Translated material
"Dance with Me"
Yuri Gladilshchikov
Archive "Movies"
(Photo: Gemini Movie World )
USA, black ball (failure)
Director Alexander Buravsky
Stars: Keith Curredine, Mia Kirshner and others.
Rental - "Gemini Movie World"
About what. About the famous but drunken Broadway dancer, who in 1939 accepted an offer from a certain Estonian impresario to perform in his Tallinn cabaret. There, a degraded playboy dancer, who is still oh-ho-ho, immediately manages to turn the head of the young daughter of a Jewish manufacturer. And all around are solid supporters of the fascists - anti-Semitic pogromists (it turns out that Estonians, in general, are bastards). A complete nightmare, which finally destroys the love idyll, begins, however, after Estonia is occupied by Soviet troops (it turns out that the Russians are also bastards). Rich people are arrested. Trying to get his young mistress out of the dungeons (either pregnant, or having already given birth - I don’t remember exactly), the American hero takes a large Soviet military commander hostage and ends up in Stalin’s camps.
In the camp - thirteen years later - the main misfortune happens: heavy logs fall on the hero’s leg, and the guard bitches leave him to die. As luck would have it - but in accordance with the immutable laws of cheap film production - the tragic incident occurs exactly on the eve of Stalin's death. Having suffered until nightfall, the heroic (that is, true) American discovers an ax that someone had forgotten by the way, chops off his leg with a few blows - and then crawls for a long time through the grass, demonstrating an incredible will to live. Someone already wrote: just like Meresyev. Only in 1959 does the hero, who during the years spent in the USSR, although he lost a leg, was completely cured of alcoholism, manage to return to New York with the help of the American ambassador in Moscow. In New York, he hopes to find his Tallinn wife-mistress (she somehow made it to America), but, alas, she was stabbed to death by a racketeer long ago (it turns out that the Americans are not very good either). But he meets his daughter. They recognize each other at a glance. And both of them cry for a long time.
The English title of the painting is Out of the Cold, which is reminiscent of the famous “The Spy Who Came Back from the Cold.”
Pros. "Dance with Me" is advertised as "the first Russian film shot in Hollywood." This means that it was conceived and made by filmmakers (one of the producers is Leonid Zagalsky, the director is Alexander Buravsky, etc.) who came to America from Russia. So be it, let's consider this a plus.
Minuses. The cheapest melodrama of the film. The simplest and most primitive methods of influencing the audience. The most naive music, which in a few seconds warns the viewer that now it will be good and beautiful, but now it will be scary and sad. Falsity (of emotions, characters, situations), noticeable from the first frames. The desire to scare the ordinary American public with the horrors of another world (this is usually characteristic of American outsider directors, who in this way seem to prove to “real Americans” that they are ready to boldly defend American values everywhere).
Tallinn in 1939 is similar to Odessa in 1911, as it was portrayed in comedies and revolutionary action films by mediocre Soviet directors.
Most of all, “Dance with Me” is reminiscent of the “serious” films produced in the early 90s by the notorious producer Menahem Golan. In his best times, in the 80s, Golan (then together with Yoram Globus) produced films like “Runaway Train” by Andron Konchalovsky, which, in the opinion of the author of these lines, were also not so much “serious” as pretending to be “serious cinematography” . In the 90s, along with the hackiest action films of category “B”, he began to produce “serious films” (this does not mean film art, but dramas and melodramas), made for pennies. For example, he simultaneously produced two films at once, seemingly similar to The Godfather. One was called "Mad Dog Call", the other - I don't remember what. The same actors played in both, and the main star of one film could well end up in the second in the role of a small-time gangster who was killed casually. In both films, Chicago - for cheapness - was filmed in Moscow (!).
These were unique films. A unique version of a “serious film of category B” - “great cinema art” for an undeveloped audience. "Dance with Me" is an even more unique film in this sense: a "serious C-movie."
Keywords. Love, Estonian anti-Semitic fascists, Stalinist sadistic jailers, a story about a real American.
(Photo: Gemini Movie World )
PS The only real plus (not of the film itself, however) was that the updated “Drummer” opened its premiere. A modern hall, screen, and sound systems appeared in Udarnik about four years ago, and now its foyer has acquired a normal cinematic-café look (for a long time it housed a car showroom). “Udarnik” has become part of the cinema network, which already includes “Pushkinsky”, “Karo Film” and “Electron”, and, like its “big brother” - “Pushkinsky”, will now be the cinema for the premiere film.
August 21, 2000