Evgeni Bauer Short Films (1/11/19)

Child of the Big City (1914)

     The film begins with the death of a mother and an absence of a father, Maria is left to grow up surrounded by the dirty laundry mentioned in the first inter-title. Years pass and she is a seamstress dreaming. Silent films are chock full of visual story telling as it is really their main form of conveying story. Films since the silent era have really lost this art (in America at least). It'd be hard to find a Hollywood where a story element is conveyed only through action and emotion and never in spoken word. This film does combine both visual and narrative storytelling but there are so many little elements in the visuals that add so much to the story. We are told that Maria is dreaming of a rich life. She stares out a window, half cloudy and opaque, obscuring the outside world, half of it open letting the city into her bustling seamstress workplace. There is a shot in this workplace where Maria leans off screen and I found this very interesting, the shot is mirrored as we cut to Viktor in his luxurious home, he leans off screen too, both of them dreaming, heads where we can't see them, in the clouds if you will. Two very different worlds bustle around both of them, one world of poor workers and another of poor servants bug the dreamers and wake them from their fantasies. Their only escape is escaping this frame into the area that we cannot see.

     Viktor sees Maria and from that moment on there is a not a single moment where he places his gaze anywhere else but on her. She removes her clothes and gives them to the servant and Viktor stares from across the room, during the short meal, and her hi jinks his gaze follows her around the room. It eventually follows her right into his own lap. Right where he wants her. Cut to some time later. Now his gaze never meets her it is always down in his reading or behind him in his social life. His diverted gaze gives way for adultery as Maria wants more men and more attention, more fantasies that Viktor isn't giving her. They've become distant and Maria cannot stand that. Distant enough to only correspond through letter while still being lovers in the same home. No matter how big the home I can't justify letters being sent. 

     It is no doubt that Maria and Viktor are from different worlds, she is a seamstress he is a rich man. She sort of overtakes his position and we seem him living in what looks like squalor towards the end of film, he is in ruin. He is yet again in a different world than she is. They were not meant to inhabit the same one, when you are worlds apart you must send letters. One interesting visual that pushes this theme further is when he returns to give her his last letter, he walks through a bridge or some sort of industrial structure that consists of multiple "X"'s he walks through these and comes to his old home, the door consisting of many "O"s. Just another cue of the differences that formed between the lovers.

     In conjunction with the cinematography being used to convey themes and convey story, it was also used frequently to show incredible beauty. This film was gorgeous the two shots that stood out to me the most was the beautiful moving shot of the dancer at the party. It was incredible and mesmerizing the way the camera moved and zoomed so slowly into the background was beautiful and hypnotic. The other shot that followed this soon after was the shot of Maria lying on a couch between some flowers and a statue, she dreams of her affair as she lays there. It shows her beauty and her riches and her character all too well, and it is incredibly well composed. This calls back to the very opening shot of the film as well as her mother lays between a dark shadowy wall and her daughter and another worker from the laundry room. The mother laid in squalor, we did not know her dreams, and now her daughter lays in riches, dreaming of ruining a rich man. Times have really changed for this family.

     One last thing that I found interesting was the use of curtains in this film. On two occasions curtains were pulled away from the forefront of the frame to reveal Maria not only with one lover but a room full of men giving her all of the attention. One of these curtains was dreamy and see through and when it pulled away the reality of the situation sinks in for the viewers. The other curtain was black and obscuring and is used to almost surprise or shock the audience with Maria's many admirers.This use of obscuring and revealing is interesting and how it fits into the themes of the film is as well. It also calls back to that beginning shot of the window to the city, half obscured and half open. It also reminds me of Irony of Fate in which Nadya claims to be "Half-Married". It is an interesting visual element.

     This film was dark and beautiful and I really enjoyed it. It was well shot, well acted and the visual story telling was incredible and that is something that I love to see in films.

The Dying Swan (1917)

     Its odd to me that we watched this film today as for whatever reason the idea of a Swan Song, and the legend that a swam is quiet until it dies has been coming up a lot in media I have been consuming and conversation lately and I really don't know why. But now we can add this to the list. Right away I kind of expected a big dramatic loud ending from Gizella, the mute, the swan. I figured her dance was her swan song, or that painting or something. Her death was instead a "song" for someone else and I found this interesting. She sort of was used throughout the film. Not even in a mean way, or a way where it wasn't consensual. But even her father, when talking to the man at the theater, told him to "just take her" or something along those lines. She literally doesn't have a voice and this plays into a lot of the ways that she is treated by other characters in the film. Viktor cheats on her because she can't chew him out and yell at him. Glinsky uses her as his muse and believes that she will make his art better when he doesn't seem to care about her art as much as it initially seems. And her father, while out of love, pawns her off to a theater. It is her dream but the way he does it seems bizarre to me. This is all because she can't fight back. Even though her soul is singing and dancing her body is not fighting back is being pushed around by all the men in the film.

     Visually light and dark play a big role in this film. When Glinsky sees Gizella coming to preform he sticks his head out from the dark of under the columns into the light of the world. He had found death, usually in the US and the western world death is dark and life is light. But here that seems to be the inverse. They even discuss how "Death is the most sublime peace" in the film. It is an interesting turn around of our normal views on death as scary. In the reading there is a line that says there are "hints of necrophilia" in early Russian films. I see this as a love of death not as a sexual attraction to dead people but maybe a sexual attraction to the idea of death. This is shown often in this second film. They fantasize about it and welcome it. It is interesting to see from the perspective of the west.

     The other thing I noticed is that in nearly every shot containing Gizella she is either surrounded by or near some kind of flowers. Greenery and life fill every single shot in this film, even indoors she is showered in them. The life surrounding the girl who is the embodiment of real death is a very interesting juxtaposition. It shows her blooming even while she is quiet, like a swan, she is beautiful while she is reserved.

     This film I do not think I liked as much as the first film as it sort of changed direction half way through with the introduction of Glinsky. However this film felt a lot more modern. It was faster, there was more cuts, there was more moving camera. It felt like a modern film in a lot of ways aside from the lack of sound and the sort of subject matter of the film. I enjoyed the beauty of this film and the discussion of death. It was very interesting and engaging however I was kind of thrown off by the change in the pace of the film half way through. I loved the dance and the dream though the effects and the music were all incredible. However I really like the complexity and themes of Child of the Big City a little bit more.