Bed and sofa
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Bed and sofa |
| Original title | Tretya meschtschanskaja / Третья Мещанская |
| Country of production | Soviet Union |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 1927 |
| length | 75, 86, 99 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Abram Room |
| script |
Viktor Schklowski Abram Room |
| production | Sowkino |
| camera | Grigori Giber |
| occupation | |
| |
Bed and Sofa , also known as Love for Three , is a Soviet silent film in the form of a socially critical tragic comedy from 1927. Directed by Abram Room .
action
The young worker Volodja has traveled to Moscow from the Russian province to find work here. Since he cannot find a permanent place to stay in the form of his own apartment, he stays overnight with his old war comrade Kolja on the sofa. His wife Ljuda likes the new lodger very much, as he is extremely considerate and polite. Tender ties soon develop between the wife and the family friend. When Kolja notices this, he leaves the apartment depressed and is now looking for a new place to live, but has just as little success with it as Volodya once did. Inevitably, he returns to his own apartment, where Ljuda and Volodja have made themselves comfortable in the marriage bed.
Grudgingly, Kolja now has to be content with the sofa that was actually reserved for the guest. As soon as Volodya has de facto taken on the role of Lyuda's new “husband”, he behaves accordingly: He takes everything for granted and no longer tries to get Lyuda. But she did not change her partner in order to breed a new Pascha and without further ado throws Volodya out of bed again. Now pregnant, both men deny being the father of the unborn child. When they tried to convince her to have an abortion , Ljuda is fed up and leaves both guys with the apartment.
Production notes
Bed and Sofa premiered in the USSR on March 15, 1927. The film opened in Germany in September of the same year. Here, as in other foreign countries, the film was a great success with the public after it had provoked heated discussions in several western countries because of too loose social morals and was even on the index at times. On October 21, 1967, the bed and sofa was shown for the first time on German television under the new title Third Kleinbürgerstrasse (love for three) .
Reviews
The national and international criticism reacted very strongly to this film. Here are a few examples:
The press organ of the Soviet trade unions, Trud, massively attacked the film in its March 24, 1927 edition. The bourgeois French films of that time simply took over the reprehensible principle of "marriage for three" and thus proved how little the filmmakers knew the Soviet people. "Such a life, as Room describes it, is a pure illusion, an invention. It is just a trick that has been slipped into the art of film ”.
“The film tells its story with a mixture of seriousness and irony, but clearly takes a stand against theories of“ free love ”that were advocated in the USSR at the time, and against the arrogance of men. Room demonstrates a keen eye for the details of everyday life. The result was an unpretentious, convincing picture of everyday Soviet life. "
“Room's intention was to polemicize against the bourgeois criteria of morality and to attack the view of men that women are only an object of sexual interests. In his accusatory passion, Room used brutal, unaesthetic means of expression to paint an ugly, often repulsive picture of the main characters and their milieu. Criticism and audience reacted very strongly to the director's intentions. "
Paul Rotha found the film “an incomparable example of a purely psychological, intimate and at the same time cinematic representation of human characters”.
In the lexicon of the international film it said on the occasion of the television broadcast in the third program of the WDR : "In the character drawing convincing and in view of everyday life in Moscow in the 20s revealing triangular history, which does not omit social problems like the housing shortage."
Individual evidence
- ↑ Georges Sadoul: History of Film Art, Vienna 1957, p. 189
- ↑ Jerzy Toeplitz: History of the film, Volume 1 1895-1928. East Berlin 1972. p. 359
- ↑ Background on filmreference.com
- ^ Paul Rotha in: The Film Till Now. Vision Press Ltd., London 1948, p. 240
- ↑ bed and sofa. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 24, 2018 .
Web links
- Bed and sofa in the Internet Movie Database (English)