Aleksandr Dovzhenko

[blindside8zao]

Just finished reading the small section written on him in a book I'm reading and was wondering if he's worth checking out? Does anyone have any opinions on his first three works? Arsenal, Earth, and the first one, I think it's Zhenigora or something like that? I saw that amazon had aresenal and earth but I did not see the other.

Reading about his films just makes it sound good, like a someone doing something completely different than people like Pudovkin and Eisenstein. The book, Cook's History of Narrative Cinema, made his films sound like very joyful and exciting viewing when compared to the other films about the revolution (not to bash them, I've enjoyed the few I"ve seen there too.)

[dspector]

I can't speak for the transfers available - but I have seen Zvenigora, Arsenal, Earth and two of the sound films. He is completely unlike Pudovkin and Eisenstein - a heavy amount of strange imagery and equally strange events (a horse hooked up to a plow turns to the peasant who's whipping him and says, "It's not me you're mad at, old man"). Dovzhenko used to be automatically mentioned in the same breath as Eisenstein and Pudovkin - like the Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi triad - but he is now very less well known. If you have a chance to see the silent films, do so - though my understanding is what is available through lmage is not very good - I am thinking here of Earth. Good luck!

[tryavna]

Yes, Dovzhenko is definitely worth checking out. As dspector points out, he really doesn't share much in common with either Pudovkin or Eisenstein. By far, Dovzhenko was the most idiomatic. Indeed, he was trying to revolutionize the way we think of narrative itself. So he gives us all sorts of odd juxtapositions and, occasionally, long static shots. (Tarkovsky must have been extremely familiar with Dovzhenko's work.)

If you're searching for good DVDs, then I'm afraid that there's only one that I can highly recommend: Image's release of Arsenal, which has a decent transfer and a nice scholarly commentary that helps place the film in its proper context. Unfortunately, as dspector says, the Kino and Image releases of Earth are atrocious. (They're both from the same print, which needs extensive restoration and TLC.) But don't let that put you off watching it. I'd just recommend a rental for Earth. Arsenal, however, is worth buying -- and you'll probably want to watch it multiple times in order to understand it. (I did.)

[blindside8zao]

sounds good. I'm all for tarkovsky and the strange. And I need to see more old Soviet films than just Eisenstein. Disasapointed to hear that about Earth, though, as it was written up as the best of the three in the book. Wonder if Criterion would ever consider digging him up?

[zedz]

(Tarkovsky must have been extremely familiar with Dovzhenko's work.)

I wonder if it's accurate to say that Dovzhenko remained far more alive in the Soviet filmmaking tradition throughout the 20th century than his contemporaries. Earth, at least to me, seems the key film of a tradition that extends through Tarkovsky to Sokhurov, and I also see quite a bit of Dovzhenko in Paradzhanov and other Georgian filmmakers (Ioselliani, Abuladze) - though there's a dollop of Ivan-era Eisensteinian theatricality there as well. The intensive montage of twenties Eisenstein and Vertov, on the other hand, seems to have been pretty effectively rooted out, with the odd exception (Kalatozov in his more manic moments, for example).

[tryavna]

I didn't know that Mosfilm had restored Dovzhenko's films in the 1970s, though I know that they revisited Pudovkin in the late 1960s (and I must say that the new scores added then for his films are less than brilliant). I share your desire that some enterprising label would take greater interest in Soviet cinema, period. I've become increasingly fascinated by these movies during the past couple of years. I'm glad we have Ruscico and Blackhawk Films, but they can only do so much.

[HerrSchreck]

Just finished reading the small section written on him in a book I'm reading and was wondering if he's worth checking out? Does anyone have any opinions on his first three works? Arsenal, Earth, and the first one, I think it's Zhenigora or something like that? I saw that amazon had aresenal and earth but I did not see the other.


Reading about his films just makes it sound good, like a someone doing something completely different than people like Pudovkin and Eisenstein. The book, Cook's History of Narrative Cinema, made his films sound like very joyful and exciting viewing when compared to the other films about the revolution (not to bash them, I've enjoyed the few I"ve seen there too.)

Can't believe I overlooked this little thread.

Two words: Daniel Demyutsky. Lord have mercy what a cinematographer.

