MOSCOW AWARDS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21463, 3 May 1935, Page 5

MOSCOW AWARDS

FILM FESTIVAL ENTRIES

"BOURGEOIS SMUGNESS" OF LOCAL PRODUCTIONS

The Moscow Film Festival, held in honour of the Soviet" industry's fifteenth anniversary, ended its celebrations recently with a prize-giving, at which selected films of native and foreign manufacture were given awards The panel of judges consisted of M. Debrie, the French camera magnate, M. Shumiatsky, State head of the film industry in Russia, and the directors, Eisenstein, Pudowkin, and Dovjenko. On their recommendation the first prize went to the Lenin studios for two pictures "Chapayev" and "The Peasants." The second prize was awarded to Rene Clair for "Le Dernier Milliardaire," the third to Walt Disney for his cartoons, and the fourth to Jacques Feyder for 'Tension Mimosa." Special mention was made of "The Private Life of Henry VIII.," in consideration of its "artistic values" and the acting of Charles Laughton in the leading role. Among other foreign pictures shown in the festival were the British "Old Curiosity Shop" and "Evergreen," the French "Marie Chatelaine," by Duvivier, the Czech film "Hey Rup," a Polish revolutionary picture called "Young Forest," a patriotic Italian film of 1 1880, and a Chinese film with occidental music but no dialogue. The American exhibits included' "Little Women," King Vidor's "Daily Bread" <■ which was loudly cheered in its closing reels), and De Mille's lavish "Cleopatra," picked with possible significance, by the Soviet representative in Washington as the Paramount film he particularly wanted shown. : Russia's own contribution was largely historical, with a fair sprinkling of political comedy, anci n considerable number of cartoons, including the colour cartoons by Nicolas Ekk, who works with n native two-colour process, not four-colour, as previously announced by the Russians themselves. Hessian Films Criticised "We were very much disappointed in> the quality of the modern Russian films," said Mr S. Harrison, chief cutter for London Films, to a representative of the London "Observer" on his return from the festival. "It seems as though, with' the increasing prosperity of Russian life, the old pioneer spirit of production has gone. The studios are learning sound technique for all they are worth, and there hnu certainly been an amazing progress in the straightforward use of dialogue and music. But an. extraordinary bourgeois smugness seems to have come over most of the work. The films are cast, not any longer with natural 'types,' tut with leading stage actors. There has been a deliberate withdrawal into the studios, where scenes are played with theatrical props against traditional painted backings. "There are a number of straightforward comedies about modern youth, rather in th« style of the American college pictures, though with a slight political, tinge, but the chief pictures. I the so-called 'artistic productions.' art* I all period pieces. It is the cultured

thing to-day to adapt Balzac and Dostoevsky and Maupassant for the screen, just as it is the fashion for the Moscow crowds to look at nineteenthcentury paintings in the galleries, and pack the opera to hear Carmen and Aida." Sergei Eisenstein, still the most popular figure among the film student-; of Moscow, but temporarily under a cloud with the Government as a result of his recent American enterprise, accounts for this phenomenon as a "passing phase of prosperity." "The Russian people," he says, "are at last getting good clothes, enough food, and certain material comforts of life, and they are appreciating the sort of comfortable art and entertainment that the bourgeois countries enjoyed perhaps 50 years ago. We shall grow out of this phase and come back to real art in time, you will see."