Man With A Movie List

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1944 I have great admiration for Eisenstein's early films, and their distinct non-Western communalist style. His later films, with their integration of distinct characters, don't work quite as well for me.  It's hard at the beginning of this film to recognize which characters are important - since the camera moves back and forth quickly, with frequent dialogue meant to establish communal opinions, it takes a while for me at least to recognize the main leads. Combined with the often glacial pacing, this was a difficult watch for me. Nevertheless, the always excellent cinematography leads to a fever-dream atmosphere that I appreciated (it's a dangerous film to watch in an anxious state) and the characteristic symbolism makes it possible to follow on a subconscious level, even if it's not clear what's going on in terms of events. I am looking forward to Part II to get a better analysis.

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1938 Run-time: 1 hr 51 min - Here we have the return of the great Eisenstein, who had stopped working for a decade, and the first Russian film on the list in quite a while.  True to form, it's a groundbreaking work in sound film in the same way that his previous works had revolutionized silent film.  It would be a gross exaggeration to say this was the first great military epic, with outstanding works like Napoleon  predating it, but it may be the most influential military epic, with everything from the cinematography to the score being like nothing else before it.  It's a slow-paced film in an era of Russian history that most westerners, myself included, know little about, but the heavy symbolism and deliberate pacing means that anyone will understand what's happening.  And, oh, to see the Germanic knights posed with their absurd and frightening helmets is really frightening, like Lord of the Rings  from a Russian poin...

Director: Dziga Vertov Year: 1929 Runtime: 1 hr 7 min Source: Amazon Video Wikipedia Kyle Kallgren's Video Analysis Notable for : Being one of the most critically acclaimed silent films (although not at the time of release).  It was voted the 8th best film of all time by Sight and Sound in 2012, and the best documentary of all time a few years later. Critics respond to many things about the film, including but not limited to: Putting the act of film-making front and center, including the editing process (here undertaken by Vertov's wife).  Previously the task of editing was considered secondary to artistic vision. The invention or innovation (there is some debate here) of many editing techniques, including split screen, stop or slow motion, and double exposure. Vertov wanted his audience to know that this was not magic but a mechanical science. Vertov's radical belief in the power of cinema to create a communal, universal perspective on the world, independen...

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1928 Runtime: 116 min Source: Kanopy The third Eisenstein film on the list, this one doesn't speak to the gut in the same way as Battleship Potemkin or Strike .  Despite the characteristically frenetic pacing, October feels like the most intellectual of his films so far, dealing in symbols (which are occasionally as subtle as a hammer) and analogies.  Although not much beloved at the time - the film makes allusions that depictions of the October Revolution were commonplace at the time - it feels pretty fresh today.  But also, it's a bit tricky to evaluate as someone with limited foreknowledge of those events - the exaggerations and inaccurate portrayals are hard for me to judge. Although it's an interesting film and a fascinating historical document, Eisenstein as usual isn't really interested in storytelling, and while that works for Potemkin , I'm not sure it works here.  Certainly, history is a messy tangle of motivation...

Director: Dziga Vertov Year: 1928 Run-time: 52 min Source: Youtube "In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people" - Dziga Vertov In 1928, Stalin's Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization and agricultural collectivization began.  The plan ended in chaos four years later with massive famine - an estimated 3.3 to 7.5 million dead.  This makes The Eleventh Year , a stark and strange propaganda film presumably commissioned to sell the program to Ukraine by showcasing innovations in machinery, one of the eeriest and most haunting films on this list, even without the industrial techno soundtrack added in a version that I found on Youtube. Vertov is well-known among cinephiles, and his film Man With a Movie Camera  made it into the top ten of the most recent Sight and Sound poll, but information on this particul...

Director: Boris Barnet Year: 1927 Run-time: 1 hr 7 min Source: Kanopy Bed and Sofa is well-known, at least in cinephile circles, for being the last Soviet film in some time that avoided any element of propaganda.  The Girl with the Hatbox, , from the same year, has several similar themes to Bed and Sofa .  It also features a love triangle (even sharing one of the main actors), and the housing shortage in Moscow plays a large role.  This film, however, was ostensibly commissioned to promote Soviet lottery bonds.  However, these play a relatively minor role in the main plot, and even though the main character does surreptitiously win a great deal of money from one, it's hard to say that a contemporary viewer would be convinced to go out and buy them. For the film itself, it's much more slapstick than Bed and Sofa , but I enjoyed it a great deal.  The comedy is simple, but effective.  I particularly like the scene where one of the suitors attempts to s...

