have many reasons to hate him. In his own companies he rejects privileges such as company-driven cars. He steps on the toes of France by making oil deals that enable Algerians to buy weapons, and he offends the CIA with Russian oil deals. But his most fatal step may be his foray into Sicily and the land of mafia. It is from a Sicilian airport that he embarks on his final journey.

Repeatedly Mattei mentions his favourite story of the kitten that was crushed by stronger creatures. But the kitten can grow into a tiger. "We don't want to be the kitten anymore".

Mattei knows from the start that he is playing with fire. He compares himself to Maginot and Mossadeq (Mosaddegh). (But he even compares himself with even bigger animals such as Julius Caesar).

Piero Piccioni's score is based on a musique concrète approach: the thunder of the oil drilling industry evokes atavistic sounds from the womb of the earth. The rumble of burning gas is a recurrent sound, a giant jet of oil a repeated image.

Visually, Il caso Mattei is an air film: Mattei is constantly on the move in his private plane. We visit many key places shot on locations, even an oil rig on the Indian Ocean. "Everywhere I fight monopoly". On his last night flight Mattei gets to see a particularly spectacular moonlight.

Il caso Mattei is not a film of psychological characterization. Only Mattei himself is truly memorable. Il caso Mattei belongs to the Rosi films where women hardly exist. There are brief shots of his widow; otherwise women appear in crowds and in nude images on oil rig workers' cabin walls.

Besides the sharp montage approach the distinction of Rosi's direction here is in his handling of huge crowd scenes, especially in the one in Sicily where we get to Gian Maria Volontè playing Mattei very convincingly as a tribune of the people.

A good translation by Lena Talvio.

A used print with well-earned battle scars yet with colour intact. In this tough movie it does not hurt fatally that there is rain in the changeovers.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BASED ON JOHN L. MICHALCZYK:

Taidesalonki Centenary 2: Sinebrychoff Art Museum (an exhibition)

Gunnar Berndtson: Laskiaistiistai / Mardi Gras. Private collection. Please do click to enlarge the images!

Helene Schjerfbeck

Kehtolaulu / Vaggvisan / Wiegenlied / Lullaby
Lauri ja Lasse Reitzin säätiön kokoelmat

Albert Edelfelt

Nainen parvekkeella, luonnos, n. 1880-1884
Damen på balkongen, skiss, ca. 1880-1884
Lady on a Balcony, sketch, c. 1880-1884
LähiTapiola

Gunnar Berndtson

Lohenpyynti / Laxfiske / Salmon Fishing
Lauri ja Lasse Reitzin säätiön kokoelmat
Lauri och Lasse Reitz stiftelses samlingar

Taidesalonki 100 vuotta / Konstsalongen 100 år. 8.10.2015 - 10.1.2016. Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Bulevardi 40, 00120 Helsinki. www.siff.fi

From the official introduction: Besides young modernists Taidesalonki displayed works of the masters from the 19th century. It also had an antique shop which was connected to the scientific research conducted by Leonard Bäcksbacka. Taidesalonki had also its own publishing branch which covered not only the exhibition catalogs but also Bäcksbacka's research publications.

While contemporary art was the main interest of Leonard Bäcksbacka he also always showed works from the artists of the golden age. Artists particularly important for him were Gunnar Berndtson, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, and Hugo Simberg. During his lifetime Bäcksbacka made sizable donations to art museums such as Ateneum and Nationalmuseum (Stockholm). The most significant donation was the collection of 448 works donated by his estate to the city of Helsinki.

Bäcksbacka acquired art and antiquities also during his trips abroad. Since the 1920s he was interested in Spanish and Islamic culture. At his home he had Spanish and Moorish luster china and Persian china from the 14th-17th centuries. Istanbul Bäcksbacka visited several times and brought with him Persian miniatures.

The Taidesalonki logo, still in use, was designed by the artist Maria Lagorio (1893-1979). Having spent her youth in St. Petersburg she emigrated after the Revolution via Finland where she stayed in 1918-1921. Her first solo exhibition was held at Taidesalonki in October 1919.

