Gone With the Wind (1939)

1939 seems to be the year that films got colourful.  There had been excursions away from monochrome as early as 1903, but suddenly, in the last year of the thirties, we had 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Wizard of Oz' and many lesser-remembered pictures, and it seemed that nothing would ever be the same again.  Alas, global war appears to have caused a relapse into black-and-white, and colour didn't really dominate until the big films of the fifties, and then practically all films from the mid-sixties onward.

1939 is also the year I missed, in my attempts to watch films from every year.  I rather liked the idea of leaving the project frustratingly incomplete, and made no real attempt to rectify the omission.  Eventually, a month after the Penciltonian officially ended, Saskia reminded me that there was a copy of 'Gone With the Wind' in the house; I'd sought it out after our American cousin Cassandra had seen the film and found herself surprised at how enjoyable it was.  It's easy to be daunted by classics, and the famously famous don't always deserve their reputation.

Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) and Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh)

The film, if you don't know, is a great American epic, and a romance of sorts.  It regards Scarlett O'Hara, an excellently self-absorbed Southerner, who has to survive the American Civil War (which is to say, the period of time shortly before the era most Westerns are set in.  Lincoln was on the throne, and his Northern states fought the Southern, partly because of slavery).  It's sometimes classed with 'Ben-Hur' (1959) as an 'Intimate Epic', perhaps because its scope is vast and vistas magnificent, but its focus intensely personal: it matters more what happens to our heroes than whether their country prospers or falls.

It is, as Cassandra noted, an extremely engaging film.  Scarlett is immediately likeable, a young woman too selfish to be dull.  She's wilfully ignorant of the dreary talk of a coming war, and she refuses to submit to social obligations, preferring to dance than mourn, and glad to marry people she doesn't love purely to spite those that she does.  Her story is exciting, surprising and colourful, and holds the attention very well for three hours (though after that, I begun to hope the resolution would come along).

Scarlett O'Hara, agitated and sultry.

It's a very handsome picture of America, at least in its visuals.  Other than the aspect ratio (widescreen being more than a decade away from popularity at this point) there's really nothing here to tell us that this was made in the 1930s.  Morally it's rather less appealing.  We're not really meant to agree with Scarlett's extreme measures, nor with those from the cruelly charming Rhett Butler who joins her in a complicated romance.  We are, however, expected to admire the American South, and its age of chivalry and slavery.  A slide at the film's start explicitly mentions slave-ownership as a positive part of the Sourthern States' history, and black characters in the film conform to and reinforce a number of stereotypes.  Hattie McDaniel deserves much credit for her performance as Mammie - a crude character played with an amazingly enjoyable gusto that quite rightly merited an Oscar.  Less commendable is Butterfly McQueen's Prissy, a submissive and incompetent character played with so much excitement as to bring to mind that more recent symbol of racism, Jar Jar Binks.

It's a troublesome movie, in some ways a successor to 'Birth of a Nation' (1915), that other huge tale of the American South.  It's not a good film to find yourself compared to.  'Gone With the Wind' is far more entertaining and enjoyable, which might make it the more dangerous of the two.

Hattie McDaniel as Mammie.

With 'Gone With the Wind' behind us, it seems the work of The Penciltonian, this century of cinema, can truly end.  The full list of films covered can be found here, and I think it makes a good place to start and to finish.

I suppose I ought to find some 2014 film to comment on, since the new year is now underway, but then what?  I'm giving some thought to repurposing the blog or (if the concept is different) starting a brand new one.  Not another obsessive catalogue or box-ticking exercise, but something new.  I'd be happy to hear any ideas you may have, even very terrible ones.

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All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

I'm rather wary of war films.  As part of my job I visit elderly people in their homes, and I've known a couple of them to spend their entire lives sitting before the television, watching war-film after war-film.  They wake in the morning, put on a war adventure channel, and watch it until bed-time, every day until they die.  It's one way to spend retirement, I guess, but one of them shouts and screams death-threats at the films' villains, 'bloody Japs', 'we're gonna kill ya', and so on, and many phrases far too coarse or murderously racist for me to reproduce in the pages of The Penciltonian.  War films seem to play to, and encourage, a horrible sort of xenophobia.

