Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova | Tri geroinia (Three Heroines) / 1938

rescued pilots

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dziga Vertov and Elizaveta Svilova (directors) Tri geroinia (Three Heroines) / 1938

 

If Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera is an exciting mélange of cinematic experimentations, his and his wife’s Three Heroines is a rather straight-forward, at times amateurish, propagandistic tribute, less to the three heroines of its title, than to Stalin and the Soviet system.

      Vertov and Svilova, true to their beliefs, did not use voice-overs or devise numerous acted out scenes for their documentary. Vertov’s more radical methods were now devalued by the Soviet film heads. Accordingly, this film was little seen in the Soviet Union and completely unknown to the rest of the world.

     The three heroines are air pilots Raskova, Osipenko, and Grisodubova, who attempted to make a first nonstop trans-Siberian flight. They failed, crashing into the Soviet taiga, and for several days their whereabouts were unknown.

     Higher-ups, however, insisted upon detailed searches and, eventually the three were discovered alive and still in good health. The irony is that this threesome came to be better known having failed than they might have had they succeeded in their mission. After mending, the women called home to their husbands and children—their joyful communications caught by the documentarians camera in some of the moving scenes of the film—before they were taken by train on the long journey back to Moscow. Along the way, the three made numerous stops, the woman laden with medals and flowers, presenting speeches proclaiming the greatness of the Soviet system and the beloved protection of Stalin. Unlike the West’s neglect of Amelia Earhart, they argue, the Soviet system cares about its would-be heroes and all its citizens, of which their salvation is an example.

     By about the third or fourth such speech even the most ardent viewer grows weary, and the constant repetition of a song of these taiga-trotting women, alternating with praises of the USSR—the major link between their picaresque travels—rather than charming the viewer, drills the ditty into his head.

     Certainly, there are lovely moments, and the intimate views of small Soviet villages are often fascinating as Vertov’s and Svilova’s camera remains in near-constant motion. But this time, without many cinematic tricks, the document seems uneventful and flat. Long live the Soviet people and their great protector Stalin and Soviet Commissars!

 

Los Angeles, March 27, 2012

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2012) and Reading Films: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).