AA: Of the three Taidesalonki centenary exhibitions the main one at HAM, Helsinki Art Museum, covers contemporary art during the three generations of the Bäcksbacka family who have run Taidesalonki.

In the atmospheric 19th century premises of the Sinebrychoff Art Museum are displayed previous generations of the young Finnish art tradition. Again there is space for multiple works of key artists, this time including Gunnar Berndtson, Albert Edelfelt, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Hugo Simberg, and Helene Schjerfbeck. Even earlier artists are included, such as Nils Schillmark, Ferdinand von Wright, and Werner Holmberg. The selections include works from private collections that are rarely displayed in public.

This time especially memorable are some unfinished works such as Holmberg's A Park in Early Spring (1860) and Edelfelt's A Lady at the Balcony (1884). Also Edelfelt's A Winter View of Kaivopuisto (1895) has an appealing not-too-finished quality.

There are also selected antique objects, silverware, china, and art glass, plus rare books and special items from Leonard Bäcksbacka's personal legacy, and a corridor devoted to Maria Lagorio in Finland.

An entire room is dedicated to refined Persian miniatures to which there is an interesting introduction by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila in the centenary catalogue. It is fascinating to observe psychological nuance combined with Mongolian influences and a realistic talent co-existing with radical stylization.

The display, the hanging, the backgrounds, and the lighting are of high quality.

A perfect way to bring the visit to a finish is to digest it all at the Southpark Restaurant next door, facing the Sinebrychoff Park. It is a successor to Café Fanny since spring.

The Band Concert

Puistokonsertti / Mikki ja orkesteri / Den stora konserten / Muntra musikanter / Konserten. US © 1935 Walt Disney Productions. P: Walt Disney. D: Wilfred Jackson. 1,37:1, Technicolor. M: Leigh Harline. - Ferdinand Hérold: Zampa. - Gioachino Rossini: Guillaume Tell: Ouverture / William Tell Overture ("Dawn", "Storm", "Ranz des Vaches", "Finale: March of the Swiss Soldiers"). - "Turkey In The Straw" (trad.). AN: Johnny Cannon, Les Clark (Mickey Mouse), Ugo D'Orsi, Frenchy DeTremaudan, Clyde Geronimi, Hugh Hennesy, Huszti Horvath, Dick Huemer, Jack Kinney, Wolfgang Reitherman, Archie Robin, Louie Schmitt, Terrell Stapp, Dick Williams, Roy Williams, Cy Young, Ferdinand Horvath. Voice talent: Clarence Nash (Donald Duck). S: mono, RCA Sound Recording. US premiere: 23 Feb 1935 - VET 49881 - S - 270 m / 9 min
    The band: Mickey Mouse (conductor), Goofy (clarinet), unnamed dog (trombone), Clarabelle Cow (flute), Horace Horsecollar (percussion), Peter Pig (trumpet), Paddy Pig (tuba). - In the poster, Gideon Goat plays the trumpet but is replaced in the film by a dog trombonist. - Donald Duck is the flute-playing lemonade, popcorn and ice cream vendor who crashes the concert.
    There is no dialogue in this musical animation.
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (History of the Cinema: early Technicolor, centenary of Technicolor) (pre-programme to Cocoanuts [1929, early sound]), 5 Dec 2015

Revisited Mickey Mouse's first colour film, the third film with Donald Duck, one of the most highly acclaimed Walt Disney shorts.

This early classic Walt Disney Technicolor animation belongs to the Mickey Mouse series but could equally be one of the Silly Symphonies.

Already the first shot is amazing: a distant shot of the park band and its audience, with many funny figures with simultaneous distinct movement patterns synchronized. We are invited to a world full of life.

Music was essential to Walt Disney from the start. Already many of his silents were based on a dance-like choreography, the rhythm of the movement synchronized by metronome. Playing instruments and dancing are fundamental activities of Disney's animated characters.

