Parky at the Pictures (DVD 26/4/2012)

Lev Kuleshov was besotted with cinema from an early age. Born in 1899, he started out as an art director and was coaxed in front of the camera by Yevgenii Bauer for the 1917 melodrama, For Happiness. Within a year, the 18 year-old was making his directorial bow with Engineer Prite's Project, which sufficiently impressed the producers of the agit-prop newsreels that he became one of their foremost directors. Once the Civil War was over, Kuleshov helped establish the VGIK film school in Moscow, where his experiments with editing proved crucial to the evolution of the montage style that became the cornerstone of Soviet silent cinematic technique.

As revealed in the 1969 Semen Raitburt documentary among the extras accompanying Engineer Prite's Project, the `Kuleshov effect' was an accidental discovery. But the realisation that juxtaposed images could have a metaphorical, as well as a literal and a dramatic meaning, transformed the way in which screen stories could be told and the manner in which complex political and philosophical ideas could be expressed. Kuleshov would later claim that his debut feature contained instances of montage. However, for the most part, this is a highly traditional picture that relies heavily on a static camera set for medium shot coverage of action that was essentially enacted in the mumming style then dominant in both Europe and Hollywood. Nevertheless, this remains an intriguing film and its sobriety contrasts markedly with the lighter tone of his silent masterpiece, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924).

Mack Prite is an American engineer who has devised a process for converting peat into fuel that is much more efficient and cost-effective than oil. He confides his scheme for a revolutionary power station when he bumps into old school friend Ham Torrynwall, although he warns him that the oil barons are not going to be pleased when they learn he can undercut them so seriously. Unbeknown to Prite, Torrynwall is sweet on Betsy Ross - whose father Orville owns 75% of the shares in the region's biggest oil company - and he falls in love with her on first sight.

Realising he has a rival for Betsy's affections, Torrynwall informs Orville Ross about the plans for the power station. Agents are sent out to kidnap Prite, but they clumsily attempt to abduct his assistant by accident and he escapes to warn Prite to be extra vigilant. However, fails to keep a close eye on the keys for the transformer and Torrynwall steals them off his desk. But the dependable assistant has a spare set and they succeed in saving the day and generating their first peat-fuelled electricity after Torrynwall attempts a dastardly act of sabotage.

Sadly, only some 30 minutes of footage has survived and the story becomes a little confusing in the frantic latter stages. Yet it is still easy to see the debt that Kuleshov owed to American cinema in both the shooting and pacing of the action, much of which takes place outdoors. There is, however, a hint of Louis Feuillade about some of the nocturnal villainy, while the influence of Russian pioneers like Bauer is evident in some of the stagier interior sequences. But, while he would later claim to have made innovative use of montage here, Kuleshov seems to be referring to what would now be called `creative geography', as he and co-editor Vera Popova-Khanshokova cut together shots photographed in different places by Mark Naletni to form a single on-screen location. Nevertheless, he directs steadily (and highly impressively for one so young) and he is ably served by a largely non-professional cast that includes Eduard Kulganek, Leonid Polevoy, N. Gardy, Yelena Komarova and Boris Kuleshov, the director's younger brother, who also wrote the scenario, whose anti-capitalist rhetoric is hardly subtle, but no more strident than the invective used in American Westerns against the railway tycoons seeking to lay track on prime grazing land.

If Kuleshov has become the forgotten man of Soviet silent cinema, Sergei Eisenstein remains its most celebrated practitioner. He briefly attended Kuleshov's workshops at VGIK and similarly owed a considerable debt to his American counterparts. Indeed, learned much about staging action and editing from DW Griffith's Intolerance (1916) before embarking upon his own first feature, Strike (1924), which was originally devised as part of an unrealised eight-part series entitled Towards Dictatorship, which was to trace the causes of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Eisenstein was fortunate to have Eduard Tissé as his cinematographer to help him achieve both the provocative expressionist angles and the geometric patterns of the film's 'mass hero', as well as the locational realism that was key to the visual potency of what Eisenstein deemed 'kino fist', in answer to Dziga-Vertov's Kino Eye newsreel style. But the film's true power came from its abrasive brand of montage, which combined the influence of Japanese pictographs and the Marxist dialectic to produce colliding images whose conscious juxtaposition conveyed complex and abstract ideas of a political, social and dramatic nature.

