 |
|
|
|
Time in the Sun: In 1931, famed Soviet filmmaker Sergei M. Eisenstein travelled to the Western Hemisphere to make his first non-Russian film, Que Viva Mexico, a project financed by muckraking novelist Upton Sinclair. The project withered and died when Sinclair became impatient with Eisenstein's meticulous shooting methods, whereupon Eisenstein returned to Russia and Sinclair assembled the completed footage into a quasi-documentary, Thunder Over Mexico. Distributors were not forthcoming for this cobbled-together film, which was then consigned to oblivion until 56 minutes' worth of Sinclair's cut were reassembled in 1941 as Time in the Sun. Beautifully photographed, the film as it stood was little more than a glorified travelogue, and would probably have disappeared from sight had not the strength of Eisenstein's reputation brought in an audience of wine-and-cheese cinema enthusiasts, who alternately applauded the film and condemned the distributors for crassly commercializing the director's original vision. As for Eisenstein himself, he was still angered over promises broken by Upton Sinclair, and wouldn't have promoted Time in the Sun even if Stalin had allowed him to do so. -Hal Erickson. Bezhin Meadow: Eisenstein worked on Bezhin Meadow from 1935 to 1937. Based on a Turgenev story, the scenario for Bezhin Meadow was written by Isaac Babel. It's a tale that dramatizes the forcible reorganization of peasant settlements into state affiliated collective farms soon after the formation of the Soviet Union. The scenario involves a farmer's son, killed by his father in retaliation against the Soviet state, and, by implication, the unfair practices of collectivization. Eisenstein's goal was to strive for a classicism that would "contain some part of the huge endowment left us from the silent film era" -- although it remains unclear if this film was intended to be a sound or silent feature. In 1937, the Soviet government, deeming the politics of the film unacceptable, stopped its production, and the film was never completed. It was considered lost until fragments of it were found in the 1970s.
|
