LADY-PEASANT
A film review by Felix Kreisel
Copyright 1996 Iskra Research
Montreal 1996 The recently concluded Montreal World Film Festival is one of the better known venues of the cinema world. It attempts to promote a wide range of filmmakers from many countries by requiring as little as possible in promotion expenditures. This year the Festival organizers paid special attention to current Russian films and even gave a special prize in the category of the Russian Cinema of Today. This writer was able to view a number of the more significant films presented at the Festival. Preceding my impressions I have included the official descriptions provided by the Festival organizers.
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Baryshnia-Krestianka (Lady-Peasant)
* * * * * * * Official information * * * * * * *
Director: Alexei Sakharov. Script: A. Zhitinsky, Alexei Zakharov. Based on the short story by A. S. Pushkin. Photography: N. Nemoliaiev. Editor: L. Shmigliakova. Music: Vladimir Komarov. Sound: I. Urvantsev. Cast: E. Korikova, E. Rednikova, D. Scherbina, L. Kuravliov, V. Lanovoi. Producer and Sales: L. Poliarskaia, Ritm Film Studio of Mosfilm Association.
Liza had her eye on her handsome young neighbor Alexei, for some time and he has had his eye on her. But their fathers, feuding landowners, clearly aren't about to let the two young people get together. Liza has an idea. With the help of a maidservant, Nastia, she dresses up as a young peasant girl and wanders into the forest ostensibly to gather mushrooms. As she planned, Alexei spots her and the peasant disguise doesn't fool him a bit.
* * * * * ) Iskra Research; by F. Kreisel * * * * *
This movie celebrates pastoral Russia of a century and a half ago. It presents an unchanging society, frozen into a traditional patriarchal culture (or lack thereof), with both the landlords and the peasants, both men and women unquestioningly following their paths through life. The story is not original, it is a watered down, conformist version of Romeo and Juliette. Two neighboring landlords conduct a feud which their offspring must follow. The young man is fresh from a Dutch university, but the education was wasted on him since he just wants to join the Hussars. The young girl is dreaming of romance with a tall, dark man with a large mustache, but knows that her father will decide on a husband. The foreign words employed by the gentry, their Western dress, tastes in poetry and music are just a thin veneer, barely concealing the basic idiocy of country life. Here is one example of the Pushkin satirizes the basic uselessness of the landed gentry when he quotes one of them lauding the other for discovering how to mortgage their estates on the London market. The movie director reenacts this scene in the movie but then celebrates this idiocy by extolling the fathers' taste for homemade vodkas and liqueurs. This is a low budget escapist film, and the viewer is advised to read Pushkin instead. -- Iskra Research -- Historical research and publication of Marxist classics in the Russian language. Address: PO Box 397142, Cambridge, MA 02139-7142; e-mail: fjk@mit.edu http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/fjk/iskra.html
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