Le père Serge

"Otets Sergei" is a film that couldn't have been made in any other time period. Literally. The censorship of Czar-era Russia had tight regulations concerning religion and politics (the portrayal of the royal family). This movie was made before the revolution of 1917 in a time of turmoil, it could just barely be made then; boasting the name of Tolstoy being a big asset. After the revolution, no such movie would be made for a long time.

Otets Sergei has both a very unconventional religious figure and it portraits the Czar as having extra-marital relationships. At heart it is the life story of a young successful army officer, prince Kasatsky, who unknowingly falls in love with the mistress of the Czar. When he eventually finds out the truth about his soon-to-be-married wife (she wants to marry him to stop the rumors about her affair with the Czar), he is so shocked that he retreats to a monastery to become a monk (and after years Father Sergei). Later he battles with the temptations of sexual lust and the dreams of how things could have been.

The movie has many uncommonly modern characteristics. Besides the daring subject it has a rather strongly developed lead character, good storytelling and cinematography and a script which deals with human emotions without being exploitative or sentimental. Altogether it has a very modern touch to it for a movie made in 1917, although the lack of sound (originally it had a score played live to the audience) does make it a little weary at times. Still it is a prime example of the art film movement of pre-soviet Russia and a timeless story of unfulfilled love.

The film has a typical "Russian ending", with almost total humiliation of the central figure, but it is not there to morally condemn Kasatsky, it's just that this was how stories like this always ended in the tragedy genre. One could see a moral lesson here, but to me what makes this movie interesting is that it doesn't seem to want to give one.

As a contemporary audience, we often approach silent films with an attitude of condescension. This initial sentiment lowers expectations but draws our attention to the everyday grammar of film language that we take for granted. Suddenly the glance object cut, the pan right and tilt down showing the elaborate ornamentation in the cathedral and the sparsely used close-ups become all the more impressive because we hold it to the standard of a silent film. While Father Sergius still suffers from the silent film dilemma of having the dominant influence of other mediums (such as theater and literature) it is exciting to see modern day film techniques in the infantile stage. Father Sergius is a silent film epic detailing the life of Prince Kasatsky from his years in school to his eventual position as a budding young officer. After discovering the woman he loves is the mistress to the Czar, the prince pursues a lifestyle devoid of succumbing to any and all earthly temptation as he transforms himself into the "saintly" Father Sergius. In a startling special effects sequence, Kasatsky regrets his decision longing for his former lover as she enters the frame as a ghostly spirit. Regardless of any standard preconceived silent film notions, the coordination, blocking and deep focus photography in the crowd scenes are remarkable. Also astonishing is the controversial acknowledgement of extra marital affairs within the royal family as well as the message of the film that seems to promote the excessive bourgeois lifestyle over the life of a clergyman. The regret that endures in Father Sergius suggests a longing for a life of excess, power and respect. Although arriving at a period where films were still testing the capacity of cinema, Father Sergius is an enjoyable experience of Russian cinema finding its footing.

It is my view that we need more efficient ways of documenting film. Emotional response is fine but fickle and, to me, untrustworthy. Film history educates but is really dry and boring. Talking about technique is simple navel-gazing complacency. The point is that film flows from actual life that is immensely complex and inviting. Make no mistake, it is the pinnacle of the arts at this point and for a long time now. We can use it to both invigorate sense of the world and our own reasoning tools.

So I have been surveying the early days of the medium looking for interesting threads that weave together the evolution of entire worlds. One such I have found in Japan, that is documented elsewhere.

The other is right here. And because the technique now seems primitive, and the emotional response is likewise hampered by having refined our own selves and viewing habits further than these films operated on, we can focus on this one aspect; film as forging of soul.

1917 Russia. Civil unrest on-and-off goes back several decades. One-third of the world is at the brink of cataclysmic change.

So at this point comes a film where the czar is portrayed as having an amorous, extra-marital affair. In order to obscure the matter, he frames a young military officer to marry this woman, a brilliant man we're told, save for his rash temper, scion of an aristocratic family and groomed to lead, the future of this ruling elite about to be destroyed we can presume. Our man finds out about the plot and outraged at worldly hypocrisy, he disavows rank and status and becomes a monk.

But this corrupt world catches up with him again in the monastery, it should not be missed that the abbot maintains friendly relations with the military aristocracy, so our man exiles himself even further and becomes a hermit.

