Novyy Gulliver, aka New Gulliver (Russia, 1935)

Director Aleksandr Ptushko’s Novyy Gulliver was Russian cinema’s first feature length film to combine live action and stop motion animation. Of course, Russia was a few years behind Hollywood in performing that feat, as special effects pioneer Willis O’Brien had accomplished it as early as 1925 with The Lost World and would repeat it in 1933 with King Kong. Neither of those films, however, could be said to present as clear a condemnation of the exploitation of the proletariat as Novyy Gulliver does—which is of course what you would want from such a film.

Ptushko began his film career at Moscow’s Mosfilm Studios, where he started out sculpting puppets for use in other animators’ films. He quickly moved into making films of his own, starting out with a series of animated shorts featuring a character called Bratishkin. More shorts followed and, by 1933, he had assembled a large enough team to begin work on the ambitious Novyy Gulliver.

The film concerns an upstanding Russian youth named Petya (played by 15 year old actor Vladimir Konstantinon) who, while on an outing with his communist youth group, falls asleep during a reading of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. As he sleeps, Petya sees the novel play out in his mind, but, because his head is so full of communism, it turns into a weird Marxist parable. This is not too surprising, as, when we meet Petya, he and his fellow scouts are marching in lockstep while singing a jaunty song about the joys of labor in which they call themselves "flying Leninists.”

Now inhabiting the role of Gulliver, Petya awakes to find himself prisoner of the tiny Liliputians—or, more specifically, of the Liliputian royals. In depicting Liliput’s ruling class, Ptushko draws heavily upon the court of Louis XIV. There is no mistaking this rogue’s gallery for what they are: a collection of spoiled libertines who are living lives of idle extravagance at the expense of the common folk. The king is clearly a simpering idiot, and can only address his public by lip synching to pre-recorded speeches. The real power in the kingdom is held by the King’s chief of police, who uses the military to keep the laborers and general populace in line.

The Chief’s leadership style is, of course, a paranoid one, and so his greatest concern, upon the arrival of Gulliver, is that Gulliver will side with the workers. His answer to this is to recruit Gulliver, whom he refers to as a “human mountain”, to the capitalist cause. This works only until Gulliver sees the chief whipping one of the laborers, at which point he rises to his full, enormous height and regales the crowd with a booming version of the happy working song from the beginning of the film. It is at this point that the Chief determines that this meddling Socialist giant must be killed, but his initial attempts are foiled by the wily Gulliver.

It could be said that Novyy Gulliver‘s combination of live action and animation is more sequential than it is simultaneous. After a live action prologue, it is with the introduction of the Liliputians that the film’s employment of stop motion animation begins, and that it indeed starts to consist of almost nothing but. Ptushko and his crew take a lot of editorial license with the puppet sculpts, making the royals a grotesque lot with bulbous eyes and tremulous, gaping mouths. On the other hand, the workers are portrayed as colorless and almost identical in appearance, like a bunch of green plastic army men given life.

The craft evident in Novyy Gulliver’s execution may be its best argument for the virtues of collective labor. Employing many hundreds of puppets--some with as many as a hundred or more different heads to portray different expressions--it was clearly a massive undertaking. Even more so given that few of these puppets were allowed to remain idle, as Ptushko and his crew took pains to create movement in every corner of the frame. As many of the scenes in the film are crowd scenes, that amounts to hundreds of tiny manipulations per frame. It is perhaps for this reason that, when Vladimir Konstantinon is required to act in close proximity to one of the Liliputians, the filmmakers give themselves a break and use an actual doll or hand operated puppet.

The gears of the royal’s downfall are set in motion when the Chief puts the laborers to the task of building a weapon that will kill Gulliver. Unknown to him, the workers have decided to throw their lot in with Gulliver and stage a revolt in the weapons factory, killing the foreman in the process. This scene, which owes a heavy debt to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, is aided immeasurably by a nightmarishly phantasmagorical miniature set in which the bizarre looking factory machinery looms over the workers like malevolent giant insects. More clever staging is employed by the climax that follows, a spectacular puppet battle royal that sees more toy tanks blowing up than a Showa era Godzilla movie.

One of the most fascinating things about Novyy Gulliver is how it employs a medium so often used toward more whimsical ends to depict the grim, life-and-death stakes of class war. In other words, Baby New Year this is not: if all the caricatured puppets and cartoon sound effects lull you into thinking that the end that awaits the King and his chief of police will be in any way pretty, you have another think coming.

Then again, at the end, all of Novyy Gulliver's events turns out to have been a dream—and we are returned to a world where militarized children sing about how awesome it is to work in a factory.

