REVIEW: FILM, FILM, FILM

A screenwriter's creativity, a director's temper, an actor's skills, and Soviet bureaucracy: the ingredients for the impending chaos that is Fyodor Khitruk's animated short, FILM, FILM, FILM. A step-by-step showcase of the obstacles in Russian filmmaking.

After his goal to break up animation from fairy tales, and give birth to political pieces, Fyodor Khitruk's legacy remains as that of a storyteller who pushed the boundaries of Russian media. His 2012 obituary listing his works as ground-breaking in discussing the mind's vulnerability to materialism (The Island, 1973), and mocking the isolation the elite grant to themselves (The Man in the Frame, 1966). However, his 1968's short, FILM, FILM, FILM, in its 20-minute run, misses its jump to follow such legacy.

Made during an era of experimental storytelling, FILM, FILM, FILM contains no narrative. Rather, it follows the stages a Soviet film crew must go through if they want to complete a war epic. It linearly follows through screenwriting, pitching, pre-production, shooting, post-production stages, ending with the premiere, all while showing the errors and limiting freedom that cost the project its identity. The short utilises simple structure, nameless characters, and a near-silent pantomime to focus entirely on the comedy of overcomplication. Each part containing its central nameless character who by chance solve their ridiculous dilemmas.

Throughout the short, Vladimir Golovanov, writes the film's conflict as a sequence of visual gags that synchronise timing and music into animation. The quickness of Alexander Zatsepin's orchestra edges us and the characters alike, in anticipation for the worst to occur.

In the beginning this is used to test the pressures of a writer who, without the inspiration of muses and accompanied by swift violins, succumbs to panic and doubt. A pile of disappointment and cigarettes lead only to hallucinations, as from rising smoke a rope forms, granting escape from an uninspired life. But, thanks to an angelic ballad and a last ray of creativity he is saved and, with his neck still tied, the script is finished.

Golonavov's use of dark humour in making simple tasks a matter of life or death, even if exaggerative, provides honesty to the expectations of the times. The expectation of perfection which Golonavov pushes to the director as well and, in the task of editing, has his silhouette becoming a pile of roll film and valium pills. A hurrying piano turning his hands into a blur of motion. This appeals to the curiosity of what imperfection meant to Soviet workers, which Russia Beyond in 2014 argued, could sometimes end projects. While also relating to current landscapes, where reports like Alberge Dayla's 2017 article, gives voice to overworked creatives to talk about the nightmare-like experience in behind-the-scenes.

However, while its comedy and animation ride high, FILM, FILM, FILM falls short when justifying its satire. The short was made in the aftermath of Stalinism. Researchers, like Ülo Pikkov, finding that in this era, animation was freed to not be only for propaganda or to amuse children. Kithruk, however, only uses this freedom to amuse the adults.

In its finale, the script demands a sombre conclusion of death, but the censors halt and reprimand the director, calling the scene "too depressing". So, with no questions asked, the finale gets overdone with a merry wedding and happy ending. This while revealing the crew's need to please, fails to highlight the consequences of failure. A lack of a threat makes the characters accepting of the censors as a tame side effect of filmmaking, rather than an emotional weight that affects creativity. In its only aim for comedy, the short misses to point out why the industry needed mocking in the first place.

FILM, FILM, FILM while exaggerating and mocking the complication of creativity, lacks meaning in its satire. It helps, at least, in making those not involved in filmmaking not worry about their sanity, while those who are... well... good luck to them.

FILM, FILM, FILM is available in the "Masters of Russian Animation" collection.