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"Cinema. Three benches.
Sentimental fever.
An aristocrat and a rich woman
In the networks of a villainous rival.
Love cannot keep flight:
She is not guilty of anything!
Selflessly, like a brother, I loved the lieutenant of the fleet ... "
With these words, the poet Osip Mandelstam described the aesthetics of silent cinema. Cinematography, which preceded the masterpieces of Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, Pudovkin. Cinematography, which disappeared after the revolution.
The films were destroyed (silver was mined from the film), and the directors fled to the "white" south and later in exile. No wonder Eisenstein said: “We came to the cinema as Bedouins and gold diggers. To a bare place. "
Eisenstein, of course, was cunning. The national cinema already had its own, albeit a small story. The bruised hands of Vera Kholodnaya, the let down eyes of the artist Mozzhukhin. Sentimental, stupid, naive. Such a stereotypical view of this era has taken root among the wide audience, largely thanks to films like Mikhalkov's "Slaves of Love", where the director shows his fantasy on the theme of that time.
Much less has been written about the gloomy decadent aesthetics that permeate the paintings of that era, about the enduring cult of death.
It was at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that a mass fascination with theosophy, spiritualism and various occult movements spreads among the Russian intelligentsia. After the failed Revolution of 1905, a whole epidemic of youth suicides swept across Russia. As Zinaida Gippius wrote in her diaries, “Death is a single proof, death is a single objection, a single weapon, a single reward, a single threat, a single punishment. On every inch of the earth… a cadaveric heap grows ”. The names of the paintings eloquently testify to the mood of the era:Satan Crowned Them (1917), The Defeated Idol (1915), The Scalped Corpse (1915)... The last film was filmed based on the materials of a high-profile criminal offense of those years. In 1909, a decapitated corpse of a man was found in one of the St. Petersburg hotels. The disfigured head with the scalp removed lay separately in the oven. The investigation revealed that an engineer named Gilevich killed his secretary in order to fake his own death and get insurance. In the name of the character, only one consonant was replaced (engineer Gilevich became Milevich) in order to arouse additional interest of the audience. But the scalping scene was absent in the film, apparently at the request of the censor.
Tsarist censorship did its best to prevent such pictures from appearing on the screen.
And Tsar Nicholas II himself quite definitely spoke out on the topic of cinematography: “I think that cinematography is empty, unnecessary and even harmful entertainment. Only an abnormal person can put this farce business on a par with art. All this is nonsense, and no importance should be attached to such trifles."
The bourgeois revolution of 1917 put an end to these prohibitions. Director Yakov Protazanov finally managed to realize his long-standing plan - to film the story of Leo Tolstoy "Father Sergius". Not long before that, he had already managed to shoot the film "Satan Jubilant", in which the director decided the fashionable satanic theme in the context of Christianity.
The film "Father Sergius" tells about the fate of the ambitious Prince Kasatsky. On the eve of the wedding, he learns that his bride is the emperor's mistress. In despair, he goes to a monastery, where he becomes a hermit. Many years later, a merry campaign appears near his cell. One of the beauties decides to seduce Father Sergius on a bet. He cuts off his finger to resist the temptation.
Leo Tolstoy in his "Kreutzer Sonata" (1890) impressively touched on the topic of sexuality. The hero of the story, who kills his wife out of jealousy, considers sex life to be a source of evil.
Contrary to popular belief, the crisis in traditional family values was not a purely Soviet problem. This began in the pre-revolutionary era.
Childless and celibate unions were cultivated among the intelligentsia: Alexander Blok and Lyubov Mendeleeva, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, Andrei Bely and Anna Turgeneva ... All this was reflected in the cinema of that era. On the screen, we almost never see happy unions, and existing families are sacrificed to external circumstances. The family is sacrificed to a sinful past ("Brothers", "Revenge of the Fallen"), rivalry between mother and daughter ("For happiness", "Golden Autumn") or revenge for a desecrated feeling ("Shadows of Sin").