All through the film we are treated to very impressive transformations of our character, from young impertinent cadet to old decrepit hermit, on par with anything Lon Chaney accomplished and without any of the caricature. No, we're watching a natural actor at work here, an early Daniel Day-Lewis, one who does not attack the role from outside but rather embodies the sullen, mortified look. He makes even the heavy makeup around of the eyes seem natural and as though it has slowly crept in from decades of bitterness and resentment.

This was going to be Ivan Mozzhukhin's last film in his own country, soon after completion he was going to be forced into exile along with the filmmakers and most of the cast shown here. They would make the next film on the trail, the Ermolief trail leading from Yalta into Paris. He would surface again in the time of the first great French school. He would have the chance to be immortalized as Napoleon in Abel Gance's historic production, but opted instead to be Casanova for Volkoff, one of the filmmakers who filmed him in this.

This is very much what the film is about, an aristocract who no longer has a place in the world and has to disappear. The hermit is gaunt and half-mad in his cabin, but at least safe and far from what he would have nothing to do with. Except temptation visits him one last time.

Another amorous woman, very much like the one he courted and had to flee from, who once again taunts him, promises sex, and the old man now has to cut off his finger to fight the urge. This prompts the local populace to celebrate him as a saint and make pilgrimages to his place to get his blessing.

But this is the thing, the karmic dynamics at work shaping destiny in and out of the film.

This is what I'm talking about. We know that our man was never a spiritual person. We know that he's never, even during his long ascetic years, managed to find a center for himself. Even as a hermit, he has the same rash temper as years ago the cadet and the merest flicker of turbulent life sends him reeling. And he has so many fingers to cut before he succumbs to temptation. In the end, he's merely swept aside by authorities as one more vagabond en route to Siberia.

Nevertheless, the dynamics of this world at the time were such, I assume, that the narrative must have registered in the national heart on the level of tragic Russian hero broken by a lawless, cruel system, and the protagonist who starts off as 'one of them', is eventually washed up in the lowest class and cast out. Religion is shown to offer no shelter. Yet no responsibility over one's own actions is ever really asserted.

So of course these dynamics would erupt in violent revolution against the characters portrayed here, that same year, but see, including the actual actors, Mozzhukhin most notably, why else, because they had been unlucky to be celebrated by the populace and amass a fortune.

Father Sergiy, blind to the mechanisms that control his suffering and constantly fleeing from himself, really is Russian soul at the crossroads.

A very good film more than a century old. Actor Ivan Mozzhukin is riveting. No wonder he was the star of European cinema. One of the wealthiest actors of his day, he died in penury. Great cinematography. Good screenplay. Unfortunately stops when Father Sergius is taken to Siberia as a vagrant. The written work describes Father Sergius in Siberia--which is a crucial element of the short story. But the film succeeds, even when it cut short the story. Two other films have been made of the same story: a 1978 version from Russia and the 1990 Italian film adaptation by the famous Taviani brothers called " The Sun Also Shines at Night." I suspect that Sergei Eisenstein and his cinematographer Eduard Tisse built on visual ideas from this film when they made the classic "Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II" and even actor Nikolai Cherkasov's portrayal of Ivan was built on on Mozzhukin's portrayal of Father Sergius.

This is the second time I've watched this film, "Father Sergius", which seems rather rare. I remember being very bored. Viewing it a second time causes one to face such questions as: am I a masochist? Am I trying to avert myself of cinema? Perhaps, I'm just too thorough in viewing these old silent films.

It's based on the Tolstoy novella, but literature and cinema are very different media, so that's no guarantee of any success. The story of Prince Stepán Kasátsky discovering his fiancée was the mistress of the Czar, so he then becomes a monk--eventually Father Sergius is faithful, but I don't consider that enough or even necessarily important in an adaptation. Co-director Yakov Protazanov was a prolific filmmaker not of the montage school, who made the curious communist sci-fi film "Aelita: Queen of Mars" (1924). Ivan Mozzhukhin was probably the major Russian actor of the day. As well, the settings of "Father Sergius" are lavish enough.

The major problem is that the film consists of static, long takes. The camera placement and film technique are common for the day, although prosaic, but the pacing is too ponderous. The bad acting and theatricality certainly don't make up for it. The scenes that remained in my mind over the years before seeing it again were those of Father Sergius's seclusion and his torment over lust. I didn't remember the finger incident, just the dullness. I've given the film a second chance, only to add nearly two more hours of boredom to my life.