House on the Volcano review – silent classic of Soviet Armenia glories in machine age – The Guardian
Machinery itself has star high quality – of essentially the most monumental and anti-heroic type – on this fascinating 1928 silent film from the Armenian film-maker Amo Bek-Nazaryan. It’s such a vivid, dynamic, engaged piece of labor, whose energies blaze forth afresh on this restoration, having other than anything great archival worth.
Bek-Nazaryan vehemently juxtaposes the unusual statuary of huge industrial structure and the faces of the individuals who stay and work in its shadow. The framing machine is {that a} veteran employee in present-day Soviet Armenia is requested by his son – or somebody we’re led to imagine is his son – to signal his software to affix the Communist celebration. Thoughtfully, the older man tells him this isn’t merely a matter of bits of paper, however hard-won expertise in solidarity and sacrifice; he then tells him (and us) a couple of employees’ motion throughout “the reactionary years” of 1907.
In an oilfield, employees are recurrently sacrificed to poor security requirements, exhausted by the lengthy journey from their barracks. Their Armenian proprietor, whose skinny, pinched face is seen in a stylised closeup, agrees to construct housing nearer to the oilfield, however that is on the location of harmful subterranean gases (therefore the title) and his frosty vanity and cruelty is to result in a cataclysmic horror as his workers’ housing is actually swallowed into hellish flames. For the union, the complicating issue had been that Armenian employees mustn’t query the views of an Armenian boss: it’s this sort of bourgeois nationalism that seems to be deprecated within the movie.
Lastly, a union employee is tricked into attacking the proprietor, thrown into jail and separated from his spouse and baby – a remaining twist which leads us again to the current day. One of many treats of this movie is the excellent new rating from Juliet Service provider, which brings out the movie’s operatic depth, and its plaintive magnificence.
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