The story matters less than the aesthetic and propagandist effect, but it is worth noting for its reliance on the clichés and caricatures that would be readily recognisable to the still largely uneducated domestic audience. It takes place in 1903 and centres on the exploited workers at a factory whose owners are aware of the discontent and send in spies with code-names like The Monkey, The Fox, The Owl and The Bulldog to discover the identity of the ringleaders. Yet, despite their feud with the management, the workforce is at one with its machinery, which is depicted with a typically Constructivist appreciation of its sleekness and efficiency.

However, Eisenstein also uses the images of pistons and cog wheels to suggest the propulsive momentum of the action after the workers rise up following the suicide of a comrade falsely charged with stealing a micrometer. As the workers confront the manager responsible for the accusation, windows are smashed and the foreman and a colleague are tossed into a ditch. A struggle also takes place for control of the shift whistle and a solid walkout follows its capture.

But, while a father plays happily with his son on the first morning of the action and the other kids use a goat to re-enact the foreman's wheelbarrow humiliation, the strikers meet to discuss their tactics. However, the manager and his fat cat shareholders smoke cigars and drink cocktails as they dismiss demands for an eight-hour day (six for minors), a 30% wage increase and fairer treatment. They also decide to send in the police, with a shot of a lemon squeezer being used to symbolise the crushing of the insurrection. But the workers stage a sit-in and continue to resist even though the resulting hardship causes many of the men problems at home.

Moreover, the spies are busy trying to sew seeds of dissent by forcing strikers to squeal on their comrades, while the police have forged an unholy alliance with the King of Thieves, who sets light to a neighbourhood liquor store and looks on with satisfaction as the firemen turn their hoses on the assembled crowd. But worse quickly follows, as mounted Cossacks are dispatched to the foundry and a riot breaks out when a young boy and his mother are struck by galloping hooves. The workers flee, only to be mercilessly hunted down in their rundown tenements and a child is dropped from a balcony by a sadistic policeman. The strikers are eventually corralled in a field, where they are pitilessly gunned down and Eisenstein compares their fate to the slaughter of a cow.

Some critics have stated that Strike lacks subtlety and is much less successful in its propagandist purpose than the works of Leni Riefenstahl. Indeed, even Lev Kuleshov would parody its use of typage in Kuleshov's Mr West. Yet rhetoric always mattered less than rhythm to Eisenstein and there is pure poetry as well as power in this formally audacious attempt to rouse the workers of the world into unity. The direction of the proletarian protagonist is also impressive, as Eisenstein and Tissé suggest the turning of the human tide of history. But, within a year, this landmark film would be surpassed by Battleship Potemkin (1925). For the moment, this isn't available in the Hyperkino editions produced by Ruscico, but October (1928) is.

Commissioned to mark the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, October was based on newspaper reports, Esther Shub's historic footage of events in Petrograd (as St Petersburg was known during the Great War to make it sound less Germanic) and American John Reed's book Ten Days That Shook the World. So bowdlerised was the print that it became known under this title in territories seeking to take the Communist curse off the content. But, even in the Soviet Union, Eisenstein's intentions fell foul of the shifting political situation, as the fall of Trotsky meant the virtual excision of the Menshavik contribution to the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and the delaying of the release of the completed version until March 1928.

Despite the triumph of the crowds in pulling down the statue of Alexander III in the opening sequence and the fraternisation of Russian and German troops on the Eastern Front, the February uprising proves to be a false dawn. The Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky continues the deeply unpopular and unwinnable war and, just as the peasants remain in thrall to the superstitions of the Orthodox religion, so they remain gripped by the errors and shortages that blighted the end of the Tsarist era. However, the saviour of the nation is seen boarding a train at the Finland Station in April 1917 and Lenin's arrival raises the morale of the Petrograd workers.

Unspoken divisions within the Bolshevik hierarchy prevent Lenin from making a move, however, and Kerensky continues to strut the corridors of the Winter Palace like a third-rate Napoleon. His position is considerably weakened during the July Days, which began when the militia began firing on the crowds and Eisenstein shows some complacent bourgeois mocking the banners and slogans of those fleeing the carnage. In a bid to keep the riff-raff out of the city centre, trade minister Konavalov raises the bridges and a female victim of violence plunges into the Neva along with a horse carriage. While Lenin makes plans in a simple cabin in the woods, Kerensky inhabits the rooms once occupied by the detested Tsarina Alexandra and his inability to act decisively prompts the royalist General Kornilov to launch an attack on the crowds that unites them in fury behind Lenin.

