Aleksandr Medvedkin | Стяжатели (The Snatchers) (Happiness) / 1935

forced to give what you don’t even have

by Douglas Messerli

 

Aleksandr Medvedkin (screenwriter and director) Стяжатели (The Snatchers) (Happiness) / 1935

 

I saw Aleksandr Medvedkin’s 1935 satirical silent comedy, apparently on Netflix, a few years ago, but did not review it. Since starting in about 2000, it is most unusual for me not to review any film I saw, I cannot explain why I wouldn’t have written something about this early Russian slapstick comedy, later resurrected and highly praised by Chris Marker. But even today, as I finally attempt to put some words to paper, I realize that the film depends so much on comic instances that are better in the viewing than in commentary or analysis, that may explain why I might have shied away from speaking of it.

      That’s not to say that the visual humor of this film is not something of a marvel. The bad-luck hero of the work, the foolish peasant Khmyr (Pyotr Zinovyev) who, envious of his wealthy neighbor, determines, first with his elderly father, and, later, with his hard-working wife (Yelena Yegorova) to get some of the “happiness” that seems to have embraced the man who they and we see magically being fed dumplings that, quite literally, go flying through the air into his mouth.

      His father’s attempt to steal some of his neighbor’s wealth, however, ends disastrously, as the old man dies, the neighbor presenting the couple with an itemized bill for the lock the old man has tried to pick and other “damages.”

      Disgusted by their condition, Khmyr’s Anna sends her husband packing, insisting that he not return home until he has found some “happiness.”

      Strangely, Khmyr does find some sort of notion of happiness, temporary as we all know it will be, in a dropped purse within which is a small cache of money, winning the treasure after two “saintly” pilgrims have battled over it, nearly killing each other in the process.

     Returning home, Khymr determines to farm the more than-hilly plot of land on which is thatch-roofed house exists. Predictably, everything goes wrong, the lazy horse he has bought eating away much of their roof and refusing to move after being hitched to Khymr’s plow. In order to get the job done, Anna hooks up herself to the plow, nearly killing herself in the process of attempting to plant their grain crop. But Khymr’s loving caring for her, after she collapses in harness, reveals that, deep in his lazy heart, he is still in love with the wife he married.

      Miraculously, the couple do produce a bumper crop of grain, which immediately, investors take away from them, leaving them only a few coins, which are demanded by half-naked nuns (there has perhaps never been a funnier vision of pious believers), and even the poor.

      Now utterly broke, Khmyr is taken off by the authorities, including an entire army of puppet-like soldiers; when he determines to die without permission, he is beaten and locked away.     

      In the meantime, as the Bolsheviks demand collectivization, Anna begins to succeed, bringing in huge melons and even a live duck to their impoverished home. By the time poor Khmyr returns, nearly broken, he is hopeless, even working as a water-boy and worse, as protector of the local granary, which the local slackers—now including his former wealthy neighbor—joyously take off its foundations and run away with it, creating a fantastic vision of the small building itself racing through the landscape.

      The poor Khymr has now lost all credibility—that is until he finally attempts to foil the plans of his former neighbor, who in retaliation of the collective’s work, tries to burn down a barn within which numerous of their horses are collected. Recognizing the evil deed, Khymr frees the horses, while trying desperately to douse the fire, suddenly becoming a hero to both his wife and the community, and finally being able to join in the bounteous collective feast.

     Because of its highly satirical dimensions, the Soviets banned Happiness for years, without truly recognizing that, in large part, Medvedkin’s comic work truly celebrated the collective successes. Stalin’s government demanded that this innovative Russian director commit most of the rest of his life to propagandistic works—which, evidently, he didn’t even mind doing. But, of course, his innovative art so wonderfully expressed in this early film, was lost to the world.

      

Los Angeles, October 15, 2017

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (October 2017).