La nouvelle Babylone

One war that gets very little screen time in cinema is the Paris Commune consisting of France's National Guardsmen and a few city workers who took over the capital city on the heels of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. This group quickly set up a form of government that was the first to adopt the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, a mix of socialist and communist elements. For two months, its supporters beat back the French Army until it gave way. Between 10,000 and 15,000 of the Communards lost their lives battling the superior army, with over 43,000 taken prisoners.

Two Ukrainian filmmakers, Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg produced cinema's first movie on the movement, March 1929's "The New Babylon." The motion picture focuses on Louise (Elena Kuzmina), a saleswoman in a Paris' wholesale store called 'The New Babylon.' She gets swept up in the Commune's passions, even though her boyfriend is a soldier in the French Army and is fighting against the Commune.

What's fascinating about "The New Babylon" is the framing of Louise and her boyfriend's scenes. Using film director John Ford's technique of filling the backgrounds with activity while focused on the main characters in the foreground, Kozintsev and Trauberg aroused the viewers' attention with such framing. In addition, the pair use a variety of trick photography, special effects and double/triple exposures to emphasize the complexity of the Commune's situation.

The two filmmakers in 1922 formed the 'Factory of the Eccentric Actor' (FEKS), which concentrated on live theater before morphing into cinema. Basing both their stage plays and films on the experimental and the avant-garde variety, each film was unique in its subjects: comedy, political tracts, musicals, etc. FEKS' purpose was to take away the constraints from theater, film, circus, music and opera and use a combination of all of them to present an unusual visual experience. The pair were influenced by D. W. Griffith's stylization and Charlie Chaplin's surreality. Employing Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich to write his first musical accompaniment for cinema, the two filmmakers produced a unique viewing experience which is thankfully preserved.

As film critic Matt Bailey succinctly noted, "The film has all of the vigor and pure cinematic originality of Abel Gance's Napoleon without all the pretensions to greatness shouldered by that film."

Everyone cheers when the army marches off to fight the Prussians, but when the surrender comes, the Parisian underclass rises and takes over the city, proclaiming the Commune. It is a peaceful existence, where people work for themselves, live for themselves, and are happy as instructed by the Committee. Even the shop owners and remnants of the bourgeouis -- those who have not fled to a lazy and sumptuous life in Versailles -- are left in peace, so long as they do not oppose the Commune. However, the bourgeouis French government cannot let such a paradise exist.

It's the last great triumph of pure, silent, Soviet Academician, handling all the pieces of theory brilliantly: the theory of types, in which the actors are chosen for appearance, the quick cuts, the Dutch angles, and, of course, the propaganda as co-written, co-directed and almost certainly co-edited by Grigoriy Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. The Commune was long cited as a precursor of the November Revolution, doomed to fail because the groundwork had not been laid in educating the masses; as some one said to me in an effort to be witty, "The lumpenproletariat was too lumpy." I told him he was half-right. No one lies like he lies to himself about his own motives and his heroes. And then, he tells those lies to others, believing them the truth.

This is the power of film, particularly silent film, of any immersive art which requires the audience to fall under its spell: it creates its own world through its story and images, and if you accept it, you live in that world, for at least its length. If you come out of it, and think it is great art, then you remain under its spell, and its world remains, at least in part, reality for you.

Yet art attempts to make sense of an immense world, it tries to create narratives that make sense, invents heuristics that explain what is happening. And because the universe is vast, and humanity is small, and this movie is 93 minutes in length (the version I saw; the IMDB lists its original running time as two hours), then it is false.

There are some incredibly powerful visuals to be found throughout this Soviet paen to the doomed Communard uprising of 1871 in Paris. From its wildly expressionistic opening to the hardened and doomed faces right off of Soviet worker poster art it powerfully conveys its admiration for the heroic underclass while eviscerating the craven bourgeois. With a music score supplied by Shostakovich its an excellent example of the decade old Soviet Union trying to spread its influence by comrading up with the French of yesteryear.

Devine decadence rules in Paris with its attention to materialism and coarse joie de vivre. The haves are enjoying a grand time while the have nots struggle to survive. When the Prussians march on the city the uppercrusts bolt for Versailles, leaving the beleaguered city's defense to the workers to defend. With the threat dissipated the workers demand more rights, the bourgeois see it otherwise by turning the military on them. A stand-off ensues and a civil war erupts.

