The Thematic and Stylistic Unity Inherent in the Films of Evgenni Bauer rob bridgettThe approach to this essay will be inaugurated primarily by an exploration of the period of Russian cinema developed in the 1910’s. This was known as the ‘Russian style’ and was championed by Bauer and Protazanov. The origins and influences of this style will be considered and contrasted with other European cinema of the period. Secondly, I will introduce definitions of this period, which since the discovery of Bauer’s films, have become somewhat in need of redefinition. In conclusion I will suggest a foregrounding of the importance of these films in terms of general cinema history. This will be achieved by analysis of certain elements from two of Bauer’s films, ‘The Dying Swan’ (1916) and ‘To Happiness’ (1917)
Film production in Russia began largely dominated by Pathe, which had a production company there in 1908. Eventually Russian owned film companies, such as A.O.Drankov’s and later Khanzhonkov’s began to appear. During the early 1910’s these companies rapidly expanded indigenous production and exhibition. During this period, as in other countries, cinema gained a higher respectability with the introduction of a more middle-class target audience, in the form of the ‘Film d’art’. In 1914, however, the amount of imported films in Russia, which had proved very popular, suddenly declined. The reason for this was the closing of the borders and the retreat of foreign distribution offices as a result of Russia entering World War I. With foreign competition severely reduced, a large wave of domestic production ensued. This lead to the innovation of a unique Russian ‘style’.
Evgenii Bauer worked for the Khanzhonkov company and directed over eighty films during his short career between 1913 and 1917. He died on 9the June 1917 from stagnant pneumonia. Many of his films exhibited a preoccupation held by popular audiences of the day, with melancholy and the ‘inevitable ending’ (Indeed Bauer’s own tragically early demise seems to echo much of his work). These narrative conclusions, which invariably ended with the death or tragic injury of a central character, can be sharply contrasted with the ‘happy ending’ of much of American and European cinema of the period. The Russian film makers of the period were effectively working to suit the tastes of two markets, the indigenous and the foreign. Often, two separate endings would be made for the same film. Yakov Protazanov’s film, ‘Drama po telefonu’(1914) is a remake of a D.W Griffith feature, ‘The lonely Vila’, but the ending is changed creating a typically Russian tragedy.
These ‘Russian endings’ were introduced into the popular unconscious through late nineteenth century theatrical melodrama. Similarly, the ideas of immobility of characters in these films can be traced to psychological pauses in the Art Theatre of Moscow. Also influential were the acting styles of Italian and Danish cinema. A manifesto of this Russian style stated…
"The ‘full’ scene involves a complete rejection of the usual hurried tempo of the film play. Instead of a rapidly changing kaleidoscope of images, it aspires to rivet the attention of the audience onto a single image" (1)
The Italian cinema particularly was in advanced stages of articulating a filmic-sytnax. ‘Cabiria’(Giovanni Pastrone) in 1914, which instigated the ‘Cabiria movement’, employed a slow lateral tracking shot, it’s aim was to reveal the proportions of the sets and to enhance the three-dimensionality of the space. (As I will argue later, when illustrating examples, the tracking shots used in many of Bauer’s films are quite unique and not mere ‘lateral’ scans).
The concern with the moribund had several stylistic manifestations, more especially in the films of Bauer. The pace of the films was slow, achieved through a proto-expressionist acting style. Opulent and decadent sets, were carefully composed and framed within the shot. Lighting, and importantly camera movements were utilised expressively with astonishing artistic control.
Although the tendencies towards the ‘art cinema’ throughout the 1910’s in Europe were fairly unified, the ‘isolation’ of the Russian film industry to pursue its own aesthetic concerns enabled a radical alterity of style to develop.
In order to accentuate this alterity, I feel it necessary to delineate a view of this period of cinema history developed prior to the discovery of the films of Evgenii Bauer.
