welcome or no unauthorized entry

Welcome! or No Unauthorized Entry (Добро пожаловать, или Посторонним вход воспрещён) is a 1964 comedy film by Russian director Elem Klimov.

Whilse his parents were ultra-Communists (his name, Elem, is an acronym for “Engels, Lenin, Marx” – a trendy practice among young Communist parents back then),  Klimov himself made several films that satirize and subtly criticize the Soviet regime.  Welcome is striking in the way it’s shot and how much it makes use of familiar compositions from Soviet posters and art.

“We shot everything head-on,” Klimov explained, “like posters or portraits. [...] If the picture has any originality, it lies in the eclectic style, the mixture of theater-poster and documentary.

Welcome is set in a Young Pioneer (Communist scouts) camp. Supposedly a paradise for children, the camp is run to such strict rules by its dictatorial leader that the kids don’t have much fun at all. When a boy, Kostya Inochkin, breaks a rule by swimming beyond the official boundaries, he is expelled.

Comedy was a big problem for the USSR. Comedy was dangerous because it is anarchic, it is subversive and could poke fun at leaders. It’s not surprising that this film ran into trouble – it was temporarily banned. There’s a famous scene after Inochkin’s expulsion, and it’s alleged that this is what caused that ban. Inochkin imagines his Granny dropping dead from shock and shame when she finds out he is expelled; he marches in a funeral parade (the Soviets did like a good parade) under a banner depicting Granny and the legend “Why Did You Kill Your Grandmother?“

Amusing? Yes, but the picture of the Granny supposedly looked like Khrushchev…

Bauer – The Dying Swan

Stills from another Bauer silent film, The Dying Swan (Умирающая Лебедь), 1916, the story of a mute ballet dancer murdered by an artist who tries too hard to capture an image of death in his painting. The film contains a beautiful and very surreal nightmare dream sequence.

Here’s the artist trying to capture images of death:

Here’s a clip of actress Karalli dancing the Dying Swan followed by the nightmare sequence:

Evgeny Bauer

Stills from “Twilight of a Woman’s Soul”, Сумерки женской души, 1913. A detailed article about Bauer is here. The article also explains the story of the film.

These two pictures are stills from Evgeny Bauer’s 1913 film, Twilight of a Woman’s Soul. Cinema was a very new art in 1913 and among other things, Bauer was an artistic photographer before he became a film set designer and cinematographer. One of the most beautiful things about his films is that many of the scenes are composed like still photographs. Everything in these images has been thought about, composition, lighting, all the elements in the frame. Cinema was an extension of photography.

Many of Bauer’s films are psychological dramas – and of course are silent – so the scenery and imagery are of paramount importance in creating the story.