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The Ghost That Never Returns 59
the Moscow housing shortage. Paul Rotha in his Film Till Now feels it is "one of the greatest films yet made", except for the conventional ending of Motherhood. "Despite the failure of the concluding sequences, Bed and Sofa was an unequalled instance of pure psychological, intimate, cinematic representation of human character." (p. 241.)
After Bed and Sofa, Room made The Pits and then Ghost That Never Returns. Herman G. Weinberg, quoted by Brandon, says: "This is a real rarity, not only because it has never before been available to film societies, but also because it represents yet another striking example of that penultimate flowering of the great Soviet silent cinema ... I urge you not to miss it. There are few enough rarities around at this late date."
ANALYSIS
The Ghost That Never Returns, which was based on a French novel. is the story of a strike-leader whose spirit has not been broken by ten years of imprisonment. This hero, Jose Real, in his unwavering allegiance to the class struggle, becomes a symbol of the oppressed worker. But the universality of his noble cause is reduced by the contrived plot. It is difficult to accept the curious penal regulation of allowing a prisoner freedom for one day, and it seems impossible that such an important and obviously dangerous prisoner would be released and then watched by a single secret-policeman. An audience can activate its suspension of disbelief only a limited number of times before the arbitrariness of the plot begins to undermine the serious intent of the film. To get suspense— and thus to sustain interest — the script descends into melodrama where psychological truth is sacrificed to momentary effects. After ten years of waiting, the hero incredibly falls asleep TWICE in the one day allotted to him. An audience of course impatiently awaits the outcome, but it also feels it has been cheaply tricked. This is not to say that the whole film lacks credibility; there are a few scenes in which the character's plight is honestly handled: the hours of expectant waiting before his release, the curious let-down when the time actually comes, and his slow realization as he leaves the prison gates that he is free. In contrast to these psychologically true episodes, there are the sleeping scenes, the unbelievable encounters with the secret-police, and the grim comedy of not meeting his wife — all of these melodramatically spoil what could have had more dignity, and thus more dramatic power.
Room has an unhappy mixture of realism and symbolism. The warden, with his grotesque face and crippled body, obviously represents the true image of society, but he is so exaggerated that it is difficult to take him seriously and reminds one, rather humorously, of one of Dr. Frankenstein's ever-present assistants. The same exaggeration is used in the treatment of the secret-policeman. In the warden's office he is a picture of urbanity and neatness as he carefully brushes a piece of dust from his sleeve. His appearance is as deceptive as the system he represents, for he can pick a bouquet of flowers in his gentlemanly love of nature and yet at the same time be pursuing Jose in order to kill him. Beneath this dandified exterior there still remain the brutal and rapacious aspects of