To today's viewer, many stories may seem absurd.
The heroine of the film "Drama on the Volga (Daughter of the Merchant Bashkirov)" (1913) is in love with her father's clerk. They are forced to keep this novel a secret. The father has already found a more suitable groom for his daughter. During one of the dates, my father unexpectedly came home. And the girl hides her lover under the feather bed. He suffocates to death there. The janitor helps the girl to get rid of the corpse, but then begins to blackmail her, forcing her to cohabit. After waiting for the janitor to fall asleep with the drunken company in the tavern, the girl sets fire to the tavern and runs away.
It was as if the culture had a presentiment of the collapse of the old world. The spirit of disaster hovered over the country. Actor Ivan Mozzhukhin, whose face became one of the symbols of the era, spoke exhaustively about this time:
Before us is a gallery of painful characters, broken destinies, heroes unable to live in harmony with themselves and with the era. Where did such scenes come from in the movies?
As in any time, cinema then sensitively reacted to the events taking place around it, it responded to the spirit of the times.
In general, flirting with evil spirits, a passion for self-destruction and extravagant rituals were an integral part of the culture of the Silver Age.
Thus, Baroness Taube, editor of the magazine Ves Mir, used to receive visitors, sitting in a coffin, surrounded by stuffed snakes and skeletons. And the connoisseur of ancient literature, Count Bobrinsky, being on the verge of death, invites not a priest, but his student to him, so that she performed a ritual over him, dancing an ancient Greek dance.
Probably, this rapture of necrophilia was most eloquently expressed in Eugene Bauer's film The Dying Swan, whose hero strangled the beautiful ballerina, just for the sake of being able to transfer the image of death to the canvas. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Life is worse than death, ”the heroine writes in her notebook.
Similar processes took place in other national cinematographs. Thus, expressionism flourished in German in the 1920s.
Somnambulists, insane and maniacs move on the screen. They become the main protagonists in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Golem, Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror ...
These paintings most fully expressed those fears and hopes that took possession of German society immediately after the First World War. German film critic Siegfried Krakauer called his book “From Caligari to Hitler. The Psychological History of German Cinema ”. He shows how the complex social processes and contradictions of the period described are reflected in the films of the twenties.
The tragic ending was an integral part of Russian cinema. There was even a special expression to designate such an ending - it was called the "Russian finale".
When exported abroad, such films were often accompanied by an alternative ending with a happy ending. At the end of almost every tape there was a victim: the husband shoots out of despair, having lost his wife, child and job ("Children of the Century"), the thief is shot at the place of theft ("Silence sadness, be silent"), the fatal beauty steps over the corpse of her lover who committed suicide, so as not to be late for the restaurant ("Child of the Big City").
In the movie For Happiness, the mother sacrifices herself to her daughter Li. For many years she has been in love with the lawyer Gzhatsky, but hides these feelings from her daughter, fearing to injure her. Li passionately falls in love with Gzhatsky and experiences this unrequited feeling so strongly that the doctor predicts her blindness if she does not change her lifestyle. Mother begs Gzhatsky to marry Li in order to save her. He resolutely refuses. Both mother and daughter feel betrayed. In the film's finale, Lee goes blind. This plot is a very peculiar cinematic version of the oedipal triangle.
In most films, it is not hard to see the influence of classical Russian literature.
For example, the film "Child of the Big City" is clearly created under the influence of "Crime and Punishment", "Fathers and Children" and the story "Nevsky Prospect". Young dandy Victor is looking for a life partner who could embody his ideal, an innocent and pure girl. Having met Manya, at first he thinks that he has found what he wants. But Manya soon changes her name to Mary, and then her character also changes. She quickly gets a taste of social life and acquires new habits. She throws Victor, and he shoots out of desperation at her door. Without any regret, Mary steps over the corpse, just not to be late for the restaurant. The viewer is offered a story of a crime without punishment.
