mflynn-69970 "The Outskirts (Okraina)" follows several stories as villagers in a far-distant Russian town are faced with war, a strike, a prisoner-of-war camp, and the effects and aftershocks these all bring. The town the film begins in is struggling with the shocks and effects of war, and the film follows those effects in multiple story lines. The ways that the war is used vary, from a factory strike brought on by the harshness of the times, to a young woman and her budding relationship with a German prisoner of war, to the shoe factory strike, to the soldiers at the front lines. As with many other Soviet films, there are many semi-leading and leading characters, and these film is constantly shifting between groups of characters and stories we are following. There are also tertiary characters being effected by the war as well. The transition from the more comedic parts to the horrors of war are quick, and often very abrupt. The clumsiness of the story comes from the odd pacing, with too-long bouts of time spent in the various places where the film takes place, making it difficult to transition back to the other story lines easily. The film is clearly struggling to fit the appropriate criteria laid forth by the Soviet Union, to tell the right story with the appropriate characters and the right messages. The stories we follow are compelling in and of themselves but the choppy pacing and the lack of technical finesse detract from the overall quality of this complex, multi-layered war film.

adriennenoracarter Outskirts is the story of one town from the outbreak of WWI and into the beginning of the revolution. It follows a few separate story lines—a few of these story lines include a father and his two soldier sons; a girl, her German POW love and her awful, anti- revolution father. This series of subplots was entertaining—it allowed for a lot of issues to be tackled: the soldiers on the front and the POWs in the town provided a look at the war and some of the issues the Russian people were faced with during WWI. While it didn't even begin to show the incredible struggles and loss, it did convey the feeling that the Russians did not want to be fighting the war. There was also the love story that did a good job of showing the common humanity between the Germans and the Russians. The series of subplots, however, were also quite confusing. None of the scenes really came full circle, and a lot of them left me with more questions than I got answers. Even in the end when the revolution was beginning to come full circle, the subplot method did more to confuse than anything. My other thoughts on this film are related to its ideological content. It doesn't seem to focus too much on ideology until the end and then it is sort of in a frantic way that tries to cram all of it into a very small period of time. This seems strange to me since it was made in 1933, the heyday of the party minded film. Despite some of the film's shortcomings—such as the confusion— it was still an enjoyable 90 minutes.

chaos-rampant Introduction: Kuleshov was a genius, and most of his students are worth getting to know about.Barnet was really the most inconspicuous of Kuleshov's cycle, always quite apart from cinematic polemics raging at the time. He looked like a big lunkhead when we first see him as a cowboy in Kuleshov's Mr. West from '24. His first stab at directing assigned by his mentor, as I read, was a long serial on Fritz Lang territory about spies and counter-spies and international intrigue, except humorous and whimsical. He made another two silent comedies, one of which I've seen, very delicate and sweet-natured class conflict, almost dainty blood.Now this, about events leading up to the Revolution of '17 and so by nature more sombre and reflective. Eisenstein and Pudovkin had turned out rigorously-driven paeans for the 10 year anniversary, Barnet's is something else altogether.It is comedy about neighbors and brothers who are too stubborn to embrace true feelings, searing drama in the next beat about these mutual feelings sublimated in the massive conflict of war. It bleeds and you laugh with a laughter that is sadness.It is plain fun to watch for the duration. There is sound but nowhere near as radical use as in Dezertir from that same year. Barnet was a much more gentle soul, eventually took his own life - the story goes - because he could no longer deliver art on the level he aspired to.It's all in the ending here, a true apotheosis of cinematic expression and one of the best moments in 30's film, truly far-reaching stuff. You have to do the work though, it's not laid out in the open, submerged further afield where censors wouldn't have the imagination to apprehend him.Two brothers have gone to war, the father receives news from the trenches that one has died, the young, rash one. Meanwhile a German POW has returned in his place; the same age, also a shoe-maker, a worker, and finds love in captivity the young brother was denied in an early scene on the same bench. The brother dead for a dubious cause has been surreally transmuted back home into a narrative that now turns vindictive, cruel, anxious - the German POW is summarily beaten by Russians, persecuted. Barnet's coup is that these scenes depict a Revolution under foot, a valiant cause in communist lore.Meanwhile the older brother is still at the front fighting the war. We hardly ever see the German enemy, it's mostly exhausted soldiers futilely storming desolate no man's land. He calls off the bloodshed, single-handedly walking in the firing range and is summarily arrested by Russians as a traitor. The last news he hears is that the Winter Palace has been stormed. His response, on the threshold of consciousness: "what a rush!".Barnet had Kuleshov's films to draw from on how to outwit the censors, but he outdoes even his mentor here in his ability to envision a multi-dimensional fabric.

artihcus022 The remarkable qualities of this early sound film pertain to it's stunning use of sound which is inventive and innovative by any and all standards, the stunning camera movements and long takes. Just as remarkable is the storytelling which plays like a series of short stories and sketches rather than a novella or novel. Yet it doesn't break these short stories into segments or blocks or frame it unlike other attempts at multiple short narratives in a feature.The movement between the various segments and stories is very poetic like from one Greek chorus to another. The central conceit being between the conflict between the war frontlines and the homefront of the village. The scenes of warfare shown in this film is harsh and brutal in a way that anticipates Roberto Rossellini's or Samuel Fuller's later films.What makes it even more harsh is the sense of futility in the conflict. As the infantrymen who fight each other in the trenches have more in common than either would do with their civilian countryman, anticipating Renoir's La Grande Illusion. One breathtaking scene is when one Russian soldier saves a German from getting bombed and then tells him after their initial celebration that he'll be their prisoner now.Equally moving is the tender love story between a Russian girl Anka and a German POW given permission to work in the village. This love story is made possible because Anka's father's friend Robert Karlovish, a German taught her enough about his country to escape the xenophobia of that community at war. Also interesting is the sense of homoeroticism, neither vulgar nor campy, among the various male characters. Early in the film when the soldiers leave for the front there is a wonderful shot of two men kissing each other on the lips which is shown casually without any sense of sensation in the presentation of this scene. Barnet in his film shows that despite the conflict, the violence, the sense of division among his characters(all acted superbly conveying a naturalism absent in many early talkies) there is always a brief glimpse of what things could be or should be.Even if for reasons of propaganda the film ends with the parade of saviour communists, Barnet has managed to create a film that transcends that all the more by ending the film in a shot worthy of Dovzhenko(a key influence on this film) where a character after hearing the arrival of the commmunists, breathes close to death, "What a rush!" and presumably dies off-screen. The world of this film belongs to people, to human relations and not to party lines.