Abram Room, Bed and Sofa, 1927

Третья Мещанская (Bed and Sofa), 1927
film poster
(image source: movpins)
no copyright infringement intended

We'd expect a Soviet movie to be framed in some Soviet canons. Well, with many Soviet movies of the twenties, simply it's not the case. Look for instance at this Третья Мещанская (Bed and Sofa), created by Abram Room in 1927. It's the story of a ménage à trois à la russe, started (and keeping on) due to the huge housing problems of those years, and evolving into something that could suggest kind of a same-sex resolution.

It's Moscow of the twenties, housing problems are huge, it's far from the period of continuous development of huge ugly projects with myriads of small anonymous apartments. Right now it's just that, an old city with an ever growing number of people coming in, and it's impossible to find a dwelling for everyone. It comes that anyone finds a solution on its own, sharing bed and sofa and even more.

Some say that this movie alludes to the tempestuous story between Majakovsky and Lilya Brik. I don't know whether it's the case. Simply the Soviet mentalities of the twenties were unexpectedly free when it was coming to the gender issues, putting men and women on an equal footing on anything related to family, attitude toward sex, conjugal fidelity and ejusdem farinae. All this would radically change a few years later, but by then it was just the decade of the twenties. Anyway a wonderful comedy, full of tempo, and full of warmth, of sympathy for each hero, the wife and the two men.

Третья Мещанская (Bed and Sofa), 1927
(video by Rvision)

A bit about the actors. Let's mention firstly Lyudmila Semyonova, playing with wonderful subtlety in the role of the wife. I saw her also in a much later movie, from 1961, The Steamroller and the Violin, the first oeuvre of Tarkovsky. Nikolai Batalov was in the role of the husband. He was an interesting actor, unfortunately he died too young and played only in ten movies throughout his life. I already watched three of them (and maybe I will come here with the fourth). His namesake, Aleksey Batalov (no relation between the two) would make a much, much longer career. And Vladimir Fogel in the role of husband's friend and competitor, he was one of the leading actors of his generation (the best, as Pudovkin would state later). He died tragically in 1929, being only 27 years old. Despite his brief life he played in fourteen movies.

Lyudmila Semyonova
(image from Bed and Sofa)
source: listal
no copyright infringement intended

(Abram Room)

(Majakovsky)

Maiakovskiene - and Vertov (Three Songs about Lenin)

Партия и Ленин -
                 близнецы-братья
кто более
          матери-истории ценен?
Мы говорим Ленин,
                  подразумеваем -
                                  партия,
мы говорим
           партия,
                   подразумеваем -
                                   Ленин.

(Маяковский, Владимир Ильич Ленин)

Partidul şi Lenin - fraţi gemeni
Istoria Mamă-i socoate asemeni
Iar noi spunând: Lenin - partidul numim,
Partidul când spunem - la Lenin gândim
(Maiakovski, Vladimir Ilici Lenin)

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(source: NoNaMe)
no copyright infringement intended

Ленин жил, Ленин жив, Ленин будет жить (Lenin has lived, is living, will live): the above poster summarizes this movie. The atheist society of Stalin needed its own mythology, just as throughout the whole history any other society had to build its own mythology (a fiction is always essential in the struggle for survival; if Darwin hadn't told it from the very beginning, it was said anyway by lots of Darwinians). Ultimately any mythology supposes the existence of an eternal god. Of course, in the Soviet mythology the eternal god was Lenin. As he had died in 1924, the problem of his immortality had to be solved.

In this movie the god Lenin lives forever in the Soviet society: in the whole society, and in any particle of it. Any Soviet citizen, and any Soviet accomplishment, carries the personality of Lenin. With this movie Vertov gives up his atheism, to become a pantheist: he deifies the Soviet society because it embodies the eternity of Lenin, and he deifies Lenin because his eternity is embodied in the Soviet society. Is it pantheism or rather panentheism? I'd leave for you to decide. Anyway it is the demonstration of a perfect totalitarian system: one cannot have free will as everyone embodies Lenin, thus carrying the will of Lenin.

