(S.V.D., Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, USSR 1927, 97 min., 16mm, English intertitles)
S.V.D. (there is no correct way to decipher this acronym – don’t trust online sources!) was one of the very few films of the Soviet silent avant-garde that became a box-office hit, not only in the USSR, but worldwide. Christened by some of the contemporary critics as “the most elegant film of the Soviet Union,” it depicts one of the most poetic and disastrous pages of Russian history:
the Decembrists revolt of 1825-1826. This attempt by a group of liberal noblemen and army officers to abolish the serfdom and introduce a democratic Constitution in the Russian Empire was brutally suppressed. Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg, founders of the legendary FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor), in collaboration with Yury Tynyanov, a great historian and scholar of literature, decided to counteract the “dress parade” of conventional costume dramas, and created a film both poetic and phantasmagoric, telling the story through the eyes of Roman Maddox, an infamous adventurer and agent provocateur of the secret police. Beautifully photographed by the great Andrei Moskvin (who went on to work with Eisenstein on Ivan the Terrible), it is a true visual feast. This print, generously provided by Daniel Bursic, used to belong to the Eastman Museum and was a favorite of James Card, the founder of the Museum’s film collection. It was frequently screened at the Dryden in the 1960s.
Live piano accompaniment by Dr. Philip C. Carli.
Post-screening discussion with Senior Curator Peter Bagrov.