Issue 186
News/Film Review: Film Class and Earth.
Throughout the previous semester, I had one particularly interesting class: Intro to Film. In essence, Wednesdays would be spent setting up a particular movement, and almost without exception, I would be supplementing his information, and I would sit next to some guy whose enthusiasm was matched only by his utter lack of knowledge of the medium's history pre-Karate Kid. Fridays would be spent discussing the film in more detail. By the end of the class, we had to rank each film we saw on a scale of 0-10. All but one film ended up watched ended up with a score above 6.0. The one that didn't was Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth. There's several reasons for this, and I will divide the reasons into innate and environmental problems.
Environmental problems:
*There were only two films we ended up watching on Friday. Since Friday classes and the film were approximately the same length, there wasn't much of a discussion.
*The room was designed differently, and thus, the likelihood that somebody's heads were covering up the subtitles (and the film was a silent, no less) was much higher.
*Seriously, subtitles in a film where the dialogue is communicated through intertitles? If Kino can try to replicate the stylised intertitles of Metropolis, they can at least translate the nondescript ones used in Earth.
*The DVD's print was taken from 1971. The film was heavily reliant on visuals, so, in essence, Kino, who released the film on R1 DVD screwed up. Amazingly, a British Distributor (Mr. Bongo) has managed to put out a version on DVD that looked much better. That said, I haven't seen that version, but at least I'd not be able to ask "What the hell am I looking at?" as often as I was. I shouldn't have to question whether I'm looking at a wheat field or not.
Innate Problems:
*Soviet Montage is a hard movement to find an accessible entry point for; of the three major features, Battleship Potemkin gets dull at points, Man With the Movie Camera hasn't much of a plot, and Earth is... well... Earth.
*Its pacing is bizarre. The opening scene is very slowly paced, consisting of two title cards, shots of a man slowly dying (presumably to symbolise the death of the Tsarist way of life), and shots of what I can only assume to be fields. By the end, there are no less than five scenes being intercut, and while some of them make sense (particularly the one of the priest trying in vain to get God to stop a non-church-based funeral), some of them are completely nonsensical (like a man putting his head to a sand dune and running about in a circle). The juxtaposition makes no sense, and I even said as such when I had to write a report. Apparently, it was supposed to spur people into action.
*The plot is almost impossible to follow. I had to look up several plot summaries of the film before I had to figure out what was supposed to be going on (apparently the man running about in a circle was in guilt over murdering his brother. I suppose Raskolnikov only got off as long as he did because Porfiry never saw him doing that), and sometimes what I was supposed to be looking at. Once again, if I have to look up summaries to be able to recognise a wheat field, something is very, very wrong.
Here's hoping that I can get back to doing two posts a month.
Also, according to my Dashboard, I apparently have a follower: Enrrique (apparently he has two r's in his name) Perez. If his profile is correct, he is apparently from Duarte in the Dominican Republic. According to the one post he's made that I had to translate with Babelfish because I don't speak Spanish, He apparently thinks all politicians are equally bad, and with the last two years in mind, I can't say I blame him. Here's hoping we can actually come into some sort of contact (preferrably in English)
Links: Because every Soviet film made before a certain date is in the Public Domain, here is a copy of the film on Youtube.
Throughout the previous semester, I had one particularly interesting class: Intro to Film. In essence, Wednesdays would be spent setting up a particular movement, and almost without exception, I would be supplementing his information, and I would sit next to some guy whose enthusiasm was matched only by his utter lack of knowledge of the medium's history pre-Karate Kid. Fridays would be spent discussing the film in more detail. By the end of the class, we had to rank each film we saw on a scale of 0-10. All but one film ended up watched ended up with a score above 6.0. The one that didn't was Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth. There's several reasons for this, and I will divide the reasons into innate and environmental problems.
Environmental problems:
*There were only two films we ended up watching on Friday. Since Friday classes and the film were approximately the same length, there wasn't much of a discussion.
*The room was designed differently, and thus, the likelihood that somebody's heads were covering up the subtitles (and the film was a silent, no less) was much higher.
*Seriously, subtitles in a film where the dialogue is communicated through intertitles? If Kino can try to replicate the stylised intertitles of Metropolis, they can at least translate the nondescript ones used in Earth.
*The DVD's print was taken from 1971. The film was heavily reliant on visuals, so, in essence, Kino, who released the film on R1 DVD screwed up. Amazingly, a British Distributor (Mr. Bongo) has managed to put out a version on DVD that looked much better. That said, I haven't seen that version, but at least I'd not be able to ask "What the hell am I looking at?" as often as I was. I shouldn't have to question whether I'm looking at a wheat field or not.
Innate Problems:
*Soviet Montage is a hard movement to find an accessible entry point for; of the three major features, Battleship Potemkin gets dull at points, Man With the Movie Camera hasn't much of a plot, and Earth is... well... Earth.
*Its pacing is bizarre. The opening scene is very slowly paced, consisting of two title cards, shots of a man slowly dying (presumably to symbolise the death of the Tsarist way of life), and shots of what I can only assume to be fields. By the end, there are no less than five scenes being intercut, and while some of them make sense (particularly the one of the priest trying in vain to get God to stop a non-church-based funeral), some of them are completely nonsensical (like a man putting his head to a sand dune and running about in a circle). The juxtaposition makes no sense, and I even said as such when I had to write a report. Apparently, it was supposed to spur people into action.
*The plot is almost impossible to follow. I had to look up several plot summaries of the film before I had to figure out what was supposed to be going on (apparently the man running about in a circle was in guilt over murdering his brother. I suppose Raskolnikov only got off as long as he did because Porfiry never saw him doing that), and sometimes what I was supposed to be looking at. Once again, if I have to look up summaries to be able to recognise a wheat field, something is very, very wrong.
Here's hoping that I can get back to doing two posts a month.
Also, according to my Dashboard, I apparently have a follower: Enrrique (apparently he has two r's in his name) Perez. If his profile is correct, he is apparently from Duarte in the Dominican Republic. According to the one post he's made that I had to translate with Babelfish because I don't speak Spanish, He apparently thinks all politicians are equally bad, and with the last two years in mind, I can't say I blame him. Here's hoping we can actually come into some sort of contact (preferrably in English)
Links: Because every Soviet film made before a certain date is in the Public Domain, here is a copy of the film on Youtube.
posted by DerekAxe at 5:56 PM
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