For this reason I spent a long while avoiding 'All Quiet on the Western Front', which I'd bought from a very interesting charity shop in Walkley (the right-hand half of the shop was a charity shop like any other, and the left-hand side was a pet-shop.  One of the shop assistants was a giant dog).  If I'd given the film's packaging slightly more attention it might have allayed my fears.  Firstly, the protagonists are WWI Germans, an unlikely set of heroes for an American film, and secondly this is a famed anti-war picture.  That's a genre I can more easily get behind.

War.

I've heard it said that it's impossible to make an anti-war-film, as war always looks really cool.  I'm not sure I agree with the argument, but it's an interesting one.  War looks absolutely awful all the way through this movie.  The youths, a class of boys, are stirred up by their schoolmaster with a torrent of rhetoric about glory and duty to defend their country.  They chant joyfully about their fatherland as one might today yell 'U-S-A!  U-S-A!'  Inside twenty minutes they're on the front lines, and everybody starts starving and dying, being blinded, losing limbs and freaking out.  The main character, Paul Bäumer (Lew Ayres) sees all his friends and contemporaries wiped out, and, when he returns to his home-town on leave, finds his old community refuse to believe his stories of a futile, unwinnable war.  They're too convinced by their own opinions, and by the propaganda from the media.

In Britain today, the old idea that soldiers are all inherently heroic is making a return, meaning that any future wars will be far more appealing to our society.  So far as I can ascertain, soldiers have two main jobs: shooting people, and threatening to shoot people if they fail to obey.  As a career, it's a very exciting way out of the poverty of austerity Britain - glamorous, masculine, and with the chance to punish the enemies most cursed by xenophobic tabloids.  One needn't be heroic to find that appealing.  One need only be physically fit.  Perhaps I'm excessively liberal, but I favour peacemakers to gun-toting peacekeepers, and find teachers, firefighters, missionaries and (when they're not being scary) police officers more admirable than armed drones.

The opening slide of the movie

I was pleasantly surprised to find 'All Quiet on the Western Front' so well-made and watchable.  If you've been following The Penciltonian with an obsessive avidity, you may recall that I've really liked the 30s films from Germany and Russia, but found the English-language stuff like 'The Island of Lost Souls' (1932) and 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer' (1935) for instance, to be rather heavy-going.  This was made only three years after the first feature-length talking picture, and the transition from silent films to talkies was a pretty bumpy one.  Here, though, is a well-crafted film, directed with a flair - with, for instance, some extremely disturbing shots of mass death when the British come over the top - and which wouldn't seem outdated even if it were released a decade or two later.  This is an impressive film with a message worth hearing.


P.S. Happy Poppy Day, if that's what floats yer boat.

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Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Alexander Nevsky had terrible hair, but a nice tunic.  He lived a nine-hundred-ish years ago, and was a prince and a saint and a general all at once.  He was the Christian Mohammed, the Orthodox Jeanne d'Arc, and he kept a peace with the Mongols, that the Russians of Rus might war against the Teutons, who were all a load of jerks.

This, then, is an anti-German film made in thirties Russia.  It was intensely popular, then banned when the government realised how nice the Germans were, then unbanned and intensely popular again when the Germans became the enemies once more - all this inside three years.  It was an exciting time.

Parp!

The film is directed by Sergei Eisenstein, who made that other handsomely-edited propaganda piece 'Battleship Potemkin' (1925).  Like that film, 'Alexander Nevsky' is much easier to appreciate than to enjoy, though it surely has its merits.  One such merit is the famous musical score by Prokofiev - at least, I've often heard it's famous.  I wasn't sure I recognised it, but it had a great power to make me exclaim 'uh oh' and (more crudely) 'oh crap' at my television whenever it indicated the stirrings of impending catastrophe.  The Teutons, you see, are very horrid enemies, and whenever the film cuts to them in their vast and amazing helmets the dialogue disappears and the music takes over.  Though 'Алекса́ндр Не́вский' is a talkie, it's a silent film at heart, meaning the Catholic foe are presented for the most part as mute, unutterably malign, communicating only through helmet-size and loud instruments.