Mickey Mouse the conductor with the outsized coat and sleeves is able to manage his crazy band, but along comes the obnoxious Donald Duck the lemonade vendor who insists in playing "Turkey in the Straw" so persistently that the band is distracted.

The film is based on a twin conflict: Donald Duck vs. Mickey Mouse - and both of them vs. the tornado.

The main concept is a magnificent hyperbole: the outdoors park orchestra plays the "Storm" sequence of Rossini's William Tell Overture with such inspiration and abandon that an actual tornado materializes.

First we see leaves flying in the air, then giant clouds appear on the horizon. The twister emerges all of a sudden, devouring everything, even sucking some of the firm-looking ground. The park band audience is caught unaware, disappearing into the vortex.

Also the band is absorbed and jerked into the sky, but they keep playing without missing a beat, as if both conducting and being conducted by the formidable cyclone.

The rhythm of the sequence is based on Rossini's "Storm" part of the Overture, with a new gag at every beat. It is an avalanche of absurd and surreal inventions appearing so fast that the film needs to be seen many times to appreciate them all. Park benches move like horses. Three trees are palmed together with Donald Duck squeezed in between. When the tornado disappears and the musicians fall from the sky they land on the branches of a huge, crazy tree where they bring the "Storm" sequence to the conclusion. The only remaining audience member is the indestructible Donald Duck still eager to play his annoying flute.

The Band Concert is a beautiful expression of the profoundly animistic and magical essence of animation. The spirit of life is conjured in a way only available to animation.

Beautiful colour in this 1988 Mickey Mouse 60th anniversary re-release print.

Le mani sulla città / Hands Over the City

Kaupungin valtias / Våldförd stad. IT/FR 1963. PC: Galatea Film / Societé Cinématographique Lyre. P: Lionello Santi. D: Francesco Rosi. SC: Francesco Rosi, Enzo Provenzale – based on the novel by Raffaele La Capria. DP: Gianni Di Venanzo – Arriflex II C – b&w – 1,85:1. ED: Mario Serandrei. PD: Sergio Canevari. Cost: Marilù Carteny. Makeup: Franco Corrodoni. M: Piero Piccioni. S: Fausto Ancillai. C: Rod Steiger (Eduardo Nottola), Salvo Randone (De Angelis), Guido Alberti (Maglione), Angelo d’Alessandro (Balsamo), Carlo Fermariello (De Vita), Marcello Cannavale (Nottola's friend), Alberto Conocchia (Nottola's friend), Terenzio Cordova (commissario), Dante di Pinto (presidente della Commissione), Gaetano Grimaldi Filioli (Nottola's friend, Vincenzo Metafora (Sindaco), Dany Paris (Dany, amante di Maglione). Voice dubbing (Rod Steiger): Aldo Giuffrè. Loc: Naples. Telecast in Finland: 20.3.1971 MTV1 - VET 74876 (Suomi-Filmi 24.11.1966: the film was classified but not theatrically released) - S - 105 min
    A Svenska Filminstitutet / Filmarkivet print (101 min) with e-subtitles in Finnish by Lena Talvio viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Francesco Rosi in memoriam), 2 Dec 2016

IMDb synopsis: "Prior to a city council election, the collapse of a building leaves a land developer and his political backers defending themselves against a scandal."

Revisited Francesco Rosi's tough political movie which I had not seen since its first Finnish telecast 44 years ago.

Rosi returns to his hometown Naples where he had also directed his solo debut feature film, the powerful camorra drama La sfida / The Challenge which focuses on the vegetable market.

The spirit of neorealism is still powerful in Le mani sulla città in which there is a passion for documentary realism.

It is also a work of epic cinema in the Brechtian sense. There is no identification figure, no identification structure. Le mani sulla città is a drama of politics; we are invited to observe the political theatre. Huge deals are being made, financial ones and political ones, but there is also an election, and voters must be convinced which is why it is necessary to keep up facades.

