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Catalogo Giornate del Cinema Muto 2012 - La Cineteca del Friuli

Catalogo Giornate del Cinema Muto 2012 - La Cineteca del Friuli

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Anna Sten in Provokator, Viktor Turin, 1928.<br />

per quanto riguardava il copione: una storia importante dal punto<br />

di vista “psicologico”, che descrive la trasformazione <strong>del</strong>lo studente<br />

rivoluzionario in inforamtore <strong>del</strong>la polizia con una ricostruzione<br />

originale e rispettosa dei “dettagli d’epoca”. Si mostrò tuttavia molto<br />

scettico nei confronti <strong>del</strong>la regia di Turin che, a suo dire, si inseriva<br />

nella tradizione <strong>del</strong> “dramma psicologico alla tedesca” (immaginiamo<br />

che uno dei motivi <strong>del</strong> rimprovero fosse in primis la scena <strong>del</strong>la prigione<br />

in cui lo studente Viktor è ossessionato dalla visione di se stesso –<br />

come è ora, come sarà da forzato e poi da vecchio ergastolano – tre<br />

immagini che appaiono in split screen e che lo spaventano al punto di<br />

accettare la collaborazione con la polizia).<br />

È tuttavia interessante notare come i due critici, pur non mostrandosi<br />

molto soddisfatti <strong>del</strong>la recitazione, elogino entrambi Anna Sten.<br />

L’autore <strong>del</strong>l’articolo di Zhizn iskusstva scrive: “Nonostante ciò, Anna<br />

Sten è magnifica. Riesce a creare un’immagine straordinaria, dolce e<br />

toccante nel piccolo ruolo <strong>del</strong>la studentessa, a quanto pare, il suo<br />

