| The VIII Archival Film Festival has ended The Gosfilmofond festival, held in Belye Stolby near Moscow for eight years in a row, is perhaps the main one, and after moving the Faces of Love festival closer to March 8, perhaps the only winter event intended for true film buffs. And an event that invariably holds its own - the festival programs may be interesting to a greater or lesser extent, but not once has a week spent in White Pillars been wasted. This time the main theme of the festival was the cinema of Eastern Europe - under the general title “Farewell to the Past”, Polish, Czech and East German films were shown, until now known only to narrow specialists (with rare exceptions, such as the quite famous film by Milos Forman “Burns”) , my young lady"). In truth, it was Forman's picture - a funny story with a slight touch of absurdity about a firemen's ball who are having fun with mazurkas and win-win lotteries while a house is burning nearby with a blue flame - that turned out to be the brightest in the Eastern European program. The rest of the films were nothing more than curious, and it is unlikely that any of them can lay claim to the title of “unknown masterpiece.” And “The Loop” (1957) by Woyzeck Has (a gloomy requiem for the soul of a “little Pole” lost in an alcoholic delirium, filmed by the author of the cult “Manuscript Found in Zaragoza”), and three films by Karel Kahini - “The Ear” (1970, a paranoid parable about omniscient intelligence services), “The Night of the Bride” (1967, about the confrontation between religious fanaticism and the collective farm system) and “The Coach to Vienna” (1966, a film about unsuccessful attempts to preserve the human form in the war) - films, no doubt, powerful, gloomy (sometimes to the point of misanthropy) and curious. But it’s impossible to radically change your opinion about the cinema of Eastern Europe by watching them. They do not introduce amendments to the usual hierarchy and remain more a remarkable document of a bygone era than an eternally living cultural phenomenon. Paradoxically, Kurt Metzig’s color film “Ernst Thälmann – Leader of His Class” (1953), the film life of the leader of the German communists, remembered among other things for its luxuriously filmed scenes of street battles and his appearance in the inevitable insert, looked much more fresh and even innovative against their black-and-white background. episode of Comrade Lenin (played by a German actor, but dubbed in the usual voice of Strauch) and Comrade Stalin, endowed with a completely stylish forelock. Lenin and Stalin also appeared in another film of the festival program - “Light over Russia” (1946) by Sergei Yutkevich, which at one time was never released due to insufficient reflection of Stalin’s participation in the GOELRO project (to which in real life the leader was generally had nothing to do with it) and the theme of relations between the authorities and the intelligentsia (in the person of the scientist Zabelin, without exaggeration brilliantly played by Nikolai Okhlopkov) was too actively emphasized. The film, perhaps, does not have any special artistic value, but what Okhlopkov does on the screen is worthy of a separate note. The secondary company of frightened intellectuals, expecting arrest at any moment, looks no worse in “Svet”. It is impossible to forget the Optimist performed by Rostislav Plyatt, who, with a voice that breaks into a squeal, suggests to an honest company: “Let's... play lotto! They will come to pick us up - and we sit and play lotto!” And of course, the most controversial feelings are caused by the completely psychedelic ending, when the map of Russia, under the gaze of Lenin and Stalin, itself blossoms with sparkling fireworks of the coming electrification.
As usual, the scandalous program “In Search of Sexual Tolerance” this time looked quite academic - it presented Bertrand Blier’s films “Get Your Handkerchiefs” (1977) and “Farewell to the Male,” well known to even more or less knowledgeable film fans. (1978) by Marco Ferreri, as well as the Hungarian film As the Bat Flies (1989) and The Trial (1962) by Peter Glanville, starring Laurence Olivier, Simone Signoret and Terence Stump. But in a completely surprising, quite shocking way, the theme of the 60th anniversary of the start of the Second World War was resolved. Screened for this tragic anniversary, Gerhard Klein’s film “Operation Gleiwitz” (1961, about the provocation staged by German saboteurs on the Polish border in 1939) is a short, but absolutely fantastic thriller in its visuals and general esoteric mood, in which there is a completely frontal visual propaganda combined with completely expressionistic shots worthy of Doctor Mabuse. Another discovery film is the historical action film “Three Hundred Years Ago...” (1956), a film by Nikolai Petrov about Bogdan Khmelnitsky and the struggle of the Ukrainian people for independence. The anniversary film, based on a clearly unsuccessful script by Alexander Korneichuk, turned into a luxurious canvas in which the battle scenes are seriously associated with Peter Jackson's recent games in the vastness of Middle-earth - there is no way to tear yourself away from the screen. And Sergei Filippov, in the role of a completely infernal killer hired by vile nobles, created one of the best - albeit tiny - images in his rich film biography. Rarely has the king of Soviet eccentricity been so terrifying and impressive. The ideological background of the film, which preaches the official version of the unification of Ukraine and Russia, is the last thing you think about - everything shown on the screen is so impressive and significant.
Jean Gabin's centenary was marked by a mini-retrospective of his little-known films, the strangest of which was Calvary (1934) by Julien Duvivier with Gabin in the role of Pontius Pilate, and the nicest was Gilles Grange's comedy Archimedes the Tramp (1958), in in which Gabin gave a benefit performance as a clochard, who becomes almost a symbol of the entire French people. The Englishman Terence Fisher was honored with “The Curse of Frankenstein” - however, the opportunity to talk in more detail about this director and his amazing films will appear in less than a month, on February 23, when he turns one hundred years old.
Among the surprises of the festival, it is worth highlighting the screening of a tiny episode from the “White Sun of the Desert”, long memorized by everyone - a fragment in which Abdullah’s wives cry bitterly at the body of their, as it turns out, beloved husband, has been heard for a long time, but few have seen it. In addition, fragments of Boris Babochkin’s unfinished film “The Dead Loop” (1941) and Oleg Bocharov’s film “Belated Premiere” were shown, telling about the filming that was carried out in 1906-1908 (that is, before the official date of birth of Russian cinematography) by Marius’s assistant Petipa, dancer of the Mariinsky Theater Alexander Shiryaev. All this - and much more - can be seen only in White Pillars. And, really, for the sake of such “belated premieres”, it makes sense to take a break from the current film process for at least five days and remember that cinema existed - and surprised - long before the advent of the Dolby system, multiplex cinemas and Oscar nominations for the best special effects. Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY |
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