CINE-FORUM

Editor"s Nole: This introduction to the international career of Fedor Ozep inaugurates
a new feature in OFSRCEC:;. Cine-Forum will provide a space for information, discus-
sion, debates, and pedagogical issues that may not be suited to full-scale scholarly
articles, but should be of interest to the journal's readers and relevant to scholarship
in film and related media. Detailed information about the form and possible content
of submissions to Cine-Forum can be found on the journal's website:
www.film.queensu.ca/fsac/cjfs.html.
SCOTT MACKENZIE
SOVIET EXPANSIONISM:
Fedor.Ozep's Transnational Cinema
Resume: La carriere du cineaste emigre Fedor Ozep iIIustre fa fac;on par laquelle
I'esthetique cinematographique transnationale est souvent marginaJise par fes dis-
cours qui theorisent les cinemas nationaux.
Ozrp. .. rrpresents all those refugees, nomads and exiles whomfate drove from one coun-
try and era to another and who regularlyget passed over in criticism, either because
they fit none of the patterns or because they disappear into the diversity of them.
Raymond Durgnat
1
F
edor (b. Otsep) is one of the great foot-
notes of cmema hlstory-a filmmaking version of Woody Allen's char-
acter Zelig. In Quebec and Canada, Ozep is best-known-and for the
most part, only known-as the "Hollywood" .filmmaker imported to
Quebec in order to direct three of the first sound features produced in the
province: I.e Pere Chopin (1944), La Forteresse (1947) and its English-language'
counterpart, Whispering City (1947). Yet before his arrival in Quebec, Ozep
CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FILM STUDIES REVUE CANADIENNE D'I:TUDES CINI:MATOGRAPHIQUES
VOLUME 11 NO,1 SPRING. PRINTEMPS 1003. PP 92-104
was lurking in the shadows of many of the great early Eastern and Western
European national cinema movements, making films in the USSR,
Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain and France, before relocating to
Hollywood, and then Quebec. His invisibility in film history is aided not
only by near-continuous immigration, but also by the plethora of spellings
of his name: in Russia and the USSR, Fyodor Otsep, Fyodor Otzep, and
Fjodor Otsep (all transliterations of the Cyrillic); in Western Europe and
North America, Fedor Ozep; in Spain, Pedro Otzoup. (For consistency's
sake I will use the surname Ozep throughout this article.)
The present work is as concerned with the reception of Ozep's films in
different nations and historiographical contexts as it is with the actual
films themselves. The reason for this is that the process of cinematic
canonisation relies not only on questions of "quality" that surround certain
films and cinematic movements, but also on the critical discourses which
are deployed to interpolate films into the canon at any given time. Beyond
the historical interest in his work as it pertains to early feature filmmaking
in Quebec and Canada, Ozep also represents an under-analysed aspect of
the histories of national cinemas: his films deploy narrative and stylistic
devices hybridised from the different film movements and national cuI
tures in which he worked. To this extent, his work represents a trepd in
European cinema that has often been marginalised, precisely because it is
seen as a threat. As Tim Bergfelder notes,
Discourses on cinema have traditionally focused less on
the inclusive or cross-cultural aspects the term 'European' might
imply, but on notions of national specificities, cultural authenticity
and indigenous production contexts, In order to establish a national
identity for a particular film culture, features which transcend or
contradict these identity formations have been either neglected or
marginalised, but also viewed as threatening.
2
Ozep's transnational cinema demonstrates that the stylistic intertextuality,
so celebrated in contemporary, post-modern cinema, can in fact be traced
back to the silent era. Along with Ozep, Hitchcock, in his early silent films
such as The Lodger (UK, 1926) and The Ring (UK, 1927), can be seen as part
of this development, as can Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Mr, West in the Land
of the Bolsheviks (USSR, 1924). Given this history, it becomes paramount to
retrace the formation of transnational cinemas and cinema styles. Through
an examination of Ozep's marginality and the ways in which his films have
CINE-FORUM 93
been historised, critiqued and compartmentalised, it is possible to question
how "national" aesthetic movements are categorised and to suggest Ozep's
transnationality points to a relatively unexplored area of the stylistic his-
tories of national cin;mas.
