"Little Vera" vs "Truffaldino iz Bergamo"

Tue Jun 6 14:36:30 UTC 2006

Alina Israeli <aisrael at AMERICAN.EDU> wrote: And then, having watched the movie, practically everybody was
>absolutely mad because they had waited for smth extraodinary good,

Half a country cannot possibly agree on what is extraordinarily good.
..........................Yes, but it seems that all those who watched the film agree on what is bad. Just for fun I've kept asking all my contacts one and the same question since the film was mentioned on SEELANGS: "Don't you want to watch 'Little Vera'? I've bought a DVD." Some reacted as if I "beleny ob'elas", the rest thought I was kidding, one even said: "A 'Lenina v oktiabre' u tebia sluchaino net?". Good comparison, to my mind...

The question is not whether there was sex in the Soviet Union or not, we know there was, the abortion rate tells us this, and it also tells us that sex is separated from procreation. 
..............................Then let's not say that it was some revolutionary movie that explained to the nation what is what and how it is supposed to look like.

The question as far as films are concerned, is it (sex) gratuitous (as in some American films), for the titilation purposes or is it meaningful, i.e. conveys something important relevant to the characters or mood of the films, the same way good music does.
................................I don't think that even the fact that sex in the film is meaningful, is enough for proclaiming a second-rate movie a masterpiece. The film didn't reveal anything new as to what sex may become for those seeking some kind of refuge. I think that it is posssible to find even old Soviet films where the same idea is more or less evident, presented from different perspectives and does convey smth. 
Let's say the truth. "Little Vera" was "revolutionary" in only one respect: in showing a sexual intercourse. I can't mention nudity because there is no less nudity in "Tabor ukhodit v nebo", for example, and maybe in other films too, this one is simply the first one that springs into my mind. The only audience "Little Vera" really attracted were teenagers (exactly under 17) who treated it as a first pornofilm and went to watch it again and again, up to several times. I do not exclude that exactly teenagers were responsible for all those numbers according to which the film was smth like a hit everybody wanted to see.
But is this fact enough for screening the film in the Slavic studies? To my mind, it should really be put under the same category with "Lenin v oktiabre", no matter that its task was to inspire the opposite mood. 
How about really good films really revealing smth about Russians?

>  "Kogda b mne dali vlast', ja b kazhdomu nevernomu muzhchine vruchila b
>po odnoj zelenoj vetke! Togda vse goroda by prevratilis' v zelenye i
>pyshnye sady!"
>  Voila! Chem vam ne glasnost? Was she talking about reproduction or about
>sex? Or did she mean that "nevernye muzhchiny" were those who played chess
>somewhere outside home?

Yes, but that's about "them" not "us", and about "then" and not "now".

..........................Yes and no. All our films are about "us" too, no matter what country and what time they depict. No one ordered to cut this scene because it is about "ikh nravy" and "we don't need any propaganda of 'ikh nravy' ". I think that such nonsense simply couldn't occur to anybody at all... So it is about "us" too. Any film released in our country is about us, no matter what characters and what parts of the world it is about.

Smb told me that one critic wrote that the only character in our "Sobaka Baskervilei" that looked really British was the dog... I don't know what that critic meant, but I suppose that not the scenery. I can say the same about American "Evgenij Onegin". When watching it I had a feeling that it was not about Russia, and not about Onegin and Tatiiana, but about Graf Drakula and Carmencita. I don't know why... Sure, it's only my personal perception... Maybe I should simply watch it once again.
 American "Doktor Zhivago" didn't cause that feeling, however,  its supposedly "Russian" scenery distracted me so much that I couldn't even concentrate on the film. The image of the house simply knocked me down... 
I think, when smb takes a piece of foreign classics and makes a film, that film says a lot about the country where it was created. It is probably inevitable. So "Truffaldino iz Bergamo" is about "us" too.
Sure, this doesn't mean that I recommend it for screening in the Slavic studies. 

But how about "Tol'ko dlia sumasshedshikh"? This is "sovmestnoe proizvodstvo", Lenfilm and Tallinfilm, 1990, starring Margarita Terekhova.  If sex is a necessary element, then it is about sex too. Sex is not smth like music in this film. It is an issue  in a very special context, raising many other issues. Sex is a kind of starting point in this film. The ideas the film conveys may be a very good discussion trigger for university students. And this film is really good, and has no political agenda behind it, to my mind.

Regards,
Maryna Vinarska

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------