Where O. Henry and Kuleshov Meet: The Great Consoler (1933)

Alexandra Khokhlova in the role of Dulcie
The Great Consoler, 1933
(https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/aleksandra-khokhlova-2)
no copyright infringement intended

Великий утешитель (The Great Consoler or The Great Comforter) - the movie made by Lev Kuleshov in 1933 (Konstantin Kuznetsov being the DP) - takes two short stories written by O. Henry along with his prison episode and uses all this material in an extremely free way (say, a phantasy on O. Henry's themes) to build upon a very ellaborated cinematic structure.

About the prison episode: condemned for embezzlement, O. Henry had to stay in jail for three years, between 1898 and 1901. Fortunately it wasn't that hard: he worked in the penitentiary as a night druggist and wrote there fourteen short stories. He got them published while still in prison, using various pseudonyms (so his publishers were not aware he was jailed). One of these pseudonyms he would continue to use as pen name for the rest of his life: O. Henry (his real name was William Sydney Porter - or rather William Sidney Porter).

O. Henry in his thirties
impractical, lacking in desire for money and financial judgment
creative, humorous, a lover of human nature
mild, rather easy-going, idealistic, constant
source: Newcomb, A; Blackford, K.M.H.: Analyzing Character
(wikimedia)
no copyright infringement intended

As for the two stories, the movie makes them written while in prison, but actually they came some years later: A Retrieved Reformation was published in the April 1903 issue of Cosmopolitan (yes, this women magazine is that old!), and An Unfinished Story belongs to his second collection of short stories, The Four Million, from 1906.

Here are the texts of the two stories:

• A Retrieved Reformation
• An Unfinished Story

A Retrieved Reformation is kind of a modern morality, one of those nice stories that are fit for Christmas period: a safecracker is released from prison and what follows is that a few banks around are robbed. Naturally he is the first suspect and a detective is on his traces. Meanwhile the guy falls in love for a rich banker's daughter and decides to become a honest citizen. When everything seems to turn finally well, an accident happens with the banker's granddaughter: she gets trapped inside the bank's new safe and someone has to break the locks. A dramatic dilemma for our ex-robber: if he opens the safe, everybody will realize who he really is (or rather who he was); if not, the little girl will die suffocated inside the thing. Add to all this that the detective is also there, waiting for the outcome. The guy takes the noble choice and breaks the locks, saving the girl. Then he gives himself up to the detective. Fortunately this one also changed himself into a nice person, so nobody gets harmed and everybody's happy. The thing is that the words and sentences are put in such a way that you can read the story in two different keys: a nice tale to emphasize all that's good and noble, or a grotesque farce where each player mocks the public and impersonates just the opposite of who he really is (probably the reading key you choose depends on your mood).

I love more An Unfinished Story (matter of taste): it's as delicate and ineffable as a cup of strawberry mousse, while fantasy (gently devised) and irony (nicely dozed) are mixed without known limits. It's the portrait of Dulcie, a young woman who worked in a department story, selling Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep there, and receiving each week six dollars of what she earned: the remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else's account. Young, romantic, naive, living in a furnished room among other girls like her, exploited by the employer, always in shortage of money, always tracked by gentlemen trying to get her favors ... you got the picture. All this told as a story that's on going, no beginning, no outcome, just Dulcie in that furnished room, lacking money, hungry, romantic, hunted by so-called gentlemen.

This portrait is embedded in another story with apparently no connection: a dream the author has, that brings him to the ultimate times of Last Judgment (such a thing being possible just in dreams, as in our current times, we are told, the flames of Tophet don't frighten anymore and even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction). Well, what we do or do not believe today is one, a dream is different: Gabriel had played his trump; and those who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination... at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind.

With this view of the professional bondsmen the author puts his dream suddenly on hold and passes to the story of Dulcie, to leave it equally sudden and come back to the dream. But now he understands who those professional bondsmen are: those who hired working-girls, and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Seemingly even setting fire to an orphan asylum or murdering a blind man for his pennies are easier sins! Really, when O. Henry starts fantasizing his irony has no limits.

