day six - The First Soviet Blockbuster

Chapaev dir. Vasilev brothers, 1934.

This film was the first we have seen that has a soundtrack, but I thought it was a bit funny because much of the sound seemed "off", in that it didn't quite match the action. Many times the actors' mouths were not exactly in sync and if there were sounds other than speech happening, it seemed to be only selective sounds; for example when the troops were moving you heard mainly horse-hooves but not the "background noise" that would have been generated by the soldier's feet or the carts moving, etc. It really struck me as odd not to have all of those sounds in there, and it made me wonder if the sound was recorded separately, which I suppose would make sense, as it was a new technology and likely wasn't perfected yet.

I feel like the style of this film was more similar to American styles, with well-rounded, relatable characters as opposed to the mass of people representing the good side in Battleship Potemkin. I think that was probably one of the reasons why it was so popular, it had more depth to it than Potemkin, just because it's not as blatantly propoganda. It still is, but I think the socialist realism style is a bit better at hiding that. I think the focus on individuals made this seem more like a biopic than a propoganda piece, at first glance.

Thinking about socialist realism takes me back to the East German Film class last semester, which I sadly had to audit due to the heavy workload for my senior sem - but for the few class periods I was tere, we discussed this for the DDR (uhh, GDR in English). We watched a film called Die Mörder sind unter uns - translated to "The Murderers are Among Us", which was the first film made in East Germany, which ultimately made the point that Nazis were bad. Similarly, I feel like Chapaev serves a similar purpose in putting down the previous regime (the czar, represented by the white army) and sets up hope in the new government and revolution. I came across this again because I realized the notebook I started using for this class had a few German notes in it from last semester and thought it was ironic due to these parallels.
(Socialist realism in German = Sozialisticher Realismus, if you were wondering.)

I liked the involvement of the woman and her importance as a machine gunner in the one of just a few battle scenes that were shown. I don't think that sort of gender equality would have been seen in other countries at this time. My guess is that it goes with the idealist part of the genre though, that in "perfect" communism there would be total gender equality, but the norm probably wasn't the same as what we see in the film. I also liked the younger guy a lot as a character as well. As soon as he left the girl though I figured he was going to die, so that kind of sucked from an audience point of view that the ending was kind of sad. And speaking of the ending, where did those giant explosions come from? Were they perhaps just symbolic? Why wouldn't they have been detonated earlier?

Another character I felt bad for was that bearded guy on the white side whose brother was killed by the mean general. I didn't understand why he made the punishment worse for his brother when he found out they were related. I really thought that that guy was maybe going to switch sides after he found that out, and especially after he betrayed them. I was suprised that he went back to his own general.

Out of all of the characters, I think the general himself was least in focus for me, actually, just because there were so many other interesting people involved. At first he seemed like kind of a jerk, yelling at his men and making threats to them and whatnot. I thought it was interesting that the commisar was the one who ended up "keeping him in line," so to speak. The scene where he figured out that stealing from the peasants wasn't a good idea seemed to be kind of a big deal. I thought that was a little odd, since common sense would say that stealing from your peers is bad. Especially under communism, where everyone is supposed to be the same. Another thing about him was that he had been illiterate and not so well-to-do himself, yet he had now become a successful war general. The "rags to riches" character was probably also a popular selling point to the people. This equality idea meant to make people think that they can be anything...kind of like the American dream in Russia - er, the USSR. But given that the 30's was a scary time to be there, its ironic that this message is being put out at this time. But I suppose, on the heels of the hopeful 20's, the diehards probably wouldn't have given up completely yet.

I think that's all I've got for today.


LIES.
edited to add that i just heard the word "tovarisch" in the Gogol Bordello song I have playing right now. And I can understand that now. Cool :)
(it's this song)