The emancipation of women, which is usually associated with the first years of Soviet power, dates back to the period of modernity. The famous tabloid novel by Anastasia Verbitskaya "The Keys of Happiness" (1908–1913) depicts a heroine who resolutely strives to get rid of any emotional attachments and practically walks over male corpses. Manya, the main character of the book, reads the novel by Mikhail Artsybashev "Sanin". Discussing it with one of her acquaintances, the girl comes to the conclusion that sexual satisfaction without emotional attachment is the "keys to happiness." How can we not recall the argumentation that Lenin attributed to Alexandra Kollontai, and the notorious theory of a glass of water, according to which having sexual intercourse is like quenching your thirst. Both Kollontai and Manya from the novel Keys to Happiness,
Culture rotted like Roquefort, in the words of Igor Severyanin.
French film critic Georges Sadoul did not spare the darkest colors when describing Russian pre-revolutionary cinema:
Read:
Grashchenkova I.N. Cinema of the Silver Age.
Plumper Y., Shahadat Sh. The Russian Empire of Senses. Approaches to the cultural history of emotions.
O.A. Kovalov Danse macabre in russian
Krakauer Z. From Caligari to Hitler. The psychological history of German cinema.
Eisner L. Demonic screen.
Sentimental fever.
An aristocrat and a rich woman
In the networks of a villainous rival.
Love cannot keep flight:
She is not guilty of anything!
Selflessly, like a brother, I loved the lieutenant of the fleet ... "
With these words, the poet Osip Mandelstam described the aesthetics of silent cinema. Cinematography, which preceded the masterpieces of Dovzhenko, Eisenstein, Pudovkin. Cinematography, which disappeared after the revolution.
The films were destroyed (silver was mined from the film), and the directors fled to the "white" south and later in exile. No wonder Eisenstein said: “We came to the cinema as Bedouins and gold diggers. To a bare place. "
Eisenstein, of course, was cunning. The national cinema already had its own, albeit a small story. The bruised hands of Vera Kholodnaya, the let down eyes of the artist Mozzhukhin. Sentimental, stupid, naive. Such a stereotypical view of this era has taken root among the wide audience, largely thanks to films like Mikhalkov's "Slaves of Love", where the director shows his fantasy on the theme of that time.
Much less has been written about the gloomy decadent aesthetics that permeate the paintings of that era, about the enduring cult of death.
It was at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries that a mass fascination with theosophy, spiritualism and various occult movements spreads among the Russian intelligentsia. After the failed Revolution of 1905, a whole epidemic of youth suicides swept across Russia. As Zinaida Gippius wrote in her diaries, “Death is a single proof, death is a single objection, a single weapon, a single reward, a single threat, a single punishment. On every inch of the earth… a cadaveric heap grows ”. The names of the paintings eloquently testify to the mood of the era:Satan Crowned Them (1917), The Defeated Idol (1915), The Scalped Corpse (1915)... The last film was filmed based on the materials of a high-profile criminal offense of those years. In 1909, a decapitated corpse of a man was found in one of the St. Petersburg hotels. The disfigured head with the scalp removed lay separately in the oven. The investigation revealed that an engineer named Gilevich killed his secretary in order to fake his own death and get insurance. In the name of the character, only one consonant was replaced (engineer Gilevich became Milevich) in order to arouse additional interest of the audience. But the scalping scene was absent in the film, apparently at the request of the censor.
Tsarist censorship did its best to prevent such pictures from appearing on the screen.
And Tsar Nicholas II himself quite definitely spoke out on the topic of cinematography: “I think that cinematography is empty, unnecessary and even harmful entertainment. Only an abnormal person can put this farce business on a par with art. All this is nonsense, and no importance should be attached to such trifles."