Born in 1895 (he died on 20 June 1949)3, Ozep was associated with a
number of key Soviet filmmakers in his early career. Unlike most of his
contemporaries, he worked in both the radical art cinema traditions of
Vsevqlod Pudovkin and Lev Kuleshov and in the popular cinema, epito-
mised by the works of Yakov Protazanov and Boris Barnet. While still
attending the University of Moscow, Ozep began his film career as a
scriptwriter, adapting Pushkin's "The Queen of Spades" for Protazanov's
film of the same name (Russia, 1916). Pushkin's short story-and
Protazanov's film-in many ways epitomised the kind of narrative that
Ozep would come to favour throughout his career: melodramatic adapta-
tions of literary works. He wrote as many as twenty screenplays in the
early years of Soviet cinema, and he seemed to work in Virtually every
genre. Along with avant-garde and popular scripts, he wrote a script for
one of W1'adyslaw Starewicz's early films, Stella Maris (USSR, 1918). He
also acted in some films, including a small part in Pudovkin's Chess Fever
(USSR, 1925).
The exact extent of his early work is hard to determine, both because
of the lack of key historical sources and because of what can be seen as
Ozep's selE:mythologisation. For instance, Durgnat notes that Ozep
claimed he wrote Pudovkin's Mat (Mother, USSR, 1926), yet as Durgnat
goes on to point out, there is no further proof that this is the case-
perhaps this bit of revisionist history on Ozep's part was in response to
claims that Pudovkin edited Ozep's Zhivoi trup (The liVing Corpse, USSR,
1929). (For a brief description of this and other films directed by Ozep,
see the filmography at the end of this article.) Nevertheless, all available
evidence indicates that the young writer was prodigious. And while writ-
ing scripts, he also worked as an assistant editor on film producer Josef
Yermoliev's newsreels.
4
As early as 1914, he planned (but never complet-
ed) a book on American, European and Russian cinema aesthetics.5
In the 1920s, Ozep was part of the collective Mezhrabpom-Rus studio,
which consisted of filmmakers Protazanov, Pudovkin, Barnet, Vladimir
Gardin and Konstantin Eggert.
6
His contributions included scripting or
co-scripting films such as Alexander Sanin's adaptation of Tolstoy's Russian
peasant tale Polikusbka (1919) and the Soviet Union's first science fiction
epic, Protazanov's AeUta (1924). These two films are interesting artefacts of
94 SCOTT MACKENZIE
popular Soviet cinema, as they revolve around melodramatic
(and, in the case ofAeUta, comedy: at the conclusion of the narratIve, the
Martians stage a proletarian revolution) at a time when both at home and
abroad, the radical formalism of Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin and
Kuleshov were at the forefront of Soviet proletarian cinema.
After a few years of screenwriting, Ozep turned his hand to directing.
His Earth in Chains (USSR, 1927) was the closest he would come to the
Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s. His comparatively non-didactic approach
to his material meant that Earth in Chains was one of the few Soviet films to
be in general release in Western Europe and North America. the late
1920s, he directed one of the first USSR/German co-productIOns, The
Living Corpse, starring Pudovkin. .
Because of this tendency toward the popular and the melodramatIc,
film critics and historians both inside and outside the USSR dismissed
Ozep's early work as too popular and not radical enough in its aesthetics.
In The Film TIll Now, Paul Rotha's judgement of Ozep's Russian work is as
succinct as it is dismissive:
He is not a director of any standing, his work being uneven and
lacking in any dramatic quality. The Living Corpse, which was one
of the few films exemplifying Soviet technique to be generally
shown in Britain, was of interest principally for the playing of
Pudovkin as Fedya Protasov, and for the editing, which was in
the hands of the latter?
While the actual editor of the film is in dispute, it is interesting to see
Rotha intent on undermining any aspect of the film that might constitute
a "successful" cinema aesthetic attributable to Ozep.
