Umirayushchiy lebed

Early ballet films followed the pattern of the Romantic-era ballet craze of its popular staged librettos where the dancers, almost supernatural in their movements, would invariably die at the end of the show wrapped in tragedy. The earliest existing ballet movie inspired by this century-old tradition is Russia's 1917 "The Dying Swan."

The mute heroine, played by Vera Karalli, is spurned by an admirer and seriously takes up ballet. Performing the original 1905 Anna Pavlova-dance, "The Dying Swan," in public, Karalli is spotted by an artist who is fixated by the illusion of death. He's sees something in her face that speaks of despair and ending it all. He convinces her to model for him with that look of gloom. But the earlier admirer returns to the scene, sparking a newfound energy in Karalli's face. This is when the movie's macabreness takes a twisted turn.

"The Dying Swan" was directed by Yevgeni Bauer, who had been called "the first true artist in the history of cinema." (See 1913's "Twilight of a Woman's Soul." ) Producing over 80 movies, he broke his leg on the set while directing his next film, "On Happiness." The later movie suffers because of his injury, as well as his last movie, "The King of Paris," when he was forced to direct in a bathchair while soaking his leg. While he was overseeing "Paris," Bauer came down with pneumonia. He was rushed to a Yalta hospital and died there June, 1917 at 52 years old. An actress in the movie stepped in to finish directing. His departure occurred just before Russia's transformation to Marxism in October roiled its movie industry, turning its independent cinema into a propaganda outlet for the government.

As for Vera Karalli, she played in several Bauer films and cited "The Dying Swan" as one of her best performances. A mistress to the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, first cousin to Tsar Nicholas II, she was at the palace of a co-conspirator with her lover the night the Tsarina Alexandra's confidant, Grigori Rasputin, was killed in December 1916. She fled Russia soon after the October Revolution and settled in Austria, living a long life teaching ballet.

Only ten months after the January 1917 release of the film, the whole Russian worldview was going to be torn asunder. The Soviet cinema that emerged post- 1922 was going to commit itself in the pursuit of the mechanisms that drive forward the eye, a collective eye that did not contemplate any more but would set in motion by seeing.

So, this is a really precious film to have, I think; a snapshot of the world about to be swept aside, and the transfiguration of the core of that world in terms of cinema.

So, whereas with Eisenstein or Pudovkin, the heroic focus shifts on the disenchanted individual - the faces tired but resolute, the living hard but rigorously driven - who is transformed, subsumed into a mass of collective struggle redolent with immediate purpose, Bauer's films shows a life distraught with aimlessness, women as fragile, ethereal beings - a far cry from Pudovkin's Mother - and the members of a decadent aristocracy, the ruling class not quite able to even rule their own lives, as entombed in morbid fixations with images of the past. Faces are nervous, agitated, sunken from inner weights.

In Daydreams it was the image of a dead wife; here it is the image of a ballerina, the swan with broken wings, as evoking the essence of death. The young painter will eventually have to stage the picture of death he wants to immortalize.

On the whole, this one more gloomy than Bauer's rest, it evokes an atmosphere of Poe; a tragic, romantic exaltation of woe. It's potent as Gothic romance but - like Poe - rather comfortably nudged in its archaism. It's not something I will keep with me, unlike Daydreams and its Vertigo-esque dizziness.

Sadly, Yevgeni Bauer would die soon after this, a morbid reminder in and of itself that life sometimes reflects art first. And in viewing "Umirayushchii Lebed" it is nearly impossible to not think that Bauer was not influenced by the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe. There are too many parallels there. Particularly the influence of women on the lives of the two men.

While Bauer's earlier marks in film were more technical, it is the acting and Zoya Barantsevich's story that shines this time around. The cast is similar to his earlier "Posle Smerti" and again employs Vera Karalli as its star. Karalli plays a beautiful dancer (the dying swan) who tragically is also a mute. When the first suitor of her life breaks her heart a lonely artist becomes totally enthralled by her beauty as well...but in a completely different way.

Andrej Gromov plays this second of the two men in her life and does a masterful job of showing us an unhappy, dark, mysterious man-on-a-mission...for lack of a better term. The outdoor locations at the beginning of the film portray a happy world where the lovely Karalli lives with her loving father before her fateful meeting with Gromov. And once again Bauer shows us his fascination with dreams and their meaning, particularly as they coincide with the films ironic conclusion. And the film again features a nice score; this time by Joby Talbot and his violin-cello-piano trio.

The nutshell: not technically groundbreaking such as Bauer's "Posle Smerti" was but still comes across as more enjoyable because of its acting, storyline, and emotional response from the viewer. Again, not a feature length film but worth checking out...8/10.

Any discussion of silent film in Russia centers around the dawn of the Soviet era and its three great directors Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, and Pudovkin. Yet before World War I and the Russian Revolution there existed a flourishing film industry that is all but forgotten today. Among the people working at that time was one Evgeni Bauer (the first name has several different spellings) whose films I was totally unfamiliar with.

His career lasted only four years (he died in 1917 at the age of 52) but if the three films on this DVD are any indication of his other works then he certainly deserves the title "the greatest film director you have never heard of" given to him on the liner notes of this offering from Milestone Films. The most astonishing thing about these movies is how sophisticated their lighting and camerawork are. They are easily the equal of anything being done in Italy, France, or by D. W. Griffith at the time. Also noteworthy are the stories themselves which deal with psychological issues rarely found in films of this vintage.

Two of the three films feature Bolshoi ballerina Vera Karalli whose face is as expressive as her body. Her performance of the title piece in THE DYING SWAN from 1917 gives us a glimpse of what it would have been like to see Anna Pavlova dance. This story of a mute ballerina and an artist obsessed with death is the longest and most potent of the three thanks to its striking visual imagery. TWILIGHT OF A WOMAN'S SOUL (1913), the earliest of the films on the DVD, features a remarkably frank outlook on the plight of a woman who is abandoned by her husband after he discovers that she has been raped. Certain images from this film seem to foreshadow scenes in THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI. The second feature AFTER DEATH (1915) deals with the effects of a woman's suicide on a sensitive young man. Parts of it resemble the cinematic landscape of early Kurosawa.

All three films have been restored from Russian archival prints and are in excellent shape considering their age and feature newly composed scores which are highly effective. There is also a brief documentary on what to look for in Bauer's works from Russian film scholar Yuri Tsivian. A major discovery for silent film enthusiasts and a real eye opener for movie buffs as well. While MAD LOVE is the title given to this collection of films, it could have been subtitled "The Russian Revelation"...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

A mute ballet dancer is jilted in love and finds herself crossing paths with a deranged artistic noble and inevitable tragedy results. Good directing and good acting make this slow-going film worth the watch. The mousy and odd-looking but charming Vera Karalli acted well considering she started out as a ballerina. The film features a segment of her dancing and what an inspired moment in film and a marvel of fate it survived for posterity. If only the same can be said for Nijinsky. This melodramatic decadent curio from the dying age of the Tsars is a dated but charming remnant from the distant past.