The bourgeois revolution of 1917 put an end to these prohibitions. Director Yakov Protazanov finally managed to realize his long-standing plan - to film the story of Leo Tolstoy "Father Sergius". Not long before that, he had already managed to shoot the film "Satan Jubilant", in which the director decided the fashionable satanic theme in the context of Christianity.
The film "Father Sergius" tells about the fate of the ambitious Prince Kasatsky. On the eve of the wedding, he learns that his bride is the emperor's mistress. In despair, he goes to a monastery, where he becomes a hermit. Many years later, a merry campaign appears near his cell. One of the beauties decides to seduce Father Sergius on a bet. He cuts off his finger to resist the temptation.
Leo Tolstoy in his "Kreutzer Sonata" (1890) impressively touched on the topic of sexuality. The hero of the story, who kills his wife out of jealousy, considers sex life to be a source of evil.
Contrary to popular belief, the crisis in traditional family values was not a purely Soviet problem. This began in the pre-revolutionary era.
Childless and celibate unions were cultivated among the intelligentsia: Alexander Blok and Lyubov Mendeleeva, Dmitry Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius, Andrei Bely and Anna Turgeneva ... All this was reflected in the cinema of that era. On the screen, we almost never see happy unions, and existing families are sacrificed to external circumstances. The family is sacrificed to a sinful past ("Brothers", "Revenge of the Fallen"), rivalry between mother and daughter ("For happiness", "Golden Autumn") or revenge for a desecrated feeling ("Shadows of Sin").
To today's viewer, many stories may seem absurd.
The heroine of the film "Drama on the Volga (Daughter of the Merchant Bashkirov)" (1913) is in love with her father's clerk. They are forced to keep this novel a secret. The father has already found a more suitable groom for his daughter. During one of the dates, my father unexpectedly came home. And the girl hides her lover under the feather bed. He suffocates to death there. The janitor helps the girl to get rid of the corpse, but then begins to blackmail her, forcing her to cohabit. After waiting for the janitor to fall asleep with the drunken company in the tavern, the girl sets fire to the tavern and runs away.
It was as if the culture had a presentiment of the collapse of the old world. The spirit of disaster hovered over the country. Actor Ivan Mozzhukhin, whose face became one of the symbols of the era, spoke exhaustively about this time:
Mozzhukhin himself gained his popularity by acting in such films. In the painting "Dance of Death" the composer kills his wife out of jealousy. Then he falls in love with another woman, very much like her, and then, in a state of insanity, kills her too. The hero of the film "In the Wild Blindness of Passions" (1916) tries to kill the husband of his beloved. But he kills his brother by mistake. He, appearing to him in the form of a ghost, drives him to delirium tremens and suicide. Both films were directed by Yakov Protazanov, and the main roles were played by Ivan Mozzhukhin.
Before us is a gallery of painful characters, broken destinies, heroes unable to live in harmony with themselves and with the era. Where did such scenes come from in the movies?
As in any time, cinema then sensitively reacted to the events taking place around it, it responded to the spirit of the times.
Death in these films appears as a desired and inevitable blessing, deliverance from the hardships of earthly existence.
In general, flirting with evil spirits, a passion for self-destruction and extravagant rituals were an integral part of the culture of the Silver Age.
Thus, Baroness Taube, editor of the magazine Ves Mir, used to receive visitors, sitting in a coffin, surrounded by stuffed snakes and skeletons. And the connoisseur of ancient literature, Count Bobrinsky, being on the verge of death, invites not a priest, but his student to him, so that she performed a ritual over him, dancing an ancient Greek dance.
Probably, this rapture of necrophilia was most eloquently expressed in Eugene Bauer's film The Dying Swan, whose hero strangled the beautiful ballerina, just for the sake of being able to transfer the image of death to the canvas. “There is nothing to be afraid of. Life is worse than death, ”the heroine writes in her notebook.
Similar processes took place in other national cinematographs. Thus, expressionism flourished in German in the 1920s.