The other thing for which the movie is famed is the battle on the ice, which takes up the latter third of the duration.  It's a tremendous spectacle, and it left me thinking that Eisenstein could have made a really watchable 'Birth of a Nation' (1915).  At the time it was the greatest battle in all of cinema, and it's hard to know when it was surpassed.  The battle is immensely long, showing the overall flow of the fight, and great amounts of detail, from seething crowds to small moments of character or comedy.  It's easy to see how we got from this to The Battle of Helm's Deep, and though I'm sure Tolkein had some experience of real-life battles I wouldn't be surprised if he had seen and enjoyed this film.

Alexander Nevsky says 'Fish'.

I thought I would like Alexander more than I did.  He turned out to be rather a dull sort of fellow with little to humanise him.  He did his job, winning the war, well and functionally, and showed little reason to be posthumously canonised.  A fair résumé for a hero in the age of Stalin, but not great for a movie protagonist.

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Don't buy the DVD - the print is soft and shaky - not to an offensive degree, but it could look much better.  Get yourself the soundtrack instead, which comes with Prokofiev's music to 'Lieutenant Kijé' (1934) too.
 

My Man Godfrey (1936)

'All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kinda people'.

I bought this film a long time ago because I thought it might have David Niven in it.  As it happens, I was really after the 1957 remake, but at least this way I had something on my shelves to stand for 1936.  'My Man Godfrey' is a screwball comedy, meaning that everybody speaks at twice the normal speed, and regards a family of upper-middle-class twits, New York's high society, taking in a homeless man to work as a butler.  Said butler, Godfrey, then becomes romantically entangled with the daughter of the family, but feels it's inappropriate for a mere butler to woo, or be wooed by, a socialite so high above his station.

Godfrey (William Powell) is a fine fellow, and immediately likeable, with his position as a 'forgotten man' made good use of.  The rich ninnies he serves are immensely patronising to him on account of his recent homelessness, but Godfrey doesn't take offence, preferring to remain perfectly gracious, coolly receiving their awkward compliments in the spirit in which they were meant.  He's quietly amused by the outrageously dysfunctional family, and eventually saves them from their folly and, with a Gilbertian inevitability, turns out to be a man from their own class who had arrived at hard times almost on purpose, and is thus an appropriate suitor for the daughter (whether he wants to be her suitor or not).  It's a classic American happy ending: a family difficulty in the great depression is solved by the butler investing in stocks and bonds, so capitalism saves the day.  You could tell the same story today, but I'll be happy if you don't.

Godfrey is opposed at every point by the other daughter, Cornelia, that villain.

It's an entertaining film with a witty script, well performed, but isn't particularly extraordinary by the standards of the time.  The DVD release I watched presented so unrestored a print, crude and fuzzy in sound and picture that when I first watched it I was put off '30s cinema for several years.  I now realise that a good scrub and a more tender preparation for release might have let it show its merits - there's probably a pretty watchable film under all the noise.

P.S. The rule seems to be that 30s films are better if they aren't in English.  Or perhaps the sample of purchasable 1930s films from abroad is smaller and weighted towards the excellent, whereas there's a great deal of 30s Americana to be had.  Alternatively, crappy sound is more of a problem when you aren't reading subtitles.  I think I prefer my first theory, and my suspicion that America, and its cinema, wasn't the best or the coolest until World War II, at which point the whole nation suddenly got its jiggy on.

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The Island of Lost Souls (1932)

At the start of the thirties, with the arrival of audible dialogue, films seem suddenly more basic, less ambitious and altogether less impressive - or at least, the English-language ones do.  Fritz Lang somehow got away with the transition, making his talking pictures more grounded than his silents, but no less exciting.  But then, he was one of the best silent directors, so naturally he still had talent and a sharp mind in the age of the talkies.

