We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
with the self-exposure of Once in a Lifetime, continues with an almost malicious delight to laugh at itself. We have also seen Pm No Angel, to which Eric Knight refers in his article on "Synthetic America."
Outside of Britain and America, the most interesting developments have taken place in France, and the importance of La Maternelle and Foil de Carotte is discussed by Paul Rotha. Russia makes a single but significant contribution to the quarter with Deserter.
Several of the documentary films produced by the E.M.B. Film Unit have been issued during the quarter, and these will be considered, with the new films of Basil Wright and Arthur Elton, in a forthcoming article.
DESERTER
Production: Mejrabpomfilm. Direction: V. I. Pudovkin. Scenario: X. Agadjanova-Shutko, M. Krasnostavski, A. Lezebnikov. Photography: A. M. Golovnia. Art-Direction: A. Kozlovski. Music: I. Shaporin.
We owe a debt of gratitude to the London Film Society for importing this new Pudovkin film, for although it may not take us with fire, as did Storm Over Asia and Mother, it is nevertheless a sizeable attempt which demands serious concentration.
In Deserter Pudovkin attempts to cover a greater canvas than any director before him, selecting a theme more complex and widemeaning than any yet tackled in the Soviet or other producing centre. I confess to being unable to describe the material in detail. In its giant stride the narrative embraces most of the vital social problems of a harassed world to-day — the struggle between the classes, unemployment and poverty, the tragedy brought about by economic crisis, the suffering of the working class, new hope in new leaderships, newr ideals and new generations. There is tragedy, deep-down and stark. There is comedy, transient but catching. There is satire, penetrating and unanswerable. Whatever its faults, and it has many, its director was inspired, and that is a sign of greatness. By its very stature the picture is awe-inspiring. Only a Pudovkin could have attempted the task and only a Pudovkin could have fallen short of success by so small a margin of failure.
The central figure is a dock-worker in the Hamburg shipyards, involved in endless strikes and wage-disputes. He is chosen as a delegate to the Soviet Union, where he decides to remain and join in the work of the FiveYear Plan. But he realises that he is a deserter to his comrades in Germany and returns to take up the struggle on his native soil.
The relation of the German worker to the mass is maintained
116