The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks

Lev Kuleshov

Every student of film is no doubt familiar with the name Lev Kuleshov and his famous Kuleshov effect.  Less well known among film students, however, are Kuleshov's actual films.  When many think of 1920s Soviet cinema, the great Eisensteinian classics, like the Battleship Potemkin, immediately come to mind.  Yet, despite the significance of such works, silent Soviet film was much more than revolutionary epics.

Kulsheov's 1924 comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is a prime example of this.  The first feature produced by Kulsheov with the actors who attended his Experimental Cine-Laboratory, it is enjoyable, funny, visually captivating, and (for its time) technically sophisticated.  It is also an underrated work that justifiably deserves greater attention.  It is here where Kuleshov puts his theories of montage, editing, and acting together with an exciting and humorous plot to form something truly entertaining.

The film, co-written by Nikolai Aseyev and Vsevolod Pudovkin, begins in the Cleveland suburb of Brecksville, Ohio, a quaint Midwestern locale where Mr. John S. West (played by Porfiri Podobed), the Harold Lloyd-esque president of the YMCA, prepares to journey to the Soviet Union with his trusty cowboy sidekick Jeddy (future Soviet filmmaker Boris Barnet).

Mr. John S. West

The cowboy Jeddy

His wife, Madge, is devastated over her husband's departure.

Mrs. Madge West

Her concern for his safety is only intensified when the mail arrives and he receives a note and some magazines from a G. L. Collagan in New York warning him about the "barbarous state of Russia today."

The postal worker.

The archetypal Bolshevik as seen in a New York magazine.

Mrs. West expressing her concern.

However, Mr. West casts aside such fears and heads to Moscow with Jeddy as his bodyguard.

Mr. West goes to Moscow... in his very 1920s-style raccoon coat.

However, one of his bags is stolen and ends up in the hands of some less-than-friendly characters, including the sinister Shban (Vsevolod Pudovkin), the One-Eyed Man (Sergei Komarov), the Dandy (Leonid Obolensky), and the Countess von Saks (played by Aleksandra Khokhlova, Kuleshov's wife and muse).

Shban

The One-Eyed Man

The Countess von Saks

The Dandy with Countess von Saks in the background.

As they scheme and resolve to "squeeze  every last dollar" out of Mr. West, the cowboy Jeddy becomes separated from his friend and soon finds himself being pursued by the Moscow police in a madcap Wild West-style chase sequence that involves fast editing, daring stunts, and stunning high-wire acts.  It also includes a beautiful shot of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (prior to its 1931 demolition by Stalin).  In the end, Jeddy ends up literally falling into the company of his old friend, Ellie (Vera Lopatina), an American girl (now living in Moscow) who he recused from a mugging.

 

Jeddy flees as the Cathedral of Christ the Savior stands proudly in the background.

Mr. West, meanwhile, finds refuge in the offices of an American company in Moscow, where the typists remind him of his wife.

Meanwhile, Shban and his gang manage to track down Mr. West.  Here Shban returns to the briefcase to West and recounts a highly fictionalized version of how he "rescued" it from those "dastardly Bolsheviks."  Then, upon finding the case included a red-white-and-blue sock, Shban claimed to have tipped his hat, realizing it was American.

Shban giving instructions to his cabal near an Expressionist-looking tree.

Shban tipping his hat to America.

Shban then informs West that he is being followed and must escape with him at once.

In the meantime, Jeddy is taken into jail by the Moscow police and Ellie bails him out.  She informs the local police officer of Jeddy's past heroism (presented to the audience as a flashback) and explains how his boss back in America misinformed him that "Russians were savages" (accompanied by a scene illustrating the accompanying stereotype).

Images from the "savage Russian" sequence.

