Page 137 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

118 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
crowd control with the Order of the White Eagle, the governor is tormented by his
bad conscience, and his struggle to come to terms with his deed is the crux of this
psychological drama. The corollary to the governor’s angst is that of the governess-
cum-revolutionary (Anna Sten), who cannot bring herself to assassinate the
governor, although she is convinced that it would be just retribution for the
massacre.
The American critic Dwight MacDonald admired the film enormously, going so
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far as to call Kachalov’s performance ‘the high-water mark of movie acting’ , but
his opinion was assuredly not shared by his Soviet contemporaries, at least by
those who went on record about the film. The White Eagle was castigated by
critics from different points on the cultural-political spectrum for humanising the
‘class enemy’, for being only superficially revolutionary, for being boring (‘like a
prison sentence’ to watch), and for making a direct appeal to the petty-bourgeois
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viewer. It was regularly used as a stick with which to beat Mezhrabpom. 61
And yet, despite all this, in the darkest days of the Cultural Revolution
Protazanov not only avoided a sustained personal attack (a major achieve ment in
itself), but he continued to work. No doubt his resolute silence on the burning
questions of the decade (regardless of his motivations) served him well. Since he
had neither written nor said anything, nothing could be held against him except his
movies. While, as we have seen, there was much that the new ‘proletarian’ critics
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(who eventually took over the cinema press) found to dislike in these films, no
one had ever charged Protazanov with the crime of technical innovation. It was the
‘Formalists’–the code word for youthful avant-garde directors–who were the chief
targets of the Cultural Revolution in cinema. 63
Given the political climate, Protazanov’s final two silent films, Ranks and People
[1929] and The Feast of St Jorgen [1930], are understandably cautious. Ranks and
People, based on three stories by Chekhov (the alternative title was A Chekhovian
Film Almanac), represents Protazanov’s return to Russian classics as a source for
his films for the first time since Father Sergius. The vignettes stay very close to the
stories on which they were based: ‘The Order of St Anne’ [Anna na shee], ‘Death
of a Bureaucrat’ [Smert’ chinovnika] and ‘Chameleon’ [Khameleon]. Apart from
some fine acting–Ivan Moskvin as the hapless chinovnik whose sneeze leads to
his death and Maria Strelkova as the unhappy young woman in a loveless
marriage–nothing would indicate to the uninitiated viewer that this film was the work
of a major director. Indeed, the mise-en-scène is so unimaginative that it seemed
Protazanov had lost his zest for movie-making.
The Feast of St Jorgen, an anti-religious comedy, is much livelier, which is not
surprising considering its stars, Anatoli Ktorov and the irrepressible Igor Ilyinsky,
who play two escaped convicts masquerading as nuns on a pilgrimage. Ktorov, in
a variation of his role as Cascarillia in The Three Millions Trial, is an ‘international
thief’ by the name of Corcoran who seizes the unexpected opportunity to claim the
pretty ‘bride’ (Mariya Strelkova) who each year is chosen for the saint on his feast
day. Corcoran sheds his habit and ‘appears’ to the worshipful throng as the saint.
The Feast of St Jorgen displays a lighter touch than many films that were part of