A Spectre Haunts Europe
(Prizrakk brodit po Yevrope)
Screening on Film
With Zoya Barantsevich, Oleg Frelikh, Vasili Kovrigin.
USSR, 1922, 35mm, black & white, silent, 94 min.
One of the earliest adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, A Spectre Haunts Europe is set in an imaginary land where the threat of revolution spurs the Emperor to seek exile in one of the most distant parts of his realm. There he meets Elka, the daughter of a revolutionary who has been banished here due to his confrontational activities. The two fall in love but meet a violent end when the revolutionaries, led by Elka’s father, destroy the palace.
PRECEDED BY
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The Cameraman’s Revenge (Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora)
Directed by Wladaslaw Starewicz.
USSR, 1912, 35mm, black & white, silent, 12 min.
An early classic about adultery in the insect kingdom from the great animation pioneer: a married beetle is filmed in a compromising situation by a jealous grasshopper; the beetle is later exposed when he takes his (also adulterous) wife to the movies and sees the final results.
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Interplanetary Revolution (Mezhplanetnaya revolutsiya)
Directed by Z. Komissarenko, U. Merkulov and N. Hodataevy.
USSR, 1924, 35mm, black & white, silent, 9 min.
This cartoon spoof of the highly successful Soviet production Aelita: Queen of Mars capitalizes on the feature's popularity, while serving as a mild political corrective. In 1924, the year of Lenin's death, the Communist Party began to distance itself from the "world revolution" doctrine; therefore the notion of the rising Martian proletariat was just past due, and safe to ridicule.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
To the Stars by Hard Ways