Red Detachment of Women (China, 1971)

While presenting challenges of its own, Red Detachment of Women may have the power to redeem ballet in the eyes of those of us who have suffered through one too many performances of The Nutcracker. Instead of dancing tea leaves and sugarplum fairies, imagine pitched battles featuring severe, uniformed female dancers, all giving literal meaning to the term “bullet ballet”, with pliés that end in bayonettings and pirouettes that wind up to the hurling of grenades. All that alongside enough fruity, highly stylized scenes of terpsichorean hand-to-hand combat to make Chang Cheh wish he was born a woman.

Of course, Red Detachment of Women is not just a ballet, but also an opera, with much of its dialogue sung in the classical Chinese style. I’d venture that Chinese opera is an acquired taste to even the most liberalized Western ear, and the shrill stridence with which the film’s three leads -- prima ballerina Xue Jinghua, Qingtang Liu, and Song Chen -- deliver the libretto might provide an even more implacable obstacle to that acquisition. Xue, for her part, spends the entire film in a state of righteous fury which, thanks to her ear piercing range, is enough to blow your hair back whenever given voice to. Still, Red Detachment compensates immeasurably for any ear rending by being a fascinating and, at times, beautiful visual document, its painterly visuals and rigorously formalist compositions giving every frame the look of a Maoist social realist painting sprung into full Technicolor life.

Red Detachment of Women is basically a filmed version of a 1964 ballet of the same name that was in turn based on a 1961 dramatic film which was also of the same name. It is one of eight “Model Ballets” produced during the Cultural Revolution, in that it was deemed sufficient in its ingestion of Maoist Kool-Aid to be officially made part of the cultural cannon. This means that it was performed a LOT, with even Richard Nixon taking a gander at it during his historic visit. Reports have it that Nixon liked it, but when presented with something that is screaming for approval with as scary of an insistence as Red Detachment of Women is, what else is he going to say?

The film begins with peasant girl Wu (Xue Jinghua) making a violent escape from the clutches of the evil landlord Nanbatian (Chengxiang Li), who has imprisoned and tortured her for her failure to pay rent. (Here in San Francisco, tenants of rent controlled apartments would gladly accept such treatment over eviction.) Nanbatian’s minions catch up to her, however, and whip her mercilessly, leaving her for dead in a rain soaked field. Hong (Qingtang Liu), a military officer, comes upon her and nurses her wounds, then points her in the direction of a military camp where a new, all female army detachment is being trained. Wu arrives at the camp and is greeted with open arms by the detachment’s commander (Song Chen), who, after hearing of her treatment by Nanbatian, ceremoniously presents her with a rifle.

Enraptured by the thought of gunning down capitalists, and now, thanks to the Red Army, armed and certified to do so, Wu joins the detachment in their first mission, which is to raid Nanbatian’s estate and rescue the rest of his captives. Commissar Hong provides subterfuge for the operation by showing up at Nanbatian’s birthday party in the guise of a white suit and pith helmet wearing fancy man. In the end, they are successful, though Wu’s itchy trigger finger almost compromises the mission. For this she is relieved of her weapon, but one gets the sense that she just may get a shot at redemption during the last act.

The fight scenes here, while not at all aiming for realism, are nonetheless surprisingly exciting, marked by lots of high flying acrobatics and intricate choreographies of feigned violence. One sequence showing the charge of the women’s detachment, armed dancers leaping by in seemingly endless procession, some spinning like dervishes with colorful flags in hand, is breathtaking. No cautionary tale this, the message here is “War is awesome”, especially when it’s waged against such deserving parties as the leering Nanbiatan and his crew of willing capitalist thugs.

It seems that no matter where you go in world popular cinema, there is no more satisfying ending than that which features an armed raid by the heroes upon the fortified lair of a mustached villain. Even life under communism cannot slake an audience’s thirst for such spectacle, and so Red Detachment of Women -- daintily, musically, but, above all, energetically -- delivers it in spades. After Nanbatian attempts a raid of his own upon the military camp, the Red Army, Women’s Detachment in the lead, launch a devastating counterattack, aided by an armed mob of Nanbatian’s newly freed peasant captives. This decisive rout reaches a fine point with Wu fiercely singing admonishment at both Nanbatian and his chief crony Ou Guangsi (Wan Qiwu) before shooting each in the back as they flee. Hong, meanwhile, having been martyred in the attack, is paid solemn tribute by all in the detachment as the curtain -- figuratively -- falls.

