FIRST PEOPLE ON THE MOON
Perviye Na Lunye
(Russia)
A Sverdlosk Film Studio, SFS Films, Deya Toris production, with support of the Russian Ministry of Culture. (International sales: Sverdlosk Film Studio, Ekaterinburg, Russia.) Produced by Alexei Fedorchenko, Dmitry Vorobyev. Directed, edited by Alexei Fedorchenko. Screenplay, Alexander Gonorovsky, Ramil Yamaleev.
With: Boris Vlasov, Victoria Ilyinskaya, Anatoly Otradnov, Alexei Slavnin, Andrei Osipov, Victor Kotov, Alexei Anisimov, Igor Sannikov.
(Russian, Spanish dialogue)
By LESLIE FELPERIN VARIETY
Inventive, slickly made Russian mockumentary "First People on the Moon" seamlessly mixes real archive footage with fake to tell ersatz "secret" story about Russkie cosmonauts beating the U.S. by 30 years to be the first in space. Pic generates laughs expected from the mock-doc format, especially by sending up Glorious Revolutionary film style, but tone dwells more on the dark side, telling the story of heroes who become victims of Stalin-era oppression with a tragic gravity. Debut for helmer Alexei Fedorchenko could make short orbit round the fest circuit, with possible splashdown landings as a niche release in select territories.
Pic purports to offer an account of how a team of five cosmonauts were trained in the late 1930s to be the first people in space, propelled toward the stars by nascent rocket technology that resulted in a 1938 moon landing.
Styled to look like a low-budget TV docudocu (pic's real budget is alleged to be in the region of $1 million), voiceovervoiceover explains plausibly that film's revelations have been made possible now because of the opening up of secret film archives once held by the NKVD (precursor of the KGB and today's FSB).
This means "First" is made up of three kinds of material: authentic black-and-white archive footage from old Soviet newsreels of parades and happy workers; fake newsreel and covert surveillance shots, the latter supposedly filmed on tiny spy cameras recording the cosmonauts in training; and full-color linking material purportedly shot by a contempo crew investigating the cosmonauts' story by interviewing the one surviving member, Central Asian Fatlakhov (played by Alexei Slavnin) and others more tangentially connected to the events recounted.
Even though the fake footage showing the cosmonauts is largely silent (a simple, non-source score adds atmosphere), Fedorchenko manages through clever counterpoint to flesh their characters out -- the model soldier Kharlamov (Boris Vlasov), the strong-jawed woman athlete (Victoria Ilyinskaya), the circus dwarf (Victor Kotov). Adding a creepy ballast, the fake surveillance shots show the cosmonauts' private fears and anxieties, which were more than justified given that one chilling sequence shows a clinically executed assassination of one of the "heroes" after the program has been dismantled.
Humor and menace rub against each other here constantly. While Western auds may chuckle at the deftly executed mimicry of Soviet kitsch, viewers from Eastern Europe will feel the darker undertow and will be more aware of the State-sponsored paranoia and terrors of the era. Nevertheless, Fedorchenko conjures a muted sense of nostalgia for a passing generation and the irrevocably lost ways of an empire built on idealism as much as fear.
Somehow fittingly, story loses focus in final reels as the surviving cosmonauts end their days ignominiously.
Counterfeiting of archive material is pro, with lenser Anatoly Lesnikov getting the grainy sheen of old B&W stock just right while post-production work inserts scratches and tears judiciously throughout.
Camera (color/B&W), Anatoly Lesnikov; music, Sergey Sidelnikov; art directors, Nikolai Pavlov, Valery Lukinov; sound (Dolby Digital), Margarita Tomilova. Reviewed at Sochi Open Film Festival (competing), June 7, 2005. Running time: 72 MIN.
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BAD GIRLS BEHIND BARS
A Shout Out Movie! production. Produced, directed, edited by Sharon Zurek.
With: Barbara Stanwyck, Lillian Roth, Joan Taylor, Adele Jergens, Pam Greer, Anne Heche, Ione Skye.
By RONNIE SCHEIB
Campy compilation of four women's prison movies from four different decades proves surprisingly entertaining in "Bad Girls Behind Bars." Witty scrolled asides to the audience provide an interactive context that never condescends. Helmer Sharon Zurek eschews cheap shot sound-bite montages for long stretches of girl-on-girl action. Clips from such disparate sources as a '30s Stanwyck programmer, a Pam Grier exploitation flick or an Anne Heche mad lesbo villain vehicle edit together for a surprisingly continuous view of prison life. Pic, inviting collective participation, should wow at gay fests or group video viewings.
What becomes immediately obvious is the homoerotic atmosphere endemic to the genre, from a buttoned-down, cigar-smoking suffragette type in Warners "Ladies They Talk About" (1933) and the sophisticated, wise-cracking Lillian Roth and Barbara Stanwyck lounging around in the same movie, to Edward L. Cahn's 1956 "B" film "Girls in Prison," where Warners' sly complicity gives way to clueless '50s incomprehension as innocent Joan Taylor finds herself at the mercy of her guilty cellmates.
The more explicitly S&M "Women in Cages" (1971) seems transparently designed to afford a pretext for Grier in thigh boots to crack her whip. The degree of characters' innocence is virtually indistinguishable from the depth of their decolletage. Yet even here the conventions of the genre rule, as the newcomer is indoctrinated into the intricate power structure of an all-female captive society.
In her pursuit of a thematic throughline, Helmer Zurek often decolorizes John McNaughtonJohn McNaughton's made-formade-for-TV "Girls in Prison" (1994) to downplay segues from the earlier, black-and-white films (only "Women in Cages" is always presented in color, presumably because pic's jungle setting is too exotic and the print too grainy to be easily assimilated). In "Girls," Heche steals the show as a plagiarist maniacally laughing in her cell as she plots the assassination of the hapless songwriter whose composition she stole.
Zurek's manipulation of her material is both minimal and deliberately blatant. The audience is encouraged to call out every time one of a glossary of terms like "new fish" pops up in dialogue or appears as a superimposed icon on the screen. Faked visual superimpositions include a Time Magazine cover of Ellen De Generes in Heche's jail cell; also, whenever an onscreen letter is opened in the vintage footage, inane mash notes are substituted for the original pic's plot-specific messages.
Midway through the film, Zurek confides to her audience, again via written scroll, that she understands completely if they are uncomfortable shouting at the screen, and that if they do not laugh out loud, it does not necessarily mean they themselves are felons or, worse, Serious Lesbians who find nothing funny. Yet, paradoxically, these post-modern jolts serve to co-opt any simplistic mockery of the films. Unlike putdown exercises such as "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "Bad Girls" invites audience appreciation.
(Color, B&W). Reviewed at Newfest Film Festival, New York, June 5, 2005. Running time: 90 MIN.
