Sergey Gerasimov

  • Fridrikh Ermler – Oblomok imperii AKA Fragments of Empire (1929)

    1921-1930Fridrikh ErmlerPoliticsSilentUSSR

    Synopsis:
    Fridrikh Ermler’s last silent feature, Fragment of an Empire, tells the story of a Russian non-commissioned officer, Ivan Filimonov (Fyodor Nikitin), who was shell-shocked, thought to be dead in the First World War and in loss of memory. Filimonov regains his memory in 1928, ten years after the Russian Revolution. Determined to find his wife and get his job back, he goes home to Saint Petersburg only to find out that his wife has remarried and his former employer has been replaced by a factory committee. The Saint Petersburg that he used to know also does not exist anymore. Renamed Leningrad and deprived of its status as capital, the city with its monumental buildings and statues of Lenin is foreign to Filimonov as is everything else in this new world created by the 1917 Revolution. As time goes by, however, he learns to appreciate the new ways. Although he is not reunited with his wife, he regains full control of his life. At the end of the film, Filimonov breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly as he declares, in true Soviet propaganda fashion: “There is still much work to be done!”Read More »

  • Grigori Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – S.V.D. – Soyuz velikogo dela AKA Union of the Great Cause (1927)

    1921-1930DramaGrigori KozintsevLeonid TraubergSilentUSSR

    (imdb)
    A failed Russian Revolution succeeded magnificently on screen., 3 June 1999
    Author: Theodore J. van Houten from Haamstede, 4328 ZG 1 Netherlands

    S.V.D. was released in August 1927. A beautiful costume drama, it is on the other hand a somewhat expressionistic, poetical fantasy. Its photography and images are more important than its desired political contents. The script, written by the inspiring historian Yuri Tinyanov (director Leonid Trauberg [1901-1990]could speak about Tinyanov for hours) supplied a failed love story, a political intrigue involving two czars, and a traveling circus background. The picture glorifies the 1825 ‘Decembrists’ uprisal: officers in the imperial Russian army are fed up with the new czar’s autocracy. Read More »

  • Grigoriy Kozintsev & Leonid Trauberg – Shinel AKA The Overcoat (1926)

    1921-1930DramaGrigori KozintsevLeonid TraubergSilentUSSR

    The Overcoat is a 1926 Soviet film directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, based on Nikolai Gogol stories Nevsky Prospekt and The Overcoat.

    A young clerk, disappointed in love in early life passes his life in paper work. He centres his interests in a new overcoat but is robbed and assaulted on the way home. He gets sick and dies.Read More »

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