Alexander
Nevsky
(1938)/October
(1927/Ten
Days That Shook The World/Eisenstein/Corinth
DVDs)/The
Bolshevik Revolution: Mother
(1926) / The
End of St. Petersburg
(1927) / Storm
Over Asia
(1928/Podovkin/Flicker Alley Blu-ray Set)
Picture:
C/C/B-/B/B- Sound: C/C/B-/C+/B- Extras: D/D/B/B/B Films:
B+/B+/B+/B+/B
Five
classics of Soviet Cinema, most of which you have likely heard of
before if not seen (and all of which you should see at least once,)
are now available to view in new disc editions...
We
have five films by two of the most important director's of their
time, each wioth a different and effective approach to filmmaking
that included strong, innovative senses of editing. Sergei
Eisenstein backed what he called 'intellectual montage' and Vsevolod
Pudovkin followed his own five principles of editing. It made for
some differences, but both were making pro-Soviet cinema that helped
build the now-defunct country early on and still influence filmmaking
today.
Eisenstein
was the more popular and inevitably more influential of the two, so
much so that he would become a threat to Josef Stalin, who had to
take the long way in dealing with him and eventually getting rid of
him (Eisenstein was so sick that he never finished his third Ivan
The Terrible
film, which was an attack on Stalin, but Stalin just let him die from
his illnesses instead of having him tortured, killed and/or having
him 'disappear' as to have zero backlash from their fellow Soviets)
and Podovkin survived much longer, also writing books and died of a
heart attack by 1953 as an established Pro-Soviet filmmaker who
Stalin had few issues with.
Eisenstein's
Alexander
Nevsky
(1938) is his epic biopic of the title character (Nikolai Cherkassov
more than carrying the picture) battling aggressors against Russia as
a major hero, building up to the major final conflict with the
Teutons in the famous 'Battle Of The Ice' that climaxes the drama and
propaganda as effectively as possible. It is as well shot as it is
well-acted, well-edited and has a Prokofiev score, but one that was
infamously included on the soundtrack as a temp score where the horns
sound like kazoos because Stalin said so. Temporarily pulled when
the Soviets and Nazis signed their doomed non-aggression pact, it is
a key classic.
Eisenstein's
October
(1927/Ten
Days That Shook The World)
is a flipside of his masterpiece Battleship
Potemkin
(1925, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) featuring the
Russian Revolution that succeeded, versus the one that did not. The
Czars are cold and evil, the Bolsheviks, humane, kind and wise with
depth and care for all people. Heavy-handed like many other such
propaganda films, but not quite as effective as the earlier film, it
still offers constant visual impact throughout. Sometimes some
combinations of shots work better than others, but this was very
effective work in its time that has aged better still than many such
films that have followed it, agit-prop or otherwise and only the
director's third feature film.
It
was made to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Russian
Revolution, while Podovkin's The
End Of St. Petersburg
(reviewed below) was the other. The later 1966 Dimitri Shostakovich
score is used here, not the earlier Edmund Meisel score from the
original release of the film.
By
coincidence, a double Blu-ray set of three of Podovkin's films have
also been issued as The
Bolshevik Revolution
(or Revolutionary Trilogy) and features three of his earliest and
best films:
Mother
(1926) has a woman in 1905 Russia (Vera Baranovskaya) so traumatized
by the death of members of her family are killed or jailed in the
face of Czarist control, she decides she's lost it all and becomes an
enemy of the state.
The
End of St. Petersburg
(1927) covers the last four years of Czarist rule and how they are
overthrow in the name of the people to form the Soviet Union, thanks
to the Bolsheviks. Can regular, plain, simple people have any
happiness, peace, prosperity or hope against a violent, greedy
system?
And
finally, Storm
Over Asia
(1928) starts in 1918 with a simple Mongol trader (Valery Inkijinoff)
by greedy 'European' traders, so he is fighting with the Soviets by
1920 against the British, who capture him, then he and those against
the British find out he is a descendent of no less than Genghis Khan!
Though no such war ever happened in real life, the propaganda points
are obvious and pull no punches. Unfortunately, it makes it the
least effective of the three films, though it is always interesting
at points it does and does not work.
Now
for playback performance. One would hope such important and visually
striking films would look as good as they can, but that is sadly not
always the case, especially when so many classic films still need
much preservation and restoration.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfers on the three Bolshevik
films can definitely show the age of the materials used, but
Petersburg
looks easily the best and is easily the best-looking film here. All
three have DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes for their various music
scores and that's fine, but the music only did so much for me and
Petersburg
somehow sounds the poorest of the three.
The
1.20 X 1 image and lossy Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono on the DVDs repeat
the same transfers from the old 12-inch analog LaserDiscs Image
Entertainment issued in the long obsolete format roughly three
decades ago, including the same damage on the prints, so nothing has
been fixed or cleaned since. Additionally, the sound here is more
compressed and poorer than the PCM 2.0 Mono on the old LaserDiscs, so
to say these need new transfers is an understatement.
The
DVD have no extras, while the Blu-ray set includes another nicely
illustrated booklet on the films including informative
text and essays (film author and historian Amy Sargeant supplies the
one here) we always get from Flicker Alley. The discs add:
Chess
Fever
(1925): Pudovkin's directorial debut, this ingenious satire of the
Moscow chess craze combines staged scenes with documentary footage,
and features a number of cameos from the worlds of cinema and chess.
(Runtime: 28 minutes)
A
Revolution in Five Moves:
A visual essay by Maxim Pozdorovkin showcasing the five edits that
inspired the Bolshevik revolution. (Runtime 9 minutes)
''Five
Principles of Editing'':
A comparison of Pudovkin's ''Five Principles of Editing''. (Runtime:
7 minutes)
Amateur
Images of St. Petersburg (1930): (Runtime: 2 minutes)
Notebooks
of a Tourist Presents: St. Petersburg (c. 1920): (Runtime: 2 minutes)
Feature
Length Audio Commentary - Storm
Over Asia
(1928): Featuring film historian and scholar, Jan-Christopher Horak.
and
a Feature Length Audio Commentary - Mother
(1926): Featuring Russian film historian and curator Peter Bagrov.
-
Nicholas Sheffo