This, though, is an American film at a time when that didn't portend slickness or coolness.  Not that it's a bad film, it simply doesn't inspire in the same way as those hectic twenties.  It's an early horror film, but less horrific than 'Nosferatu' a decade earlier, its moral less memorable than that of 'Häxan' (1922), for instance.

The Speaker of the Law (Béla Lugosi)

So what is there to recommend the film?  Well, there are scenes on ships and in the sea, things one couldn't see on stage (which is surely the major rival to the talking pictures).  Everybody speaks clearly, and the set-up for the story is interesting and memorable, the story itself being H.G. Wells' 'The Island of Dr Moreau'.

Moreau joins Doctors Mabuse, Caligari and Nicholson in being a wretched villain with a twisted mind (doctors in the films I've been watching are, it seems, wholly malign until 1965 gave us the double-whammy of Who and Zhivago), but at least Dr Moreau is only tampering with nature, operating on animals to turn them into humans (which makes less sense the more you think about it), rather than murdering, hypnotising, stealing diamonds or working as a psychiatrist.  His beasts have exciting prosthetic heads, the hairiest of which is Béla Lugosi (the first screen Dracula, an actor now best known as a historical figure, as played by Martin Landau in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic 'Ed Wood').  The beasts are all male, except The Panther Woman, who is far less exciting than one might expect from her name, and who doesn't have fancy prosthetics or make-up at all.  Perhaps she's there to titillate the audience, but this would surely be more novel, less boring, if she had a head like Lugosi's all-over beard.  Or am I expecting the wrong things from actresses?

Even after a good restoration, 30s films tend to look rather grainy.

There's a human drama played out amidst this tale of monstrous science, but within a few days I've forgotten all its details.  I suspect it, and the moral dimension, had a greater depth and emphasis in the original novel - the film is all about spectacle.  Still, it's short and it isn't dull, but it doesn't delight me.

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The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)

Gary Cooper, considered quite the dish of the day

I was recommended this film by my grandmother Mopsy, who saw it shortly after it came out.  It clearly had a fairly broad appeal, as it was also enjoyed by Adolf Hitler, who apparently saw it thrice, and who was in most important respects unlike Mopsy in character.  I fear its merits have fallen away somewhat as the years went by.  Moustaches and European domination of ostensibly lesser countries have both gone out of fashion, and talking pictures have increased their scope and flair.

It has the flavour of a war film, though I'm fairly sure we weren't actually at war with India in the 1930s.  Our handsome and moustached hero (the very famous Gary Cooper, who I always thought was a dancer, but apparently wasn't) and his comrades have to fight the handsome and moustached villain, Mohammed Khan, whose name alone will tell you why this film is unlikely to be remade.

The villainous Mohammed Khan

In my last update, 'Metropolis' (1927), the silent film reached its full extent, a vast, visual feast, a story told in pictures; it's rather distressing to find out the state of cinema these eight years later.  Now that money and time are poured into audio recording, the visuals seem to matter far less, and long, static dialogues take place in plain offices.  Perhaps it's just that 'Metropolis' was highly stylised, while this is much more naturalistic, but that too is probably a consequence of sound-recording, as something so extreme as 'Metropolis' with dialogue would seem bizarre, even comic.  Either way, on all fronts, 'The Lives of a Bengal Lancer' seems a far less impressive, less cinematic way of telling a story.

Oh, the talking scenes are intercut with charges and skirmishes, some high-quality explosions and an extremely dated scene in which the characters have great fun sticking pigs with spears, an effect achieved simply, by having the actors really go out and stab pigs with spears.  This all seemed rather uncharming.  The spectacle is there, but the story, and the drama, is all in the talking.