Le mani sulla città is a drama of the period of massive reconstruction after the war, the industrial miracle. Rod Steiger plays Nottola the construction tycoon. The Germans have a word for him: ein Baulöwe (a construction lion; the wit of the expression is lost in translation); the Finnish word is grynderi (a speculative builder). Nottola is voracious, unstoppable, moving at overspeed, ignoring the city plan.

The film starts with a huge crash of a block of flats. On Nottola's construction site a giant jackhammer has been busy at work, and a neighbouring house has not been properly protected. There are casualties. Nottola's son, the superintendent of the construction site, disappears.

A powerful drama is launched. The establishing shot is from a helicopter juxtaposing shantytowns with high rise districts. We witness documentary scenes at the construction site and violent debates at the City Hall. We enter Nottola's premises on top of the city with vast scenes all over Naples. We see mothers pacified with wads of bank notes ("see how democracy works"). We observe a huge archival room (qf. Ladri di biciclette) where blueprints and permissions are kept. We arrive at a children's ward at the hospital where victims are taken care of. There are huge demonstrations, the media is alerted, the opposition is furious. Further spaces of significance include a restaurant where Nottola is a regular, and a gambling hall where the biggest political boss is a regular. And, importantly, the church where Nottola makes a sign of the cross; the political boss has a private chapel with an invaluable painting by a Renaissance master.

The canny powers-that-be are quick to make deals that ensure that nothing changes. But appearances must be kept. There are honest politicians in all parties. One of them would like to refuse to participate if Nottola is allowed to continue. "Half of our civil servants should be put to jail". "A tutti un occhio sul golfo” is Nottola's election slogan.

A quick succession of striking deals ensures that everything continues as before. The camera tracks back as corruption goes on consecrated by the Church. City property is sold at bargain prices to irresponsible speculators. There is a sound of a whistle, and the magnificent jack hammer strikes again.

The cinematography by Gianni Di Venanzo is stark, conducted in available light, or a good semblance of it. There is a rich array of angles, and a an exciting montage concept without an identification approach. The agony and the suffering are made clear but in a distanced way. The lighting is often hard, and there are no warm, soft, or intimate moments.

Women are almost non-existent. Rosi's films are either about the power games of men or Spanish stories with sensuality and women.

Piero Piccioni's music theme is harsh, vigorous, and full of defiance.

The print is brilliant. It looks like it could have been struck from the negative and has hardly ever been screened before.

Sorok pervyi (1927) / The Forty-First

Sorok pervyi (1927) poster by Grigory Borisov and Nikolai Prusakov. Please click to enlarge the images!

Sorok pervyi (1927) poster by Vladimir and Georgii Stenberg.

Сорок первый / Sorok pervyy / [Tyttö ja vanki] / [Neljäskymmenesensimmäinen]. The film was not released in Finland. SU 1927. Year of production: 1926. PC: Mezhrabpom-Rus. D: Jakov Protazanov / Yakov Protazanov. SC: Boris Lavrenjov / Boris Lavrenyov and Boris Leonidov based on the tale (povest) (1924) by Lavrenjov. DP: Pjotr Jermolov / Pyotr Yermolov. AD: Sergei Kozlovski. Ass D: Juli Raizman / Yuli Raizman. C: Ada Voitsik / Ada Vojtsik (Marjutka / Maryutka), Ivan Koval-Samborski (lieutenant Govoruha-Otrok), Ivan Shtrauh (Evsjukov / Evsyukov, commissar).
    Sovetskie hudozhestvennye filmy I: premiere 4 March 1927, 6 reels, 1800 m  /18 fps/ 87 min
    KAVI print (from Gosfilmofond, print made in 1972) (reels 3 and 4 out of the original 6 shortened) 1504 m /18 fps/ 74'
    Viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Yuli Raizman), piano: Ilari Hannula, e-subtitles in Finnish by Anna-Maria Hakanen, 2 Dec 2015

Yakov Protazanov was a Protean director who had made 90 films already before his emigration to France after the revolution. Perhaps the fact that he had been with the White emigrants of Russia for seven years made him especially capable of bringing a sense of balance to a revolutionary tale such as The Forty-First.

