Little Vera
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Film: B-
Back in the 1960s, Milos Forman was considered more and
more subversive with his breakthrough films Loves Of A Blonde (1965) and
The Fireman’s Ball (1967), as they subtly took apart Communism slowly,
but surely. Forman eventually left for
the United States and the Prague Spring kicked in in 1968. Over a decade later, as glasnost (the new
openness in the Soviet Union) came into being in the USSR, the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster proved its limits. Not
only did that show the limit of its new openness and thaw, but had helped mark
the end of the USSR. Vasily Pichul’s Little
Vera (1988) was a timely film in all those regards.
The film showed teen life in a way that was being ignored
or countermanded in every Communist cinema up to that time and the simulated
sex was unheard of. The film was a huge
hit in the USSR and gained a great reputation worldwide, picking up awards and
critical acclaim. It seems to finish
what Forman and the few bold filmmakers like himself (including many who were
killed for the films they made) had started.
Vera (Natalya Negoda) is a young girl with little
direction who sleeps around and leads a pretty careless life. That was unacceptably “decadent” and too
shockingly real and “anti-Social Realism” by the traditional Soviet Cinema
standards. The return of the repressed
was well received. With that said, does
the film hold up? This is the unrated
cut and it is not bad, though it seems a bit dated and that has nothing to do
with no more USSR. It was tame even
then by Hollywood standards, but subversive by USSR committees. What does remain outside of the context of a
superpower about to crumble (and turn into another power) is a film with a pace
that is still appealing and performances that endure.
Vera eventually gets involved with another man and even
falls in love, but that does not mean stability by any means. Instead, things stay crazy and it is fair to
say that this holds up far better than many of the bad Hollywood teen films
form the 1980s, that remain plastic and celebrate unknowingly (or purposely to
push their audience into such a corner) with clichés and other subliminally
sinister ideologies. The film was for
real then and shows how backwards Hollywood was going and how for a brief
moment, a new Russian Cinema was fighting to emerge before the next chill.
The 1.33 X 1 full frame image has big, but burned-in
subtitles, and the print has some scratches and artifacts throughout. The color is slightly faded here and there,
while definition is an issue in fine detail.
It is still the uncut version and that is good, but a restored new print
is going to be needed for the inevitable High Definition release in a few years
from now, but there is no guarantee that will be uncut, though it should. The Dolby Digital 2.0 does its best to
reproduce the monophonic sound, but it shows some of its age. Maybe it could be remastered too. There are no extras, but Little Vera
has an unexpected new values unimagined in its time and deserves to be
reconsidered again. Not bad for a film
with an already good reputation.
- Nicholas Sheffo