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(source: NoNaMe)
no copyright infringement intended

Well, for the regime officials this movie had two impardonable flaws. Firstly it was an Avangardist movie, it means some kind of bourgeois leisure. In 1934 the Soviet norm was already the Socialist Realism. And more than that it was the second flaw. The Soviet mythology was actually built upon two gods: one dead (Lenin) and one alive and in full control of the power (Stalin). And the dead god should have had only one role: to justify the almighty alive god.  This movie said too much about the dead god, and almost nothing about the alive god. No wonder that Vertov would not be let to make another movie any more. He would not understand why, as he was too honest, too sincere, to understand the ways of life.

Apart from that, this is a superb movie, just because it is so consistently Avangardist (I would even say so Productionist - the whole Soviet construction living through one hero, Lenin), and so sincere.

Три песни о Ленине, 1934
(video by solidaritet2010)

(Dziga Vertov)

(Majakovsky)

Maiakovkskiene: Apucaţi viitorul de chică, 1925

(source: sovlit)
no copyright infringement intended

Viitorul, el singur, o să vină prea-ncet. 

Să-l aducem mai iute nu strică. 

Prinde-l, dar, de urechi, tineret! 

Pionierule, apucă-l de chică! 

Nu-i crăiasa din basme comuna, 

să visezi nopţi de-a rândul la ea. 

Tu socoate, gândeşte-te-ntruna, 

şi nici faptele mici nu uita. 

Comunismul nu-i numai pământul, 

numai munca din fabrici... E la masă, aci, 

şi-n familia ta şi-ntre-ai tăi, învăţându-l 

şi-n viaţa de fiece zi. 

Pot mitralierele frontul să-l ţină, 

războiul nu doar la atât se rezumă. 

Nici problema căminului nu ni-i străină: 

nici cu ea nu-i de glumă. 

Cel care în silă răspunde la toate, 

bârâind toată ziua, scârţâind fără spor, 

cel care sucombă-n cântări leşinate, 

acela nu ştie ce e viitor. 

Problema căminului cine nu-şi pune 

se culcă-ntre flori de hârtie; 

la poarta vieţii de mâine-o să sune 

zadarnic. Nu-l ştie. 

O şubă-i şi vremea - de-o ţii în odaie -

mâncată de molia felului vieţii... 

Tu scutură-i vremii-nvechitele straie 

şi, tânăr, fii steag tinereţii!

(source: poezie)

(Majakovsky)

Mujeres a la vanguardia de la insumisión

Lili Brik y Elsa Triolet
portada de la biografía
(fuente: El País)
no copyright infringement intended

Lili Brik y Elsa Triolet: Neruda las llamaba la indomable Lili y una espada de ojos azules. Musas de Majakovsky y de Aragon, las dos hermanas vivieron una existencia tan fascinante como convulsa. María Robert Ramirez nos cuenta sus vidas en un articulo maravilloso publicado en El País:

Lili Brik y Elsa Triolet, dos mujeres a la vanguardia de la insumisión

Lili Brik retratada por Rodchenko
en un fotomontaje propagandístico
el cartel es una de las obras más célebres del constructivismo
(fuente: El País)
no copyright infringement intended

(Majakovsky)

(Una Vida Entre Libros)

Majakovsky: a Movie from 1918

Vladimir Majakovsky and Lili Brik, 1918
no copyright infringement intended
(http://pilt.delfi.ee/en/picture/10930283/)

Was this movie a love poem for Lili Brik? Majakovsky wrote the screenplay, co-directed the movie and played in it. The plot follows a story written by Edmondo de Amicis in 1895 (La maestrina degli operai - The Workers’ Young Schoolmistress), adapting it to the Russian universe of 1918, and to the universe of Russian avant-garde: the story of de Amicis breathes here of Constructivism; poetry, enthusiasm and a very realist depiction of society, far from the triumphalism of later Soviet movies.