I saw Protazanov's version for the first time. We had never screened it before, having somehow forgotten its existence. It took the enterprising Mr. Otto Kylmälä to discover it in our vaults for his Loud Silents festival.

I only knew Grigory Chukhray's colour remake from 1956, his debut film, one of the first great internationally noted films of the Thaw, a symbolic work during the Cold War because it acknowledges the dignity, valour, and humanity of the enemy.

All this is valid also in Yakov Protazanov's original film adaptation of Boris Lavrenyov's story which we screened in our Yuli Raizman tribute. The Protazanov-Raizman connection is relevant in many ways. Both were survivors during wildly different periods of regime in Russia (Raizman started as an assistant in the era of NEP freedom, survived Stalin's grimmest period, the war, and the "malokartina" draught of minimal production, flourished again during the Thaw, carried on somehow during the stagnation, and managed to make it to the Glasnost). Both were professionals who mastered many kinds, forms, and genres of the cinema. Both had a sober approach to the film syntax. Both focused on the human personality as expressed through the actor. Most importantly, there is an interesting female leading role in Sorok pervyi, as there is in several of Raizman's films. Even further, there is an acknowledgement of the female look in the way the male lead is shot, including beefcake shots (as there are in Raizman's films).

The film starts as a grim civil war story at the Karakum desert. A red army unit embarks on a trek through the desert and captures a white lieutenant carrying a secret message from General Kolchak to General Denikin. The sharp-shooter Maryutka is assigned the task to bring the important prisoner to the headquarters for interrogation. But a storm breaks out at Aral Sea, and Maryutka and the lieutenant are stranded on a desert island where they find shelter in an empty fishermen's cabin. The second part of the story is a Robinsonade.

Maryutka and the lieutenant are young and healthy, but this is not just the story of pussy and dick having their way amongst civil war adversaries. Already during the desert trek Maryutka has defended the lieutenant, securing him his share of the scarce water and bread ratios. At night Maryutka has eased the ropes of the prisoner giving him a chance to better rest. The lieutenant has gotten to read some of Maryutka's naive poetry ("good but it needs work"). On the island the lieutenant catches a high fever which makes him lose his consciousness and survives thanks to Maryutka's tender care.

An ideological compromise never takes place in the love affair between Maryutka and the lieutenant. Maryutka never relents from her Bolshevik conviction.

The sensuality is beautiful and restrained. The approach is not clichéd in the images of the stormy sea and the boiling kettle. There is something Buñuelian in the image of the bucket full of live crayfish that topples as Maryutka and lieutenant fall into a passionate embrace. The sensual images of hands touching has a reticent quality reminiscent of Bresson.

The dénouement is deeply tragic as a boat finally approaches, turning out to be one of the White Army. Maryutka shoots the lieutenant who has given them away and falls into a final embrace with her dead lover in a true Liebestod ending.

The film is built on contrasts of the red and the white, man and woman, desert and sea, and also soldiers and peace-loving Muslims of the desert.

Strengths of the film include:
a good dynamics of the ensemble of actors
a strong sense of the place (the desert and the sea)
a feeling of authenticity in dress
fine, unobtrusive visual touches (scenes in silhouette, stark compositions, memorable images)

The translation by Anna-Maria Hakanen was good.

Our print is almost unused but it is based on battered sources with bits missing here and there (the print is some seven minutes short); yet it is the best there is we are told. It is impossible to fully appreciate the rhythm of the editing for instance in the resolution.

The visual quality varies wildly. There are good passages that help appreciate how the film must have have looked. Even with its uneven visual quality The Forty-First is an impressive and memorable experience.

OUR PROGRAM NOTE BY LAURI PIISPA: