A FISH PROCESSING FACTORY IN ASTRAKHAN (Anonymous, 1908)

In Moscow, in a small production studio owned by Charles Pathé and his brothers in Paris, Aleksandr Drankov initially made documentaries, thus helping to introduce the Russian people to cinema. Another Aleksandr, Khanzhonkov, also lit this path, beating Drankov at his own studio by releasing the first Russian feature film. Drankov himself likely directed the unsigned documentary “Zavod Rybnykh Konservov v Astrakhani,”* part of the Picturesque Russia series.
     It opens with a startling moving long-shot surveying a dock where barrels of fish are being unloaded from boats; the camera itself is stationary, its simulated motion the result of its location: an out-of-frame motor boat.
     The remainder of the eight-minute film consists of static shots. These, closer in, show workers weighing the catch, gutting the fish, delivering the salt with brooms, salting the fish. Gradually, the workers come to the fore, quite literally leaving the fish behind. The scene that effects this shift is a sustained shot showing the workers washing their hands; the degree to which they wash and wash conveys the effort involved in relieving themselves of the stink. It is also a practical preparation for the activity that follows: a communal meal in a room full of long tables. The image overflows with animated conversation and convivial atmosphere. The film ends jubilantly, with two woman workers, arms around each other, facing the camera and smiling with seeming sincerity and spontaneity.
     Therefore, the film moves from a portrayal of labor as social contribution to the laborers themselves, their sparkling humanity and individualism. It is a case of putting the best face forward, for tsarist Russia was a place of terrible poverty, cruelty and oppression. Those who have work to do hide from view those who do not and starve.
     Ironies abound.

* Marty Cohen, a dear friend, wrote me the following in an e-mail:

I was ready to go all snarky on you — “A Fish Processing Factory in Astrakhan — now there’s a name to reckon with!” — until I read on and found a great humanistic sympathy. Looking beyond the work to the people who perform the work was the center of my work for a dozen years, at fish factories, insurance agencies, and silicon fabs alike.

(And our ritual visits to fishing piers and sardine-canning facilities in Massachusetts in my youth…I remember still the bandaged thumbs of the lobstermen and the writhing of the sea-beasts that had broken through their bands. My dad, whose Yahrzeit was this week, came from Fall River — no legend.)

Thank you for a beautiful vignette.

EVERLASTING MOMENTS (Jan Troëll, 2008)

Maria Heiskanen (best actress, Guldbagge Award; Valladolid) is moving and ultimately haunting as Maria Larsson in Jan Troëll’s episodic, though cumulatively very full chronicle of her and her family in early twentieth-century Sweden. She and Sigfrid Larsson, a docks laborer, along with their (eventually) seven offspring, struggle through a hard life, whose unmanning of Sigge’s sense of authority drives his bouts of drunkenness and frightening eruptions of abuse. Mainly, though, this is Maria’s story, which the Larssons’ eldest daughter, Maja, narrates. Based on a novel about a relation of hers by Troëll’s wife, Agneta, its visual storytelling is executed with great compassion and affection. Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick—literally, Maria Larsson’s Everlasting Moment—is one of Troëll’s very best films.
     The title refers to the mirrored self-portrait that Maria creates using the camera that she won in a lottery prior to her marriage—something that is hers alone; encouraged by photography shop owner Sebastian Pedersen, Maria achieves a liberating awakening of spirit by becoming a photographer of the world around her. Although she remains faithful to Sigge, she and Sebastian silently, gradually fall in love. Maria is a Finnish immigrant; Sebastian, Danish. Jesper Christensen (best supporting actor, Guldbagge Award) is phenomenal as Sebastian’s decency copes with the deepest feelings of his heart. When he feels he is being cuckolded by either the camera or Sebastian, or one in cahoots with the other, Sigge rages.
     Sigge returns from the First World War after Sweden’s monarch and two other regional monarchs decide to withdraw from the conflict and assert their countries’ neutrality: unexpected change for the good.
     A freeze frame indicates Maja’s using the camera to capture her parents robustly mid-dance.
     Best film (Guldbagge; Robert Festival). Leaning on gorgeous sepia, best cinematography, Troëll and Mischa Gavrjusjov (Valladolid).