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threeplusfireToday we had an extra session of film class. The professor, Michael Bregant, works in the National Film Archives and tells excellent stories. He waves his hands when searching for a word in English and one day I mean to ask him if he finds it vexing to teach in a foreign language.
We watched The Ectasy, an 30's film I found quite interesting. It's famous for its scandalous shots of a naked woman, though no copy seems to exist with the most revealing frame. Apparently they were all stolen long ago. Also saw a laughable propaganda film about the construction of the gigantic Stalin statue that loomed over Prague in the 50s. There was a brief shot of poor Otakar Svec, the scupltor who designed the monstrosity. He did it drunk, as a joke almost, simply because it was required to enter the contest. One can imagine his horror when the thing was picked. Svec suffered terribly during the years it took to build the statue, and finally took his own life shortly after it was unveiled. His face already seemed heavy and tragic in 1952 when work began.
After class, Professor Bregant offered to take me to a private screening of an old 50s movie made by the Barrandov studios. (Someone he works with is writing about it, and so they decided to dig it up out of the archives) It's Action B, an incredibly bad, ridiculous bit about Good Soviet Soldiers fighting the Evil Anti-Communist Partisans. The acting is laughable, the dialogue stiff and the shots flat, but it was great to watch. I could understand what was happening, even if I didn't catch all the dialogue. Funny, how if the roles were reversed, it would be exactly like an American Anti-Communist film of the same period. I believe the director was Josef Mach. A rare opportunity, and a wonderful way to spend my afternoon. I can still see the smiling soldiers saying "We won!" and hugging, the sweet Slovakian peasant woman holding her little boy up and smiling.
We watched The Ectasy, an 30's film I found quite interesting. It's famous for its scandalous shots of a naked woman, though no copy seems to exist with the most revealing frame. Apparently they were all stolen long ago. Also saw a laughable propaganda film about the construction of the gigantic Stalin statue that loomed over Prague in the 50s. There was a brief shot of poor Otakar Svec, the scupltor who designed the monstrosity. He did it drunk, as a joke almost, simply because it was required to enter the contest. One can imagine his horror when the thing was picked. Svec suffered terribly during the years it took to build the statue, and finally took his own life shortly after it was unveiled. His face already seemed heavy and tragic in 1952 when work began.
After class, Professor Bregant offered to take me to a private screening of an old 50s movie made by the Barrandov studios. (Someone he works with is writing about it, and so they decided to dig it up out of the archives) It's Action B, an incredibly bad, ridiculous bit about Good Soviet Soldiers fighting the Evil Anti-Communist Partisans. The acting is laughable, the dialogue stiff and the shots flat, but it was great to watch. I could understand what was happening, even if I didn't catch all the dialogue. Funny, how if the roles were reversed, it would be exactly like an American Anti-Communist film of the same period. I believe the director was Josef Mach. A rare opportunity, and a wonderful way to spend my afternoon. I can still see the smiling soldiers saying "We won!" and hugging, the sweet Slovakian peasant woman holding her little boy up and smiling.
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Date: 2001-06-06 08:31 am (UTC)In one scene, the principal character (apparently ambassador to the USSR) explains away all the troubling questions Americans were asking at some kind of public meeting. What about the invasion of Finland? He responds that the pro-Nazi Finns turned down the Soviets very reasonable request for territory to defend against the Germans, and that the Soviets offered the Finns an equal amount of land in exchange. The Soviets were "forced" to invade Finland when the Finns refused this reasonable offer. What about the non-aggression pact with Germany? Well, the Soviets were just buying time. Isn't the Soviet air force inferior? and on and on.
Shameless propaganda to justify a necessary alliance in a necessary war. I admit I was fascinated. It ended with the Soviet and US ambassadors arm in arm, united to fight the Nazi horde.
oh my
Date: 2001-06-07 10:56 am (UTC)I wish I'd seen that movie too!