This set of four DVDs would have been great if they had not been heavily overloaded with four introductions that are sectarian, one-sided blabbering attempts to make us think that what these films are about is evil, devilish, ugly, despicable, and a few other things like that. All countries are doing that kind of propaganda, some even call it agitprop, which is a dignified genre in literature and theater with among other names Bertold Brecht but our democrats generally wrap it up in some kind of patriotic and even artistic garb that means something like garment, clothing, wrapping, etc, and has little to do with garbage. Though indeed in reality . . . !
The films are most of them short, more or less short from very short to rather short and they all have qualities due to the techniques used to produce them, the editing used quite freely and the creativity at times to have special effects even before they existed. And do not believe Méliès invented special effect. He invented accidental cut and accidental editing that turned a cow into a tram because the camera had stopped on the cow and had started again on a tram.
We have here real special effects and great editing, without speaking of the animation that is at times frankly creative and even avant-garde, and of the voices and music when there was music (composed by rather inspired composers) and voices after the silent cinema gave way to the talkies. The film on Mayakovsky for example is a great example of animation and voice performing. The moralistic tone might irritate westerners because it advocates Soviet morality and history, but just watch the Walt Disney film on Pocahontas and you will have a remarkable film of colonial propaganda justifying the extermination of Indians, once they had been exterminated. There is no contrition at all about her being forced to marry someone she hardly knew after being abducted, Christianized and having given her know how on how to grow and cure tobacco.
Anyone who is interested in animated films and in the history of the Soviet Union has to get these DVDs and watch these films. Just use the menu and jump over the introductory political lessons from some western servile writer.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