A young schoolmistress comes to a remote village to teach pupils who are between 10 and 50. A bum comes to the school having in mind to seduce her, but he is falling in love. The bum is played, you gotcha, by Mayakovsky himself. The schoolmistress feels terrorized by him, while realizing little by little his true love. The guy will die after a fight in the village, the woman will come to give him a kiss: the first and the last.

Chaplin would have made a very special poem from such a story, delicate like a ballet, but don't think at Chaplin: think at Mayakovsky, at all Constructivists, Vertov or Rodchenko, Klutsis or Lissitzky, whoever comes first. It's love here, while this is just an episode in the construction of the new epoch: the schoolmistress will continue to teach her pupils with ages from 10 to 50, as the new world needs qualified workers. Was Lili Brik okay with such a love poem? Well, I think so: after all she remained in history as the Muse of the Russian Avant-Garde!

It's Барышня и Хулиган (Baryshnia i Khuligan - The Young Lady and the Hooligan): a silent movie shot in April 1918; Majakovsky wrote the script in less than two weeks. A score was created by Dmitri Shostakovich and Valery Gavrilin to accompany the representations.

Барышня и Хулиган (Baryshnya i Khuligan): Part 1/4
(video by KidaCut)

Барышня и Хулиган (Baryshnya i Khuligan): Part 2/4
(video by KidaCut)

Барышня и Хулиган (Baryshnya i Khuligan): Part 3/4
(video by KidaCut)

Барышня и Хулиган (Baryshnya i Khuligan): Part 4/4
(video by KidaCut)

In the same year, 1918, Mayakovsky wrote the scenario for the movie Закованная фильмой (Chained by the Film), in which he and Lili Brik starred. The footage has been lost, with the exception of a few trial shots.

(Wikipedia)

(Majakovsky)

(Filmele Avangardei)

(Russian and Soviet Cinema)

An Audio Recording of Majakovsky, 1920

Majakovsky, photo from 1910
(Ученик Строгановского училища. Москва. 1910)
source: Маяковский Владимир с сигаретой, http://www.rulex.ru/rpg/portraits/26/26705.htm
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mayakovsky_1910.jpg)

(video by sira44)

Majakovsky reading one of his poems. Illustrations by himself.
Original ogg-file: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Mayakovsky-Neobychaynoe.ogg


(Majakovsky)

Majakovsky

Monument of Majakovsky in Moscow
Цветное фото: И. Шагина, ИЗОГИЗ
no copyright infringement intended
(http://www.sovworld.ru/foto/displayimage.php?album=1&pos=41)

Each city has some special places, known only to those who have read many books about that city, those who knew what to observe in the movies about, those who have heard many stories about.

Moscow does not have too much to say to foreigners - except Kremlin and Red Square, there are large boulevards and large side streets; however it has its charms, for the happy few. If you go on the Vorobiov Hills, in front of Lomonosov University, you can see the whole panorama of the city. If you have read Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, you'll know that here was the ultimate place for the two lovers, before being taken to eternity (but then you'd know also where the Partiarshy Prudy is to be found). There is a church there, one of the few not closed by the Soviet regime: once Kutuzov prayed in that church, in the eve of Borodino. Students come now in the church to light candles in the eve of exams (everybody stops being an agnostic and starts praying, provided dogs are barking around, or other stuff like that).

And many have visited the Kremlin. Few of them know in what church inside there are icons painted by Rublev.

There are some other charms in Moscow, too. Students gather sometimes in front of the statue 0f Pushkin, or in front of Majakovsky.

As Russians say, каждый москвич - патриот своего города (while the same is true for any other city in any other country).

• An Audio Recording of Majakovsky, 1920
• A Movie from 1918
• Bed and Sofa
• Mujeres a la vanguardia de la insumisión
• Maiakovkskiene: Apucaţi viitorul de chică, 1925
• Vladimir Ilici Lenin

(Жизнь в Kнигах)

(Avangarda 20)