While it left me mildly transfixed, I could see how all of Red Detachment of Women’s declamatory acting and stylized posturing could be welcomed by some as an unintended caricature of authoritarian rigidity, even if it’s one that is at times a little frightening. The hysterical pitch of the film could easily be seen as symptomatic of the period of brutal cultural suppression in which it was made. The frozen, wide eyed countenances of the actors, which were likely intended to communicate both vigor and revolutionary fervor, are just as evident of mania. In other words, if you want Maoist kitsch, you’ve got it, but in order to treat it as such, there is an awful lot that is hard, unforgiving, and aggrieved -- not to mention beautiful -- within Red Detachment of Women that must first be ignored.

To the Stars by Hard Ways (Russia, 1981)

With the exception of art house fare like Tartovsky’s Solaris, Russian science fiction films have a history of being treated with little respect in the U.S., and To the Stars by Hard Ways is no exception. After falling into the ruinous hands of Sandy Frank, it received one of that producer’s typically haphazard dubbing jobs before being released to American television under the title Humanoid Woman, going on from there to the ultimate ignominy of being mocked by puppets on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

In Russia, not surprisingly, it was a somewhat different story. Scripted by renowned Russian sci-fi author Kir Bulichev, the film was both a critical and box office success during its day, and, after the fall of communism, became something of a cult item among the country’s young film enthusiasts. This renewed popularity prompted the successful release of a restored version of the film (the project of Nikolai Viktorov, the son of the film’s original director, Richard Viktorov) in 2001. Given the contrast between its handling Stateside and its reception in its homeland, it’s tempting for a writer like myself to go that one step further and over-praise the film as being some kind of underappreciated masterpiece. But that simply isn’t the case. Still, To the Stars is nonetheless a well made and interesting movie, and certainly one that rewards a viewing minus the hectoring silhouettes of Joel and the bots.

The film begins with the discovery of a mysterious, human-like woman, the sole survivor of some unascertainable catastrophe, aboard a derelict alien spaceship of unknown origin. In order to both study this extraterrestrial and introduce her to our human ways, the somewhat unorthodox decision is made to bring her back to Earth, where she will live at the home of scientist Sergei Lebedev along with Lebedev’s mom and dad and his college age son Stepan (Vadim Ledogorov), who is finishing his preparations to become an astronaut. That the woman, who comes to be known as Niya, ends up being a quick study of the spoken Russian language ultimately serves to shed little light on things, as she is only able to reveal that she remembers nothing prior to her rescue.

What is immediately apparent about Niya, however, is that she is capable of moving at superhuman speed, and that she has both the power of telekinesis and the ability to teleport herself at will. It is further learned, after closer examination, that she is a creature of synthetic origin, and that her brain is designed so that she can be controlled remotely by some unknown third party. The question then, for both Niya and her human hosts, becomes that of for what purpose she was created, and by whom. When delegates from the ecologically ravaged planet Dessa arrive on Earth asking for assistance, Niya thinks she has found the answer.

Suspecting that Dessa is her home planet, Niya stows away aboard a clean-up vessel bound there, not realizing that it is the same ship on which young Stepan will be making his maiden voyage as a space cadet. Once there, she gradually becomes aware of her true purpose, all the while assisting the crew in its attempts to steer the blighted planet away from the brink of irreparable ecological meltdown. Opposition to these efforts comes from the forces of Turanchoks, an industrialist who has turned the increasing toxicity of Dessa’s atmosphere into an opportunity for profit -- he’s made a killing in canned air and gas masks –- and who sees no gain in having the situation remedied.

Alongside Aleksei Bybnikov’s romantic, harpsichord tinged score, attractive cinematography by Aleksandr Rybin, and a few truly imaginative ideas and inspired visuals, I think one of the things that contributes most to To the Stars by Hard Ways being as enjoyable as it is is the agreeable balance it strikes between hard handed allegory and lighthearted space opera. I know that those who are rightfully wary of propagandistic elements within Soviet films might roll their eyes at the movie’s depiction of a craven industrialist capitalizing on the misery of the masses, but, in that, it’s really no more strident or left-leaning than the nihilistic portrayals of corporate greed found in countless Hollywood versions of dystopia produced since the late 60s.

And, unlike a lot of those latter mentioned films, To the Stars –- no doubt motivated by a desire to disprove any obliviousness to Star Wars on its makers’ parts -- also piles on fun, Flash Gordon-y elements like intrepid space cadets, goofy domestic robots, grotesque alien creatures, groovy looking space vehicles, and a climax that involves both a ravaging space blob and a pitched battle on the surface of an alien planet. In well orchestrated combination with the Earthbound parts of its narrative, which are steeped in both melancholy and mystery, this makes for quite a unique stew, not to mention one whose ingredients, in a testament to Viktorov’s prowess as a director, clash a lot less than you really might expect them to.