The reckless folly of the `Wild Division' and the failure of negotiations with Kerensky, the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries convince the Bolshevik leader that the time has come to seize power. Eisenstein had planned to shoot scenes of garrisons mutinying in the aftermath of the Kornilov offensive, but he had to content himself to shots of the workers arming themselves and Lenin informing the Second Soviet Congress that insurrection would occur on 25 October. As dawn breaks, marines from the cruiser Aurora come ashore and the Cossacks refuse direct orders from the dejected war minister. The bridges are lowered and telephone lines are cut to allow the takeover of the city, which begins almost as soon as Kerensky's pseudo-comic flight and Eisenstein succumbs to another cheap gag as he presents the unprepossessing Stankevich beneath a statue of Adonis as the Women's Battalion of Death lead the storming of the Winter Palace.

Key positions around Petrograd are occupied with an efficiency that is symbolised by the dynamism of Antonov-Ovseenko, which contrasts starkly with the inefficacy of the Provisional Government. As the red guards advance, Lenin wins the argument at the Congress and ordinary citizens deride the fleeing dignitaries who had betrayed them with their misuse of authority. But the ease with which the Bolsheviks seize power robs the final third of the film of any real dramatic tension. Victory is achieved too easily and the capitulation of the bourgeoisie and the remnants of the aristocracy presages the instant forging of a worker-peasant unity that would have struck anyone who had lived through the ensuing decade as simplistic propaganda (which perhaps explains the presence of the small boy as Eisenstein's alter ego and his excuse for forgiving the looting of the wine cellars by a mob more envious than enlightened).

The film's reception was decidedly mixed. Keen to extol the aesthetic virtues of the country's leading film-maker, the critics marvelled at his use of `intellectual montage' to give juxtaposed images a politico-philosophical subtext. However, many of the same reviews also denounced Eisenstein for making a picture intended to celebrate the rise of the masses that was too complicated for the less-educated proletarian members of the audience to understand. Thus, it was deemed sensible for Eisenstein to take a sabbatical and he was dispatched on a supposed fact-finding tour of France and America to learn about new techniques and the latest sound-recording equipment. By the time he returned to resume work on The General Line (following a lengthy sojourn in Mexico), he had lost both creative momentum and his privileged status among the cinematic elite. He didn't finish another feature until Alexander Nevsky in 1938 and only completed one more, Ivan the Terrible (1944), before his death in 1948.

Eisenstein considered October to be `the first embryonic step towards a totally new form of film expression'. However, in his bid to create a new intellectual form of cinema, he failed to take into account that those unfamiliar with the events of 1917 would struggle to follow the broad sweep taken by the action, while many of those who had lived through the tumultuous times would be perplexed by the intricate structuring and often subtly subversive metaphors. As an adherent of the concept of `kino fist', Eisenstein despised the concept of passive spectatorship and insisted that making and viewing a film had to be a conflictual experience. Thus, October can only be properly understood as a passionate piece of dialectical rhetoric, whose content and form are indivisible and whose internal battle between thesis, antithesis and synthesis makes for both a thrilling spectacle and an onerous intellectual challenge.

Recumbent stone lions rousing themselves to roar might have epitomised Eisenstein's approach to image-making, but such exhilarating artistry was regarded with deep suspicion by the Kremlin and a new, restrained form of Socialist Realism had been devised by the time Lev Kuleshov came to make his second sound film, The Great Consoler, in 1933. Despite the freezing of relations between Stalin's increasingly totalitarian regime and the West, Kuleshov continued to exhibit his fascination with all things American (which had also informed Mr West and By the Law, his 1926 Jack London adaptation about the rising tensions in a Yukon gold prospectors' cabin) by basing his screenplay on studies by Al Jennings and Boris M. Eikhenbaum of the master short story writer O. Henry and two of his typically insightful tales, `A Retrieved Reformation' and `An Unfinished Story'. Consequently, Kuleshov was criticised for failing to tackle a theme relevant to Soviet audiences and for suggesting at a time of rigid adherence to official versions that there was often two sides to every story.