In Barry Salt’s essay, ‘The early development of film form’, he asserts of the ‘mistaken ideas’ about an invention of film language that…
"Griffith may have been the best director working in the years from 1908-1915, but that does not mean that he invented everything."(2)
He goes on , however, to posit examples from the period 1914-1917 in terms of such stylistic devices as flashbacks, lighting developments and tracking shots, as exemplified only by Vitagraph and F.J Ireland (The on-the-square girl). In fact only in terms of American and English developments.
These articulations about the evolution of a film language, cannot possibly have acknowledged Bauer at the time of writing. Although, I have stated that Bauer and other film-makers of the Russian style, exhibit a radical stylistic alterity to the cinema of Europe and America, this does not imply that their approach to the development of a spatial and temporal cinematic world is of the same radical difference. In fact, it is highly organised and advanced, exhibiting a remarkable control and coherence both spatially and temporally, in terms of flashbacks, scene dissection and camera articulation.
Salt, in his book ‘Film style and technology’ points to a general trend in the period as
"more shots per reel, more shots in each scene, more close shots, and more naturalistic acting." (3) This suggests an increase in scene dissection and a quickening of pace and action. In Bauer’s films of this same period, there can clearly be observed an antithesis to this trend. The preference is to shoot a scene wherever possible in a single shot. This shifts the expression of meaning and feelings onto the mise-en-scene and above all on performance rather than frenetic editing. This does not imply an impoverishment of the spatio-temporal diagesis through prominence of the tableau shot. Spaces are linked effortlessly with cuts when characters leave the frame via a door, and resumes by having them enter a street or other room from an appropriate corresponding space. Dreamsequences and flashbacks also remain placed coherently in the narrative by use of (as will be illustrated later) the ‘ subjective tracking shot’ and other appropriate prompts, such as characters looking dreamily offscreen. This maintains a high degree of temporal stability, unlike Protazanov’s ‘Aelita’(1924), in which dream and reality become confused and enmeshed.
I intend now to solidify these gestural claims with examples from some of Bauer’s films. Firstly I will exemplify the degree to which mise-en-scene is composed within the frame. The next illustrative examples will be regarding a particular expressionistic use of tracking shot. Finally, I will delineate the ‘proto-expressionistic’ ascetic acting style.
Throughout Bauer’s films there can be observed a definite trait for filling the frame with rich, baroque decoration. This varies from the ornately designed furniture which inhabits the interior scenes, to the emphasis on luscious garden settings. The scenes are composed not only in terms of borders around the frames, but with deep focus and pertinent depth cues.In ‘Twilight of a Woman’s Soul’ (1913), the female central character, Vera, is introduced as being lonely within the vast expanse of her opulent surroundings. An important use of chiaroscuro lighting is made, as intense white light( either from natural light or from high intensity fill lights) serves to bring the darker pools of light into greater contrast. Most scenes in this film exhibit a similar concern for filling the frame, even the slum area is shot so that the crumbling edifices fill the frame.
This concern with the ornate composition within the frame, details of leaves delicate decorations etc., can also be evidenced in ‘The Dying Swan’ and ‘To Happiness’. ‘The Dying Swan’ has remarkably composed exterior garden shots. In a particular scene, as the mute girl walks with her father at the beginning of the film, a static frame reveals the figures in the near foreground. In the immediate foreground, right against the camera lens, and in focus, are leaves and offshoots from bushes which frame the image. Not only this, but the deep space continues right back to the top centre of the frame, where background action, perhaps two or three miles away, can be discerned, such as vehicles passing down minute tributary-like roads.
This obsession with intoxicating detail echoes an affinity with the then fashionable design style of art nouveau, a decorative style flourishing in most of western Europe from about 1890 to the First World War. Out of all the stylistic differences appearing in Bauer’s films, this one appears to be the most widespread.
