Director: Yevgeni Bauer
Year: 1914
Runtime: 0:37
Source: Youtube
The two Yevgeni Bauer films on the list seem to me attempts to distill the essence of deep, psychological Russian romantic novels into short films. Technically, they're very accomplished, particularly in the lighting and mise-en-scene. Each shot seems carefully composed.
The story here inverts that of the previous film: instead of a wealthy heiress "corrupted" by her encounters with the working class (although it seems to me she ends in a fair position), here it is a poor laundress who is brought into high society by a prince who is in love with her supposed innocence. She almost immediately becomes entranced by the superficial frivolities of class, spends all of the prince's money and leaves him destitute for another suitor.
In both Bauer films, the men act well, but their arcs are so dull and melodramatic that it's hard to stay interested in them. The women, on the other hand, are fascinating and dynamic. What strikes me especially about these films is how the actors' expressions and moods often change several times in the course of a single shot. Even though there are very few title cards from which to determine the context of these conversations, it's still possible to feel how the story will develop from watching these performances. For as much as the settings feel so alive, the story and the films themselves take place on the faces of these actors.
However, I'm not ready to call these masterworks. Though ambitious, the two films try to express too much in their short runtimes. There are fundamental ambiguities in these stories, and though these might have been intentional, they also might have been resolved if the films weren't so rushed. This kind of psychological drama benefits from a slower development. As such, they seem to invoke the conventions of a contemporary dramatic play without being able to fully realize that genre on the screen. It's hard to fault Bauer for this - neither the industry nor the audience at that time and place may have been ready for that yet. I think these two films are a fascinating glimpse at what midcentury Russian cinema might have looked like, had the Bolshevik revolution not changed that course entirely.
Year: 1914
Runtime: 0:37
Source: Youtube
The two Yevgeni Bauer films on the list seem to me attempts to distill the essence of deep, psychological Russian romantic novels into short films. Technically, they're very accomplished, particularly in the lighting and mise-en-scene. Each shot seems carefully composed.
The story here inverts that of the previous film: instead of a wealthy heiress "corrupted" by her encounters with the working class (although it seems to me she ends in a fair position), here it is a poor laundress who is brought into high society by a prince who is in love with her supposed innocence. She almost immediately becomes entranced by the superficial frivolities of class, spends all of the prince's money and leaves him destitute for another suitor.
In both Bauer films, the men act well, but their arcs are so dull and melodramatic that it's hard to stay interested in them. The women, on the other hand, are fascinating and dynamic. What strikes me especially about these films is how the actors' expressions and moods often change several times in the course of a single shot. Even though there are very few title cards from which to determine the context of these conversations, it's still possible to feel how the story will develop from watching these performances. For as much as the settings feel so alive, the story and the films themselves take place on the faces of these actors.
However, I'm not ready to call these masterworks. Though ambitious, the two films try to express too much in their short runtimes. There are fundamental ambiguities in these stories, and though these might have been intentional, they also might have been resolved if the films weren't so rushed. This kind of psychological drama benefits from a slower development. As such, they seem to invoke the conventions of a contemporary dramatic play without being able to fully realize that genre on the screen. It's hard to fault Bauer for this - neither the industry nor the audience at that time and place may have been ready for that yet. I think these two films are a fascinating glimpse at what midcentury Russian cinema might have looked like, had the Bolshevik revolution not changed that course entirely.
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