Luck (1935)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Happiness |
| Original title | Stschastje / Счастье |
| Country of production | Soviet Union |
| original language | Russian |
| Publishing year | 1935 |
| length | 1764 meters, at 20 fps 78 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Alexander Medvedkin |
| script | Alexander Medvedkin |
| production | Moskinokombinat |
| camera | Gleb Trojansky |
| occupation | |
| |
Luck ( Russian Счастье / Stschastje) is a Soviet comedy film by Alexander Medvedkin from 1935, which was made by the state production company Vostokfilm. Medvedkin also wrote the script for it. Gleb Trojanski took care of the photography . The stage design was created by Alexei Utkin .
action
After the death of her grandfather, who died after watching the rich neighbor Foka feast and was caught trying to steal from him, the farmer Anna sends her husband Chmyr away to seek happiness.
A priest and a nun find a wallet full of money on a bridge that a merchant lost on his way back from the fair . Both fight over the find. Chmyr, who joins them, secretly takes the money without the beating people noticing.
With the money Chmyr buys a spotted horse that eats the straw from the roof. When it is to be clamped for plowing, it collapses. When Anna tensions herself to the plow instead of his, she too collapses. Neighbor Foka rebukes Chmyr as a slave driver. But when it comes to gathering the harvest, the priest, nun, gendarmes and officers line up to collect their tithe . Chmyr's harvest is driven from the farm in full wagons. When two thieves sneak into the courtyard during the night to break into the chests secured with heavy locks, there is nothing left to steal from them. They give another ruble and ten kopecks to the new Chmyr - out of pity.
Desperate, Chmyr decides to die. He is already beginning to make a coffin for himself when the priest and the gendarme blame him. If the farmer dies, they say, who will feed Russia? Hussars and officers then occupy the court, soldiers seize Chmyr and arrest him. Anna, who wants to free him, is pushed away.
Years have passed.
Chmyr sits on the box of the tanker truck. Now he is the water trucker of the collective farm , but his wife Anna is behind the wheel of a tractor. It needs water to cool the hot engine. But Chmyr fell asleep on his box. A tractor driver who is supposed to bring help distracts neighbor Foka with a vodka breakfast. In the end, the tractor gets out of control and rolls towards an abyss. Foka jumps up and brings him to a stop.
Chmyr gets a rifle and is supposed to guard the harvest of the kolkhoz. The two thieves, plus the priest and the nun, decide to rob the granary . Chmyr does not notice; only when the thief reams holes in the floor of the granary does he go with his rifle, but does not know how to catch the thief. Neighbor Foka distracts Chmyr by pointing out a sheep in the pumpkin field. Meanwhile, the thieves are carrying away the whole granary. Chmyr doesn't notice anything. When he turns around, it's gone. Startled, he jumps up and is locked up by the thieves.
Anna sees the granary being carried away. Together with the overseer and the other collective farm members, they recapture it and free Chmyr. The guard takes away the rifle that he could not handle. Anna (in the subtitle): "Go 'Chmyr! You will never become a righteous man!". Chmyr is ashamed.
It is spring. A subheading warns: "We make the horses ready for sowing !". But Foka wants to sabotage the work and set fire to the horse stables. Chmyr wants to stop him. He kicks out the fire, wrestles with Foka and is overwhelmed. Foka sets the stables on fire, but Chmyr manages to save the horses from the already burning stables. He is hit by a beam and falls into unconsciousness . In the meantime the overseer has alerted the kolkhoz farmers. Chmyr will be saved. When he wakes up, he points to Foka: That's the arsonist. The collective farmers seize Foka.
Chmyr is dressed in new clothes in the city. He hides his old things in a bundle which, as it were, contains his past. His attempts to get rid of it fail because salespeople, tailors and policemen want to give it back to him. Even the two thieves who sneak up on them no longer want the things and throw them away. Chmyr, dressed in a modern club cap, and his Anna watch and laugh.
background
Alexander Medwedkin (1900–1989) traveled through Russia in the 1930s on a "film train", which was equipped with a complete set of film equipment from cameras and copiers to a trick table for subtitles and animation. The intention was to take up-to-date recordings of the respective area and its inhabitants on site and then show them to them on the train after processing. The action should support the Russian reconstruction. Often, however, satirical strips emerged, which soon caught the attention or disapproval of the state authorities, so that the project was finally banned.
His film "Das Glück", in which he depicts rural collective farm life in a grotesque and funny way, also fell victim to censorship. It was only released for performance a year after it was completed. The film is the only surviving document of the "first Soviet cinema train".
"Das Glück" was premiered on March 15, 1935 in the Soviet Union , in the United States only on April 7, 1935. It also ran under the alternative title Die Habsüchtigen / Стяжатели / Stjaschateli.
In Germany it had its premiere on December 10, 1970 on television on Hessen 3 , then on September 26, 2003 on the ARTE cultural channel in a restored version. He was seen there again on Friday, July 28, 2006 at 12:20 a.m. The new music for the restored version was composed by the Italian Mauro Coceano , who also recorded it in 2003 with his ensemble.
reception
The film was reviewed by:
- unknown Soviet critic (March 22, 1935):
“An interesting, idiosyncratic and promising director has stepped into our cinematic art. HAPPINESS has great social implications ... ”
- Ekkehard Knörer: Alexander Medwedkin, Glück (Stschastje, SU 1934). In: Jump Cut - Magazine for Film & Criticism.
