Fragment of an Empire (1929)
(Oblomok imperii, Fridrikh Ermler, USSR 1929, 109 min., 35mm, Russian intertitles w/subtitles).
One of the last masterpieces of silent cinema, Fragment of an Empire is being rediscovered and reinterpreted every couple of decades. Praised by Chaplin, Eisenstein and Pabst, it is as controversial as its director, Fridrikh Ermler, a die-hard communist, a devoted Freudian, winner of four Stalin prizes and a man who, according to Pope John XXIII, had “the eyes of a saint.” The film tells the story of a soldier who has lost his memory because of shell shock during WWI and who “awakens” ten years later – only to find himself in an unknown city (Leningrad, instead of St. Petersburg) in a new country (the USSR, instead of Russia), where the factories now belong to “the people”, and his wife has a new husband. Intended as a work of Soviet propaganda, Fragment of an Empire is nevertheless often considered a bitter anti-Soviet satire – particularly when performed with the original score by Vladimir Deshevov, an eminent composer of the Russian avant-garde. Until recently, the film was available in a re-edited and abridged version; the new restoration will be screened in Rochester for the first time.
Vladimir Deshevov's original 1929 piano score performed by Dr. Philip C. Carli.