The playing of a pungi summons a snake, with hillarious consequences

The film isn't without merits, but at each level I find myself thinking it could be better.  The lively banter and camaraderie of the main characters could be even more fun, and the film would be more engaging if it was.  The slight tragedy of the ending could have been richer, less of a footnote.  Far more could have been wrung out of the central conflict: Lieutenant Stone tries in vain to gain some affection from his father, a Colonel, who doesn't wish to show favouritism - a thread with no real resolution.

All in all, a bit disappointing.  I was left a little concerned for the fate of the talking pictures, wondering whether the move toward dialogue would present a string of wordy disappointments.  Thankfully the three films I watched thereafter, from the forties, fifties and sixties respectively, were all excellent, and have together restored my faith in the talkies.  Unless calamity befalls me, they'll be the next three posts.

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I can't truly recommend this film, but as a Briton neither can I fail to advertise a chance to spend your money with a multinational corporation.

Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse (1933)

Murder!

Mabuse, villain of the earlier 'Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler' (1922) has, since his arrest, gone insane and possibly then gone sane again.  He sits in the asylum, wild-eyed and wild-haired, never speaking a word, but writing page after page after page of instructions on how to commit perfect crimes.  And far across the city, somebody is committing those crimes.

This is recognisably the same Berlin as in 'M' (1931).  The criminal criminal underworld acts with a certain gusto, and seems a relatively agreeable side of society, for those willing to join in - living, laughing and cooking sausages together when not indulging in petty crimes.  The only real evil among them comes from those rare crimes, murders.

Thomas Kent and Lilli in a soggy situation

At the four corners of this adventure are are the aforementioned Dr Mabuse; Professor Baum, the psychiatrist who studies him; Thomas Kent, a handsome and for-some-reason-American-named, basically law-abiding crook who won't commit the murderous instructions passed down from his unseen master; and reprising his role from 'M', the excellent Otto Wernicke as the equally excellent Inspector Lohmann.

Unusually, the presence of both Lohmann and Mabuse makes this a sequel to two different films, taking the hero from one and the villain from the other.  I haven't seen 'Dr Mabuse, Der Spieler' (1922), but I was delighted to see the return of Lohmann (or rather, I'd forgotten him utterly, as I hadn't seen 'M' for five years when I watched this, but he was so enjoyable here that I immediately rewatched 'M' and was delighted to see him return there, even if it was more of a pre-turn).  It's a full-blooded performance with a great amount of humour where it's needed.

The Spectre of Mabuse over Professor Baum

Mabuse is suitably sinister and cadaverous, and is played here by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, who was the fascinatingly alien Koenig Etzel (that's Attilla the Hun, to you or me) in 'Die Nibelungen' (1924) and Rotwang in 'Metropolis' (1927).  Yet more frightening, perhaps, is Professor Baum (Oscar Beregi, Sr.).  Film after film, from the thirties to the sixties, show psychiatrists as more prey to neuroses and what used to be termed 'criminal insanity' than anybody they might actually treat, so it's little wonder they're so feared today, and 'Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse' gives us a classic example.  It beats Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' (1945, often counted with popularising all the main psychiatrist stereotypes) by a good decade.  This whole film, in fact, has a great deal of Hitchcock to its style and flavour, and it would surprise me very little to hear he'd given it his attention.

I can see why this is less well remembered, at least in the English-speaking world, than 'M' (1931), which got there first, and had Peter Lorre on its side - but it's a pity that, bar the odd Amazon recommendation, I've never heard this spoken of.  Anyone who enjoys 'M' enough to rewatch it will find a great many of its merits reproduced here.  The special effects are as bold as I've now come to expect from 20s and 30s cinema, and the DVD cover is an exciting one indeed.  Perhaps not the right way to judge a film, but it's a test that's often led me right in past.

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Tempted to investigate?

