Carnival Night: Screw You Stalin

Carnival Night is a good time, not just for the audience but the characters as well. For the characters, it is time to party like it is 1999. For us, it is an explosion of camp, over-the-top technicolor, outbursts of singing, and ridiculous dialogue. How could you not love that? On the surface, Carnival Night merely celebrates having fun. However, behind that fun there is something much deeper, perhaps an underlying and subversive social commentary. The film was made in 1956, several years after the death of Stalin. Although the film makes no direct reference and reaction to Stalin, a questioning and violation of authority consumes the film.

The young characters of the film spend the entire film doing what they want in complete disregard of authority. They turn the idea of authority into a joke, making fun of its traditionalist and regressive ideals. Sounds like a reaction to the oppressive totalitarian system of Stalin to me. The end of Stalin's power wasn't a tragedy, but rather a reason to celebrate, joyously and loudly. Carnival Night celebrates New Years Eve properly, but also the end of Stalin, in your face, on the big screen, with bright colors, jokes, and songs. The youth have its own plans, which do not involve any form of a hierarchical power structure. The kids just want to rock 'n' roll. Heaven forbid people want to have fun in communist Russia. Can a communist have fun? Aren't the communist supposed to sacrifice fun in the name of the State? Not here. Youth have taken over, running things on its own terms, without sacrificing anything, especially their fun, to the State. What has the State and Stalin ever done for them?

Questioning authority is great, but the film takes it another level with a handful of homoerotic scenes. A man and man kissing, which for us nowadays is nothing, but back then it was another story. Hinting to homosexuality in 1950s Soviet film? Could you even do that? Sounds like trouble to me. But, who knows and who cares? Carnival Night has done it all. Good fun reaches the level of subversive and perhaps even treason. It is refreshing to see these characters slap everything sacred in the face. 




Peter Bayuk

My Love/Hate Relationship with Jean-Luc Godard

Looking back at the Jean-Luc Godard series at the PFA, "Movie Love in the Sixties," I feel partially guilty for not having attended all the films. It is a rare opportunity to see films, especially "classics" on the big screen, in gorgeous and preserved form. Who doesn't love going to a movie theater and sitting in those comfortable purple seats? Yet at the same time it is a major relief not having attended most of the series. I went to Contempt and Breathless and that is probably all I could have handled before losing my mind. As the title of this entry explicitly states, this series has reinforced my love/hate relationship with Godard. Part of me loves his style, how it simultaneously violates narrative codes and creates a captivating energy. We can feel the fresh and innovative nature of his work even today, despite how jaded we have all become with the excessive amount of films readily available.

As a film studies major, I am supposed to appreciate Godard as an "auteur," a cinematic artist who invested a great deal of thought and intellect into his work. He helped changed film, this cannot be denied. However, at the same time, I find his work tiring and tedious, at times reaching a level of extreme pretentiousness. Godard gets so caught up in making references to everything intellectual, from classic films to poetry to philosophy. Very quickly my head starts to hurt. References are great, but how much is too much? I can only take so much such intellectualism. His films deconstruct our traditional relationship with cinema, but he pushes it to a point where it just becomes too exhaustive and monotonous. He moves so far away from narrative conventions, from the orthodox and traditional, that many of his works become almost unwatchable.


I would argue that Contempt is his greatest work and Breathless is an undeniable classic. Band of Outsiders is fascinating to an extent, dealing with characters and scenario, which create an energy, perhaps similar to that of Breathless, but it just never ends up succeeding. In the end, it just falls flat and leaves you wanting so much more. And then there are the rest. They bring up necessary and interesting topics for discussion on the level of content and form, but who can actually stand them? Alphaville was interesting, but enough was enough. Film noir that meets sci-fi is irresistible and a clever play with genre, but yet again Godard’s intellectualized style makes the film intelligible. Masculine Feminine became more painful the further you entered into it. There was nothing to truly captivating with everything existing in such fragmented and detached terms. I know it is meant to be art, but whatever happened to accessibility? Do I need to be French to be able to adore everything he has ever made? Godard asks a lot of his audience, leading me to the final question: can a film be too intellectual?

Peter Bayuk

Teuvo Tulio: The King of Finnish Melodrama. Who the hell is he?

Melodrama needs no translation. Raw human emotion and drama makes sense in any language. When there is that much intensity on screen, who needs language? Melodrama is a genre that transcends not only history but also language barriers. We have classic melodrama from Almodóvar, Fassbinder Sirk, and even Finnish director Tulio. I know what you are asking yourselves: Who the hell is Teuvo Tulio? It is rare to find a director who is virtually unknown to sophisticated modern audiences, but Tulio is such a case. Teuvo Tulio is worthy of our attention, a director of wild melodramas during the 1930's and 1940's. His influence can be felt in the films of melodrama masters, ranging from Sirk and Fassbinder to even Buñuel. Tulio was born in Latvia, then moved to Finland became an actor in silent films, earning the name of "Finland Valentino." Soon, he shifted to film making, bringing to his films an erotic passion he developed from the silent films. His spectacular cinematography, coming-of-age stories, embellished orchestral music, and editing even rival Eisenstein. We'll let you be the judge of that. All these elements merged to create intense, captivating melodrama, which brought a needed sexual frankness to only to the genre but also to film overall, dealing with premarital sex, prostitution, sexual inequality, and female objectification. Looks like the root of good drama. Who could ask for more?

Peter Bayuk