ESSA EYES WIDE OPEN .\' f.. L' 1 (Tl. ·\ C.' 1 1 1· '11 1 1 I) 1 I-) (") I? ·\ \P :\ /\ S (_) : .. .I.'; r1. .J . .. 1F .,:J i-.s ·..r (" _; I)F·.\, .JV1'' .. s~ · 1. s~ r1i. ... 1 l .F..:J . .: i.N '... • . I·. '\' .r .. I).\, BY GREGORY FREID IN Old films are like a message in a bottle, mysterious and enchanting, even more so if written in a hidden code to elude the censor. Great Soviet filmmakers from Eisenstein to Muratova have made such coding part of their cinematic aesthetic. Marlen Khutsiev is among them. Khutsiev (his given name is a contrac­ tion of MARxLENin) was born in 1925 in Tbilisi, Georgia, to an actress mother and a Bolshevik revolutionary father who per­ ished, like many, in the Stalinist purges. A graduate of the venerable Russian film school VGIK (1952), he became famous in 1956 with his third film, Spring on Za­ rechnaya Street.(with _Fe~~s _ ~!i:C>~t:~). Khutsiev is now working on his 13th film-about an encounter between Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. He is , perhaps, with Tchaikovsky's Manfred (the theme of Early in the evening, the young lieu­ The film's final segment holds the key best known for his 1961 film,/ Am Twenty , tormenting memories) and culminating in tenant is summoned by his superior to a to the hidden code. Like the introduction, it with its echoes of La Nouvelle Vague and the hoisting of the Red flag over the Reich­ nearby estate to celebrate the end of the consists of a montage of documentary foot­ Francois Truffaut, and July Rain (1966), stag. Then comes deafening silence-as the long war. He mounts a trophy motorbike age, but this time, the clips show street life with its cinematic vibe resembling classic protagonist, a young Lieutenant (Alexander and speeds to the party along a beautiful of modern European cities-Berlin, London, Antonioni. In Russia, these two films be­ Arzhilovsky), wakes up on a sunny morn­ wooded alley. Within sight of his destina­ Paris, Moscow-replete with well-<lressed came iconic for the 1960s generation. ing in a clean and puffy farmer's bed. There tion, an opulent German country house, men, women and children hurrying on their Like them, It Happened in May (1970) were more su~rises to come. he fumbles and crashes. For a moment he way along avenues pulsating with traffic. is intensely contemporary. Released to mark Made for television, which explains its looks dead. After he gets up, dazed but Wearied by the story's horror, the eye the 25th anniversary of the end of World War generous use of close-ups and a spare setting, uninjured (Khutsiev needs this shock to feasts on these ordinary scenes until, with­ II, it falls within the range of government­ the film is based on 'The Wages of Horror" ready him for his eventual descent into out warning, the human traffic begins to sponsored topics: the Great Patriotic War, (1962), a short story by Georgy Baklanov hell), he joins other partying officers in flow onto the grounds of a concentration victory over evil and vigilance in the face of (1923-2009), a chronicler of World War II raising melancholic toasts in honor of fall­ camp museum. Now the moving images the uneasy coexistence with the former foe. who was much admired for his authenticity en comrades and singing tearful Russian get interspersed with some of the most fa­ By 1969, it was the World War II vic­ and honesty. In the story, an old veteran re­ songs. They have seen too much grief and mous stills of the Jewish Holocaust. The tory, not the revolution of 1917, that the calls how he was stunned when, as a young lost too many friends and family to aban­ camera lingers, moves on, and then returns regime mined for legitimacy. Accordingly, officer, he came face to face with the Nazi don themselves to a victory celebration. to one of the iconic Holocaust images-a the theme monopolized movie houses, TV extermination camps concealed behind Ger­ As the party comes to an end, the host, 7-year-old Jewish boy from the Warsaw screens and other media. But not all war many's civilized veneer. Khutsiev appropri­ a senior lieutenant (the filmmaker Pytor ghetto, his arms raised in a gesture of