Rotha also dismissed the works of Protazanov and Barnet (with whom
Ozep co-directed the popular serial Miss Mend [USSR, 1926]),
strating the biases of the time against the Soviet popular entertamment
film. Part of this dismissal comes from what could be seen as the hybrid
nature of the film's style, in which Soviet montage techniques are com-
bined with a melodramatic narrative. Within the USSR, Ozep's films were
also not seen as radical enough. For instance, Sergei Eisenstein's only
recognition of Ozep's films in his published work is a dismissive
about the director's use of montage in The Living Corpse, which he claims I,S
derivative of his own in October (1927); moreover, he argues that Ozeps
work imitates Eisenstein's own failures:
CINE-FORUM 95
Such a means [of montage] may decay pathologically if the essential
viewpoint--emotional dynamization of the subject-is lost. As soon as
the filmmaker loses sight of this essence the means ossifies into lifeless
literary symbolism and stylistic mannerism. The sugary chants of com-
promise by the Mensheviki at the Second Congress of the SOViets-
the storming of the Winter Palace-are intercut [in October]
WIth hands playing harps. This was a purely literary parallelism that by
no means dynamized the subject matter. Similarly in Ozep's Living
Corpse, church spires (in imitation of those in October) and lyrical land-
scapes are intercut with the courtroom speeches of the prosecutor and
the defence lawyer. The errm was the same as in the "harp" sequence.
8
therefore, found himself in the unenviable position of being criti-
CIsed for both his "debasement" of montage and his commercialism
Despite the changing landscape of Soviet culture and politics
melodramatic devices Within Socialist realism was on the rise),
Ozep was obvIously on the margins of Soviet film cUlture.
After making The Living Corpse, Ozep immigrated to Weimar Germany
and adopting "Fedor Ozep" as the "official" spelling of his name directed
Der Marder Dimitri Karamasoff (1931). The film was well receiv:d by the
German press at the time. Herbert Ihering, for example, wrote that the
adaptation rivalled Dovzhenko's Earth (USSR, 1930) and Renoir's Sous [es
toits de (France, 1930).9 Yet, after the war, Siegfried Kracauer argued
that the frlm was authoritarian in nature, foreshadowing the rise of Nazi
cinema.
1O
Indeed, Kracauer sees Ozep's Karamasoff as one of the early
examples of what he calls the "national epic," in which concerns about
social formations are subordinated to themes of individual rebellion. As
rebellious indiViduals take control of destiny, they also embody the need
for an authoritarian figure. Kracauer argues that Ozep avoided Soviet
montage, despite the Russian theme of the story, as the SOViet aesthetic
at odds with the themes of the film. For Kracauer, the aesthetics of a
natIOnal cinema movement are intrinsically tied to a given nation-state's
politics: "It was a story which had little in common with Dostoievsky or
With. Ozep seemed to sense it; for he refrained from using
montage methods, except, perhaps, for the magnificent" troika
which juxtaposed treetops and horse's hoofs in fast cutting so as to
tncrease the impression of speed."lJ
This reading of the film is predicated on placing Der Mifrder Dimitri
Karamasoff Within the traditions of German Ex ..
preSSlOllIst cinema, as
96 SCOlT MACKENZIE
Kracauer sees them. Others perceived a different aesthetic-and therefore
political-tendency within the film. Writing the year after the film's
release, Werner Klingler notes the film's Soviet style:
Recognising Ozep as a product of the strictly scientific Soviet film-
school we have in him a film director of highly individual mould.
We dealing here with a man of great skill who has conquered the
A-B-C of montage and permeated it with his own genius and cre-
ative power. Throughout the picture, the harmony of image-values is
consummated in a perfect symphony. The camera is ever the experi-
encing eye of the spectator, or the piercing vision of the protagonist
himself. At times the complete collectivism of the filmic apparatus is
under the dominant control of the spectator.
l2
It is the desire of both Kracauer and Klinger to pigeonhole the national
characteristics of Ozep's work that is of interest here. Neither a classic of
Soviet montage nor a late German Expressionist film, Der Marder Dimitri
Karamasgff stands as a hybridised film-as Tom Milne recognizes: 'The.
cinating thing about both The Living Corpse and The Murder of Dimitri
Karamazov, however, is their unique fusion of Soviet montage and German
Expressionism."!