Incredibly beautiful and extremely unique filmmaker, Dovzhenko. Always preferred his & Pudovkin's silent work (make watching V.I.P.'s END OF ST PETERSBERG a near monthly ritual) to that of Eisenstein. I always love Dovzhenko's great big skies, with towering cottony clouds dwarfing the characters beneath. Even with the well-known blasted-out copy of EARTH, with the dupey screen and defects the print inserts between the viewer and the frame, I never fail be be completely absorbed into those great open spaces. I would say also that Dovzhenko was the most avant garde of the three in Attitude. The way he caricatured humans so far into the rediculous (his background as a cartoonist-- and art in general-- is obvious), from the strange behaviors and faces and poses, to his comparisons with animals (trio of humans/cows chewing seeds/cud). Love his taste for the bizarre and obscure. His constructions required a lot of filling in of narrative blanks, which naturally elevate them even further into the zone of visual poetry.

I know that Facets has a copy of ZVENIGORA but I can't speak for it's quality.

[htdm]

I'm pretty sure they get theirs from Grapevine. The quality isn't great but it's about the only way to see this title on DVD right now.

[HerrSchreck]

Grapevine!!! I actually have few from that guy.

That is some old-fashioned silent film watchin... (sounds of slow banjo, odor of coffee in dented steel cans & smells of bacon frying in a black pan over a campfire under a railroad bridge. Here.. take my pocketknife and gimme a haircut, willya pard?)

[HerrSchreck]

Interested in seeing some masterpieces, and Pudovkin's twin in crushing the work of Sergei Eisenstein inna silent era? Then walk /run /crawl /hitchhike /fire yourself from a circus cannon into the Anthology here in NYC this weekend. ZVENIGORA, EARTH, AND ARSENAL are coming up.

Oh and Joseph Cornell retrospec. Tee fucking hee.

Brakhage too.

[mikeohhh]

Wow, this thread was bumped exactly one year later by the last person who posted in it. Almost seamless.

Doesn't say that any of these Dovzhenkos are new prints. Too bad since, as mentioned elsewhere, the DVDs look like ass. Still, seeing that + Cornell + Bruce Conner on the same page for the same week I'm thinking I need to run away to NYC.

[HerrSchreck]

Anybody else get over to see Zvenigora... and freeze to death in an icy theater?

PS: The disc for ARSENAL is clean and fresh as 16 yr old Amish pussy. At least compared to the Mosfilm EARTH on the Image & Kino discs and the probable appearance of the Grapevine ZVENIGORA.

[Roger_Thornhill]

PS: The disc for ARSENAL is clean and fresh as 16 yr old Amish pussy.

I nearly fell out of my seat laughing when I read that. I'm going to have to steal that from you and use it sometime.

Just wanted to say too that Arsenal's DVD release is very nice and well worth purchasing. I've been meaning to buy it after renting it several years ago just so I could watch it a few more times to figure out just what the hell was going on. Strange film, but I loved it. I haven't seen any of his other films unfortunately.

[HerrSchreck]

PS: The disc for ARSENAL is clean and fresh as 16 yr old Amish pussy.

I nearly fell out of my seat laughing when I read that. I'm going to have to steal that from you and use it sometime.

Just wanted to say too that Arsenal's DVD release is very nice and well worth purchasing. I've been meaning to buy it after renting it several years ago just so I could watch it a few more times to figure out just what the hell was going on. Strange film, but I loved it. I haven't seen any of his other films unfortunately.

The commentary on the disc goes a long way to filling in the blanks of Dovzhenko's gloriously abstract, cartoonish strangeness.

[markhax]

Has anyone else seen the ARTE DVD edition of Earth (Erde)? I had resigned myself to never seeing it better than the Image edition, but this one has been cleaned up beautifully, with wonderful contrast and detail. The subtitles are only in German, but if you already have the Image, you know what's going on.

I am not getting rid of the Image DVD though because of the reconstruction of Eisenstein's Bezhin Meadow.

[Tommaso]

We discussed the arte disc before, in the "Silent Films" thread, I believe. One question remained open: as the arte disc seems to be some minutes LONGER although it is PAL, are there any additional scenes/footage in the arte version ? I don't have the Image disc, so did you notice any difference to it ? Perhaps it's just a frame rate thing...
And yes, the arte disc looks very great, though the print is still in deplorable condition. If that has already been cleaned up, hell, I don't want to see the Image....

