Za schastem

Nikolai Radin and Emma Bauer are in love. They've delayed their marriage, because she has a daughter, Tasya Borman. Radin loves her as a daughter. Miss Borman's feelings for him are warmer. Neither of the two older people realize this. They only recognize that her health is bad. So Miss Bauer and Miss Borman head off to the Crimea, where artist Lev Kuleshov really likes her.

It's a pretty good movie, except for the ending, which is over the top. I've gotten used to that in movies directed by Yevgeni Bauer. The acting here is pretty good, with Radin excellent. Kuleshov is a lump. He shows no visible reaction to anything. Still, it's good to have a face put to the name. It's movies like this and his own poor acting, I am convinced, that caused him to look at what other other directors already knew about editing, and appropriate it to general acclaim as the Kuleshov effect: that we judge the emotions of the performers more by the editing than the performance. While I would not slight the importance of editing, a good performer can brings his thoughts and feelings to the audience by how he acts.

Kuleshov spent the rest of his life to genearl acclaim, making movies into the 1940s, spent times in archives destroying pre-revolutionary films, and becoming a big wheel at the Moscow Film School. For these efforts, he was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1967, and died in 1970 at the age of 71.