3
This view of the film has been noted by other critics, most often those
who champion a transnational aesthetic. As Raymond Durgnat-who
places Ozep's work in the category of cinema maudit-writes,
The Karamazov film is a tour de force of stylistic eclecticism: expres-
sionist acting (Kortner), dynamic angles, Russian editing, marathon
tracking shots. It's a real showpiece of formalism geared to psycho-
lyrical ends, exactly as Eisenstein intended, except that
Dostoievskian soul-torments replace Leninist collectivism to which
the "official" montage-masters tuned their lyres.
l4
Milne develops this further when he writes that The Living Corpse is not.only
important as a hybridised German-Soviet film, but also because of what it
foreshadows in terms of film style: 'The importance of The Living Corpse .. .is
that it is a source-book not only for the later Lang and the poetic dilutions
of Carne and Prevert, but for Bresson."15 Milne treats Ozep as a precursor
of some of the most influential pre-nouvelle vague French cineastes, and in doing
so, claims an impmtant place for Ozep in film history. But by drawing him
CINE-FORUM 97
into a "tradition," he minimises the most radical or transgressive and his-
torically interesting aspect of Ozep's work, its incompatibility with any
stable and discrete historical tradition in one national cinema or film aes-
thetic. Yet, by foregrounding Ozep's influence on the masters of French
cinema, he points to the fact that the aesthetics of national cinema move-
ments are often greatly influenced by the presence of transnational cine-
mas circulating within a nation's public sphere.
With the rise of Nazism, Ozep moved to France at the height of French
Impressionist cinema, and directed, among other films, 'La Dame de Pique
(t 937) and Gibraltar (t 938), the latter starring Erich von Stroheim. In his
French films, Ozep returns to the melodramatic themes that dominated his
Russian and Soviet period, and that marginalised him after the revolution.
While in France, Ozep was also asked to direct a British film entitled A
Woman Alone (UK, 1936), although another expatriate, Eugene Frenke, sub-
sequently replaced him as director. Ozep's presence in France points to
another moment in the development of transnational cinema aesthetics. As
Colin Crisp notes, "Chronologically, the first nation... to affect French
filmmaking practices was Russia; the influence of Russian immigrants was
enormous in the twenties and had lasting effects in a number of areas of
production."16
WhileOzep arrived a decade later, two of his films nevertheless demon-
strate this influence: Mirages de Paris (1932) and Amok (1934). The former
brings the formal elements of German Expressionism and Soviet montage to
the "city film." While there are both Soviet and German "city films" that pre-
cede Mirages de Paris-most notably DZiga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera
(USSR, 1928) and Walther Ruttrnann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
(Germany, 1927)-Ozep produced one of the first films within the "city film"
tradition that combined a variety of aesthetic strategies from different nation-
al cinema movements. Ozep's subsequent decision to adapt Stefan Zweig's
novella Amok is also an interesting choice, not only for its subject matter,
which addresses the tensions inherent in the experience of eXile, but also
because Zweig's displaced status as emigre parallels Ozep's to a large degree.
At the beginning of World War II, Ozep was interned in France as a dis-
placed person, then freed \,Ipon the fall of France. Like many displaced
cineastes who relocated from one country to another during the war, Ozep
eventually made his way to Hollywood, where he hoped to direct an
English-language version of Tolstoy's War and Peace-a project that never
materialised. Before arriVing in North America, however, Ozep co-direct-
ed (with Jose Marfa Tellez) a melodrama, Cero en Conducta (Spain, 1945),
98 scan MACKENZIE
which appeared only after he had begun to make films in North America,
and which has left even less of an historical trace than his previous work.
From Spain, Ozep moved to Hollywood and directed B-pictures, such as
the pro-Russian film Three Russian Girls (1944, with Henry
Kesler) for United Artists.
