Piter FM

This movie i found to be a little tempting because i thought that we were going to see the two characters actually publically intereact with each other at the end of the film and that did not happen. I think that the city itslef played a very important role in this film. The movie made it look beautiful with all of the unique buildings, to the cool escalators and the river running through with the bridges. I think also that the film used the city as the main obstacle preventing these characters from meeting. I also like how close the characters were to each other throughout the film and how many taimes they literally walked by each other without knowing each other. They kept making eye contact with each other as well and it made me just want to tell Maxim hey thats Masha thats her right there. I thought it was funny when he called into her  radiostation at the end to apologize to her on the air when she was the DJ at the station. In the end i found this movie to be not bad for a Russian love story.

The Return

I found this film today to be very interesting and a little bit confusing. I would have like to have known what the father had found in that little chest and wonder why he had to bring his two boys on that horrible journey? I found the father just to be a complete dick who didn't really seem to care at all about his sons until the very end before he falls off the tower. He also just makes both of the boys very upset throughtout most of the film, espicially Ivan who questions his father from almost the beginning and Andrei who kind of just does what he is told and really doesn't have any conflicts until the end of the movie with the father. I also wondered if the father had changed right before he died because he seemed compassionate to Ivan when he said "I Hate You" and ran off. Another thing i found interesting was how after the dad passed the kids seemed really to be pretty calm about it and you get the sense that they were almost prepared for the dad to die. I also noticed that this director like Tarkovsky used one of the four basic elements in this film alot with water. There were several scenes where wate was being shown with such vividness and purity and it was the focal point of those scenes. It definatley looked very similar to some of the scenes in Mirror.

Brother

I was a big fan of the film we watched today, I thought that the main character Danila was awesome. As a character i'd say that Danila was kind of a comic book vigilante while he does kill several people in the film they all seem to be bad people. Danila is a very violent character while i think he does not wish to be one, the main reason that he kills most of the people is to protect his brother or innocent civilians who he later becomes friends with like the German. This is what makes him more than just an ordinary mobster because he actaully cares for the innocent people in the story and he protects them almost like a crime fighter. I think that the film wants us to approve of his acts because the movie portrays just how bad St. Petersburg was in the 90's and I think that they were trying to suggest that the city needed some kind of super hero to clean up the city. Danila's background definately helps him out throughout the film as a solider in the army while he claims that he only worked in the "HQ" i find it hard to believe that an HQ officer would know how to assassinate i mobster in the middle of a public market. Music plays a huge role in this movie for Danila because it helps him to escape reality and keep him sane from all of the violence that is going on around him. I think that without music Danila might have lost his head and just gone insane.  

Little Vera

The film we watched was called Little Vera and i found this film to be just depressing. The thing i noticed was how the make most of the scenes in this film very shady or sketchy looking. They made it just look like a very poor terrible place to grow up in and it really set the mood for the entire film. This is in sharp contrast to the movie Moscow  does not believe in tears where in that film many of the scenes are in very beautiful scenic places. The reason for this is to give a good appearance of the Soviet Union and Little Vera gives off the exact opposite kind of vibe to the viewers. Another thing i noticed about this film was all of the drinking in it and how badly it effected the characters in the film. It seemed like whenever they started to drink in this film only bad things happened after. Vera's father is the character in this film who really becomes a bad person when he drinks and it negatively effects every character in the movie. I feel some extreme sympathy for Vera she just cannot seem to catch a break in the movie, and she seemed to be kind of ignorant of her whole life situation. I wasn't suprised at all when i saw her try and commit suicide at the end and honestly i can't really blame her.