M (1931)

This is Fritz Lang's other film.  Other, of course, to 'Metropolis' (1927), a film almost everybody, hearing about this blog, has recommended I watch.  'Metropolis' (like his lesser-remembered 'Die Nibelungen' - 1925) was fantastical, vast, full of crowds, epic vistas and expressionist images.  'M', by contrast, is smaller, grounded in the real world of downtown Berlin.  Streets, apartments, offices, warehouses.  Perhaps this was a practical move to offset the cost of audio for these newfangled talkies - or perhaps silent films, like mime or ballet - can afford to be more flamboyant without seeming silly.  Nonetheless, despite this move towards something like the real world, this film is not without flair or dynamism.

I watched this the same week I revisited 'Shaft' (1971), and despite the four decades between them they have a similar flavour.  Crime, the streets, men looking cool in their long leather coats, a gradient of morality between the police and the criminals.  The authorities here are embodied by Inspector Lohmann - a brilliant performance by Otto Wernicke for whom I've much praise.  The antagonist, despised, feared and sought by the whole city, is the Kindermörder, the child-murderer, a no-less-striking Peter Lorre.  Between them is Berlin - its crowd has a better claim to being the main character than either of this pair.

If this was made today, I suspect the implication of paedophilia would be found somewhere in accusations against the murderer.  A man abducting children merely to murder them seems almost naive by today's standards, though I understand it has been done, notably to Fanny Adams.  Anyway, nothing is known about the child murderer, and the whole city gets itself into a frighteningly familiar lather of paranoia and groundless accusation.  Any grown man so much as saying hello to a child is a candidate for condemnation by the lynch mob.  The police are working overtime, and raiding the usual haunts of criminals with such frequency that the whole criminal underworld band together to track down the child-murderer, just to get themselves some peace and quiet.  It's a brilliant concept.  Soon the cops and criminals race to catch the unknown killer.

Die Kindermörder!

When we finally meet the child-murderer, he's presented quite alarmingly sympathetically.  This is not a man filled with malice and evil - just an ordinary person.  He's pathetic, pudding-faced, wide-eyed as a bush-baby.  When he's finally challenged over his crimes he grows distressed: it's a compulsion, an addiction.  He's driven to it, this obsession.  There's no apparent motivation, and we're left with the frightening suggestion that such a person could appear at any time, in any society, with a feeble inability to quash their urges to befriend and dismember infants.

Peter Lorre is better-known in the West for his appearances in American film noir, but this was his first big role - an astounding, upsetting performance.  He makes this compulsive murderer's impotent fear real, and manages to seem inexplicably amiable even as he pursues his quarry.  Otto Wernicke's Inspector Lohmann is no less engaging, and it's little wonder Lang brought him back to play the same role in 'Das Testament Des Dr Mabuse' (1933).  He manages to bring some excellent moments of comedic business to what could be a doomy film: at one point being so shocked by a revelation that he drops his cigar from his mouth, and lets his hands spend some time looking for it before his mind can catch up.

Kriminalkommissar Lohmann in shock

There's a lot of fun to be found here.  My favourite moment likewise features Lohmann, who devastates a petty criminal with the false news that the man he'd punched unconscious has died of the injury - before the director allows us a fade to the 'victim' in question, alive and enjoying a slap-up meal of sausages and beer.  Though Fritz Lang undoubtedly has a dark and upsetting message to convey about humanity's propensity for evil, he's made a lively film, full of wit and invention.  It was this movie, along with 'Das Boot' (1981) and 'Heimat' (1984) that convinced me German films were very good films indeed, and caused me to seek them out hungrily.  And if you follow this blog for long enough, I suspect you'll be reading about a good many more of them.

P.S. Some time next week I'll find time to comment on this this film's semi-sequel 'The Testament of Dr Mabuse' (1933), but for variety's sake the next two updates will be 'The Birth of a Nation' (1915) and 'Up' (2009).

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This is certainly a film worth watching, and German cinema is always worth a look in.  Why not get yourself a copy, or just borrow mine, or we could all watch it together and have pancakes if y'all would pop over.

Laurel and Hardy Way Out West (1937)

Whatever comedy I saw first after 'Daisies' (1966) was inevitably going to seem a bit ordinary.  I have nothing intelligent or faux-intelligent to say about 'Laurel and Hardy Way Out West', so will provide you with some pictures and captions to give you a sense of it all.