The final phase of Ozep's career has been documented to the greatest
degree. By the 1940s, the demand for francophone films in Quebec was so
strong that it seemed feasible for two production companies to open. I? The
first was Renaissance Films, founded in t 944 by J.A. DeSeve and Charles
Philipp. In order to give Renaissance Films "prestige," DeSeve and
imported Ozep to direct their first production, Le Pere Chopin (1944). RenaIS-
sance Films aimed not only 'for prestige, but also to appease the DupleSSIS
,government of Quebec and the province's Roman Catholic Church, in
order to secure distribution. Indeed, to raise money for Renaissance Films,
DeSeve and Phillip claimed that the positive propagandistic effect of the
cinema was one of their main reasons for producing films. DeSeve and
Phillipp argued that an "engaged cinema" was needed to combat the evils
of the world, and the main evils of the time, according to the
were atheism and Communism. DeSeve and Phillip envisioned a renaIs-
sance of French Catholic films with Quebec as a leading producer.
The second company to emerge was Quebec Productions Corporation,
founded in 1946 by Paul I..:Anglais and Rene Germain. Quebec Produc-
tions was more secular in its outlook and hoped to make films that could
compete in the American as well as French markets. With that objective in
mind CAnglais and Germain hired Ozep to shoot the same film simulta-
in English and French. The result was La Forteresse and Whispering
City, both released in 1947. .
The two francophone films made by Ozep in Quebec are often diS-
missed as inferior products that do not tell authentically "local" narratives;
to this extent, Ozep's work could be put in the same category as Michael
Powell's 49th Parallel (UK, 1941) or Alfred Hitchcock's I Confess (USA,
1952). Nevertheless, as Pierre Veronneau points out, while Le Pere Chopin
and La Forteresse can be derided for their folkloric qualities, their elision of
QuebeCOis French for the French of France, and their American and
European pretensions, the two films still must be compared favourably to
many of the dubbed and/or European French-language products seen on
the screens of Quebec in the 1940s.1
8
While La Forteresse has been written about, at least in Quebec, little
attention has been paid to Whispering City, which is often looked upon solely
CINE-FORUM 99
NOTES
This essay began as a (long) footnote in my doctoral thesis, of .Own: Quebec
Cinema, National Identity, and the Alternative Public Sphere . (McGill Umversl.tV, My
thanks to the many people who helped me track down Ozep's films or lent Video cOP.Jes of
his work, including Thomas Eisaesser, Christopher Faulkner, Tony Pearson, Will Straw, Glnette
Vincendeau, and Haidee Wasson.
as an English-language version of La Forteresse. Yet, despite the fact that the
camera set-ups for the two films are virtually identical, Whispering City
works far better as a film nair than La Forteresse does as part of what Heinz
Weinmann calls the Quebecois roman Jamilial cycle.
19
Indeed, Whispering
City, along with the all-but-forgotten, Montreal-based, English language
Selkirk Productions' film Forbidden Journey (1949, Richard J Jarvis) can be
easily seen as the only two Canadian films produced in the t 940s that
combine a nair visual aesthetic with a crime story. Of note, as well, is the fact
that Ozep's career ended with a nair film, the genre that, above all others,
exemplifies the hybridisation of European cinematic styles in a recognis-
ably American form.
The story of Fedor Ozep not only offers a compelling account of the
mobility that lies behind the construction of national cinemas and aes-
thetic movements, but also provides insight into the shifting ground upon
which film history is based. Commenting on the German emigre experi-
ence and the foundation of AmericanJilm nair, Thomas Elsaesser observes,
In order to understand the presumed German ancestry ofJilm nair,
attention shifts to the German cinema in its transnational as well
as international dimension, which involves a more differential
account of "film exile" than one usually finds in film histories.