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears

This film Vladimir Menshov in 1979 revolves around three young ladies who live in Moscow in the late  1950's or the Thaw period. The first lady's name is Katerina and she is one of the two girls who has good morals, she is also a very hard-worker and this gets noticed at her factory and eventually gets her promoted to Executive Director. I felt really bad for when she became pregnant and her boyfriend just abandoned her and she was all on her own, but i was glad that she was doing very well for her and her daughter twenty years later. The next lady was named Lyudmila and she was the trouble maker of the group. She was basically just a gold-digger who thought she could just marry a rich guy and be set for life without having to do anything herself. She was a very shortminded person who didn't think about how her actions would effect her future and this comes back to hurt her later in the film. I could tell early in the film the type of girl she was going to be when she had on that strawberry mask and said it helped heal her skin. The third lady Antonina seemed to be the most modist of the three and she meets her future husband in the beginning of the film and gets married shortly after. Antonina and husband live happily married and have several children together. One thing i noticed about this film was the kind of blue collar attitude that all of these characters portrayed and i think that this was a great symbol of the Russian people. I think the title of this film also symbolized how Russian people on the outside all appeared to be really tough but when you get to know them it showed how they had several issues with the way their lives were going.

Ballad of a solider

I had some mixed feelings after viewing this film. I thought it was very good but i wasn't a big fan of the ending. It was definatley a little suprising the way it ended i thought that main character Alyosha was going to either meet up with the girl Shura again or that he was going to stay home with his mother and neither happened. But i can see why the movie did not have that kind of ending because it was trying to send a different message that that of a Hollywood fairytale or with a tragic death at the end. This film doesn't really explore the battles of war but more of a solider return home and the people he meets along the way. While the film is about more than just a solider on his journey home he hirst meets the man who is also returning home and lost his leg. He spends some time with this man then they part ways after he reunites wtih his fiance. Alyosha the sneaks his way onto a cargo train where he meets Shura, who is very irratating at first and wants to jump off the train when she sees him. She calms down and they spend some time together on the train and get to know each other a liitle better. Another significant meeting he has with a solider father who he gives the gifts of soap to, you can see just how much it meant to the father and the people around him after receiving this gift. This makes him feel good about what he has done for the father by giving them good news of his son. The last encounter is with his mother who is just thrilled to see her some again but gets her heart torn apart when he has to turn right around and head back to the army. I really felt for him and his mothe during this scene because if  I would have had to turn right around and head back after only seeing her for a few minutes. the message that this film sent was that you have to get the most out of time you spend with people and that some encounters can change your life forever.

Mirror

Well obviously i had some trouble trying to understand what whas going on in this movie but lets start at the beginning when the lady is standing at the fence. She is approached by a man who just comes walking out of the somwhere and he starts talking to her then he just leaves and we never see him again but i think im not sure that it might be that man's voice that narrates a few times through the film. Another thing i noticed in that scene was that the was a strong gust of wind and this re-appeared at the end of the filmmaybe to show that the characters ended up back in the same place. Later in the film the main charcter lady looks into a mirror and it turns into an old lady and we later see the old lady again walking in the field with children and maybe this symbolizes how quickly people's lives go bye without them realizing it. Another scene i found interesting was with the boy in the house by himself when suddenly a mysterious lady appears and starts telling him oreders then she dissapears and i wonder if the boy had some kind of disease. Another thing was that there were so many characters in this film and they all seemed to be rather irrelevant for the most part and I kept thinking that we would see some of them again and we never did. In the end i was left very confused by this film and I am interested to discover the actual plot of it.