As Ellie works to release Jeddy, Shban takes Mr. West on a "tour of Moscow," passing off a rundown building as a "university" and rubble as the site of the Bolshoi Theatre, all to illustrate the savagery of the Bolsheviks.  An astonished Mr. West is then treated to tea "Soviet style" with Shban and the Countess, who tries to flirt (and even play footsy with) an embarrassed Mr. West.  Podobed, Pudovkin and especially Khokhlova seem to have had a lot of fun performing this sequence.  Khokhlova's facial expressions in this scene and in subsequent others are especially fun to watch, adding to the humor of the scenario and the sinisterly funny character of the criminal clique.

Returning to the American office, meanwhile, Ellie and Jeddy discover that West had left in the "company of a very peculiar gentleman."  The two then decide to enlist the Soviet police to help them find Mr. West.

Back at the criminals' headquarters, Mr. West is asleep but soon receives a surprise when "Bolshevik revolutionaries" storm the run-down building.  In reality, these "revolutionaries" are "played" by extra bandits, but they manage to play on the worst fears of Mr. West who attempts to fight them as a "true American."

After trapping Mr. West in a fur coat, the gang then tie up the countess, making her appear as a "hostage" to "Bolshevik savagery," much to the horror of Mr. West.

The Countess and Mr. West are then put onto a mock trial conducted by "Bolshevik tribunal."  This wild sequence with its editing, acting, and striking use of chiaroscuro lighting call to mind the French crime serials of Louis Feuillade as well as the films of the German Expressionists.

A masked Shban, reminiscent of Feuillade's Fantômas.

In the end, the "Bolsheviks" sentence West and the Countess to death.  The two are then imprisoned in an Expressionist-style cell, with the shadows of the window muntins cast on West like a spider's web, as if to further emphasize the fact that he is ensnared in the criminals' scheme.   He is then instructed that both he and the Countess can only be saved at the cost of thousands of dollars.  Desperately West pays the money and is "rescued" through the chimney of the house, covering his face with soot.

In the end, the criminals' plot is foiled by the Soviet police, Mr. West is recused, and the four thieves are arrested.

"Now this is what a real Bolshevik looks like."

The four criminals behind bars.

Mr. West is then treated on a real tour of Moscow led by the Soviet police chief.  The University is intact as is the Bolshoi Theatre and both are flourishing. The American visitor is so impressed that he immediately telegraphs his wife and informs her to burn all magazines depicting the Russians as "savages" and to instead place a portrait of Lenin in his office.

Mr. West is a fun and entertaining film.  Though it is clearly pro-Soviet, it has also been labeled by some incorrectly as an anti-American work that ironically (and some might even say shamefully) "steals" from American films of the day.  However, such a characterization misses crucial points of Kuleshov's work and his intentions behind it.

None of the American characters depicted in the film are shown in a bad or negative light.  They are all likeable and fun characters to which any audience (whether in New York or Moscow) can easily relate.  Also, the inclusion of elements such as the cowboy, Mr. West's raccoon coat, his Harold Lloyd-esque glasses, and even his red-white-and-blue socks seem to indicate a certain sympathy, even affinity or love, on the part of the filmmaker towards the American people and American culture.  This especially makes sense when one considers the fact that Kuleshov himself was openly pro-American and a self-professed fan of American Westerns.  If anything, the film is more of an anti-stereotype film, created with the intention of dispelling common myths in the West regarding the Soviet Union and its people as a "barbarous, Red horde."

Though the film is currently not available online in full, it is available on DVD as part of the four-disc Landmarks of Early Soviet Cinema set, fully restored with a new score by the acclaimed silent film composer Robert Israel.

From Perestroika to Pizza Hut

Okay, so this post is not exactly about Soviet film per se, but it does involve Russia, an ex-Soviet leader, and visual media.

I was doing some research on Mikhail Gorbachev and glasnost recently when I happened upon this:

Yes, it's Mikhail Gorbachev's all-too-famous pitch for Pizza Hut.  In the ad, the former Soviet President appears alongside his then-10-year-old granddaughter, Anastasia, while patrons fiercely debate his legacy.  According to CNN, "the commercial uses their presence in a Pizza Hut restaurant to suggest that capitalism is better than communism because it makes luxuries like Pizza Hut available."