Director: Abram Room Year: 1927 Run-time: 75 min Source: Kanopy Bed and Sofa  really surprised me.  Regardless of culture or country of origin, films that are this early will adhere to a set of moral standards that only the most child-friendly of films today would.  However, Bed and Sofa  could fairly be described as a sex comedy, and a fairly progressive one at that.  It's got a wry sense of humor, but very little cynicism. The plot shouldn't be spoiled if your interest is peaked, but Bed and Sofa  is about a married couple in a tiny apartment who are visited by the husband's friend, who's come to the city to work.  The husband offers him a place in the apartment (against his wife's wishes).  However, while the husband takes a work trip, the wife and the visitor fall in love.  Because the visitor can't keep a secret from his friend, he admits it - the husband, in a surprising move, leaves the new couple and tries to find anoth...

Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin Year: 1926 Run-time: 1 hr 29 min Source: Youtube The Soviet director Pudovkin isn't as well-regarded as Eisenstein, and his films don't have the same force of impact, but he played a crucial role in the development of cinema.  Working in a similar rapid-fire editing style as Eisenstein (an approach which is known as montage , although that term has a different connotation now), Pudovkin strayed a bit from his contemporary's communalist ideal, and focused his stories on strong characterization. That's somewhat relative - Mother  doesn't name its main character, the titular "Mother".  The crux of the film is how she responds to the death of her husband (and eventually, her son) in the failed 1905 revolution (also the setting of Eisenstein's first two films) by devoting her life to the proletariat's cause.  Pudovkin never actually shows her making that decision - it's an internal story told almost entirely throug...

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1925 Run-time: 1 hr 22 min Source: Kanopy Here we break chronological order for the first notable time: Strike  is actually the first feature-length Eisenstein film, although it was made in the same year as Battleship Potemkin .  Potemkin  is the better film, although I would say that Strike  better illustrates just how ahead of his time Eisenstein was.  This is a masterwork of editing - never has a film this early felt so meticulously constructed from its shots.  Although light-years apart in story and mood, the film on the list that feels the closest in directorial spirit was Jean Epstein's Coeur Fidele .  (I can't help but wonder what Eisenstein's films would be like if he was born in the West, in some scenario like the Superman Red Sun  comic but in reverse.) The shots are incredibly quick, with entire scenes built out of small, disparate moments, like in a comic book.  The effect is exhilarating, ...

Director: Sergei Eisenstein Year: 1925 Run-time: 75 min Source: Kanopy This film's reputation puts at on a higher level than the prior films on this list, and there's certainly not much I can add to that reputation.  I'm just going to say what strikes me about it at the moment, in the context of the other films I've been watching. Battleship Potemkin  is a Soviet propaganda film conceived as such: it documents and celebrates a very specific event in Russian history on its twentieth anniversary, the mutiny of the ship Potemkin  and its participation in the riots in the city of Odessa.  (Wisely, Eisenstein scrapped the original plan of covering the entire first Russian revolution.)  Certainly, the story fits the needs of the state, although the basic facts are accurate.  The famous Odessa Steps sequence really took place at night and not on the steps themselves, but Tsarist soldiers really did fire on the protesting crowds, and the resulting panic woul...

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 fascin...

Director: Yevgeni Bauer Year: 1913 Runtime: 0:48 Source:  Youtube Our first Russian film is a compact tragedy with a lot for us to unpack.  It comes from Yevgeni Bauer, an interesting film pioneer who died a few short months before the October Revolution.  And indeed, this is a rare glimpse into late Tsarist society.  It follows a young, depressed heiress Vera who feels without purpose.  The early scenes showing her internal isolation are the best; Bauer uses lighting expertly to highlight her feelings of loneliness.  Inspired by her mother, she gets excited by philanthropy, but is deceived by a crudely stereotypical drunkard and wastrel Maksim, who steals from and incompetently kidnaps her.  Not letting herself be taken advantage of, she murders him in his stupor. Later, she is pursued by a courteous, doting prince.  She falls for him quickly, but realizes she can't connect with him emotionally, because she can't help but see Maksim when s...