Babylon's revolutionary fervor was certainly right for the period with it being released a month after the Stock Market Crash in 1929. Emboldened with Eisenstein montage it shouts out its message with a ham fisted juxtaposition and simplicity that may have stirred the proles in 1917 but comes across dated here with the upper class caricatures no different than Griffith's Union troops in black face in his Civil War whitewash. Both remain triumphs of form over content (racism, totalitarianism) that should be be relegated to the dustbin of history,

The New Babylon was recognized as a masterpiece as early as 1929. It was rediscovered at the 1958 Bruxelles Expo but properly presented with the original Shostakovich score only in the eighties. The original Shostakovich score (opus 18) had been synchronized with the film under the personal supervision of its director Leonid Trauberg (1901-1990) and - according to Trauberg - he had never 'seen' his film in that final state before 1981. A valuable estimation of the picture can be found in Jay Leyda's KINO. One should realize that there is only one definite version of the picture: the GOSFILOMOFOND print, running for about 90 minutes at variable speed. There is however an apocryphal print about, a clipping together of the original print and approximately another 33% of out-takes. German film historians are responsible for this horrible mutilation of the original. When this version was shown in Hamburg in 1983 a press bulletin explained that scenes had been added that were once removed by censorship. However, what had been added were only discarded scenes that had been cut because they were too dull; for instance actrice Kuzmina in front of a cupboard of hat boxes or actor Sobolevsky with his wounded arm in a sling as an unlikely cabaret artist in 1871 'Gay Paris'. Director Leonid Trauberg saw this `German' version with the extra footage "that I cut out myself" and has furiously tried to prohibit its screening. A lengthy statement about the original and apocryphal print of The New Babylon was sent to various cinema museums by Trauberg in October 1983. His statement is to be found in `Eisenstein was Great Eater' - In Memory of Leonid Trauberg / Graduate Press, Buren, Netherlands, pp. 107-109 (ISBN 90-72058-07-0). The New Babylon is one of the greatest masterpieces of the Russian cinema. However the German version with its complimentary footage is a disgrace for the profession of film restoration. In fact the best guideline to follow is the original score composed for the picture by Shostakovich in 1929. Its greatest advocate is maestro Mark Fitz-Gerald from Croydon, associated with the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. If you have any doubts about music or print contact Theodore van Houten, POB 1, Haamstede, 4328 ZG-Netherlands.

It is, I suppose, fair to say that this is a propaganda film because it does deliver a political message. On the other hand, it's not too outlandish of a message. Perhaps there were reasons to oppose the Paris Commune, although none occur to me. However, a discussion of propaganda in films is in itself somewhat redundant: most films might face the same charges. After all, film is an art form that chooses to present a series of images and sounds, usually dialogue but also music (and in this case there is in the best version a stunning score by Shostakovich) in order to manipulate the feelings and the thoughts of the viewer. "Apocalypse Now", for instance, is an examination of war and its component parts that does not shy away from politics or advocacy. It is clear to the viewer that the filmmaker is asking questions about why that war was fought. "Armaggedon" also supports a particular political world view, as does "First Blood", "The Seventh Seal", "Sex in the City" and even "Toy Story".

Despite my sympathies, however, it is not the politics that I love about this film - it is not the message but the artful use of the medium that sells me on this work of art. This is a moving and beautiful film, with fully realised character development and wonderfully magical imagery. After the parasols, the train and the cancan dancers, you should keep an eye out in particular for the shots in the last segments of the film. Kozintsev and Trauberg work little miracles with everyday objects such as lace, shovels and pianos. (Amazingly enough, these artists continued their magic for a long time -Trauberg worked until the early 1960s and Kozintsev directed his last film, which many consider the best "King Lear" for the cinema, in 1971.) "New Babylon" is, in a number of ways, a good companion piece for "The Man with a Movie Camera", the best of the Russian silents that I have seen. While it does indulge the "message" shot - there are a number of those but most are extremely well-done and worth seeing; the milk-for-soldiers is one, the juxtaposed lives are another - it is the realism of this film that elevates it, not its occasional slip into histrionics. The female lead, Yelena Kuzmina, is excellent, an actress who commands your attention and earns your sympathy, but it is in all the secondary roles put together that the city of Paris of 1870 and 1871 truly comes alive. In these earlier films, before sound drew us in, it was the faces that needed to speak, and these do, eloquently. The department store owner, the old soldiers, the contemptuous general, the washerwomen and the journalist with hope for humanity, they are all clamoring to tell you something. Exactly what they say to you may depend on your own world view, but their comments should be interesting to everyone.