Thursday, September 11, 1997

Konets Sankt-Peterburga

015281 / 12 / SU 1927 / Pudovkin, Vsevolod / drama
Konets Sankt-Peterburga / 7@>,P E">8H-A,H,D$JD(" / The End of St Petersburg / Pietarin viimeiset päivät. PC: Mezhrabpom-Rus. P: Moisei Aleinikov. D: Vsevolod Pudovkin. SC: Nathan Zarhi. DP: Anatoli Golovnja. CAST: Ivan Tshuveljev, Vera Baranovskaja. Ca 2500 m / 24 fps / ca 90’. Silent, b&w. Viewed at SEA, Cinema Orion, Helsinki, on Thursday, 11 September 1997. Fumbling musical accompaniment composed and conducted by Johannes Raumonen: Johannes Raumonen (synthetizator, computer), Niina Tamminiemi (voc), Lasse Tervo (perc). Brilliant print with Finnish/Swedish subtitles of the short 1960s reissue version, 72’ at 24 fps. **** Great naive epic about the ghostly capital founded by Peter the Great. The characters are vignettes or caricatures, and the film is like a musical composition built on visual contrast, slow and fast movement, the major and the minor. The wandering clouds and the restlessly flowing Neva surround the towering monuments of autocracy. Its implacable power is shattered by war and revolution. The film’s drawback is the clumsiness of the propagandistic caricature. Visual music in itself, the film is a challenge for musical accompaniment. Last year in Pordenone I hated the absent-minded improvisation and missed great popular music themes in the Russian cycle. The Russians have no shortage of stirring ballads and marches. It would be interesting to see the original full version of this film, some sequences of which I only know as reported by Jay Leyda.

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