They set out to be film workers serving the Soviet state, but their talent was too great. Shortly after their films were released internationally, the great Soviet filmmakers of the late 1920's, Sergei Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin, 1925) and Vsevolod Pudovkin (Mother, 1926), became stars, revolutionizing the style of movies all over the world.
Alexander Dovzhenko is usually the third listed of the Soviet cinema masters of this period, but recently his own star has risen as his works have become more available. Image Entertainment's new DVD release of his stunning 1928 silent film Arsenal will undoubtedly add to the elevation of Dovzhenko's importance to motion picture history.
Arsenal began as an assignment from the Soviet government for a commemoration of the siege of the arsenal at Kiev in The Ukraine in January 1918. In an event with some of the same resonance as the Alamo in the United States, this was a doomed attempt by a group of Bolsheviks to seize and hold Kiev's arsenal against a much larger force of Ukrainian nationalists. If the authorities were hoping for a straightforward retelling of events that is not at all what they got with Dovzhenko's film.
Instead Dovzhenko went for a far more radical way of telling the story, trying to get at the reasons for the siege and what it meant for his Ukrainian homeland. The style most closely resembles animated political cartoons, freely using exaggeration, fantasy, symbols and a wild and very bitter humor. A horse, beaten by his peasant master, turns and tells him he is venting his anger on the wrong target. A Ukrainian nationalist lights a commemorative candle to the portrait of a great patriot of the past and, filled with disgust, the portrait comes alive and spits out the candle. The futility of the first World War is harrowingly expressed when soldiers are bombarded, not with poison gas, but with laughing gas and die with horribly extended grins.
Arsenal was a success upon its release although there was some grousing from the Soviet government over the obscurity of its avant-garde style. That grousing would quickly grow as Josef Stalin took more power and imposed a new and very dull style called "Social Realism" that would wipe out the advances made by the Soviet filmmakers of the late 1920's. After one more masterpiece, Earth (1930), Dovzhenko would soon be brought to heel, too tightly controlled in his remaining films to allow a venue for his talent.
Dovzhenko and his cinematographer Danyll Demutsky created some of the most beautiful images in film history. There is hardly a shot in Arsenal that is not a striking pictorial composition. This is ably served here by the high quality of the print on Image Entertainment's new DVD. The score is modernist but ably supports the images. Many viewers may feel lost as the film delves into details of Ukrainian politics. Fortunately Image as added a commentary track by Dovzhenko scholar Vance Kepley, Jr. who supplies the background to the action and insight into Dovzhenko's artistic choices.
Dovzhenko's films have had immense influence on many other directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris, 1972) and Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line, 1998). Thanks to Image Entertainment's DVD release of Arsenal, that influence is only likely to grow.
For more information about Arsenal, visit Image Entertainment. To order Arsenal, go to TCM Shopping.
by Brian Cady