I will now move onto the description of a unique tracking shot used in ‘The Dying Swan’. Bauer has used tracking shots quite extensively, but throughout the few films that I have viewed, this remains the most astonishing. Prior to a symbolic dream sequence in which the female mute girl forebodes her own death, being strangled by the artist who is painting her portrait, the girl is seen to be sleeping restlessly through a thunder storm. Flash lighting is used to accentuate this. The camera is then pulled smoothly back in a tracking shot from alongside the bed, way from the sleeping girl. This occurs immediately before the dream sequence begins, maintaining temporal motivation as previously discussed. This expressive use of the camera’s movement to suggest a sense of ‘leaving the girl’s body’ is highly innovatory and very rare, probably unique for the period. Tracking shots were often used to scan a scene (as in the Cabiria film), but not as a subjective action. Yuri Tsivian states…
"The lateral camera movement is the film-maker’s address to the viewer. Bauer’s ‘in and out’ tracking shots, on the other hand, look as if addressed to the character personally, rather than the viewer. The ‘track-in’ gesture may be sympathetic or aggressive, but it is always inter-personal rather than space bound."(4)
The final example which I intend to illustrate is that of the ‘slow’ emotive and ponderous acting styles. These can be evidenced, like the sense of decoration in the mise-en-scene, in much of Bauer’s oeuvre. A scene of particular illustrative potency can be found in the denouement of ‘To Happiness’. The culmination of a series of misunderstandings, and a disastrous triangle of unrequited love, ends in a confrontational sequence between Li, a girl who is gradually losing her sight, and her mother and lover (whom Li is also inconsolably in love with). Upon the mother’s insistence that he marry Li, the lover declares, in Li’s presence, that he could not possibly because he loves her mother. In this tableau shot, the three figures are posited as the lines are spoken via intertitles. Upon hearing the words the acting becomes incredibly slow, as Li, in a despairing pose, reminiscent of the later ‘classic despairing pose’ of German expressionist cinema, struggles to comprehend the words. The scene is almost painful to watch in terms of the despair communicated by the actress through such tortured minimal movements. In the ensuing cut to an outside locale, Li runs to fall at the base of a statue, she is joined by her mother and, in the background, the lover. The emphasis here is on Li’s wide, despairing eyes as she asks her mother for help, as she can no longer see. The lingering shots, combined with the almost proto-expressionistic acting, make this one of the most painfully evocative denouements I have ever witnessed.
Considering the very specific style evidenced throughout the films of Evgenii Bauer (and to a lesser extent the films of other Russian directors of the period) they should indeed be more widely recognised for both their independence from a background of European and American cinema, and also in terms of their sophisticated and innovatory use of the techniques widely associated with this mainstream. Barry Salt, and other film historians such as Noel Burch, were not wrong in their historicisation of these periods. However, they are incomplete, and with the films of Bauer being re-discovered for nearly nine years now, a higher historical profile should be afforded to them. As should other European films, in a history which all too often eliminates these national cinemas as ‘fringe developments’ to the financially dominating giants of Griffith, de Mille and Hollywood in the 1910’s.
notes
Tsivian, Yuri, ‘Silent Witnesses Russian films 1908-1919’ (BFI 1989) p 29-30
Salt, Barry ‘The early development of film form’ in ‘film form’, vol.1,no.1.Sping 1976
Salt, Barry ‘Film Style and technology:History & Analysis’ 1914-1919, p.132
Tsivian, Yuri ‘Early cinema in Russia and its Cultural Reception’. Routledge.
additional bibliography
Tsivian, Yuri, ‘Two ‘stylists’ of the teens: Franz Hofer and Yevgenii Bauer’ from Thomas Elsaesser (Ed) ‘A second life, German cinema’s first decades’ (Amsterdam University Press, 1996)
Robinson, David ‘Evgenii Bauer and the cinema of Nikolai II’ Sight and Sound winter 1990
Bordwell & Thompson ‘ Film History: An Introduction’, McGrawHill. 1995