TODAY’S BEST BET: On the Sunny Side o’ the Kolkhoz Кубанские казаки/Cossacks of the Kuban (USSR. Mosfilm, 1949)(Dom Kino, 06:05) -- > Is there a reason to watch a Stalinist musical comedy? And if there is, at least theoretically, will you still be overcome by an urge to hurl the nearest heavy object at your TV screen 20 min. into it? Deep breaths, people. My advice – and remember, I’m a professional – is two-fold: (1) Yes, you should watch this classic, iconic late-totalitarian fun-on-the-collective-farm reality-mocking romantic epic – for what it tells you about its era (which is a great deal), for its value as a technical achievement and for, well, the actual entertainment (in particular the songs). But ahem: (2) Watch it on your *old* TV – yeah, the big boxy one you still haven’t hauled off to the dacha after getting your flatscreen – just to be safe. A few creepy historical details: the film’s working title was Весёлая ярмарка/The Happy Market Fair, but upon screening the (first) final version, Stalin (a) rechristened it the above and (b) uttered the infamous phrase – equally frightening whether taken as irony, cynicism or simply Grand Delusion – “So things on the agriculture front are pretty good after all”(“А всё-таки неплохо у нас обстоит с сельским хозяйством”). To which everybody in the room doubtless replied “Right, chief!” But to cases. One of the first Soviet color productions (shot on film from the Shostkinskii kombinat), “Cossacks” is an eyeful, certainly, with the collective farm market that figures as its centerpiece looking like nothing less than an astonishing Horn of Plenty. That such earthly riches represented pure fantasy in the hardscrabble, impoverished Soviet countryside of 1949 was self-evident – sufficiently so, in fact, as to render Nikita Khrushchev’s criticism of the film 7 years hence (“covering reality with a coat of lacquer”) an understatement that amounted to marveling at the obvious. Reality was never the point – but one can see, nevertheless, why NK decided to pull “Cossacks” from circulation. When it was re-released in 1968 after “restoration” – a nicely Orwellian term for this *second* round of Soviet censorship – the movie had been re-cut to suit post-Stalin sensibilities, with references/connections to the Cult of Personality dropped and various dialogue refashioned. This “restored” version is what you see on TV and video here, for better or worse; I’d guess worse, actually, and one Russian cinema source evidently agrees w/ me, neatly and eerily summing up the fate of the film that director Ivan Pyrev actually made: “The original version of the picture has not yet returned to the contemporary viewer.” It probably never will. In the meantime, Isaak Dunaevsky’s great score and upbeat songs remain very real cultural heritage – and continue to enjoy genuine popularity today, insofar as that can be determined along the immeasurable byways of national nostalgia. The romantic plot of the film, moreover – whose “conflict” pits good against better – is so resolutely other-worldly as to offer faint impediment to one’s mind-on-hold viewing pleasure. “Cossacks” can infuriate people, of course – especially those who themselves recall 1949 from the standpoint of rural disaster victims – but that doesn’t make the film less expertly crafted or historically symbolic. If Leni Riefenstahl’s Third Reich epics are worth watching and learning from, so is this – and this has catchy songs! https://youtube/watch?v=L5qoPRyvPOU&list=TLq8ku5NWUQZA
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 03:05:21 +0000