Travelogues were long a feature -- or short subject -- in the movie theaters. Here's, years after MGM's Traveltalks had ceased production, came this short feature about Siberia. Beginning as a series of pan shots, or perhaps post card pictures, this continues in a variety of forms, including animation discussing mammoths and so forth and a trip to find a mammoth's frozen remains.
Perhaps this is more akin to the "City Symphony" films that flourished, most notably in the 1920s. The landscapes it offers don't really show people, so much as the bleak Siberian landscape, even as they narration tries to convince the listener that it has its own beauty: birches on a plain, hawks, wolves, geese in flight, even trains roaring along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Perhaps. The print I saw showed a land that was washed out.
In the end, though, Chris Marker produces a self-referential parody of travelogues which mocks the idea that he can produce a work that will show you the reality of Siberia. It is, he makes clear, too large, too diverse, and every frame of his movie is open to endless interpretation. So look at the pretty images and take what you will.
