Children of the Century (film, 1915)

The film shows "the drama of the wife of a small employee - a young woman seduced by the boss of her husband" ^[1] .

Maria Nikolaevna lives a happy family life with her beloved husband and tiny son. Once in the mall, she accidentally meets with a gymnasium friend Lydia Verkhovskaya, who married a rich man. Lydia comes to visit her and invites Mary and her husband to visit her mansion.

At a party in this rich mansion, Maria is noticed by a wealthy businessman Lebedev, who immediately falls in love with her. She rejects his harassment.

At the request of Lebedev, the husband of Maria Nikolaevna is fired from her job. Lydia Verkhovskaya takes Maria for a walk, where her new meeting with a businessman takes place. Maria Nikolaevna does not find in herself the strength to resist his passion. She goes to Lebedev. Subsequently, Maria, with the help of Lydia Verkhovskaya, taking advantage of the absence of Toropov, takes her child away. Seeing the empty cradle, the husband of Maria Nikolaevna comes to despair. He finds a pistol in a drawer and brings it to his temple.

• Director: Eugene Bauer
• Operator: Boris Zavelev
• Producer: Alexander Khanzhonkov

After the release of the film, conflicting reviews appeared ^[5] . A Projector reviewer wrote that “the plot of the play is“ saturated with “a cinematic template” and “dragged into the cinematography” and the film “neither director’s“ tricks ”nor participation in the main role of V.V. Kholodnaya save ..." ^{[2] [6 ] ]} . The Bulletin of Cinematography noted the “touching realism of acting” and praised the film: “The production of Mr. Bauer is above praise. The carnival on the pond is amazingly beautiful, all the other scenes are magnificent ... ” ^[7] .

A critic of the Kinema magazine wrote that actress Vera Kholodnaya “very faithfully” performed her role as a loving wife and mother and in some moments looked “incomparably true” ^{[2] [8]} . The observer of "Teatralnaya Gazeta", recognizing the success of the film as deserved, on the contrary, noted the shortcomings of the acting play of Vera Kholodnaya, indicating that "her pace is too smooth, too slow-cold" ^[9] . On the other hand, the same reviewer singled out the role of Ivan Gorsky and noted that “the death scene was carried out with great skill and should be noted among a number of undoubtedly major achievements of the screen” ^[10] .

A reviewer of Theatrical Reviews wrote that the production is commendable and " Bauer is quite comfortable with the conditions of the screen and knows how to highlight the most convexly spectacular moments" ^{[2] [11] [12]} . The magazine “ Sine-Fono ” noted very interesting “tricks” in the production - like “carnival on the water” ^{[2] [13]} . After 90 years, the film expert Irina Grashchenkova in the book “Cinema of the Silver Age” pointed out the metaphor of this episode - “the holiday of life that deceived the heroine will quickly burn out like this firework, go away like this holiday” ^[14] .

I. N. Grashchenkova named the film among the best Russian cinema dramas of 1914-1917 and called it “a group portrait of contemporaries in the interior of the era” ^[15] . She, in particular, wrote about the expressiveness of scenes shot outside the pavilion.

They wrote, and quite rightly, about Bauer's special addiction to the pavilion, the scenery, without noticing how expressive the scenes shot outside of them were. There were his favorite off-site filming facilities - a modern city and eternal nature ... Bauer always knew where in this giant pavilion he would place his heroine. In the film “Children of the Century”, the place of the fateful meeting of the heroine with a friend who changed her whole life is the Upper Trading Rows on Red Square. The largest Moscow store (a thousand small in one) - mirrors, forged lace railings, a glass roof, transition bridges. Such a modern, beautiful, natural filming pavilion and at the same time - a fair of wealth and vanity, an auction ... ^[16] .

In addition to the already mentioned episode with the "carnival on the water", I. Grashchenkova noted the metaphorical nature of other scenes from the film:

There, in the shopping arcade, the heroine buys a child’s toys, having returned, plays with him like a living doll, and when she leaves the family, leaves the house, leaves the child, like a capricious girl with a bored toy. Frame metaphor, episode metaphor, detail metaphor. This is how the author’s commentary on events and actions is born - unequivocal and quiet ... " ^[14] .

Film critic Lidia Zaitseva examined in detail the artistic features of the film in her monograph ^[17] . In particular, she noted:

“The troubled heroine is faced by circumstances with a choice that she does not suddenly and desperate. Good and Evil appear only in an individual guise, although the conjugation of Evil with wealth is generally accepted in the melodrama of those years. This also affected the expressiveness of Bauer's fine “text”, due to which he cannot be blamed for indifference to the true problems of our time.

