The vagaries of film preservation have been so capricious that the unexpected rediscovery of less than a hundred hitherto obscure silents - if they were the right hundred - could probably completely rewrite film history. The Soviet Union continues to be pilloried as a purely repressive and destructive regime; but a remarkable number of politically incorrect projects got made before only then getting banned. ('My Grandmother' was made in Georgia, and its possible that the sheer size of the Soviet Union made it difficult for Moscow to keep a close eye on all film production in its outer reaches.) After the Soviet Union collapsed it rapidly became apparent that a surprisingly substantial body of pre-communist and communist-era feature films - including those, like this one, that had originally been banned - had nevertheless been preserved; although the majority of them remain largely unseen in the West (or probably even in the former Soviet Union itself).
'My Grandmother' actually resurfaced over forty years ago, and as a passionate lover of Soviet silent films (I always leap at the chance to see more when the opportunities arise) I wouldn't claim it to be the masterpiece that others have declared it, because familiarity with the comedies of directors like Kuleshov and Barnet has already set the bar high for expectations.
The satire in 'My Grandmother' (the title is a slang term for a well-placed sponsor needed when seeking employment) isn't really any more subtle than that to be found in the films of Albania's most beloved import from the West, Norman Wisdom. But like most Soviet silent films it looks wonderful - the similarity in places of its stylised settings to Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' has already been remarked upon - and the makers plainly had carte blanche to throw in whatever sight gags took their fancy - including both a newspaper caricature and a naked statue coming to life.
Films of this era are usually vague as to when they were actually supposed to be taking place; which enabled the makers to nail the foibles of the current regime while blaming them on the Bad Old Days before the new broom swept all this bureaucracy and corruption aside (rather bizarrely, it's the Junior Communist League that is given credit for rooting out idlers). The censors of the day nevertheless seem to have noticed that it resembled contemporary reality a bit too closely, and 'My Grandmother' soon found itself sitting on the shelf along with other goodies with a long wait ahead of them to be properly enjoyed by posterity.