Gorbachev's spokesman, Karen Karagezian, told the AP that Gorbachev agreed to do the commercial in order to earn money for his research foundation.

"I'm in the process of creating a library and a perestroika archive, and this project requires certain funds," Gorbachev told CNN.  "Perestroika gave impetus to Russia and to the whole world. It is very important that everything that happened be preserved in these two centers."

Gorbachev stated that he had declined offers to endorse other products, but made an exception only for Pizza Hut because pizza "brings people together."

"It's an important part of life," he said. "It's not only consumption, it's also socializing. If I didn't see that it was beneficial for people, I wouldn't have agreed to it."

Still, among many Russians, Gorbachev's legacy remains mixed, with one Muscovite stating that "once he's started to advertise Pizza Hut, the next step will be to advertise Tampax."

At the time the commercial was made, Sergei Tatosyan, the then-manager of the Moscow-based Pizza Hut where the commercial was filmed, told the AP that the ad will not be shown in Russia due to Gorbachev's unpopularity.

Chess Crazy

When we think of Vsevolod Pudovkin, we think of his sweeping revolutionary masterpieces like Mother (1926), The End of St. Petersburg (1927), and Storm Over Asia (1928).  Yet despite the very epic and very serious nature of these films, Pudkovkin actually began his directorial career on a lighter note, with a comedy.

The film in question is called Chess Fever, a short comedy that rivals the best American comedies of its time.  Jointly directed by Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky (who also wrote the script), the work centers around the 1925 Moscow chess tournament.  Pudovkin took full advantage of this by utilizing actual documentary footage of the event at his disposal, including shots of the renown Cuban chess champion José Capablanca.

Capablanca in Pudovkin's Chess Fever (1925)

The film itself utilizes these documentary shots as a means of further advancing the story that Pudovkin sets out to tell.  Specifically, they are sewed into the work by way of montage like threads in a finely-woven rug.  Unlike Eisenstein, who felt that the montage should also speak to the masses and engage in an emotional appeal, Pudovkin felt that telling the story should be, above all, paramount to its use.

A film theorist as well as a filmmaker, he wrote in 1925 that "two shots cannot be joined together if one of them in some manner or aspect does not continue the other."  For Pudovklin, such editing could only be utilized in a continuous manner, as a means for ultimately conveying a "higher idea."

Onlookers young and old watch the chess players intently.

Using the tournament as a backdrop, Pudovkin brings to us a story.  It is a story of a national obsession and pastime with the game of chess.  It is also taken and individualized through one character, a Harold Lloyd-esque chess fanatic played by Vladimir Fogel.

The hero of Chess Fever.

Everything about this guy is chess.  His flat cap, to his necktie, his socks, and his scarf are all patterned in black-and-white chess checkerboard style.  Later, even the tiles of an apartment are fashioned this way, in order to further emphasize the deep level of his mania.

Unfortunately for our hero, however, he is torn between two loves: love for the game and for his girlfriend, Vera (played by Pudovkin's actress wife Anna Zemtsova).  To her, chess is an obstacle to romance and, in the words of her friend, a "danger to family life."  Arriving late at the apartment, our hero at first tries to remedy the situation, but it explodes when Vera finds him more concerned with a mobile chess set than with their relationship.

Bad move.

When Vera seeks consolation from her grandfather, he recommends a book: Collection of Ancient Chess Problems.  She is then presented with a cake, designed in the manner of a chess board.  Indeed, everywhere she turns, there is chess!

Vera seeking consolation.

...and not finding much help...

This drives Vera mad, so much so that she decides to take a poison.  However, by a twist of fate (or, as a Russian might say, through the irony of fate) she is accidentally given a chess piece instead and finds herself running into none other than Capablanca himself.

"Leave me alone," she shots, not knowing who he is. "Chess has made me hate everyone."

"When I see a beautiful woman, I too begin to hate chess," he responds.

