East Side Story
(Germany, 1997, in German, Russian, Czeck and Rumanian with English Subtitles)
Seen on 29 June 1997 for $8 with Tony at the Film Forum. I arrived late, but missed about two minutes of the film.
This is the documentary that asks the question "Who knows how things could have turned out if Socialism had just been more fun?" It was discovered that one film could do more for propaganda than political meetings, especially if you had a clear minority of the population attending agitation rallies. But everyone loves the movies and wants to be entertained, especially if you have been waiting all day on line for state-sponsored toilet paper at GUM. Apparently, only 40 musicals were made behind the Iron Curtain, and very often the only role models they had were the "traumfabrik" of Hollywood. Happiness was a universal theme in both the East and the West.
The Soviets discovered early on what an important tool they had in the cinema, and even Stalin himself was persuaded to allow the making of musicals. One, Grigori Alexandrov's Volga Volga, was his favorite--he viewed it more than 100 times and made a gift of it to FDR during the war. Unfortunately, while the actors since "our happiness is blooming like the wheat" the infamous purges ravaged Russia in general and Russian movie houses in particular. At least the survivors liked it. After the war, the countries that had socialism thrust upon them continued to make movies, but under difficult circumstances. Censors worked against them while they labored under shortages of essentials, like money and electricity. Directors like Grigori Alexandrov played the fool, like the Roman Emperor Claudius, to survive the political perils of the communist regimes. The musicals proved successful in many of the Eastern Bloc countries, but they were few and far between.
The documentary succeeds; it shows a lot of clips while speaking to a variety of people involved in Eastern Bloc musicals--cast members, writers, and even audience members. We even get to meet the "Doris Day of the East" and the "Elvis of the East." Actually, they were more like East Germany's answer to Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. The musicals themselves are as good, bad, memorable, forgettable, clever or stupid as anything made here. Hot Summer was made the same year as My Fair Lady and surpassed its Western competition at the box office, sending throngs of East German teens to the theaters, to the record stores, and to the North Sea for beach vacations. At one point, a Russian woman notes that sometimes, holding onto some basic untruths is essential "just to survive," and it is not too difficult to imagine why the masses didn't mind seeing the screen tell them that prosperity and a wide variety of consumer goods were just around the corner.
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Copyright (c) 1997 Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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