Perhaps To the Stars by Hard Ways’ greatest asset, though, is the presence within it of Yelena Metyolkina, a model who was then making her acting debut. With her haunted, marmoset-like eyes and startled, cat-like movements, Metyolkina’s Niya is both an oddly compelling heroine and a striking physical presence, combining an unnervingly alien inscrutability with a vulnerability that is all too human.

And once we learn more about Niya’s unique predicament, I’d think it would be difficult for even the most calloused viewer not to feel a little something for her. Though, by the time of her return to Dessa, she has adapted to the ways of her human hosts as best she can, she is still, at heart, just another ET with a longing to go home -- no matter how ravaged and muck encrusted that home might be. Sadly, as the film’s title implies, that the path home is seldom one as straight and true as it might seem is something that Niya has to learn the hard way.

Tsog Taij (Mongolia, 1945)

Tsog Taij is one of the earliest surviving examples of Mongolian cinema, and may represent an instance of me biting off somewhat more than I can chew. Not only do I know very little about Mongolia, but Tsog Taij is a film whose story is at least nominally rooted in the country’s 17th century history, about which I know even less. To compound matters considerably, it’s also a work of propaganda and, as such, is heavily influenced by the nationalist politics of its time. This means that historical veracity likely took a back seat to whatever ideological points needed to be made -- though in which instances that occurred I’d be loathe to speculate. In short, I’m asking that you forgive a little blind groping on my part (no, not of you… I meant that totally metaphorically), because the alternative would be a review made up almost entirely of cut and pasted bits from various Wikipedia articles.

Our hero here, Tsog Taij, was indeed a real Mongolian prince, but I imagine that he was chosen as a protagonist less for his objective accomplishments than for his rhetorical utility as an enemy of Tibetan Buddhism. The Soviets had a very hands-on involvement in Mongolian cinema at the time, which had been designated by the ruling Revolutionary Party to serve as a tool for socialist instruction (yes, Tea Partiers, just like in Hollywood!), and so it’s not all that surprising that a story about Mongolia’s battle for the control of Tibet would be skewed to become a teachable moment about the evils of organized religion. Still, for those of us accustomed to the more sympathetic portrayals of the Dalai Lama and his followers that are common today, there is indeed some dark novelty in seeing them cast as the craven oppressors of the people that they are here. And while it is true that the Buddhists made use of the Swastika for many hundreds of years before the Nazis appropriated it -– and toward very different ends --, it’s hard to imagine that Tsog Taij’s shots of their forces marching under flags adorned with it were not meant to conjure associations with certain, much more recent events.

Tsog Taij opens upon the aftermath of a battle near the Tibetan border, in which the forces of Lingden Khan (Bat-Ochir), the last descendant of Genghis Khan, have been crushed by forces lead by Manchurian general Ambagi Tsetsen. As they make their retreat, the ailing Lingden hands the sword of Genghis to a messenger, instructing him to take it to Tsog Taij in Mongolia, and, further, to instruct Taij to muster his forces and join him at the front. Meanwhile, an emissary from the Gelugpa -- or “Yellow Hat" -- Buddhist sect approaches Ambagi Tsetsen and pledges the Dalai Lama’s allegiance, while at the same time asking for assurances that theirs will be decreed the official religion of those areas of Mongolia that fall under Manchurian control.

Meanwhile, back in Mongolia, we see the common folk being generally ground down under the Yellow Hats’ collective boot heels, being forced to chant mantras, bow down before their Nazi symbol, and whatnot, all of which meets with spirited opposition from the noble Tsog Taij (Tsegmeb). Taij further angers his rival, Khush Khan -- a prince who has aligned himself with the Yellow Hats –- when his son, Arslan Taij (Tserendendev), embarks upon a Romeo and Juliet-style romance with Khush Khan’s daughter Khulan (Dolgorsuren). In retaliation, Khush Khan takes the occasion of Taij and his troops being away on maneuvers as an opportunity to stage a late night assault on the prince’s castle, during which Taij’s mother and many of the members of his court are brutally slaughtered by Khush Khan’s Yellow Hat soldiers. Rather than entering into a civil war, as Khush Khan seems intent on provoking him into, the grief stricken Taij, upon returning, proclaims that he will instead take the fight to Tibet itself. Fortuitously, it is almost at this precise moment that Lingden Khan’s messenger appears bearing the sword of Genghis Khan.