Vera meets Capablanca

Eventually, Capablanca teaches Vera the virtues of chess.  Encountering our Lloyd-esque hero at the tournament, she makes up with him and the two embrace, both now hopelessly overcome by chess fever.

A fun and humorous little film, Chess Fever is an enjoyable treat for any cinema enthusiast.  Yet, the film itself contains so much more.  There are many great moments and nuances throughout and Pudovkin and Shpikovsky are especially keen to play upon humor revolving around the obsession and high regard for chess in Russia and the (now former) Soviet republics.

Chess: a national pastime...

...a national obsession.

You can watch the film online on YouTube here or purchase it on DVD from Amazon.com here.

In Memoriam: Václav Havel (1936-2011)

Yesterday, on December 18, I was saddened to read that Václav Havel had passed away.

Havel in Prague, 1989.

For those who may not know, Havel was a dissident Czech playwright, poet, essayist, and activist.  As a writer, he specialized in absurdist drama.  After the Prague Spring of 1968 was crushed by Soviet tanks, however, his works were banned in his own country.  In addition, while his plays continued to be performed outside of communist Czechoslovakia, he was prevented by the authorities from ever seeing them.

In 1977, partially in response to the arrest of the members of a non-conformist rock group, Havel, along with other Czechoslovak dissidents, formed the civic initiative Charter 77.  Its purpose was to draw international attention to the human rights abuses of the Prague communist government.  Subsequently, Havel's political activities resulted in several imprisonments (the longest from June 1979 to January 1984) and constant surveillance, harassment, and questioning by the Czechoslovak authorities.

By the late 1980s, with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost (political openness) in the Soviet Union, regimes all over the Eastern bloc began to weaken.  Czechoslovakia was no exception and it was Havel who took the initiative to lead the Velvet Revolution that ultimately led to the demise of communism in Czechoslovakia.  Subsequently, he became of the first and only president of post-1989 Czechoslovakia and, after the split with Slovakia, of the newly-formed Czech Republic.

A visionary artist and a courageous activist, Havel was a true nonviolent revolutionary.  May he rest in peace and continue to serve as an inspirations to others.  After all, as history has shown, pravda vítězí!

Recounting Revolution

It has been twenty years since the dissolution of the USSR, an event that effectively meant an end to approximately seventy-four years of Soviet communism.  This began with the 1917 October Revolution when the Bolsheviks, led by the revolutionary Vladimir Iliych Lenin, ousted the Russian Provisional Government of Alexander Krensky and seized power, proclaiming Russia a socialist state.  This was followed by five years of brutal civil war between the Bolsheviks and their allies (the "Reds") on one side and an amalgamation of anti-communist, monarchist, and liberal forces on the other side (the "Whites").

The events of the October Revolution have been variously interpreted over the years.  There is the Marxist view of the Revolution, the Western Totalitarian view, and, since the 1960s, the Western Revisionist view.  Of these, the Marxist view held that the Revolution was an inevitable outcome of class struggle.  The Western Totalitarian view held that the people were misled by the Bolsheviks and that their totalitarian tendencies inevitably led to the rise of Stalinism.  The Revisionists, meanwhile, viewed the Revolution not from the viewpoint of major leaders (like Lenin, the Tsar, or Kerensky), but from the vantage point of ordinary people who held a genuine revolutionary fervor and a sincere desire for change.  They argued that the success of the Bolsheviks was contingent on this as well as several other factors and circumstances.

Of these, it was, not surprisingly, the Marxist view of the Revolution that served as the basis for Sergei Eisenstein's 1928 landmark film, October: Ten Days That Shook the World.  With a title based on the name of the book by American socialist journalist John Reed, the film is a visual masterpiece, combining striking images, fast action, and rapid film editing to create an overall emotional impact on the viewer.  Commissioned by the Soviet government in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, it is a prime example of film as agitprop.   It also notably features Trotsky in a prominent role, though Eisenstein was later forced to edit out these sequences in subsequent versions of the film, after Trotsky's defeat and exile.  A score composed by Dmitri Shostakovich was added in 1966, something that only enhances the power of an already potent work of art.