primo ruolo cinematografico”. Il severo critico di Kino si spinge<br />

oltre: “Gli attori di questo film sono molto diversi, dal rispettabile<br />

Panov all’eterno mascalzone Koutouzov, e infine Anna Sten, che<br />

è giovanissima, ma già molto divertente e accattivante nelle sue<br />

movenze. Ma questa attrice è solo una piccola macchia brillante,<br />

72<br />

che si perde sullo sfondo grigio <strong>del</strong><br />

film. Ecco perché il calcolo fatto dai<br />

distributori <strong>del</strong> VUFKU – lanciare un<br />

vecchio film sfruttando il nome oggi<br />

molto popolare <strong>del</strong>la Sten – non pare<br />

molto fondato.”<br />

Così la prima particina <strong>del</strong>la giovane<br />

debuttante Anna Sten diventa un<br />

atout <strong>del</strong>la Sten diva per richiamare<br />

gli spettatori russi alla première di<br />

un film ucraino diretto da un regista<br />

sovietico formatosi a Hollywood e<br />

realizzato imitando i film tedeschi.<br />

NATALIA NUSSINOVA<br />

The student Lipa in Agent provocateur<br />

seems to have been Anna<br />

Sten’s first role in the cinema. It was<br />

probably in 1926 that Viktor Turin<br />

offered to the very pretty beginner<br />

the part of a character who seems<br />

marginal to the story, and does<br />

not even figure in the synopsis of<br />

the film that he had been shooting<br />

since 1923. Lipa, the girlfriend of<br />

the revolutionary terrorist, is a little<br />

student, a young girl from a good,<br />

honest but not rich family, a <strong>del</strong>icate<br />

young lady in the old style, who<br />

blushes and faints, and whose character bears the surname Khromova,<br />

like the heroines played by Vera Kholodnaya and Lidia Koreneva, rival<br />

sisters in the famous melodrama Zhizn’ za Zhizn’ (A Life for a Life).<br />

Bauer’s 1916 masterpiece could surely not have been unknown in the<br />

VUFKU studios, established in the Ukraine in 1922 on the basis of the<br />

old pre-revolutionary studios of Khanzhonkov, Ermoliev, Kharitonov,<br />

etc., and giving shelter to such directors from the Tsarist cinema as<br />

Vladimir Gardin and subsequently Piotr Tchardynin.<br />

But the marginal character played by Sten comes out of the shadows<br />

to assume an important place in the structure of the film. The police<br />

arrest the girl, using blackmail, aggression, and even money to try to<br />

make her become an agent provocatrice. Fragile though she seems,<br />

she nevertheless finds the strength to refuse, and it is thus that she<br />

becomes the antithesis of the agent provocateur Viktor, the main<br />

hero, a student from a well-off family, inspired by the romantic and<br />

clandestine, who readily cracks under police pressure and becomes<br />

a traitor and informer, resulting in the death of his friends. It is in<br />

this counterpoint of characters that Sten found the opportunity<br />

to show the evolution of her heroine, who passes from timidity to<br />

extreme courage, to the point of throwing an inkwell in the face of<br />

the policeman and threatening him with a pistol. And of course her<br />

courage costs her dear: three days later the newspapers tell us that the<br />

body of Miss Khromova has been fished out of the river. The official<br />

explanation of the “suicide” is quite in keeping with the traditions of<br />

Russian melodrama of the 1910s – a case of unhappy love.<br />

Work on the film lasted 4 years, owing to conflicts between the<br />

director and the management of VUFKU studios. For Viktor Turin<br />

(1895-1945) this marked his debut as a director, following his return<br />

to the USSR; he had lived in the United States (1912-22), been<br />

educated at M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and had<br />

worked in Hollywood as an actor and synopsis writer. But he took<br />

the liberty of criticizing the scenario by Oles’ Dosvitnyi (Aleksandr<br />

Skripal-Mischenko, 1891-1934), a Ukrainian writer who was editor-inchief<br />

at VUFKU and one of the founders of the Yalta studios where<br />

the film was made. Turin blamed the scenario for many ideological<br />

errors, but the VUFKU bosses insisted on the production. Turin<br />

<strong>del</strong>ayed the shooting on the pretext that the facilities given him were<br />

unsatisfactory. Accused in his turn of ideological errors, he called for<br />

a control commission at which he offered his justification. But finally,<br />

just as the film was finished, the presidential council of VUFKU was<br />

renewed, and the new heads criticized him, demanding re-editing<br />

involving serious cuts which affected the very heart of the story.<br />

For Turin this was not very worrying, because he had meanwhile made<br />

another film, Struggle of Giants (1926), also for VUFKU, and then<br />

acheived fame thanks to the documentary Turksib (1929), with its<br />

scenario by Yakov Aron and Viktor Shklovsky.<br />

But Dosvitnyi’s ending was to be much different. The Party Congress<br />

on <strong>Cinema</strong> in March 1928 accused the heads of VUFKU of nostalgia<br />

for Tsarist cinema and of having employed “old reactionary directors”.<br />

As a result of the purges that followed, Dosvitnyi lost his post as<br />

chief editor at VUFKU in 1929; four years later he was accused of<br />

counterrevolutionary activity, arrested, and shot.<br />

Since the distribution of Ukrainian films in the USSR took time, Agent<br />

provocateur was not released in Russia until October 1928, when<br />

it provoked very opposing reviews. The Moscow newspaper Kino<br />

reproached this “screen novelty” for being banal, old-fashioned, and<br />

naïve, and using the images to illustrate the intertitles. Kino’s critic<br />

went on to complain of the uninteresting interiors: “It is very badly<br />

staged, and so badly lit that it takes some effort to recognize the actors<br />

at the start of every shot.” The critic of the revue Zhizn Iskusstva was<br />

much more tolerant, especially with regard to the scenario – in his<br />

view, it was an important story from the “psychological” viewpoint,<br />

demonstrating the transformation of the revolutionary student<br />

into an agent provocateur for the police, with a precise and original<br />

representation of “details of the period”. However, he was more<br />

sceptical regarding Turin’s direction, which he considered reproduced<br />

the tradition of the “German psychological genre” (we can assume that<br />

the reason for this was the scene in the prison where the student Viktor<br />

is obsessed by visions of himself, as he is now, as a future prisoner, and<br />

as an old convict, all three images appearing in split-screen and making<br />

him so fearful that he agrees to collaborate with the police).<br />

73<br />

It is notable that though neither critic is very satisfied with the acting,<br />