O. Henry was the nom de plume of bank employee William Sydney Porter, who started writing after he was jailed for embezzlement in Ohio State Penitentiary in 1898. Kuleshov takes this episode from Porter's life and uses it for the sound bookends to a silent fantasy criticising the US justice system. He regarded this as his best picture and it's telling that he equates his own situation with Porter's, as he was frequently berated for avoiding the depiction of life's harsher realities in tales that were renowned for their twists.

In the prison sequences, Porter (Konstantin Khokhlov) shares a cell with two fellow inmates (Andrei Gorchilin and Weyland Rodd), the latter of whom is black. They are carefully monitored by the governor (Vasili Kovrigin) and a pair of guards (Daniil Vvedensky and S. Sletov) who bring food and search for contraband with a scarcely veiled contempt. Insisting on his innocence, Porter has been allowed privileges by the governor since he started publishing stories under various pseudonyms. But his cellmates wonder why he doesn't use his fame to expose the harshness of the regime, especially as the warden refuses to allow a man dying of tuberculosis to be treated.

Stung by a broken promise to help his ailing friend, Porter writes `The Metamorphosis of James Valentine', in which he recasts his dying buddy as a dashing crook. As his comrades start a riot in protest at the senseless death, Porter concedes that he offers greater consolation to his readers by helping them escape from the grimmer aspects of life rather than highlighting them, although he feels guilt at his failure to denounce the cruelty he sees all around him.

Intercut with these sequences is the legend of ace safecracker Jimmy Valentine (Ivan Novoseltsev), whose mother (O. Rayevskaya) comes to see him every day of his 16-year sentence without being allowed to see him. On being released, Valentine greets his landlord (Mikhail Doronin) before going to the upstairs room where he keeps his precious tools in a well-hidden bag. Valentine does a job that will earn him enough money to make a fresh start. But Detective Ben Price (Andrei Fajt) recognises his technique and is determined to put Valentine back behind bars.

Price is a callous man, as is evident from his treatment of Dulcie (Aleksandra Khokhlova), a Henry-loving shop assistant who shares digs with the frivolous Sadie (Vera Lopatina). His pestering Dulcie leads to her being dismissed by the officious floorwalker and she contemplates sleeping with him on realising she will never find her Mr Right. But Price is also devoted to his duty and he vows to find Valentine when he slips out of town and assumes the identity of Ralph D. Spencer.

Setting up in a new state and landing himself a job in the bank run by the local bigwig Adams (Pyotr Galadzhev), Valentine seems to have turned over a new leaf. Indeed, he is even thinking of settling down with Adams's daughter, Annabel (Galina Kravchenko). But, when a young girl gets herself locked in the bank's new high-security safe, Valentine is left with no option but to use his skills to free her - even though he recognised Price among the onlookers. An act of kindness follows, but it is repaid with violence, as a dreamer finds she cannot cope with reality any longer.

Kuleshov has long been attacked for the structural gaucheness of the interweaving storylines and the stylised realism of the prison sequences and the sentimentality of the intra-narrative's finale. But he is too experienced and knowing a film-maker to make such elementary mistakes and it's hard to argue with those critics who have identified a slyly satirical strain in his approach (at the expense of both the USA and the USSR), which sought to expose the unreliability of state propaganda. Moreover, this is an audaciously experimental film, not just in its dispensing with linearity, but also Kuleshov's pioneering use of colour for parts of the Valentine story (although they aren't included here). But what is most striking is his championing of artists and their contribution to society at a time when the state was desperate to curtail their freedom of expression.

Each of these films comes with a second disc offering Hyperkino annotation. This is a text and clip variation on the traditional DVD commentary that allows users the chance to click on links that pop up on screen at various points in the action. It's a novel idea that will particularly appeal to cineastes and students, as the coverage ranges from background information to more general discussions of a director's technique and preoccupations. Such analysis is crucial to gaining a thorough appreciation of the historical context and stylistic niceties of these often difficult pictures and add a new layer of intrigue to more deceptively accessible titles like Alexander Medvedkin's Happiness (1934).