October is well-known for being featured frequently in documentaries on Russian and Soviet history, often with a disclaimer that "this is not actual footage from the Revolution."  Footage used from the film usually includes the sequences of the workers running throughout Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersberg holding rifles and, of course, the famous Eisensteinian depiction of the storming of the Winter Palace.  Below are images from both scenes:

However, in the world of film, October is much more famous for the instances where Eisenstein employs something known as "intellectual montage," editing two seemingly unrelated images together to convey a single idea or message.  One of the most outstanding moments of this occurs during the depiction of the ill-fated Kornilov affair in which General Lavr Kornilov attempted an unsuccessful putsch against the Kerensky government in the fall of 1917.  In the film, Kerensky's government calls upon the people to "Defend Petrograd, in the name of God and Country."  With this phrase, Eisenstein critiques both religion and nation individually, by employing "intellectual montage."

It is his critique on religion and the concept of deity, however, that is especially visually enticing.  Through a succession of images of religious art, both frightening and strikingly beautiful, Eisenstein makes a statement, effectively illustrating that all icons are one and the same.  The images include icons and architectural monuments of Russian Orthodox Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Shamanism, and indigenous African faiths.   All of these are connected by slight visual similarities.

Though this sequence does have a very Bolshevik anti-religious message behind it, it is difficult to deny its very eye-catching and visually captivating quality.  Below are a few select images from this sequence:

Eisenstein also employs a similar technique with regard to Kerensky.  During the Kornilov affair, Kerensky (expertly portrayed by Vladimir Popov) is shown folding his arms in a pensive manner:

This image is then followed an image of a statue of Napoleon, striking a similar pose, thus comparing Kerensky to Napoleon:

Kornilov himself receives the same treatment and, at one point, two images of the same Napoleon statue are brought together, emphasizing the point that both Kerensky and Kornilov are attempting to be Napoleons in their own right:

In any case, October is a classic of Soviet cinema that is must for any student of film or Russian/Soviet history.  You can watch it online on YouTube here or purchase it on DVD from Amazon.com here.

Waiting for a Soviet Godot

The road to nowhere in Turkmenistan
as seen in Aleksandr Gutman's
The Russians Have Gone (1990).

Continuing the Central Asian theme, I recently came across this offbeat documentary posted on YouTube by Journeyman Pictures.  Entitled The Russians Have Gone, it was directed by Russian documentary filmmaker Aleksandr Gutman in 1990 and focuses on the emigration of ethnic Russians from the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (modern Turkmenistan) during the late glasnost era.  Though it appears to be a shortened version of a longer film, it is still an enjoyable, if somewhat quirky, work nonetheless.

Oddly, Journeyman's accompanying description of the film refers to it as taking place in Armenia in the aftermath of the 1988 earthquake.  This error most likely derives from the fact that they confused this film with another Gutman documentary called Frescoes (2003) which dealt with the aftermath of the 1988 Armenian earthquake.  You can watch that film in its entirety online here.

In any case, this film possesses a strong postmodern quality to it and, as the YouTube description even states, it almost has "the feel of a Beckett play."  Set against a landscape blighted by desolation and industrial decay, the work includes footage of dromedary camels lazily strolling into rundown cities, Turkmen children reciting Mayakovsky, and prisoners marching dutifully behind a wire fence.  It also includes thoughts from a local immigrant from Daghestan who notes that while most of the Russians and other Soviet nationalities have left, he has decided to stay and learn the Turkmen language.

The Russians Have Gone was Gutman's third documentary film and it won awards at international festivals in Egypt, Finland, and Belgium.

UPDATE (26 February 2017): Journeyman uploaded Gutman's full film on YouTube in June 2016, just four months after the filmmaker's passing on 17 February 2016.  Notably, Journeyman still oddly and erroneously insists that that the film is about Armenia rather than Turkmenistan.