Burnt by the Sun

This film Burnt by the Sun was a little unclear about exactly what the plot was until the very end of the movie. They did make the character mitya seem very sketchy throughtout the film and i noticed it when he was talking to little Nadya and the bald-guy when he said to him that he lies alot. The title of the movie itself is very significant because it showed all of the people who lives ended up being ruined from the revolution and Stalin being paranoid. Its very ironic how the characters are singing the song throughout the film and it maybe be a little forshadowing because the characters end up being "Burnt by the Sun". Another thing i noitced in the film was how much the KGB kept visting the Kotov's land in the beginning in the wheat fileds with the tanks. to giving people gas masks at the river to visting Kotov at his home. I got the feeling throughout the movie that it was just a matter of time until Kotov and his family were going to run into some trouble with the Russian government. The fact that they were still living in the countryside at that time their house seemed pretty bourgeosie and that is not what the Soviet Government wanted. Comparing Chapaev and Kotov they both were well respected men and both heroes. Chapaev dies gloriously in battle while Kotov gets killed by his own government because they saw him as a threat. Mitya is the real problem and he represents the Russian Government at that time the people in control were manipulators with no morals or ethics all that they cared about was power. Mitya arresting Kotov was based entirely on personal motives because he was harmed by the government earlier in his life so he wanted to harm Kotov for revenge. Kotov represents kind of the old regime in a way even though he was a Red general hero as time goes on he gets overpowered by Mityawho represents the new people in power who are looking to get rid of all of the people who were in power. This film was made for all of the people who suffered in Russia during the years of Socialist Realism, and was intended for an i think a world wide audience because they wanted to show the whole world how bad things really were in Russia during that time and to warn people and hopefully prevent it from ever happening again.

Circus

The Movie today i found to be be very un-propagandic until the very end of the film. It basically just follows around this lady named Marion Dixon who has to deal with having a black child in the 1930's and in the beginning of the film it shows her fleeing America because at the time that was not accepted in the U.S. . The film at the end of the movie then shows her child being revealed to the Russian people and Marian gets very upset thinking she will have to leave. Then all of the people embrace the baby and pass it around to show that Russian people do not discriminate people. The film basically just takes a couple shots at America and then claims itself to be the Greatest Country in the world. I found it very ironic when Marion says at the end of the film "I've never been to a place where i felt so free" i almost laughed out loud when i heard this because in Russia during the 1930's the people had almost no freedoms. All in all this movie was pretty boring and the propaganda in it was a far stretch from the truth.  

Chapaev

From what i noticed about this film was that it foucsed entirely on the legendary commander. The reason he succeeded with the Russian public was becasue he was just an ordinary man who become this great leader once the war broke out. The movie makes him very loud and boistrous and at times very comedic and this is what made the people fall in love with him because he was an actual character not just someone who walked around on a screen with saying any words. Words definately play a big role in the success of this movie without them the audience would have lost all of the emotion that he put on the screen through his mouth and that is why Battleship Potemkin didn't have a big success with the people because the audience doesn't really get to know any of the characters in that film. I think that the combination of Chapaev and Furmanov was huge for the movie and for the Red army. While Chapaev was a great leader, Furmanov gave his intellectual side to help guide Chapaev and to make sure he did what the Red army wanted because Chapaev wasn't the smartest guy in fact he said he had only learned to read during the revolution. One symbol that i noticed from the movie was that the White general im not sure of his name but he was seen several times in the film wearing glasses and glasses were a major sign of the Old regime and everything that The Soviets hated about the czarist people. Another symbol was when they were about to fight the Whites marched up in unison together with blank expressions on their faces as if they didn't even care. They were also all dressed in sharp black outfits that made them just look like the bad guys. All together i can see why this was a great propaganda for Russia at the time.

The man with the movie camera

I found this movie to be very interesting. I was a big fan of all of the cool camera shots that were in this movie. The shot with the train was awesome and looked risky because the guy set it up as the train was coming right toward him. This film appeared to be a documentary with the camera just shooting typical events that took place in a day in the Soviet Union. My favorite part of the movie is the shots of the athletes when they are competing it must have been one of the first scenes with sports so glorified like that. The camera lengths of each shot seemed to move very fast. While Eisenstein's scenes were propagandic toward the Reds, this movie just showed things that took place as they happened without trying to propagandize the film. They were only a few characters in this film the Man with the camera and the editor lady who appears to put the movie together. Another thing I liked about this film was the music that they used, it really put you into a few of scenes a made the shots look extremely interesting. After seeing this movie i definatley prefer this style of the style of Eisenstein.

