In this post, you will read a programme note for Evgenii Bauer’s film After Death (Posle smerti, 1915. The aim of this post is to provide viewers with little or know knowledge about the film with a critical introduction to it, to contextualise it briefly and to highlight significant features of the film’s themes and style. The word limit is 750-1000 words.
Posle smerti (After Death, 1915)
Also known as Turgenevskie motivy (Motifs from Turgenev)
46 minutes
Preserved without intertitles
Production A. Khanzhonkov & Co. Ltd
Director/scenarist Evgenii Bauer
Cameraman Boris Zavelev
Cast
Andrei Bagrov Vitol´d Polonskii
Kapitolina Markovna, his aunt Ol´ga Rakhmanova
Tsenin, Andrei’s friend Georgii Azagarov
Zoia Kadmina Vera Karalli
Her mother M. Khalatova
Her sister Tamara Gedevanova
Princess Tarskaia Marfa Kassatskaia
Evgenii Bauer’s After Death was released on 29 December 1915. As its alternative title – Motifs from Turgenev – suggests, the film is a free adaptation of ‘Klara Milich’ (1882), a short story by the nineteenth-century Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. Bauer sets his film in his own century, however, and in doing so adds an extra dimension of meaning to Turgenev’s story of a haunting, transforming it into a bleak commentary on the state of gender relations in Russia in the late Imperial age.
The film is dominated by the relationship between hero and heroine, played by Vitol´d Polonskii (1879-1919) and Vera Karalli (1888/89?-1972). A former ballerina, Karalli turned to cinema in 1914 when her dancing career was interrupted by injury. Considered one of the most talented and beautiful actresses of her generation – so beautiful that she was allegedly used in the plot to lure Rasputin to his death – she was one of the acknowledged ‘Queens’ of the pre-Revolutionary screen, and Polonskii one of the ‘Kings’. Paralyzed by the portrait of his dead mother and dominated by his fussy aunt, Bauer’s infantile hero Andrei has no romantic experience of women and little inclination to acquire any, and it is his encounter with Zoia, an actress and unconventional ‘new woman’, that sets in motion the film’s dramatic action. Zoia’s sexual attraction to Andrei is obvious from their first encounter, and she makes no attempt to hide it. Nor is she afraid to act on her attraction, for she writes to Andrei, requests a rendezvous in a park, and boldly declares her love. Horrified by her forwardness, Andrei rejects Zoia’s advances, and she poisons herself during a stage performance. On learning of Zoia’s death, however, Andrei falls passionately in love with the young woman. He obtains a photograph of her and, as his obsession begins to grow, his mind is haunted by Zoia’s unattainable image until eventually, sapped by his visions and the fainting fits they cause, Andrei expires in his bed.
As a contemporary reviewer of After Death complained in 1916, Andrei’s dreams and visions of Zoia so dominate the second half of the film that they begin to become ‘monotonous’. It also becomes increasingly difficult to take them seriously. This is perhaps what Bauer
intended, however, in order to ensure that Andrei inspires ridicule rather than pity in the viewer. Bauer’s ironic treatment of his hero is also clear from the nature of his visions and dreams. The Zoia Andrei imagines bears little resemblance to Zoia in life. Rather than the confident and independent ‘new woman’ Bauer shows her to be, Andrei’s fantasy-Zoia is an out-dated icon of idealized femininity, more revealing of Andrei’s attitudes to women than of Zoia herself. That Andrei can love Zoia only after her death, when he is free to re-imagine her as he chooses, clearly suggests the extent of the fear that an autonomous new woman such as Zoia could inspire in the essentially patriarchal male of the early twentieth century.
Many sequences in After Death illustrate Bauer’s technical mastery in their skilful use of lighting to create mood and contribute to characterization and theme. Particularly interesting is his innovative use of an over-exposed shot during Andrei’s first Arcadian vision of Zoia, which bathes the actress in an idealizing ethereal light but drains her face of all expression and individuality. Bauer’s inventive and innovative use of camera movement is also evident throughout the film. In his stimulating essay contained on the BFI DVD and video Mad Love, Russian film historian Yuri Tsivian analyses the long sequence at Princess Tarskaia’s soirée where Tsenin introduces the reluctant Andrei to the other guests. He shows how Bauer, by combining tracking shots, pauses and pans to left and right, succeeds in making his camera speak of Andrei’s social alienation by having it follow Andrei’s uncomfortable progress through the grand salon, mirroring the ‘chilling steadiness’ of the scrutiny to which the guests subject the recluse. After Death also contains one of the earliest uses of the close-up in Russian film. At the end of Zoia’s recital, Bauer’s camera frames the actress’s face in an extreme close-up that highlights her mesmerizing eyes, as they stare directly into the camera. Against all rules of cinema, the unblinking actress then steps deliberately towards the camera, a bold gesture worthy of the emancipated ‘new woman’ Zoia attempts to be.