Rejoicing under the catch-all subtitle `A Tale of a Hapless Mercenary Loser, His Wife Anna, His Well-Fed Neighbour Foka and also of a Priest, a Nun and Other Old Relics', this is a paean to the peasantry that explores the vicissitudes to which they had been subjected during the transition from Tsarist tyranny to Stalinist totalitarianism. Eisenstein considered Medvedkin to be the Soviet Chaplin and he famously stated on seeing Happiness that `Today I saw how a Bolshevik laughs'. But, for all the slapstick and social satire, this is also a shrewd insight into the lot of the rural poor, with whom Medvedkin had become familiar during his time aboard the Cine Train that had travelled the length and breadth of the vast country in the 1920s making and screening educational and propaganda films to largely illiterate audiences in accordance with Lenin's proclamation that `for us, the cinema is the most important of all the arts'.

Doubtless Medvedkin would have come across several characters like Khmyr on his travels. He is first seen peering through a hole in the fence at his neighbour Foka and envying the surplus of food that he has stored away in his larder. Khmyr's father is equally covetous and perishes in a foolish nocturnal attempt to break into Foka's house. Following the funeral, which is paused by the Orthodox priest to ensure he is paid, Khmyr's wife Anna orders him to go in search of happiness, as he is clearly not enjoying life and getting in the way of her best attempts to make do.

Leaving with some reluctance, as he would rather idle away his time at home than actively seek to improve himself, Khmyr strolls through the countryside with no sense of direction. However, he chances upon a wallet that has fallen onto a bridge from the pocket of a fat merchant and picks it up, unaware that a priest and a nun have fallen into the river while fighting over it. He uses the cash he finds inside to buy a polka-dot horse and returns to Anna with a vague idea that things can only improve. But the horse proves to be as lazy as its new owner and Anna is not only forced to fetch it down from grazing on their thatched roof, but she also has to disconnect it from the plough and attach the heavy harness to herself to till the rocky soil on their precipitous piece of land.

Anna's efforts are rewarded, however, as she produces a bumper harvest. But any hope the couple has of enjoying the fruits of her labour are soon dashed, as a priest comes to demand his tithe, while a government inspector arrives with a tax demand that leaves Khmyr feeling suicidal and he starts building his own coffin. However, he is arrested for depriving the state of a potential worker and is led away by a battalion of soldiers wearing identical masks. A caption informs us that he is gone for 33 years, during which time he fought in various wars and was killed seven times. Undeterred, Khmyr returns home to find that much has changed, as the 1917 Revolution has brought the Communists to power, along with their notions of collective farming.

Unsurprisingly, Khmyr doesn't take to life on the kolkhoz and makes a right mess of the simple task of driving a water truck to the fields. He even fails at the simple task of guarding a storehouse and embarks on a madcap pursuit to prevent thieves getting away with their ill-gotten gains. By contrast, Anna is thriving under the new regime and bestrides her tractor like a Stakhanovite goddess. She returns home after another fulfilling day with her share of the communal proceeds and stores her largesse with considerable pride.

However, Foka bitterly resents losing his kulak status and vows to sabotage the farm. He identifies Khmyr as a weak link in the collective chain and tries to enlist him to his cause. But, when Foka tries to burn down the stables, Khmyr becomes an unlikely hero by risking his life to rescue the horses. Thus, he has finally become a valuable member of society and, at last, he has found the key to happiness.

Despite the warmth of the initial reception, Medvedkin's film was quickly identified as a dangerous satire on collectivisation and the Five-Year Plan and was promptly banned. Stalin seems to have taken the director's contribution to the Cine Train project into account in deciding against sending him to a gulag. But Medvedkin's later films were markedly less contentious, with The Miracle Worker, his 1936 musical comedy set on a dairy farm, being much more positive in its assessment of Stalinist agricultural policies.

The French documentarist Chris Marker (who would later lionise Medvedkin in both The Train Rolls On, 1971, and The Last Bolshevik, 1992) rediscovered the film in the early 1970s and did much to boost its reputation. Despite being photographed by Gleb Troianskii in the poetic pastoral style devised by Dovzhenko, Aleksei Utkin's production design is full of sly visual gags, including the dehumanising masks sported by the arresting soldiers and the transparent habits worn by nun Lidiya Nenasheva. As Khymr and Anna, Pyotr Zinovyev and Yelena Yegorova ably lead an ensemble that includes Mikhail Gipsi and the great Nikolai Cherkasov. But what sets this apart is the courage of Medvedkin, who dared to make a comedy about ownership and the impossible dream of communal living at the very time when Stalin was prepared to liquidate those who frustrated or opposed his will.