beaufiful, European and cosmopolitan city
Since the 300 Anniversary celebrations, this is a place I especially look forward to seeing and feeling again. But for the moment I'll let you with these two short reviews of movies shot in Sankt Petersbourg.
One of them was filmed during the communist era; the other one is a brand new Russian production. Both are well known in the West; and both have (time and political considerations apart) won prices and been praised by critics. In these two films you can pretty much appreciate the splendor of the city; they're like a window allowing you to see The colours of Petersbourg.
Autumn Marathon (Osennij marafon, 1979). This film by director Georgi Daneliya features superb performances by Oleg Basilashvili (in the role of Andrei Pavlovich) among other Soviet actors.
We see Pavlovich hurriedly move around downtown, climb up and down the stairs of XVII century buildings, even paying a fast visit to the airport... In Autumn Marathon we see the then Leningrad at its best, whether it is the park and plazas, the canals or even the modern "Prospekts" or boulevards where Pavlovich and his colleague (a Danish doctor played by Nortbert Khukinke) jog every day at first hour of the morning.
Marathon lets us see some funny situations of life in the former Soviet Union. Take for instance the remark by Vasili Ignatyevich, who after finding himself a pricey jacket in the street wonders whether people in Denmark would ever throw away such a nice jacket just because it is ripped, thus inferring that the Soviet people were much better off than the Danish!
Progulka (The Stroll, 2003). Whether Marathon has a very dated feel to it (it is actually more than two decades old) "Progulka" is a product of today's Russia under Putin, carrying such a vibrant energy and youth like few other movies.
In over 90 minutes of nearly real-time action, we see Alyosha, Olga and Petya fooling around plazas, squares, metro stations, shopping malls... This certainly is the burgeoning Russia that business magazines and papers proclaim today, with ever expanding rates of growth and surging consumerism.
This movie certainly shows why director Alexei Uchitel is a genious. (No need to emphasize the point, anyway, as he had been acclaimed worldwide for his Dnevnik yego zeny, a film about writer Ivan Bunin's very last days). Progulka has a very creative use of camera angles and movements (though at times it made me feel a little dizzy especially when people were running...) At the end, the story makes a very unexpected twist.
Progulka has already been awarded the main price of the Cottbus Film Festival of Young East European Cinema, which might surely mark the beginning of a long string of praise for this film which has yet to hit the big European and American markets.
I still have some reservations about episodes in Progulka which reinforce some very infortunate "clichés" and which might fool people about life in post-communist Russia. For instance, the characters seem not especially worried about money, when the country suffers from a very unequal distribution of income... Olya makes an unfortunate joke about what her fate would be in the hands of a Chechen rebel... Then there is the moment when they get robbed by a band of Gypsies... Sadly, these episodes only reinforce existing prejudices in today's Russian society.
Anyway, political comment is not the goal of this film review.My intention was just to give the reader some pointers on flims depicting that lovely city by the Neva; in perennial competition with Moscow, yet more dazzling, fascinating and intriguing... "Moscow seems to keep the better things for herself..." says Alyosha in a Progulka scene. "At least we can console ourselves with the fact that girls are more intelligent in our city".