A man with a big beard!

They shoot the hat off of his head!

When they bow to pick up a lily, their heads

bump with a loud wooden 'KNOCK'

Some cowboys sing harmonies, so the duo have an impromptu dance sequence.

This is the best sequence not to feature Stan Laurel eating a hat.

But for the many guns on display, this film is virtually indistinguishable

from 'Chucklevision'.  Perhaps the comedy was more innovative back then,

though I'm inclined to assume otherwise.

D'oooooh!

Trying to remove a locket.  With hilarious consequences!

Early in the film, Stan Laurel says 'if this doesn't work, I'll eat your hat'.

He weeps his way through this particular meal.

Laurel is the funny one.

A comedy chase sequence!

For ages!

They hide in the piano,

with hilarious consequences!

The true heir to the gold mine is modest and dull and lowly
and inefficacious, and gullible with no capacity or wit or agency

and is the only character not to get any comedy moments

and I wish the villains won instead.

That is all.

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Normally there would be an advert for the DVD down here because I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to exploit you all, but I don't think I'd recommend watching this film unless it came on the BBC, and even then you might want the radio on too. Of course it was fun, and likely wholly typical of Laurel and Hardy, but I refuse to believe it was their *best* film, so I'm more inclined to steer you away from it.

Lieutenant Kijé (1934)

This Russian comedy, 'Поручик Киже', has been largely forgotten (except, perhaps, in Russia, where I presently have no data-gatherers), and seems to be wholly unavailable on VHS or DVD.  I had thought it might have lapsed into the public domain and been exploited by some cheap DVD producer on the basis of its famous soundtrack - but since this has not happened I can only guess the Prokofiev estate is blocking it, since the music he wrote for it, while rightly famed (you almost certainly know the Troika) is crudely performed and recorded, and often accompanied here by bawdy lyrics.

The whole film can be found on Youtube, however, where I would suggest you might give it your attention.  'This is the story of a spelling mistake,' as we read at the film's beginning.  I'll give you a brief idea of the premise.  It's 1800, and the Tsar of Russia is asleep.  The palace guards, up until then marching with the help of early split-screen effects, stop where the are, mid-step, toes in the air.  Everybody stops because the Tsar is asleep.

Some guy, elsewhere in the palace - if the film names any of its characters, bar Kijé, I have remained oblivious - is being seduced by a woman pretending to be a cat.  She pinches his bottom, and he cries aloud, in surprise rather than pain.  According to the English subtitles, he shouts 'Ga-oo-ah-oo-ah-r-r-r-...!!', which is loud enough to wake the sleeping Tsar, and apparently sounds enough like the Russian word for 'guard' that the awoken tyrant demands to know who has called for a guard - and begins planning punishments for them.

This picture describes the film better than my words could.

The guards' daily orders are being transcribed onto fresh paper by a clerk who manages, though a no-doubt rib-tickling Russian pun, to make a duplication of syllables into the name 'Kijé'.  One of those things that doesn't quite work in English, but never mind.  Before the mistake can be corrected the nonexistent Kijé gets the blame for shouting, and is promptly banished to Siberia - with, as they say, hilarious consequences.  The rest of the film sees him recalled and married off to the jocular lady pictured above, who relishes the prospect of being married to (by that point) a general, even one who doesn't exist.

Perhaps appropriately, the film's comedy loses something in translation from screen to the page (though I know this blog is also on a screen), but the whole film is enjoyably silly, well put-together, and especially worth watching if you already have some familiarity with Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kijé suite.  It has a Christmassy flavour - perhaps down to the sleigh-bells, the Siberian snow, the booziness and the folk-tale quality.  There's something of pantomime to it, and it fills eighty minutes comfortably enough.  I can't offer the film high praise, but I've watched it twice and both times found it engaging and amusing - and both times forgotten almost every detail within a few days.