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Fragment of An Empire 63
aspects less; as a result, simple and conventional narrative devices superseded the montage method (the intercutting of shots in rhythmic and ideological patterns) . In short, Russia went "Hollywood" as the renowned school of montage ended in official disrepute.
Perhaps because of Ermler's early allegiance to the Party, his films did not suffer from the ideological "errors" which severely curtailed the work of Eisenstein, Trauberg, and Pudovkin. He was apparently able to confine his aesthetic experiments within the framework of the Party's desires.
Fragment was one of the last great Russian pictures to win approval in the West, because the silent films w4iich Russia continued to make were obsolete for American audiences who quickly demanded only sound features.
Fragment of an Empire, perhaps because it has only been cursorily mentioned in film criticism,*"' has largely been ignored by film societies. When occasionally booked, it is grouped with other "propaganda" films and considered basically as a prime example of that genre. But it is unfair to reduce Ermler's brilliant expression and carefully conceived effects to the message alone. It is rather tragic that so many essentially meretricious sound films are shown year after year while Fragment lies unheralded, for it is one of the great, but little known masterpieces of the silent screen.
One of the reasons for its lack of recognition can be attributed to the Museum of Modern Art. Its print, a particularly grainy and scratchy one, does not contain any subtitles; an omission which prevents an audience from following the action clearly. The resulting confusion has no doubt left film audiences disappointed, and perhaps this has by word of mouth tended to undermine the film's deserved reputation. The Museum does not aid matters by neglecting to state either in its catalogue or in its filmed preface that their version lacks the subtitles which were translated from the original Russian print for the American release.
The Museum in this instance, as alas in so many others, is hardly taking its role as a custodian of the Art of the motion picture seriously when it allows, with no compunction or explanation, such a mutilated version to be shown. Because their print is so confusing, a plot outline for our own society members had to be extracted from a review in the New York Times of January 27, 1930. Fortunately, this recourse is unnecessary because Brandon has a print which is clearer, less scratchy, and which — most important — has titles. Although its titles do not seem to agree entirely with the original American release, they are infinitely better than their complete absence in the Museum's copy. In the Brandon print, Fragment becomes not only perfectly lucid and completely untedious, but that rare experience, a film which is both a great exercise in form and a great human document.
*Even the carefully compiled British Film Academy publication, The Technique of Film Editing (which may well prove to be the definitive work on editing\ does not even MENTION Ermler.