A work in constant progress (and occasional regress).
Release Date:
December 31, 1930
Original Title:
Простой случай
Alternate Titles:
Life Is Beautiful
Prostoy sluchay
Рассказ о простом случае
Genres:
Drama | Romance
Production Companies:
Mezhrabpomfilm
Production Countries:
Soviet Union
Ratings / Certifications:
N/A
Runtime: 75
As a response to criticism for the allegedly excessive “mass appeal” of his earlier epic STORM OVER ASIA (1928), Vsevolod Pudovkin unleashed his flair for experimentation in what was supposed to be the director’s first sound feature. Everything went wrong: technical problems forced him to complete the film as a silent; viewers were baffled by the lack of a recognizable plot; then, the ideological climate of the Soviet Union changed. He was now being blamed for catering to bourgeois taste! Time has come to set the record straight. Here’s lyrical cinema at its best, deliberately operatic and yet intimate as it matches the characters’ inner life with the solemn rhythms of nature, and depicted through breathtaking black-and-white photography. A sensation at last year’s Pordenone fest, Pudovkin’s long-forgotten swan song to the art of montage is resurrected by Gabriel Thibaudeau’s emotionally charged live music performance. –PCU (USSR, 1930, 75m)
Co-Director:
Mikhail Doller
Director:
Vsevolod Pudovkin
Director of Photography:
Grigory Kabalov
Georgi Bobrov
Production Design:
Sergei Kozlovsky
Screenplay:
Alexandr Rzheshevsky
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Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.