Evgeni Bauer (1865-1917) was the most important film director of pre-revolutionary Russia. He made comedies, social dramas and especially psychological melodramas about love and death, often with a tragic ending. Between late 1913 and early 1917 Bauer directed more than 80 films, of which less than half have survived. He worked with the greatest actors of Russian silent cinema.
In his short career of four years Bauer made macabre masterpieces. His dramas, obsessed with doomed love and death, are admired for their graceful camera movements, daring themes, opulent sets and chiaroscuro lighting. Bauer used cinematic techniques such as flashbacks, moving cameras, close-ups, dramatic lighting effects and split-screen. He symbolically depicted the inner lives of his characters through dream sequences and dark visions. Tragically, he died in 1917 of pneumonia after breaking a leg.
His first surviving film, Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913), tells the story of a woman who murders her attacker and must build a new life when her husband leaves her. After Death (1915), based on a story by Ivan Turgenev, explores one of Bauer's favorite themes: the psychological hold of the dead on the living. In The Dying Swan (1916), an artist obsessed with the idea of capturing death on canvas becomes fixated on a mute ballerina who dances The Dying Swan.
I opt for Twilight of a Woman's Soul because I am not very fond of supernatural stuff (Turgenev is in reality an ironic story) and even more so because in this film we encounter a strong woman who takes her destiny in her own hands. The film begins with a party in a lavishly decorated garden full of wealthy guests. Vera, the heroine, bored by her luxurious but secluded life, apologizes and retreats. The next day, Vera's mother invites her to go with her to help the poor. Enthusiastically, Vera jumps at the chance to do this charity work. One of the people she helps, a man named Maxim, is enchanted by her beauty. He writes Vera a letter asking her to come back to help with his deteriorating medical condition - which is a complete lie. She goes alone to his apartment, where he violates her. Afterward, he falls into an alcohol-induced sleep. While he is asleep, Vera escapes his grasp and bludgeons him to death. (Interestingly, this murder remains unnoticed by the police - could the poor just be killed off like that?)
Vera returns home, visibly shaken. She is then introduced to Prince Dol'skii. After a month, the prince declares his love for her and they kiss. However, as she kisses him, she has a vision of kissing the man who attacked her, and she runs away. Prince Dol'skii does not give up on her, however, and she eventually agrees to marry him. She decides that she must tell him her secret before the wedding, but both attempts to tell him are thwarted. At first she tries to tell him outright, but he does not let her finish and only says: "No matter what happened in your past, nothing will make my love waver." At the second attempt she writes him a letter, but he is not at home to receive it and so she burns it.
Vera and Prince Dol'skii get married. They are happy, but Vera decides that she must tell him the truth about what happened to her. Her husband reacts very badly to her confession. His love is shocked, so to speak, and he seems to want nothing more to do with her. So Vera leaves him for good and returns to her family. Prince Dol'skii starts drinking and carousing with light women to smother his sorrow. But after living like this for about a year, he can't stand it anymore and goes looking for Vera.
He hires a private detective, who discovers that she lives abroad. She has become a famous actress there. The prince leaves Russia to look for her, but after two years his search yields nothing. He returns to Russia. Sick of his gloomy attitude, a friend of the prince convinces him to go to the opera. Prince Dol'skii agrees and it is in this opera that Vera performs. He sees her on stage and immediately goes to talk to her after the performance. He begs her forgiveness and asks her to come back to him, but Vera refuses. She tells the prince that it is too late now and that she no longer loves him because of his cold reaction to her confession. After hearing this, Dol'skii returns home in mental anguish. In the last scene of the film, Prince Dol'skii commits suicide. (That is overdoing it, but every Russian story seems destined to end in death.)
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My goal is to discover interesting movies that are not already on all the "greatest movie" lists.
All films discussed in this blog are public domain and can be watched via YouTube or Archive.org