Early Russian Cinema, Vol. 3: Starewicz's Fantasies; Early Russian Cinema, Vol. 7: Evgenii Bauer

The raising of the Iron Curtain continues to bring new discoveries to the West, and the latest is a smorgasbord of early Russian films produced between 1910-1918. Here offered on 10 volumes, the series contains some 28 films in all. We watched two of the tapes. Starewicz's Fantasies, featuring three shorts by puppet animation wizard Wladislaw Starewicz, opens with "The Dragonfly and the Ant" an insect fable featuring stop-motion puppet animation that is quite impressive for its day (although some of the subtitled translations don't make perfect sense). This is followed by "Christmas Eve," an elaborate fantasy featuring a broom-stick riding Devil who steals the moon, adapted from a tale by Gogol. The last piece, "The Lily of Belgium," is a propaganda short, again featuring insect animation, made to support the war effort. The other volume, Evgenii Bauer, offers a pair of social melodramas and a farce, led off by "A Child of the Big City"--the story of a waif named Marya, who emigrates to the big city following the death of her mother. Shortening her name to Mary, she hooks up with Victor--an excellent social catch--and eventually sinks so far into the lap of luxury that she loses her moral bearings, and becomes a profligate spender and flirt. Eventually, she leaves Victor who, brokenhearted, takes his own life. The second short, "The 1002nd Ruse," is a one-joke low-key peephole comedy, in which an elderly husband studies ways to catch his young wife's eye, while the wife plans to cuckold the husband. The last story, "Daydreams," is a fairly clever piece about a husband who obsesses over the death of his wife until he finds a new woman, whom he struggles to turn into the resurrected image of his dead wife. While impressive on one level (as a gauge of just how far Russian cinema had come in the early years of this century), the Early Russian Cinema series is unlikely to find much of an audience among the general populace. These are not the mature works of a filmmaker like Eisenstein; they are the experimental gropings of early pioneers who are trying to create a language of cinema. As such, film buffs will be interested in seeing these--but general modern audiences will have little interest and less patience for these early pieces. Libraries with large cinema collections will want to consider; others may skip. [Note: the 10-volume set, if purchased as a whole, runs $250.] (Available from: Milestone Film & Video, 275 West 96th St., New York, NY 10025; (212) 865-7449.)