And this is only the beginning of Tsog Taij, for, from here, we will go on to see our hero and his forces battle their way across Tibet’s borders, and then proceed onward toward Lhasa. There he will meet with betrayal at the hands of his own son, who, seduced by the evil Lamas –- with the help of a beautiful and licentious Tibetan princess and some of the local libations –- crosses over to the other side, thus destining himself for a traitor’s death under the executioner’s blade. All leads to a final confrontation between the armies of Taij and Khush Khan, during which Taij is mortally wounded, but still finds the strength for one last rousing plea for Mongolian national unity before decorously expiring.

Despite its three hour length and scrupulous-seeming period detail, Tsog Taij is prevented by the glaring nakedness of its (then) present day agenda from truly capturing the viewer within its epic sweep. This problem is further compounded by the fact that director T. Khurlee, despite having the extras, the props, and the scenery to accomplish the task, wastes them by failing to shoot the pivotal battle scenes with any kind of dynamism, instead making them come off as somewhat static and clunky. Where he does capture an appropriate sense of grandeur is in those quieter, tension-filled moments that both lead up to and follow those battles, such as in his sweeping shots of the carnage left in the wake of the film’s opening melee and the scenes of huge, silent armies trudging their way across vast, wind whipped plains.

Make no mistake about it; Tsog Taij is indeed a handsome looking, technically accomplished film -- thanks in no small part, I imagine, to an influx of Soviet funding and talent. However, those who are looking for a rousing period war picture are likely to come away disappointed. As much as it might have aided its cause, Tsog Taij apparently forgot to be that, instead losing sight of such objectives in the course of pursuing other priorities.

The Hand of Fate (South Korea, 1954)

Han Hyeong-mo's The Hand of Fate is an interesting hybrid, part tragic romance, part political allegory, part spy thriller and part anti-communist propaganda. Made at a time when Korean cinema -- along with Korean society as a whole -- was struggling toward recovery in the wake of the Korean war, while not a commercial success, it marked a step forward in technical terms for its crisp editing and ambitious, bifurcated structure. Not to mention that it delivered Korea's first on-screen kiss.

The story concerns "Margaret"/Jong-ae (Jun In-ja), a North Korean spy working as a bar girl in Seoul. One night Margaret encounters Young-chul, a poor student and day laborer whom the police have wrongly apprehended under suspicion of stealing her purse. Margaret decides to make a "project" of sorts out of the young man, buying him clothes and offering him financial support so that he can quit his job and focus on his studies. She obviously has seduction in mind, but of what kind is initially unclear. Is her plan to recruit Young-chul to her cause?

Eventually we find that the taste of freedom Margaret has been afforded during her time in the capitalist South has lead her to question the ideology and methods of her communist superiors. In response, she has chosen to exercise one of the only freedoms available to her; that being the freedom to love whomever her heart chooses. For a short period, she and Young-chul are able to carve out a small piece of happiness for themselves amid the squalor of their daily lives, until Margaret discovers that Young-chul is in fact an anti-espionage agent for the South Korean government.

Han Hyeong-mo, who worked as a cinematographer before moving on to directing. brings a striking minimalism to the material here. Apart from a couple of brief walk-ons, Margaret and Young-chul are the only speaking characters we ever see on screen, with Margaret's mysterious superior only being shown from the neck down until the film's conclusion. The result of this is that, to the extent that The Hand of Fate is a parable about the North/South division, it is one that plays out entirely between two people in a room. Han also uses his musical score very sparingly, while incorporating long, dialog-free patches, which adds to a feeling of tension and anxious anticipation -- in turn making us jump along with these haunted, furtive characters whenever there is a sudden knock on the door.

Unfortunately, since The Hand of Fate is to some extent infected with the stark moral binarism of propaganda, as well as a certain primness in its approach to romantic melodrama, there is a stiffness to things that prevents us from really feeling the heat of Margaret and Young-chul's passion. This is a particular shortcoming in light of the fact that the film would have us believe that this passion is strong enough to lead them to risk their freedom, and even their lives. Still, this does not prevent The Hand of Fate from being enjoyed as a nifty mood piece, as well as a fascinating look at the formative years of a cinema that would later become one of the most exciting in Asia.

Your Jesus didn't bring us any candy

America, you are a weak and sinful nation. That's alright by me, of course. Just don't go crying to Baptist firebrand Estus W. Pirkle about it when the Commies overrun your town and start driving bamboo spikes through your children's heads. That, as far as I can gather, is the message of If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, the subject of my latest review over at Teleport City.