stories were equal: the Jewish Holocaust, ated Baklanov's straightforward narrative, Todorovsky, wearing his own wartime uni­ surrender. As the present-day footage re­ for one, was passed over with silence-in ostensibly about a Polish victim, and infused form), invites officers to go for a ride in a sumes, the camera picks out a charming line with with Soviet "anti-Zionist" foreign it with an extraordinary resonance and depth. captured German convertible. They run into boy of the same age and fixes on his wide­ policy, while Stalin's role in the war was A small detachment of Red Army a strange gate, not quite realizing they have eyed gaze before fading into the credits. amplified in line with the regime's effort scouts, led by a 21-year-old lieutenant, is arrived at the portals of hell. Inside, still clue­ This silent acknowledgement of the Jew­ to whitewash him and his record of mass quartered on an idyllic German farmstead less, they enter the dark camp buildings, their ish Holocaust escaped the censor but not the terror. Khutsiev was among the prominent visibly untouched by the war. The soldiers flashlights illuminating mysterious empty Soviet viewers. For them, it would have also artists and scientists who petitioned against make friends with the farm's German own­ cans (the gas Zyklon-B), mounds of aban­ resonated with another enforced silence­ creeping Stalinism. No wonder, then, that ers, who are eager to put the war behind doned footwear, spoons, and finally, heavy the unmourned millions of victims of Sta­ he would inject his own-coded and subtly them. The camera focuses on the simple oven doors of the crematorium that the visi­ lin's Great Terror. Baklanov must have felt discordant-note into the official chorus of pleasures of peace: sleeping late, a hearty tors take for the camp's heating system. ecstatic for the way Khutsiev "unpacked" commemorative hosannas. meal, sharing a carafe of cider, the soldiers Only later that night, when the camp's the impulse behind his "The Wages of Hor­ Paradoxically, It Happened in May is set making simple conversation, their clumsy former inmates wander onto the pig farm, ror." In a rare tribute, he renamed the story on a bucolic German pig farm, untouched courtship of the farmer's pretty wife. does the lieutenant learn the truth about "It Happened in May." ii'li by war, a few days after the Nazi surren­ The farm raises pigs, and the soldiers are the death camp: the gassing and burning of der. But Khutsiev opens with a five-minute eager to help the farmer's wife in her chores the victims, the use of human ashes to fer­ A native ofMos cow, Gregory Freidin is Professor montage of war footage, replete with a around the well-tended pigsty. But come tilize the nearby fields. Now aware of the Emer.itus ofSlavic Languages and literatures al deafening battlefield soundtrack overlaid evening, the farmer, mindful of the soldiers' farmer's complicity in the gassing of a Pol­ Stanford University and author ofa crilicaL biography gallantry, takes his family overnight to his ish laborer, they go searching for him in the ofOsip Mandelstam, A Coat of Many Colms relatives in a nearby village. All is peaceful nearby village. But the family is gone. In (UniversilyofCaJifomia Press, 1987, 20/0)and, but the camera's in-your-face gaze, awkward one of the final shots, the lieutenant stands, forthcoming A Jew on Horseback; Isaac Babel in Life IT HAPPENED IN MAY silences, strained exchanges and the scene's dazed and bewildered by the horror of the and Art. His writings on Russian literature, culture, U.S.S.R., 1970, 115m flat lighting lend an uncanny air to the open­ revelation, while all around him are the and politics have appeared in The New Republic, The Director: Marlen Khutsiev ing episode. Are we in a Gothic fairytale farm's well-tended pigs-a fairytale sub­ New Criterion, The Los Angeles Ttmes and the Ttmes Presented By: Volker Schlondorff castle, its ghosts too shy for the light of day? stitute for the disappeared German family. Literacy Supplement. ©Gregory Freidin, 2016. NQ 24 • FILMV\/A.TCH • GUEST DIRECTOR • TRIBUTES NEW FILMS • SPECIAL • .