A linear history of "influence" would have to be combined with a
lateral history of "interference".... Rather than subsume all directors,
stars and movie personnel under the category of "emigre," we would
have to study, in each and every case, the precise reasons and
circumstances that brought a German director to the United States.20
What is most compelling about Elsaesser's argument, in the present con-
text, are the ways dialogism plays a key role in the development of cine-
ma aesthetics, transnational or otherwise. In the case of Ozep's aesthetics,
his pre- and post-revolutionary Russian and Soviet cinema cannot be total-
ly separated from the work of his German and French periods. This fore-
grounds the fact that transnational cinema aesthetics, both in Europe and
the United States, are more often that not the rule rather than the excep-
tion. This being the case, reconsidering the works of Fedor Ozep is not
simply a matter of rediscovering a director whose work has fallen through
the cracks of cinematic history; it also allows one to re-conceptualise how
the history of cinema aesthetics and stylistic influences between national
cinema movements might be understood.
100 SCOTT MACKENZIE
l.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Raymond Durgnat, "Fedor Ozep: Film Dope 49 (1993): 43.
Tim Bergfelder, "The Nation Vanishes: European and :opular Genre
Formula in the 19505 and 19605," in Cinema and Nation, Mette Hjort .and Scott
MacKenzie, eds. (London: Routledge, 2000), 139. For more. on the
and stylistic interchanges between .European and American cmema durmg m
question, see Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby, eds., "RIm Europe and FlI'".
America"; Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange, 1920-1939 (Exeter, UK.
University of Exeter Press, 1999).
There is some disagreement about where Ozep actually died.. to Richard
Taylor's entry on Ozep in Enc/yc/opcedia of European Cinema, Gmette ed.
(London: BFI, 1995), Ozep died in Ottawa. Vet all other reliable accounts list hiS place
of death as Hollywood, including the account of his friend colleague Georg.es
Freeland which was written in response to David Godin's essay Fedor Ozep: A Bllef
Biography: Griffithiana 35/36 (1989): 66-74. See Freeland, "Letter," Griffithiana 38/39
(1990): 282-287.
Jay Leyda, Kino: A History ofRussian and Soviet Film (London: George Allen, 1960), 88.
Vuri Tsivian, "Early Russian Cinema: Some ObselVations," in Inside the Film Fac:or:: New
Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, Richard Taylor and Ian Chllstle, eds.
(London: Routledge, 1991), 13.
Leon Moussinac, Le cinema Sovietique (Paris: Gallimard, 1928), 112-113.
Paul Rotha, The Film Till Now, revised and enlarged (London: Vision Press, 1959),247-248.
Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (New York: Harcourt, 1949),
Herbert Ihering, review of Der Marder Dimitri Karamasoff,
December 1931, cited in [anon.], "Fedor Ozep-Regisseur,. Author, m CmeGraph.
Lexicon zum deutschprachigen Film (Munich: edition text&kritlk, 1977).
Perhaps part of the reason that Kracauer viewed Karamasoff as foreshado,:"ing the, rise
of Nazism is that excerpts from Ozep's film-along from Fritz Lang s M
(Germany, 1931)-were used in Fritz Hippler's anti-SemitiC NaZI propaganda film Der
ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew, Germany, 1940). Nevertheless, one cannot hold Ozep
accountable for this appropriation of his work.
Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), 252.
Werner Klingler, "Ozep's Film The Murderer Karamazov: Experimental Film 4 (1932): 30.
Tom Milne, "The Living Corpse," Monthly Film Bulletin 43.504 (1976): 16.
Durgnat, 44.
Milne, 16.
Colin Crisp, The French Classical Cinema, 1930-1960 (Bloomington and London:
Indiana University Press and I.B. Tauris, 1993), 167.
CINE-FORUM 101
17. R:lr the history of Renaissance Rims and Quebec Productions Corporation (interestingly,
both companies used English names), see Pierre \leronneau, l,e su:es est eu film {XlI"-
font froot;ais: histnirc au cinema 0lI Qu6bC<' I, tes ossian de Ia Cinematheque no. ;$
(Montreal: Cinematheque quewroise/Musee du cinema, (979) and Cinema de
J'epoque dupfes:siste: histuiro au enemaau Quebec II, les dossiers de ta Cinematheque
no. 7 (Montreat: Cinematheque queWcoise/Musee du cinema, 1979).
