Balbec4
Joined Jun 2011
Welcome to the new profile
Our updates are still in development. While the previous version of the profile is no longer accessible, we're actively working on improvements, and some of the missing features will be returning soon! Stay tuned for their return. In the meantime, the Ratings Analysis is still available on our iOS and Android apps, found on the profile page. To view your Rating Distribution(s) by Year and Genre, please refer to our new Help guide.
Badges2
To learn how to earn badges, go to the badges help page.
Reviews2
Balbec4's rating
Enthusiasm, much less well-known than Dziga Vertov's other major works Kino-Eye and The Man With a Movie Camera, is nevertheless well worth a look.
The movie is subtitled Symphonia of the Donbass and portrays the implementation of the first five year plan in the industrial regions of Ukraine. If that sounds un-exciting, don't be put off – this is an amazing movie that places sound – the sounds of pulleys and railway wagons, steel plants, the brass bands of the Young Pioneers and the Army, of tractors in the Kolkhoz – at the forefront of everything.
Framed by close-up shots of a young women (later shown to be an artist making the finishing touches to a bust of Lenin) listening to the radio via earphones, the soundtrack of the film takes on a life of its own. Its synchronization with the visual content of the film creates a highly atmospheric portrayal of work and of constant, excessive noise – not just the noise of the work itself but of the streets, with their endless parades and ubiquitous brass bands.
Made in 1931, the film includes more overtly propagandistic content than The Man With a Movie Camera, made in the marginally more liberal (or at least less rigidly controlled) Soviet Union of 1929. However, for me the propaganda element is rendered almost irrelevant by the highly original soundtrack. The ponderous narrative interventions ("Here come the enthusiasts") are ultimately subsumed in the clatter of machine hammers and coal conveyors, brass music and public announcements, simultaneously distancing you from the "enthusiasm" on display and drawing you in to a kind of hyper-real portrayal of physical life (hard work, the streets, demonstrations) that makes you suddenly aware of the un-real nature of everyday urban sound when you leave the cinema. No wonder Soviet critics hated it.
The movie is subtitled Symphonia of the Donbass and portrays the implementation of the first five year plan in the industrial regions of Ukraine. If that sounds un-exciting, don't be put off – this is an amazing movie that places sound – the sounds of pulleys and railway wagons, steel plants, the brass bands of the Young Pioneers and the Army, of tractors in the Kolkhoz – at the forefront of everything.
Framed by close-up shots of a young women (later shown to be an artist making the finishing touches to a bust of Lenin) listening to the radio via earphones, the soundtrack of the film takes on a life of its own. Its synchronization with the visual content of the film creates a highly atmospheric portrayal of work and of constant, excessive noise – not just the noise of the work itself but of the streets, with their endless parades and ubiquitous brass bands.
Made in 1931, the film includes more overtly propagandistic content than The Man With a Movie Camera, made in the marginally more liberal (or at least less rigidly controlled) Soviet Union of 1929. However, for me the propaganda element is rendered almost irrelevant by the highly original soundtrack. The ponderous narrative interventions ("Here come the enthusiasts") are ultimately subsumed in the clatter of machine hammers and coal conveyors, brass music and public announcements, simultaneously distancing you from the "enthusiasm" on display and drawing you in to a kind of hyper-real portrayal of physical life (hard work, the streets, demonstrations) that makes you suddenly aware of the un-real nature of everyday urban sound when you leave the cinema. No wonder Soviet critics hated it.
A by-the-numbers contribution to the hot 20-somethings-in-peril in-redneck-country genre.
Two couples and spare girl Jessie (Eliza Dushku) on the way to confront the latter's errant boyfriend take the wrong turn of the title and get knocked off the road by a barbed wire boobytrap. Soon after, lone wolf medical student Chris (Desmond Harrington) accidentally smacks into the back of their 4x4.
From then on they are under the threat of being picked off in turn by the locals, who have a taste for city-boy (and girl) flesh. The whole thing chugs along amiably enough in its way before guttering out in a messy, somewhat suspense-free finale. Lead man Harrington is so wooden it's hard to imagine he'd provide much of nutritional value to the cannibal countryfolk in pursuit.
Two couples and spare girl Jessie (Eliza Dushku) on the way to confront the latter's errant boyfriend take the wrong turn of the title and get knocked off the road by a barbed wire boobytrap. Soon after, lone wolf medical student Chris (Desmond Harrington) accidentally smacks into the back of their 4x4.
From then on they are under the threat of being picked off in turn by the locals, who have a taste for city-boy (and girl) flesh. The whole thing chugs along amiably enough in its way before guttering out in a messy, somewhat suspense-free finale. Lead man Harrington is so wooden it's hard to imagine he'd provide much of nutritional value to the cannibal countryfolk in pursuit.