“The world of film has shifted away from the socialist reality that Medvedkin tried to capture with his moving film train between 1932–1934. Here reality is transformed into a grotesque, in which caricatures of the (pre) Bolshevik era distorted to be recognizable, slapstick through mountains and valleys of a fantasy landscape ”(E. Knörer)
- Ekkehard Pluta: “Latente Komik” (report on Soviet silent films at the “International Forum of Young Films” in Berlin) in: Zeit online, March 3, 1972.
DAS GLÜCK is “a satire about the path of a little farmer from the suppression of the tsarist agriculture to the freedom of socialist collective farm work” (E. Pluta).
Sergei Eisenstein called Medvedkin a Bolshevik Chaplin .
"LUCKY HAPPINESS is one of the most original films in Soviet film history, which is all the more remarkable given that it came out during the most orthodox period." (Jay Leyda).
“The exploitation of a peasant couple by large landowners and priests ends only after the October Revolution with the introduction of the kolkhoz economy. Chaplinesque silent film comedy that conveys its political message with satirical wit and cinematic sophistication. First feature film by the Soviet director Aleksandr Medwedkin, highly praised by SM Eisenstein, but not very successful with critics and audiences at the time. In terms of staging, the film makes use of the farce and burlesque, borrows from surrealism and expressionism. It is considered to be one of the most original films in Soviet cinema. " (© Filmdienst)
“Medvedkin's surreal silent comedy tells the story of a peasant named Khmyr and his wife Anna as they try to discover the meaning of happiness. The narrative unfolds over an unrealistic amount of time, taking the couple from pre-Revolutionary days to the time of Stalin and collectivization. Throughout the film, the happiness of the couple is thwarted by a series of absurd and surreal events, including a horse unwilling to do its work, neighbors who steal their entire granary, and Tsarist officers who arrest a suicidal Khmyr, asking him 'if the peasant this, who will feed Russia? ' One of the most famous scenes features the arrival of members of the Orthodox Church, including nuns in see-through outfits and a clearly corrupt priest who has arrived to collect tithes from Khmyr and his wife. " (Cinema glass online).
“Happiness” is “one of the last and most original silent films in Russia. It is a Bolshevik comedy with an anarchic list, decidedly "dedicated to the last lazy collective farm". A peasant's struggle for happiness, against priests, kulaks and followers of the tsar - and after the revolution against their own incompetence ”(filmmuseum.at).
“In numerous witty and humorous details, Medvedkin describes the path taken by the exploited farmer Chmyr into the collective farm community, which is portrayed as susceptible to corruption and individual freedom. Noteworthy and can only be explained by Medvedkin's individual mode of production is his formal daring at a time when there seemed to be no exception to socialist realism. " (Koki Freiburg)
“Medwekin used exaggeration, farce, vaudeville, burlesque and surrealism, even expressionism or filthy jokes. Medvedkin's upbringing on the cinema train must have been very thorough. A slightly theatrical touch in the decorations and costumes is balanced by the effect of funny improvisation ”(arte.tv)
literature
- Aleksandr Arosev (Ed.): Soviet cinema. Publisher Voks, 1935, OCLC 458526742 .
- Herbert Birett: Silent film music. Material collection. Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin 1970.
- Ulrich Gregor (Ed.): The Soviet Film I. 1930–1939. A documentation. Selected and compiled by Ulrich Gregor and Friedrich Wärme. Published by the Association of German Film Clubs on the occasion of the Bad Ems retrospective in 1966.
- Peter Kenez: Cinema and Soviet society from the revolution to the death of Stalin. IB Tauris, London 2001. (English)
- Ekkehard Knörer: Alexander Medwedkin, Glück (Stschastje, SU 1934). In: Jump Cut - Magazine for Film & Criticism. (jump-cut.de ; accessed on May 15, 2014)
- Jay Leyda: Kino - A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. 3. Edition. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1983, ISBN 0-691-00346-7 .
- Catherine Lupton: Chris Marker - Memories of the Future. New edition. Reaction Books, 2005, ISBN 1-86189-223-3 , p. 128.
- Ekkehard Pluta: Latent comedy. In: time online. March 3, 1972, (zeit.de ; accessed on May 21, 2014)
- Friedrich von Zglinicki: The way of the film. History of cinematography and its predecessors. Rembrandt Verlag, Berlin 1956, pp. 537-550.
Web links
- The happiness in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The luck at arte.tv
- Luck at kino-teatr.ru (Russian)
- The happiness at arsenal-berlin
- 5 still images from “Das Glück” at cinema.de
- Stand photo: Jelena Jegorowa as Anna Chmyrova hitched to the plow
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kenez p. 131
- ↑ according to Arsenal-berlin.de
- ↑ www.arte.tv ( Memento from May 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ cit. after Gregor / Wärme I, 1966.
- ↑ Lupton, p. 128.
- ↑ Leyda was a student of SM Eisenstein at the Moscow State Film School in the mid-1930s . Andrew L. Yarrow: Jay Leyda, Film Historian, Writer And a Student of Sergei Eisenstein. In: The New York Times . February 18, 1988. (nytimes.com)
- ↑ Das Glück 1934. In: Kabel 1-Filmlexikon. ( www.kabeleins.de ( Memento from May 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ))
- ↑ kinoglazonline.weebly.com
- ↑ filmmuseum.at ( Memento of the original from May 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ koki-freiburg.de