Battleship Potemkin

This movie i found to be very propagandic toward the soviets for many reasons the first one that i came across was how they portrayed the officers on the battleship. They were dressed in these dark black uniforms and played this haunting evil music anytime they showed up in the movie at the beginning. It also appeared to make the sailors living conditions terribly bad from how they had to sleep in those little hammocks to eating the meat with all of those disgusting maggots in it. I love how the portrayed the little man with the glasses who inspects the meat and tells the sailors that the meat is fine and they could just wash them off. After that i knew that some bad things were going to happen to that little guy. Another symbol was after the sailors take over the ship they hoist a big red flag at the top to symbolize the Soviets. The fact that it was the only color used in the film besides black and white shows how important it was to send this message out to the viewers. Another thing i found interesting is after the death of Vakulinchuk the sailors put him in a little tent and the people all came and said their prayers to him. This looked strikingly similar to what the Soviets did with Lenin's body. The last thing i would like to talk about was the staircase scene, this must have been a groundbreaking scene in film history the way it was shot with the camera following the people down the stairs I'm sure that the people had never seen anything like that before. The part with the baby carriage looked very similar to the famous scene in the movie The Untouchables.

The Three Short Films

So from these three films i have discovered that you have to focus on the characters with your eyes alot because obviously there is no sound. I love the facial expressions that the actors make so that they giive off their emotions and some of them just tried way to hard to sell an emotion that i found hilarious. One advantage i can think of that sound films carry is that you could show to all audiences and didnt have to bleep out any bad words because they weren't any. Obviously some of the challenges of making these movies is being able to sell the emotions of the characters without using words and having the dialogue kept to a minimal number of words that you could put on the screen. From the first movie we watched i felt bad for the character Viktor who married a huge gold-digger who clearly had no love for him and just wanted to use him to move herslef up in social status. In the second movie i found it extremely entertaining how dumb that husband was just letting his wife bring over the other man and not even check in the most obvious place. You would think that an old geeser like that would keep a closer eye on his younger attractive wife. That guy looked like he should have been on the Three Stooges or something the way he was acting. And finally the third movie which a found very depressing it was sad enough that the girl Gizzella had a dissablity and couldn't speak but then bith of men that she liked were terrible to her with one cheating on her and the other who ends up killing her. Im not sure what she was thinking with Glinsky when a guy thinks that a beard like that is cool you know that there is probably something wrong with him. The strategy that i found to watching these movies is that your eyes have to be glued to the screen because you cannot listen and you have to pay more attention to the characters and how they act.

The Irony of Fate Part II

My thoughts on the rest of this movie are mixed I did like the movie but it was very long. I felt like they could have shortened it up and they kind of beat aroumd the bush for awhile. The main idea of the movie i found very intriguing how spontaniety can save peoples lives. I agree that sometimes people can become brainwashed in every day activity and  people sometimes need to look back and reflect on their lives and find true happiness. I do feel bad for Ippolit who gets completely screwed over by the whole situation. But I think that Ippolit symbolizes Russian Society and the idea of Nadya being safe and secure with him but she discovers that she will not be happy with him. This movie sends the message that if you are happy with someone no matter how unusual the situation of meeting them or how far apart you live that it will work out. I agree with this message because if we aren't happy then when will look back on our lives someday will we be satisfied with what we have done?  

Irony of Fate Part I

So from what i have seen of this movie so far it seems pretty similar to an american comedy. Main character Zhenya is very entertaining from his singing to his drunken adventure that he unconsciously takes from Moscow to Leningrad. The idea that you could end up on the exact same street, apartment complex and apartment in another city would never be possible in America because our citites are not all mapped out exactly the same like in Russia. This film seems alot like a prehistoric Harold and Kumar and the humor of the movies is similar involving characters who do humorous things in an altered state of mind and then recollect back on it later and freak out. The idea of new years in Russia seemed more important than in America with characters giving gifts to each other and spending the time together whereas Americans just all go out and celebrate it with a big group of people. All in all i am looking forward to seeing the rest of this movie and the comedy that comes with it.