Though, let me tell you this: for committing a murder, one gets a punishment here on earth, plus it could be some circumstances, while for exploiting the workers one is praised here on earth, there is a whole bunch of idiotic yesmen and sycophants who praise the exploiters and blame the exploited, so at least make the fucking bondsman punished sometime at the end of time.

Now about the movie: it follows two distinct plots in parallel. In one of them we find Dulcie, as nice, romantic, enthusiast, naive and poor as we already know her. The novelty is that in the movie Dulcie is reading (with great delight) the stories of O. Henry. In the parallel plot we find O. Henry himself, staying in prison and writing there his stories, embellishing in them the life, making life look nice, and keeping this way the illusions in his readers. Readers like Dulcie, readers like the inmates from the prison. He is their great consoler, great comforter. That is why he enjoys a privileged regime in jail, while all other inmates are treated like shit (if you excuse my French).

The story of Retrieved Reformation is embedded in the structure of the movie: it starts with the moment when the author begins writing it, it ends with the moment when Dulcie arrives at the end of it. So it is flowing between the two parallel plots of the movie, and it is made as a silent film (all the rest being sound movie - an exquisite cinematic choice: the epoch of sound paying here an accolade for the silent!). The story comes as based on a real case from prison, only exactly opposite: what happens in real life is that one of the inmates is ordered to break a safe where some documents got locked by accident. Apparently he hopes to be freed after that, but instead he is brought back to jail, where he soon dies. The writer had changed the outcome just to cheer up his readers!

A very ambitious cinematic construction: two parallel flows embedding between them a third one, each evolving distinctly while every now and then sending each other subtle signals of synchronization - a real symphonic work, calling in mind maybe some elaborate modern multi-threading computerized systems!

The same as with the story of O. Henry, this movie also can be read in two different keys. Apparently it is an anti-American propaganda film, as it takes place there and shows everything as rotten: jail, corruption, lack of perspective. But in the same time it subtly creates another tableau: it's the Soviet regime, a whole country like a huge prison, where artists get a privileged status for embellishing life in their works and helping this way to keep people's mood in control. There is a hint in the movie that supports this interpretation: at a certain moment one of the inmates exclaims: we are rotten in this prison for sixteen years! The movie was made in 1933: exactly sixteen years since 1917, when the Soviet regime had begun. Naturally, a Soviet movie made in 1933 could not give more hints to make us understand that it actually carried an anti-Soviet message! Maybe another hint in the end, when showing the riot of inmates: for a cine-viewer it calls in mind, derisively this time, some famous uprising sequences from Eisenstein et all.

Великий утешитель (The Great Consoler), 1933
(video by All soviet movies on RVISION)

(Lev Kuleshov)

(O. Henry)

A Movie from 1918: The Project of Engineer Prite

(http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2010/08/the-mosaic-approach-tk/)
no copyright infringement intended

Lev Kuleshov was only nineteen in 1918, when he directed his first movie, Проект инженера Прайта (The Project of Engineer Prite). The whole film is no more available, only a partial reconstruction of 30 minutes: disparate scenes, just glimpses in what the original looked like. The action takes place in America, the land of buoyant industry and daring projects, also of big companies led by big shots who kill any idea that does not serve their interests. Kuleshov was from the very beginning a pro-American enthusiast, so no wonder his first movie takes place in the country of his dreams, and anyway in 1918 Soviet Russia was taking industrial America as model, but the big bourgeoisie. Ironically this movie from 1918 offers a paradigm for today's gap between the American society at large and the multinational companies. The main hero is a young engineer (Mack Pright or Prite, whatever) who has developed a revolutionary project that would make electrical energy very cheap: turbines running entirely on peat - simply, reliable, and above all echo-friendly, this film was way ahead its time, isn't it? A power plant is built based on his project and it is about to start functioning. Naturally this would come against the interests of a huge oil company, which leads to intrigue, espionage, sabotage, all that stuff. There is also a bit of love story, as the daughter of oil company's boss is attracted by the young and handsome engineer.