1e. Pierre Veronneau. PFedor Ozep,# in I.e dicfioonaire du cineml1 qu6berois, 3rd Michel
Coulombe and Marool Jean, eds. (Montreill: 1999),496-497.
l!t See Heinz Weinmilnn, Cinema de f'irooginwe quebkrois: De La petite Aurere q Jesus
de MQnttOOl (Montreat: t'Hexagooe, 1900).
20. Thomas Elsaesser, flA German Arn:estry to FIlm Noia-Fllm Hist01Y ilud Its tmagi"",y,'
Iris 21 (1996): 136.
Miss Mend (USSR, 1926, c;o..dir. Boris Barnet). In thiS serial, SOlliet reporters and <I seaelalY
attempt to thwart an attempl by Westem capitalists to attad( the USSRwith biological weapons.
ZJuta Knizka (aka The Yellow Pass aka Earth in Clwlns, USSR,1927). An innocent young peas-
ant girl becomes a prostiMe after moving to the city.
Zhivoi trup (aka A Living CfJrpse,Germany/U55R, 1929). Fedya knows his wife Usa is in 1000e
wiln $Omeone else> The couple seek a di_ce. When it is nol granted feyda tries to drown him-
sell, Usa marries her 10ller and is dlllrged with mganl'f.
Ow Morder Dimitri Karomasolf (aka The Murderer Dimitri Karamazov, Germany, 1931). In a
loose adaptation of Dostoyevsky's The 8rothm f(ammaov, Dimilri falls in IlMl with a prosti.
tute who was al$O iJ1\lOIved with his father. When the father is killed Dimitri is charged with pal-
ricide,
Mirages de Paris (aka CroIlstm:Jncdrt, Frana!, 1932). tn the tradition of the "city film,' this exper-
Imental work explores the dtv of Paris.
Amok (France, 1934). A doclor living in the jungle is sought oul by a desperate woman seeking
an abortion (adapled from a nOliella by Stefan Zweig).
AWoman Alone (aka rwoWho Dared, UK, 1936, completed by Eugene Frenke). A maid faUs in
10lle with her employer, an army offia!r, leading to dire consequences arising out of class coo-
flict:.
La Dame de Pique (aka Queoo of S{Xldes, Frame, 1937). An army officer falls victim to his
obsession with gambling (adapted from a story by Alexander Pushkin).
TarK.amOOV4 (aka Betrayal, France, 1938). Catherine the Greal plots against both her fonner
klver and a claimant to her throne, who have fallen in 1000e with each other.
Gibraffor (aka It Happenedin Gibraltar, france, 1939). ABritish $Oldier posing <IS a traitor catch-
es 0lIt a NaIl spy.
J.e Nre ChopirI (aka COlloe ali Carwdc, Quebec, 1944). Two brothers, one from the <:OUnllY,
the other the city, try to come to telms which each othef's way of life.
Thref.: Russian Girls (aka She Who Dares, US, tS44, aMIlr. HenlY Kesler). tn this pro-Russian
film set during World Wilr II, a Russian nurse falls in lo1ie with iln American airmiln whose plane
has !man shot down.
Ceroen conalJda (aka Madalena, Spain, 1945, co-dir. rose Marla Tellez). Based on a play by
laszlo KOOar (also the source of Wono De Sica's Mafklcierw, Zero in Condot!a lllal.y,
this comedy of errors concerns a girl who writes rnnlasticat letters in the name of an Imagmary
person she inwnlS. But it turns oot that II real person exists with the same flame.
La forteress<: (Quebec, 1947) and Whispering City (aka' Crime Citr' Quene<:, 1947). Afemale
reporter explores the death of a famous actress, and is slowly drawn mfo a larger murderous plot
SCOTT MACKENZIE is Lecturer in Him Studies and Chair of Graduate
Studies for the School of English and American Studies, East
Anglia. He is author of Screening Qllwec Quw{wis CiHtIIW,
11Je Public Sphere and CQeditor of Cinema ,mJ NatioH and Punty .md ProvowllMI
DQgme 95.