Just Imagine

Maureen O'Sullivan and John Garrick

David Butler's Just Imagine is a justly neglected science fiction film from 1930.  The film is set in the far off future of 1980 in a world in which planes are the primary vehicles and numbers have replaced names. Marriage is dictated by the state which provides what little plot the film has. Lovebirds Maureen O'Sullivan (as LN-18) and John Garrick (as J-21) can't get a marriage license from the Politburo, so Garrick flies off to Mars to earn enough brownie points to wed his lady love. There, he encounters a planet of doppelgängers who alternately coddle and bruise him. There is also a refugee from 1930, played by vaudeville star El Johnson who specialized in ethnic (Swedish) humor, who is monikered 0 and serves no real purpose except to provide comic relief. Oh, as if things weren't bonky enough, there are musical numbers.

Joyzelle Joyner and John Garrick on Mars

The picture has the searing impact of a burlesque revue with jokes about the Volstead act included. The sets and costumes are endearingly gaga. The men's suits in the film's 1980 resemble maitre d's outfits at a French restaurant in Vegas. The tony dwellings of 1980 resemble the Art Deco look of the 20s and early 30s. Butler is a curiously lightweight director who was able to carve out a steady career in Hollywood despite helming a number of disasters like this one. He is able to create a few bold and startling images, Ms. O'Sullivan in close-up superimposed upon the surface of the earth or a passel of nekkid chorines (Pre-Code, baby) shimmying before their pagan idol, but the film doesn't really hold together. It resembles a night of vaudeville, alternating between comic and musical numbers. Neither Garrick nor Johnson were able to make much of an impact in their film careers and soon returned to the stage. I've never seen Ms. O'Sullivan look more beautiful, but she, like Garrick, gives a largely inane and callow performance. The second bananas, Marjorie White and Frank Albertson, fare much better. Ms. White was to die prematurely and tragically of an auto accident in 1935.

I would have enjoyed the film more if the songs had been better. The team of Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson were responsible for both the songs and the flimsy screenplay. They wrote some classic songs, like Bye Bye Blackbird, Has Anybody Seen My Gal ? and You're the Cream in My Coffee, but inspiration was lacking on this one. Most of the songs are light ballads designed for Garrick's tenor voice. They seem like knock-offs of the work of Sigmund Romberg, known for operettas like The Desert Song and The New Moon. Indeed, the drinking song in Just Imagine seems like a direct rip from the drinking song in Romberg's The Student Prince. Only the White and Albertson number, Never Swat a Fly, has any razzmatazz. Just Imagine is streaming on Tubi, if you are in the mood for a real Hollywood hallucination.

      

Father Sergius

                       

I cannot recommend the print of Father Sergius (Otets Sergiy) that is currently streaming on Tubi. It seems to be the product of a Soviet re-release from the 1930s. The quality is murky and the film image seems pared down. The film is certainly truncated in length, eighty minutes of a film that was originally nearly two hours, but options are limited. Mubi ran a print of similarly shortened length a few years back. There are purportedly full length versions circulating on disc, but they are of dodgy provenance.

However, the film is of both artistic and historical value and I could not pry my eyes away. The film was begun during Kerensky regime, but not released until after the Bolsheviks had consolidated their seizure of power in 1918. Tsarist law forbade the depiction of priests onscreen, so this was the first adaptation of a Tolstoi short story that had been published posthumously. There have been subsequent versions, including an adaptation by the Taviani brothers in 1990 which transposed the action to Italy. Father Sergius, the film, adheres fairly closely to the arc of the original story. We watch the title character age from a hot-tempered aristocratic soldier to an aged holy man who embraces abject humility in Siberia. The story is typical of late Tolstoi, a predictable morality play tracing one man's spiritual regeneration; a story akin to that of the Buddha. Prince Kasatsky, the future Father Sergius, is on the eve of his wedding to a well-connected Countess whom he has pined for when he finds out that she has served as the mistress of Tsar Nicholas 1. Before you can say Platon Karataev, the prince has renounced worldly desires and status and donned the robes of a priest. Through the years his devout demeanor attracts followers, as a slew of female temptresses try to snatch him from the straight and narrow. Eventually, he succumbs to the charms of one of them and abandons his church. In order to fully embrace humility, he becomes a wandering beggar which leads to exile in Siberia. Thus endeth the lesson.

Yakov Protazanov was the primary director of the project, but after he fell ill Alexandre Volkoff, who adapted the Tolstoi story for the screenplay, filled in. Whoever was responsible, the direction is sturdy, if not astonishing. Foreground and background are contrasted for some nice contrapuntal effects. Images of Sergius' betrothed are superimposed over his meagre room to show that he has not fully escaped worldly desires. There are a few rickety 45 degree pans, but they seem designed to do little except show off the sets. Whoever did the makeup seems overly fond of kohl.

The primary reason to see the film is the title role performance by Ivan Mosjoukine, the premier film actor of pre-Soviet Russia. He gives a bravura performance in which he ages from sixteen to sixty. Mosjoukine reminds me, in terms of looks and talent, of John Barrymore without the hamminess. Both Mosjoukine and Volkoff headed for exile in the West in 1920. They even collaborated on a few films in France. Mosjoukine had a brief stay in Hollywood, where he was trumpeted as the next Valentino, but the rise of the talkies cut his stay short. He will remain immortal because he was the actor Lev Kuleshov utilized to illustrate his celebrated effect.

1917: The Making of a Revolution

Maxim Gorky

I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed Stan Neumann's documentary 1917: The Making of a Revolution which is currently streaming on Tubi. I am mad keen on the Russian Revolution and will watch even the blandest collection of archival footage and talking heads. However, this doc has no newsreel footage or talking heads. It switches from expertly chosen still photographs to animation and footage of historic sites as they look in present day St. Petersburg. Neumann was born in the Czech Republic and lives in France. The 53 minutes length of this documentary makes me think that it was probably made for French television, but I could not pin this down for a fact.

The French title for the documentary gives a better idea of the scope of this film: Lénine -- Gorki, la révolution à contretemps. The film uses the polemical blasts and op-ed pieces by Lenin and Gorky to portray the dialectical push and pull of revolutionary ferment in 1917. This is not the best approach for an overview of the revolution, Trotsky is barely mentioned, but it serves well the constrictions of a film this length. What is here has great impact. The animated sections are lively, I particularly liked the breakdown of political parties in the style of Malevich's Suprematist Compositions. I also adored the use of Alexander Blok's poem The Twelve. The narrator recites passages as we glimpse Jury Annenkov's illustrations for the original edition which gives as much a flavor of 1917 in Petrograd as any period photo.

The clincher for me was the use of the great Denis Lavant to portray Gorky in his Italian exile. Lavant's passionate yet mellifluous readings of Gorky's Revolutionary era essays are beautiful. History comes alive.