The juxtaposition of noble poverty and corrupting luxury is embodied in the juxtaposition of two elaborate interiors. The first is a modest apartment (there were such films in Bauer's films), which, in the end, the heroine leaves, and the second is the one where she settled in the finale of “Children of the Century” ” ^[18] .

“The central place between two compositions - a modest apartment and a rich mansion,” L. Zaitseva wrote, “is a carnival event with fireworks and serpentine, against which the first scene of seduction unfolds.” According to the film expert, “in the context of the film, the frames of the carnival and the seduction scenes covered with its atmosphere are entrusted with a very important role” ^[19] .

First, cameraman B. Zavelev takes medium-close-ups of the seducer and the victim, demonism and naivety, playing with glare of bright light. Champagne bubbles in elongated glasses, flashing lights on the leaves of the lanterns so far echo the acting scene. However, then the kingdom of the festive carnival practically distracts attention from the acting plans and begins to solo, replacing the ardent dialogue: fireworks, explosions of firecrackers, bright tinsel of garlands “play” instead of expressing the faces of the solitary heroes. The atmosphere of seduction speaks about the development of the plot more than showing the behavior of the characters and their dialogue. Such opportunities for substituting actions by the state of the environment were not known until the advent of Bauer films ... ^[19]

Culturologist Igor Smirnov noted that director Bauer “filled the interiors with sculptures that had more than decorative significance.” For example, “a wooden eagle and a statue of a naked boy on the railing of the stairs, which Maria Nikolaevna climbs to her lover, hint at the myth of Ganymede and thus involve one of the main events of the film - the kidnapping of a child’s heroine from her husband’s apartment” ^[20] . Like a critic of Theatrical Newspaper in 1915 ^{[9] [10]} , he also highlighted the final scene of the film when “the absence of a shot with a pistol (previously taken by a suicide in his hands) is positioned by Bauer where the silent film reaches its climax , which is at the same time the peak of its soundlessness (the absence of sound is felt the more, the more it could be expected) ” ^[21] .

Film critic Shamma Shahadat interprets the film as a version of “ Anna Karenina, ” where the image of a woman symbolizes the crisis of the family and traditional society ^[22] . At the same time, in the Children of the Century, as in the film The Child of the Big City , a transformation of the old cultural context took place. Mary is destined to survive and outlive her faint-hearted and emotionally vulnerable husband. And, unlike Anna Karenina, the heroine acts not according to emotional, but economic logic ^[23] .

• Vishnevsky V.E. Feature films of pre-revolutionary Russia. - M .: Goskinoizdat, 1945. - S. 68. - 194 p.
• The Great Kinemo: Catalog of preserved feature films of Russia (1908-1919) / Comp .: V. Ivanova, V. Mylnikova, S. Skovorodnikova, Yu. Tsivyan, R. Yangirov. - M .: New Literary Review, 2002. - S. 238—239. - 568 p.
• Short V.M. Operators and directors of Russian feature films. 1897-1921. - M .: Research Institute of Motion Picture Arts, 2009. - P. 42-43. - 430 s.
• Grashchenkova I.N. Cinema of the Silver Age. Russian cinema of the 10s and Cinema of the Russian post-October foreign countries of the 20s. - M. , 2005 .-- S. 252, 254. - 432 p.
• Grashchenkova I.N. Silver Age. In search of a face // The Art of Cinema. - 2007. - No. 4 . - S. 106-114 .
• Smirnov I.P. Footage: historical semantics of the movie. - St. Petersburg: Publishing House "Petropolis", 2009. - S. 80, 83. - 404 p.
• Shahadat S. Russian film melodrama between the Silver Age and the avant-garde // Russian Empire of Senses: Approaches to the Cultural History of Emotions. Sat Articles / Ed. J. Plumper, S. Shahadat and M. Eli. - M .: New Literary Review, 2010. - S. 227—255. - 512 s.
• Yani A.V. Vera Kholodnaya: the first love of a Russian moviegoer - SPb. : Doe, 2012 .-- S. 128-129. - 224 p.
• Prokofieva E.V. Vera Cold. Queen of the silent screen. - M .: Veche, 2013 .-- S. 60-64. - 256 s.
• Zaitseva L.A. The formation of expressiveness in Russian subsonic cinema. - M .: VGIK, 2013 .-- S. 63–65. - 311 p.

• "Children of the Century" on the site "Encyclopedia of Russian Cinema"