So, we have here a cocktail of political propaganda, enthusiast industrial projects, villain multinational crocks, sabotage, espionage, thriller, love, what else? well, above all it breathes of Kuleshov's enthusiasm for all things American, it shows Kuleshov entirely, his daring cinematic techniques are here in nuce, his further movies can be guessed. He was one of the greatest, and he had an unjust destiny. His apprentices, Eisenstein among them, took over his genial ideas (what else is Eisenstein's intellectual montage other than Kuleshov Effect?) and went further making celebrated films, while Kuleshov, after making some fine movies in the twenties, took low profile and remained a pedagogue for the rest of his life. And decades after, he was rediscovered.


Here are several links to articles discussing the movie:

• The Digital Fix Film
• Art Margins
• Bit Landers

Проект инженера Прайта (The Project of Engineer Prite), 1918
(video by History Club)

(Lev Kuleshov)

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West (1924)

(Wikipedia)
no copyright infringement intended

Mr. West (played as a Harold Lloyd type with enormous round glasses), is a YMCA president who is planning a trip to the newly founded Soviet Union to spread the idea of the YMCA. His wife is worried that Russia is full of savage Bolsheviks who wear primitive rags and fur for clothing, as depicted in American magazines. He takes along his cowboy friend Jeddie (played by Boris Barnet) for protection and as a companion. However, on arriving in the USSR his briefcase is stolen, he gets separated from Jeddie and he falls into the hands of a group of thieves, including a run-down Countess (played by Aleksandra Khokhlova, who was, or would become sometime later, the wife of director Lev Kuleshov), who masquerade as counter-revolutionaries. The thieves play on West's fears and engineer his abduction by crooks dressed up as caricature Bolshevik barbarians. The thieves then rescue West from the clutches of these fictional Bolsheviks, extorting thousands of dollars from him along the way. In the end, it is the real Bolshevik police who rescue West, rather than his friend Jeddie (who meanwhile has hooked up with an American girl living in Moscow). West then takes a sightseeing tour of Moscow, where he sees that the Soviet government did not destroy all cultural landmarks, such as Moscow University and the Bolshoi Theater, as the thieves suggested. The film culminates in Mr.West watching a military parade with the policeman and concluding that the American view of the Soviet Union is wrong. He telegraphs his wife instructing her to hang a portrait of Lenin (no more, no less) in his study.

(Wikipedia)

American ignorance based on stereotypes was in 1924 as big as today. As well as Soviet propaganda. Only this is a very good film, in many respects. Lev Kuleshov at his best. Think at the famous Kuleshov Effect and all that staff, you'll find it in this movie. By the way, Kuleshov was known by his friends as openly pro-American and quietly anti-Soviet (not that it would matter; anyway he passed through the great purges of Stalin by keeping low-key). One of the roles (the chief of crocks) was played by Vsevolod Pudovkin (who also co-signed the scenario). Among the rest of the cast, Vladimir Fogel, as a young cocky man. A last hint: in the final scene of military parade, you will see for only one instant the figure of Trotsky (as the film was made in 1924, Stalin was not yet in full control).

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924
(video by SAGIXTV)

(Lev Kuleshov)

(Vsevolod Pudovkin)

A Book and a Movie: The Unexpected (1906) and By the Law (1926)

McClure's Magazine, August 1906
where The Unexpected was originally published
(Chanticleer Books)
no copyright infringement intended

There are those that make toward survival, the fit individuals who escape from the rule of the obvious and the expected and adjust their lives to no matter what strange grooves they may stray into, or into which they may be forced.