both appreciate Anna Sten. The author of the article in Zhizn Iskusstva<br />

writes: “And yet Anna Sten is magnificent. She has succeeded in<br />

creating a remarkable image, sweet and touching, for the quite small<br />

role as the student, which is, it appears, the first part she has played.”<br />

The severe critic of Kino goes even further: “The actors in the film<br />

are very different; here is the respectable Panov, the eternal scoundrel<br />

Kutuzov, and finally Anna Sten, who is very young, but already very<br />

amusing and piquant in her movements. But this actress is only one<br />

very small bright spot, lost in the gray background of the film. … This<br />

is why the calculation of VUFKU’s distributors, to launch an old film<br />

taking advantage of the name of Sten, which is now in vogue, has little<br />

chance of succeeding.”<br />

Thus it was that the first small role of the young novice Anna Sten,<br />

making her film debut, became a trump card for Sten the Star, which<br />

was to attract Russian spectators to the premiere of a Ukrainian film,<br />

made by a Soviet director formed in Hollywood and imitating German<br />

films. – NATALIA NUSSINOVA<br />

MOI SYN (Syn / Staroe derzhit) [Mio figlio / My Son; Son; The Old<br />

Keeps] (Sovkino, Leningrad, USSR 1928)<br />

Regia/dir: Yevgenii Cherviakov; scen: Aleksandr Macheret, Viktor<br />

Turin, Yuri Gromov, Yevgenii Cherviakov, dal racconto/from the<br />

story “Caso n. 3576”/“Case No. 3576” di/by Dmitrii Sverchkov; f./<br />

ph: Sviatoslav Beliayev; scg./des: Semion Meinkin; aiuto regia/asst. dir:<br />

Nikolai Dirin; asst: Mikhail Gavronskii, Pavel Morozov; cast: Anna<br />

Sten (Olga Surina), Gennadii Michurin (Andrei Surin), Piotr Beriozov<br />

(Trofim), Olga Trofimova (vicina grassa/fat neighbour), Yelena<br />

Volyntseva (vicina magra/skinny neighbour), N. Mikhailova (vecchia<br />

vicina/old neighbour), Ursula Krug (madre <strong>del</strong> bambino morto/mother<br />

of the dead child), Nadezhda Yermakovich (prostituta/prostitute),<br />

Nikolai Cherkasov (“Pat”), Boris Chirkov (“Patachon”), Piotr Beriozov<br />

(“Charlie Chaplin”), Yevgenii Cherviakov (ubriaco/drunk), Vladimir<br />

Stukachenko (capo commissione locale/Head of the local committee),<br />

Boris Feodosiev (comandante dei pompieri/Head of the fire brigade),<br />

Gleb Bushtuev, Piotr Kuznetsov, Sergei Yegorov-Bystrov (pompieri/<br />

firemen), Mark Cherviakov (bambino/child); data uscita/rel: 21.8.1928;<br />

orig. l. (35mm): 1900 m.; DVD (da/from 16mm), 49'; fonte copia/print<br />

source: Museo <strong>del</strong> Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken, Buenos Aires.<br />

Didascalie in russo, con sottotitoli in inglese / Russian intertitles, with<br />

English subtitles.<br />

<strong>La</strong> riscoperta da parte di Fernando Martin Peña e Paula Félix-Didier<br />

nel Museo <strong>del</strong> Cine Pablo Ducrós Hicken di Buenos Aires (la stessa<br />

fonte <strong>del</strong> recente ritrovamento <strong>del</strong> Metropolis integrale) di 5 dei 7<br />

rulli di Moi syn di Yevgenii Cherviakov può essere considerata la più<br />

importante riapparizione in ambito sovietico <strong>del</strong>la seconda metà <strong>del</strong><br />

secolo scorso. Il film rappresenta uno dei rari casi in cui i testi di storia<br />

<strong>del</strong> cinema andrebbero riveduti, se non addirittura riscritti. Ma ciò<br />

richiederà probabilmente ancora molto tempo: i film di Cherviakov<br />

(1899-1942) sono stati completamente dimenticati, perfino nel suo<br />

ANNA STEN

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