Proekt inzhenera Prayta

The engineer Herr Pright has invented a new hydro turbine that is heated with peat, a plentiful natural resource in the surroundings. This method of processing peat is simple, safe and cheap so the hydraulic extraction makes it the cheapest fuel so consequently electricity will reach everyone. Herr Pright wants to build a power plant in order to exploit his invention, a modern project that will revolutionize the electrical industry, a development that is opposed by the all-powerful transnational oil trust led by Herr Orvil Ross.

By accident, Herr Pright meets his former schoolmate Herr Gem Torrinuol who introduces him to Frau Betsy. Herr Pright immediately falls in love with the girl who turns out to be the daughter of Herr Orvil Ross!. Torrinuol is also in cahoots with Herr Ross and the two of them hire saboteurs to blow up the transformers of Herr Pright's power plant on the day of its inauguration.

"Proekt Inzheniera Prayta" ( Engineer Pright's Project ) (1918) was the first film directed by the pioneer and renowned Russian director Herr Lev Kuleshov (at the age of 17) and was written by his brother Boris who also has a principal role in the film.

The picture was considered "futuristic" in those early years and certainly it was and of course is of great modern relevance at a time when people are concerned about dwindling natural resources and possible renewable energy. The film deals with such weighty issues of greed and exploitation in an entertaining way. It's basically a crime thriller wherein the shameful profits of the ruthless oil companies are openly denounced. The moral is that oil companies won't allow safe alternative energies because of their greed and will always try to thwart progress to advance their own interests.

Although "Proekt Inzheniera Prayta" was Herr Kuleshov's first oeuvre, you can see signs of his later recurrent themes and his love of Amerikan crime movies with their chases, mysteries and investigations. The film is a bit amateurish but certainly interesting as the debut of one of the most important directors in Soviet cinema.

And now, if you'll allow me, I must temporarily take my leave because this German Count must start blowing out every candle in the Schloss in order to saving energy.

Herr Graf Ferdinand Von Galitzien http://ferdinandvongalitzien.blogspot.com/

Lev Kuleshov was only nineteen in 1918, when he directed his first movie, 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.