La nouvelle Babylone

I caught this one before it expired on "the silent stream" section of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto website, where they temporarily revive past screenings from the Pordenone Silent Film Festival. Mark it down as one of the classics of Soviet montage and the late silent era. This version, by the way, is the 92-minutes restoration with the original score; reportedly, there's a longer cut that was discovered in Germany in the 1980s, but which co-director Leonid Trauberg disavowed as extra footage that they'd intentionally discarded and not censored material. Regardless, as it is, "The New Babylon" is a spectacular synthesis of Impressionistic images, rapid and rhythmic editing and a score by renowned composer Dmitri Shostakovich, his first for a film, to match the operetta within the film and the operatic presentation of the Paris Commune.

The opening sequence in itself is masterful. With the aid of special portrait lenses, the focus of images is extremely narrow--mostly, only a character in the foreground per shot is seen clearly--while the background is blurred as if each frame were an Impressionist painting--none of which remain on the screen for long. Counts of the film's average shot length (ASL) range from five seconds, according to Barry Salt, to as quick as 3.7 seconds, as claimed by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Seeing several shots pass by in a fraction of a second at its fastest pace, I wasn't about to bring out my own clicker. Suffice to say that the shot succession here is closer to that of a modern action flick than to the contemporary early talkies in Hollywood, which seem to be guaranteed an ASL of more than 10 seconds and upwards of more than 20 seconds. Eventually, the camera will sometimes spin as if in a drunken stupor until hardly anything can be made out. Other imagery, such as when the rich attack the poor in the street, is also obfuscated visually and by quick cutting. Also undercutting what one might otherwise consider an appreciation of French Impressionist paintings is that the footage is of bourgeois debauchery, a grotesque depiction of the sort of leisurely activities one might find in a Manet, Monet, Renoir, or Surat.

Nor is the entirety of the picture photographed in quite the same way; indeed, there are a few striking deep-focus compositions. One features the French flag in the foreground, as a soldier on horseback occupies the distant horizon. The montage, too, slows down at least long enough to establish a relationship between a woman who joins the Commune and a French soldier who winds up being involved in its demise, including sometimes their relatively-long forlorn looks, the plot of which does rather well to ground the grander narrative and hold the spectator's attention with the traditional, character-based identification that's more important to other movies, but rather at odds with this film's socialist and non-individualistic politics. Set during the Franco-Prussian War, the Prussian soldiers, too, only occupy silhouettes in the background of the frame; the center of this picture is occupied by France's own class conflict. It should also be noted that the lighting, including some chiaroscuro effects throughout, is finely done.

While later we see those of the middle or upper classes lounging outside, watching the Commune being defeated by the soldiers as if it were street theatre, in the opening sequence it's an apparent operetta being performed on stage while they eat and drink and generally revel, or, for the more sober, conduct business. If these arts and entertainments are defined as bourgeois, then one might very well wonder what is supposed to be made of film, such as this one. That's where the guns that the proletariat fight for come in. Cinema as mechanical, rapid-fire, revolutionary polemic for mass production and mass appeal. The crosscutting between a new operetta being practiced and the working-class women feeding the soldiers before a struggle over weaponry ensues is an especially stark contrast. Furthermore, there's the piano player on the Commune's side of the barricade and, perhaps anachronistically, "La Marseillaise" being sung as the workers' battle cry, to go along with the rest of Shostakovich's score that's always fighting in unison with the class struggle of the imagery. Sure, it's Soviet propaganda, but it's also great art.

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.

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.

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 plot is just a vehicle for this surreal, innovative and radical film. For sure one of the best Soviet silent movies.