‘The purely tentative nature of my Americanism begins.’
A U.S. military General is sent to a small Southern town to evaluate a new process developed by a reclusive scientist. Against a background of rising civil unrest, he manoeuvres to obtain the secret…
Director Abram Room smashes the propaganda button hard in this serious slice of Soviet Science Fiction. Joining him in his attempts to dismantle the American Military-Industrial Complex is a cast headed by Mikhail Bolduman, Rostislav Plyatt and Vladimir Belokurov.
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A top-level briefing sends General McKennedy (Plyatt) to the Deep South to attend a demonstration of a new scientific process invented by Professor Steele (Bolduman). The scientist married into money some time ago and has been able to work independently of the government, funded by the fortune of his aristocratic wife, Doris (Sofiya Pilyavskaya). Plyatt is accompanied by leading industrialist Upton Bruce (Vladimir Belokurov), a big wheel in the nation’s largest chemical conglomerate. The subsequent demonstration of Bolduman’s work is enough to convince both men of its fabulous possibilities and priceless value. Bolduman has invented a ‘silver dust’ that becomes temporarily radioactive after a scientific process. It will eradicate all life when released in a target area but quickly become harmless, leaving it available for occupation.
Although Bolduman’s work is successful, his home life is fraught with problems. Rebellious stepson Allan (Nikolai Timofeyev) has rejected conventional society, and his sister Jen (Valentina Ushakova) has fallen in love with physicist Dick Jones (Gennadi Yudin), who is part of the laboratory team. There’s also trouble brewing in town with the activities of Ben (D. Kolmogorov), the son of their black maid, Mary Robinson (Zana Zanoni). He attends a peace protest led by the liberal Charles Armstrong (Aleksandr Khanov), which is broken up by the local police led by Sheriff Smiles (Osip Abdulov). Subsequently, Kolmogorov is arrested along with five other black men and charged with the rape of barfly Flossy Bates (Lidiya Smirnova). The men are found guilty of the crime and sentenced to be executed. Nationwide protests erupt, and the local situation threatens to explode into mob violence.
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A contemporary consideration of Room’s film is an interesting prospect. On the one hand, as a drama, it’s little more than a succession of talky, static scenes and overall lifelessness. The science fiction element is relevant to the plot but just a hook that director Room uses to promote his relentless anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda. Whichever political side of the fence you sit on, this approach is most definitely anti-entertainment, and it’s far more interesting to consider the circumstances of the film’s production, the attitudes and views it expresses and its relevance as a cultural and historical document than to talk about its cinematic shortcomings.
At the time of production, Room was not in a comfortable place. During the Second World War, he made some films that showed Americans in a positive light. By the early 1950s, this had affected his position in the Soviet film industry and, most probably, his status in general, with all the sinister undertones that implies. Never mind that America and Russia were allies during the recent conflict and that he probably had little regarding the content of his film projects. Of course, this is an interesting reflection of what was happening in America at this time, with Hollywood filmmakers under attack by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the implementation of the notorious blacklist targeting alleged Communist sympathisers.
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In short, Room needed to reestablish himself in the good graces of the Party, and what better way to do that than to make a virulent anti-American cinematic statement? As you might expect, the results aren’t exactly subtle. First, we have the fact that Bolduman has sinister ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Kurt Schneider (Grigori Kirillov) as a valuable member of his scientific team. This is a valid inclusion, given that V2 rocket designer Werner Von Braun famously participated in the U.S. space program after the war. However, the Soviets also utilised Nazi expertise, relocating more than 2,500 scientists, engineers and other technical staff to the USSR under the top secret Operation Osoaviakhim program. More pointedly, however, Bolduman isn’t satisfied with testing his deadly dust on chimpanzees; instead, he demands human subjects, suggesting that Plyatt ship in some prisoners of war from Korea.
Room doesn’t hesitate to show one of the Professor’s experiments either, with a chimp jumping around inside its cage screaming after being sprinkled with the lethal dust. Plyatt is shown actively enjoying this tortuous spectacle, although businessman Belokurov can’t bear to watch. Although this might be placed to his credit, it’s just a demonstration of his cowardice as he is more keen than ever to obtain the process afterwards. The two potential buyers even try to double-cross each other, with Belokurov contacting influential figures by telephone. However, Plyatt takes a far more hands-on approach, recruiting several people to his team. First, he targets ex-Nazi Kirillov, promising to use the dust against the enemies of Germany and then local gangster Joe Twist (Aleksandr Pelevin), who tries to put the screws on the obstinate scientist. Room also doesn’t forget to put the boot into organised religion, of course, with the local priest stooging for the General, hilariously recounting a recent seance where Jesus Christ appeared(!) to confer his blessing on American military might.
Clik here to view.
Obviously, Room has jumped in with all theological guns blazing, and we haven’t even considered the rampant racism yet. All the older characters, bar the liberal Khanov, are aggressively racist. When reluctant paid witness Smirnova retracts her testimony about the rape, Khanov visits his congressman. While accepting that the accused men are innocent, the politician refuses to stop their execution because, being black, they have probably already done something to justify their sentence or are bound to do so in the future. Almost the only white characters immune to this bigotry are the younger generation, the obvious implication being that they have yet to be brainwashed by the curse of Capitalism and can still be led down the correct path if educated correctly. Of course, I did not experience the American Deep South of the 1950s, and the historical record of the time does include multiple instances of terrible racism and extreme abuses of human rights. However, again, Soviet Russia is hardy blameless in this respect. During the Second World War, over 2 million people from ethnic minorities were deported from within its borders to inhospitable areas of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. After Stalin died in 1953, this process was reversed to some extent but with certain limitations. Historians have suggested that Stalin was ultimately responsible for the deaths of over 20 million people overall.
Given the difficulty of travelling outside the Soviet Union at the time, it’s unlikely that Room ever saw the West himself and had to rely on second-hand information to inform his depiction of the United States. The results could be more convincing, but neither are they well off the mark and probably passed muster with the domestic audience of the time. Room shows us a long, empty highway lined with Coca-Cola billboards, which is fine as far as it goes, but clearly, the motor vehicles aren’t appropriate. The most obvious example is a delivery truck with just ‘Milk’ stencilled on the side in mile-high letters. Downtown Fortskill is the scene of what action there is, and it boasts ‘Joe Twist’s Bar’, an establishment that most closely resembles a coffee shop or a main street soda fountain. Unfortunately, when we get inside, the customers appear to be the lowlife of a backstreet Parisian nightclub hanging out in a poorly lit English pub.
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Room was born in Lithuania in 1894 and initially studied medicine at the prestigious State University in the major Russian port of Saratov. However, his passion lay in drama and by his early twenties, he was working in the arts department, subsequently becoming director of Moscow’s ‘Theatre of the Revolution’ in 1923. Soon after, he became involved in cinema, landing a job at the USSR State Committee for Cinematography, the government body responsible for state film production. Work for Russian production company Lenfilm followed and his first directorial credit arrived with ‘The Vodka Chase/Gonka za samogonkoj’ (1924). His most celebrated film is the comedy-drama ‘Bed and Sofa/Tretya meshchanskaya’ (1927), which was adapted as an Off-Broadway opera as recently as 1996. His filmography contains documentaries, crime films, romantic dramas and even a musical. Final project ‘A Man Before His Time/Prezhdevremennyy chelovekin’ (1972) was released four years before his death at the age of 82.
Entertaining? Certainly not, but it is a fascinating product of its era and circumstances.