Somnambulists, insane and maniacs move on the screen. They become the main protagonists in such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Golem, Nosferatu, Symphony of Horror ...
These paintings most fully expressed those fears and hopes that took possession of German society immediately after the First World War. German film critic Siegfried Krakauer called his book “From Caligari to Hitler. The Psychological History of German Cinema ”. He shows how the complex social processes and contradictions of the period described are reflected in the films of the twenties.
Soviet film critics did not dare to seriously analyze the painful tendencies of pre-revolutionary cinema, and often simply dismissed them as "primitive", filled with bourgeois "decay". Film critic Oleg Kovalov convincingly shows that pre-revolutionary domestic films were filled with exactly the same gloomy forebodings as German ones. And even the social situation in the Russian Empire was similar: the lost Russo-Japanese War, depression in society, a terrible gap between the poor and the rich.
The tragic ending was an integral part of Russian cinema. There was even a special expression to designate such an ending - it was called the "Russian finale".
When exported abroad, such films were often accompanied by an alternative ending with a happy ending. At the end of almost every tape there was a victim: the husband shoots out of despair, having lost his wife, child and job ("Children of the Century"), the thief is shot at the place of theft ("Silence sadness, be silent"), the fatal beauty steps over the corpse of her lover who committed suicide, so as not to be late for the restaurant ("Child of the Big City").
In the movie For Happiness, the mother sacrifices herself to her daughter Li. For many years she has been in love with the lawyer Gzhatsky, but hides these feelings from her daughter, fearing to injure her. Li passionately falls in love with Gzhatsky and experiences this unrequited feeling so strongly that the doctor predicts her blindness if she does not change her lifestyle. Mother begs Gzhatsky to marry Li in order to save her. He resolutely refuses. Both mother and daughter feel betrayed. In the film's finale, Lee goes blind. This plot is a very peculiar cinematic version of the oedipal triangle.
In most films, it is not hard to see the influence of classical Russian literature.
For example, the film "Child of the Big City" is clearly created under the influence of "Crime and Punishment", "Fathers and Children" and the story "Nevsky Prospect". Young dandy Victor is looking for a life partner who could embody his ideal, an innocent and pure girl. Having met Manya, at first he thinks that he has found what he wants. But Manya soon changes her name to Mary, and then her character also changes. She quickly gets a taste of social life and acquires new habits. She throws Victor, and he shoots out of desperation at her door. Without any regret, Mary steps over the corpse, just not to be late for the restaurant. The viewer is offered a story of a crime without punishment.
The emancipation of women, which is usually associated with the first years of Soviet power, dates back to the period of modernity. The famous tabloid novel by Anastasia Verbitskaya "The Keys of Happiness" (1908–1913) depicts a heroine who resolutely strives to get rid of any emotional attachments and practically walks over male corpses. Manya, the main character of the book, reads the novel by Mikhail Artsybashev "Sanin". Discussing it with one of her acquaintances, the girl comes to the conclusion that sexual satisfaction without emotional attachment is the "keys to happiness." How can we not recall the argumentation that Lenin attributed to Alexandra Kollontai, and the notorious theory of a glass of water, according to which having sexual intercourse is like quenching your thirst. Both Kollontai and Manya from the novel Keys to Happiness,
Culture rotted like Roquefort, in the words of Igor Severyanin.
French film critic Georges Sadoul did not spare the darkest colors when describing Russian pre-revolutionary cinema:
And, perhaps, it was not the Bolsheviks who shattered the norms of public morality, paving the way for revolutions and cataclysms. Perhaps it was a natural process in which cinematography and literature took part on an equal footing.
Read:
Grashchenkova I.N. Cinema of the Silver Age.
Plumper Y., Shahadat Sh. The Russian Empire of Senses. Approaches to the cultural history of emotions.
O.A. Kovalov Danse macabre in russian
Krakauer Z. From Caligari to Hitler. The psychological history of German cinema.
Eisner L. Demonic screen.
