Mad Love: The Films of Evgeni Bauer (shorts)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: B       Film:

 

Twilight of a Woman’s Soul                      A

After Death                                          A-

The Dying Swan                                    A

 

 

How many people have heard of Evgeni Bauer?  Not many even though he is considered one of the greatest filmmakers.  His career was short, only four years, similar to that of Jean Vigo, who lived a short life, but completed a masterpiece of cinema with L’Atalante (reviewed on this site).  The tragedy of short-lived careers is not that they have only made a handful of films, but the thought of what the future could have held for them.  Were the few films that they did make just the beginning of further more advantageous projects?  We will never know.

 

Bauer was a soviet filmmaker that combined the stylistic trademarks of Sergei Eisenstein and D.W. Griffith with the haunting nature of an Edgar Allan Poe short story or poem.  The combination of these elements would create a film deemed too cosmopolitan for the Soviet society at the time, therefore his work was buried and his name vanished from cinema almost entirely.  Since the fall of the “Iron Curtain”, his work has surfaced and is finally now receiving the praise it always deserved. 

 

Mad Love has been put together by the British Film Institute/Milestone Film & Video and pulls together three of his films.  Starting with Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (1913) then After Death (1915), and finally The Dying Swan (1916), they are all presented in their original 1.33 X 1 origins with new music created by Laura Rossi, Nicholas Brown, and Joby Talbot.  The audio track is Dolby Digital 2.0 that goes between Stereo and Mono.  It is hard to tell because if it is stereo, it has mono origins to begin with.  Whatever the case may be, the audio is decent and nicely arranged adding just the right dimension to make these films work.  While a 5.1 mix would have been a nicely conceived idea, they are ok in the 2-channel form.  As can be expected the prints have some damage, but are better than expected considering much of this was thought to be lost for some time.  Scratches are very minimal and the tint looks ok too overall.  While dirt and debris arrive throughout the steadiness of the print is impressive.  I have certainly seen much worse from other films from this era. 

 

Twilight of a Woman’s Soul is a very poignant film about a woman who ends up killing her rapist and then must make a new life for herself when her husband leaves (Thelma and Louise anyone?).  I particularly like the placement of the camera and certain framing that was used on this film.  It is important to see how early films like this would set the cliché for later films within a particular genre.  For example, how are evil characters introduced and what type of angle or lighting is used to establish certain moods around these characters.  The same goes for good characters and so one and so forth. 

 

After Death would explore some of the elements that are more Poe-esque with the idea that there is a psychological tie between the dead and the living and even further the idea that the dead have some control over the living.  Check out F.W. Murnau’s classic Sunrise!  The use of psychology has been dated way back in cinema even though its treatment as a profession has existed much shorter.  Alfred Hitchcock’s powerful Spellbound (1945) would be one of the first films to truly use psychology in a profound way and treat it like a real profession, rather than a theory.

 

Finally The Dying Swan is a tragic novella dealing with a dancer played the legendary ballerina Vera Karalli. In this film we have a talented ballerina, but she is mute.  She is also the subject of an artist who is obsessed with trying to capture the idea of death on his canvas.  She is adored by her father, but his expectations of her are more than she can handle.  Not only that, but there is an accident that will change all those involved. This one almost reminded me to some extent of the underrated 1998 film Meet Joe Black, which was based on Meet John Doe, a film from the 30’s.  

 

I was quite shocked at just how impressive these films are considering very few have heard of Bauer, but hopefully this set from Image will allow that to change.  That is especially since this single disc set features three of his films and runs two and a half hours total time.  There is even a documentary that runs 37-minutes and touches specifically on each of these three films.  It is broken down by each film specifically.  This segment is hosted by Russian film scholar Yuri Tsivian and is certainly a nice section to become more familiar with the influence and uncommon practices that Bauer used.  To make this disc complete is a DVD-ROM press kit and photo gallery.  This is a general must-have for anyone that is serious about having a library of films from the silent era.

 

 

-   Nate Goss