"Bezhin Meadow", btw, is also on the CC Eisenstein set.

[MichaelB]

It's far from his best, but anyone who wants a free introduction to Dovzhenko could do a lot worse than download his 1935 film Aerograd from Archive.org.

Other directors who remind me of Dovzhenko are Sergo Paradjanov (at least around the time of Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors, a more or less explicit tribute) and the Taviani brothers from roughly 1977-84 (i.e. Padre padrone, The Night of the Shooting Stars and Kaos). I suspect they'd all appreciate the comparison.

[bollibasher]

One question remained open: as the arte disc seems to be some minutes LONGER although it is PAL, are there any additional scenes/footage in the arte version ? I don't have the Image disc, so did you notice any difference to it ? Perhaps it's just a frame rate thing...

I was thinking while watching the Image disc that it's almost certainly played too fast. It seems likely to be some sort of 18fps/24fps discrepancy since the only restored version of the film as far as I know is the Mosfilm 70s one. If anyone has any more information on this resto, I'd be very interested to read it...

A question re: the Arte edition - are all the subs removable with original language intertitles? Because on the Image disc some of them are burnt in as full screen intertitles supposedly because there's too much to say to subtitle it.

xx

[Tommaso]

Thanks for the info, I assumed the Image was running too fast, as the 'resto' on the arte is apparently still the 1971 version. So no new footage, but the correct speed makes the arte the definitive release, then.
I honestly never tried to play the arte without subs, but I'm pretty sure -judging from all the other arte discs I have - that all subs are completely removable.

[bollibasher]

Ok, I've been looking into this a bit more. It seems that the running time on both DVD releases is way off the mark. The original release of Earth before censorship was 5670ft (94 minutes at 16 frames/second). There are many other versions, but the 1970s restoration is 5580ft (93 minutes at 16 frames/second).

According to John Raymond Uzwyshyn:

In the nineties a North American video release version (KINO Red Silents) appeared, which claimed to be copied from an earlier uncensored version of Earth but, in actuality, drew on the Russian 'Khrushchev thaw' reconstruction. [footnote:] Projecting the speed at the incorrect 24 frames per second in its video dubbing instead of 16 frames per second, the closer silent film speed, the KINO video release version reduces Dovzhenko’s originally 94 minute film to 73 minutes. Because of Earth’s concern with stasis and motion, this speeding up does violence to Dovzhenko’s rhythm. Dovzhenko’s original conception of the film was predicated on a lyric static, painterly aesthetic. In the original conception, little moves.

Presumably (as noted above) Image's DVD derives from Kino's 90s release. I'm not sure how Image's version is 70 mins and Arte's is 78 minutes though. Either way they are definitely run too fast. As an addendum, Grapevine's edition is 87 minutes long...

[Tommaso]

Truly interesting; the 79 min. of the arte disc include PAL speed-up. I'm a bad calculator, but in NTSC speed it would probably run 84 min. or something. I haven't seen the Grapevine, but should it have English intertitles, the three minutes difference might just come from these being a bit longer on screen than the original Russian titles (pure speculation).

I find the motion in the arte completely natural (I suspect 20 fps), and I have my doubts that 16 fps would be correct. The film was made in 1930, and at that time 16 fps would have been rather unusual. Most German silents from the later 20s run approx. at 20 fps, for instance. Now I don't know how it was in Russia at the time, but I would assume that they also didn't stick to 16fps anymore.

[bollibasher]

My Arte disc arrived today, I haven't had a chance to watch it properly yet but you're right, the action does look quite natural. I might try watching it slower on the PC or something, just to see...

Interestingly the russian intertitles are different in appearance on the German release to the Image one, indicating either that it's from a different print or that Kino re-did the titles for their 90s release. Hmm.

[denti alligator]

Has anyone seen Ivan from 1932? Any chance this will make it to video?

[HerrSchreck]

Or how about fricking Zvenigora which blew my hair back it was so awesome. This man-- light years (with Pudovkin) ahead of Eisenstein's silent-era mise en scene-- is hopelessly underrepresented on vid.

[foggy eyes]

Apologies for the banal question, but where would be the best place to order the Arte DVD of Earth?