Page 112 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

and its inherent relation to the tragic history of the nation. The exposure of pure evil, hidden behind
the banners of freedom, is illuminated by Kovalov's masterful deconstruction of the national myth
through classical works of early Russian and Soviet cinema.
The collage aesthetics of images and sounds relies on the postmodern interplay of alienation
and identification, creating a cathartic effect of releasing memories - both uncanny and beguiling
- from beneath the waters of the collective unconscious. As the film progresses, the ghost of 'the
city on the marshes' and its celebrities is conjured up, but the serenity of scenes, featuring pastoral
walks and afternoon teas, recreational army exercises, casual snapshots of the Emperor's family, and
school parties of cute girls and boys, is undermined by a growing sense of foreboding, emphasised
by gathering clouds. Combined in seamless sequences in the tradition of the Soviet montage, these
images clash with the mounting chaos in the streets, on the front, in the villages. The expressive
soundtrack, featuring nostalgic period chansons, dramatic opera and symphonic pieces as well as
arrogantly ironic musical burlesques, triggers yet another level of associations, leaving the imagination
to act on a few hints from the inter-titles.
The close-ups on Kholodnaya's melancholic face ('My eyes are my bread!') and the fleeting
images of her fellow-artists convey the rising terror of entrapment. In the context of pending
disaster, epitomised by images of Protazanov's Aelita, the scenes featuring Kholodnaya, the poet
Mayakovsky and his muse, Lilly Brick, theatre director Meyerhold, prima-ballerina Anna Pavlova
lose their original melodramatic vaunt and acquire the numinosity of fables about martyrs. 'The
difference between Terror and Horror,' we are told, 'is the difference between awful apprehension and
sickening realisation: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.'2'' Thus the Martian
princess Aelita, in her pompous art nouveau attire, is a belligerent symbol of the revolutionary, albeit
doomed 'art of the future'. She also emerges as a formidable Goddess of Terror, conveying the 'awful
apprehension' of war and the two ensuing revolutions.
The terror spills into horror with a close-up on Aelita solemnly clutching her fist, followed by
a zoom-in on a flag, silently waving its Long Live the Red Terror inscription, inter-cut with scenes
of the infamous Battleship Aurora sailors making merry on a fairground (Battleship Potemkin). The
climactic sequence, a 'cruder presentation of the macabre by an exact portrayal of the physically
horrible and revolting'30 quickens its pace, resembling a truly diabolical St. Vitus' dance. Pieced
together from virtually unknown documentary footage, the narrative literally 'stumbles against
corpses'. A scene of a cheering mob chasing a 'class enemy' to strip him of his clothes in a manner
most humiliating is followed by a shot of a woman stupefied with horror, sitting among scattered
corpses of children and adults, and instinctively pulling on her torn dress to cover the evidence of a
recent assault. Images of a crowd wildly singing and dancing are juxtaposed with a panoramic shot
of grief-stricken refugees, crammed on board a ship, steaming away in haste. The last we see of them
is a man trying to jump overboard at the sight of the vanishing shores. The sequence closes with
the haunting image of a little girl with surreally big eyes sticking out amongst a bunch of horribly
famished children.
The montage rhythm is slowed down by scenes from rarely seen newsreels of Kholodnaya's
funeral. Her untimely death from the Spanish influenza in February 1919 at the age of 26 triggered
a mass outpouring of grief in Odessa. Kovalov constructs this sequence as a nostalgic lament for the

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