The Unexpected was firstly published in 1906, in the August issue of McClure's Magazine. One year later Jack London included it in his collection Love of Life and Other Stories.

The story is based on a real case reported by San Francisco Examiner in October 1900 (double murder and subsequent revenge on the murderer by a married couple). Jack London made from it some unforgettable pages of great literature.

A small group of gold diggers are on the borders of Yukon and get trapped by the bad season. No ship is coming till next spring to take them back to the city. They are five and among them there is a married couple. Suddenly one of the diggers kills two of his comrades and is about to kill also the husband and wife, who succeed to immobilize the murderer. The husband wants to kill him on the spot, but the wife disagrees: justice must be done strictly according to the law, otherwise it would be just another murder. It comes that the two have to guard the killer for several months, risking their lives, till the ship arrives. What follows is an intense psychological drama, told by Jack London in his usual straightforward manner, keeping it down to the fact though the facts are minimal: only a continuous flow of inner thoughts. Thinking about the situation: how to keep control while keeping to the law. Thinking about your own thoughts: how to keep control while your mind is spiraling dangerously. Facts of mind told by Jack London strictly down to the fact.

You can read the story here:

http://www.online-literature.com/london/105/

In 1926 film director Lev Kuleshov associated with cinematographer: Konstantin Kuznetsov made a movie based on the story of London: the silent По закону (By the Law). It is a great work of art in its own right, and I would dare to say, a timeless gem. London was keeping a distance to the subject, giving a cool account. In the movie, the camera and the montage scissors become part of the play: the hut where husband and wife are guarding the murderer becomes a claustrophobic universe surrounded by the unleashed universe of the big river outside, at times frozen, at times flooding everywhere, always menacing, always ready to destroy everything around. At any moment the two risk to be murdered by their prisoner, their tiny space risk to be swallowed by the caprices of nature, their inner thoughts risk to be swallowed by madness. Space, guardians, thoughts, like tiny elements at the mercy of much bigger unknowns: an ultimate cinematic expression of the unexpected.


And Vladimir Fogel in probably his best role.

(video by Классика советского кино (официальный канал))

(Jack London)

(Lev Kuleshov)

Lev Kuleshov

Lev Kuleshov
(1899-1970)
(http://a-bittersweet-life.tumblr.com/post/41282261964/lev-kuleshov-on-the-origins-of-the-kuleshov)
no copyright infringement intended

Kuleshov may well be the very first film theorist as he was a leader in Soviet montage theory — developing his theories of editing before those of Eisenstein (briefly a student of Kuleshov) and Pudovkin; for Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another; to illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Effect: shots of an actor were intercut with various meaningful images (a casket, a bowl of soup, and so on) in order to show how editing changes viewers' interpretations of images (wiki).

the Kuleshov Effect is using the Pavlovian physiology to manipulate the impression made by an image and thus to spin the viewer's perception of that image; to demonstrate such manipulation, Kuleshov took a shot of popular Russian actor Ivan Mozzhukhin's expressionless face from a silent film that had to be destroyed by the Soviet officials; he then edited the face together with three different endings: a plate of soup, a seductive woman, a dead child in a coffin; the audiences believed that Ivan Mozzhukhin acted differently looking at the food, the girl, or the coffin, showing an expression of hunger, desire, or grief respectively; actually the face of Ivan Mozzhukhin in all three cases was one and the same shot repeated over and over again; viewers own emotional reactions become involved in manipulation; images spin those who are prone to be spun; although editing and montage have already been used in art, architecture, fashion, politics, book publishing, theatrical productions and religious events (just look at placement of icons in churches, or photos in books, or pictures at exhibitions), the use of such editing in silent films was innovative and eventually led to more advanced visual effects (imdb).

• A Movie from 1918: The Project of Engineer Prite
• The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West (1924)
• By the Law (1926)
• Where O. Henry and Kuleshov Meet: The Great Consoler (1933)

(Filmele Avangardei)

(Russian and Soviet Cinema)