Shagay, sovet! / Stride, Soviet! / Шагай, Совет! (1926), Padenie dinastii Romanovykh / The Fall Of The Romanov Dynasty / Падение династии Романовых (1927) DVD9 Landmarks of Early Soviet Film Disc 3
on May 21st, 2016 at 20:26
During the 1920s, Soviet documentary and fiction films were financed by the State, and their fledgling directors, some barely out of their teens, converted their lives from theater, engineering, painting and journalism to the practice and theory of a revolutionary cinema devoted to showing the achievements and aspirations of the new Socialist society. Their problem was to captivate an enormous, culturally diverse, multi-lingual, semi-literate population in ways that would be emotionally compelling, yet ideologically clear.
The proven ability of movies to achieve this difficult goal inspired Lenin's famous dictum, "For us, cinema is the most important art.," and their stunning innovations recharged world cinema. Editing, or "montage," is the common organizational basis of these films and each of the filmmakers believed the arrangement of shots to be the foundation of film art.
All the films in this set are major works and all are new to DVD. They are Dziga Vertov's Stride, Soviet! (1926), which transformed a State commission intending to show what the Soviet had done for Moscow into a highly experimental film; Esfir Shub's Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), culled from pre-Soviet Russian newsreels gathered from Europe and America.
DVD9 | NTSC 4:3 | 02:36:09 | 6.88 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Russian, English
Genre: Documentary, Silent
Directors: Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub
Country: Soviet Union
Stride Soviet! / Shagay, sovet! / Шагай, Совет!
Dziga Vertov | 1926 | 65 minutes | Russian intertitles, English subtitles
In 1925, the city council was up for re-election and commissioned Vertov to make a film for them. Clearly, they expected some kind of propaganda piece; instead they got a provocative, highly innovative work that reflects on one of Vertov’s favorite themes, the “humanization of machines” vs. the "mechanization of humanity". Not surprisingly, after suggesting an enormous range of cuts and additions, the authorities refused to show the film.
But the film was recognized by many as a major leap forward in the evolution of documentary.
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty / Padenie dinastii Romanovykh / Падение династии Романовых
Esfir Shub | 1927 | 90 minutes | English intertitles
Using archival news footage, Esfir Shub pieces together a chronology of Russia, from 1913 to 1917. She introduces leaders of the Duma, gentry and peasants, soldiers and sailors, the bourgeoisie, and the Czar. In May of 1913, Europe’s crowned heads come to Petrograd to celebrate 300 years of Romanov rule even as most of them prepare for war. As war erupts, so does Russia: strikes in Petrograd and marches in Moscow threaten the regime. The Duma tries to survive, seeking accommodation with the Soviets. March 4, 1917, Nicholas abdicates; March 27, a mass funeral in Petrograd for those who died in the struggle to bring down the Romanovs; then, Lenin returns from exile.
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