The Girlfriends [USSR 1936]

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Director: L. Arnshtam
Cinematographers: V. Rapoport, A. Shafran

Like Love and Hate, this is a film about revolutionary women in the civil war, apparently intended to inspire a new generation of young women to participate in the revolutionary process. Stylistically, it is more polished than earlier films of the 1930s, but it also has many more hints of Hollywood. Nevertheless, the social content is interesting.

The story takes place split across a pre-revolutionary period in 1914 and the civil war in 1919. In the earlier period, we see the three girls who are the main characters as little girls surviving as orphans in a proletarian slum. They are befriended by Bolshevik plotters, and inspire the workers around them who have descended into alcoholism and hopelessness. The voice of the girls serves as the voice of hope and innocence, reminding the workers of what they once believed in. Then, after the revolution, the girls fight in the civil war as adults, serving as nurses but also being drawn into the fighting. Throughout the film, the girls are depicted as strong-willed, independent of men, able to stand up for themselves, and of course as revolutionary.

There is good reason to believe a lot of this is intended to set an example for young girls seeing the film. For toward the end there is an explicit plea on the part of one of the girls for more girls to join the Komsomol--there are not enough, she says. And there are many times when the film feels like it is intended to entertain children, to fire their imagination. The message in the end is clear for everyone however: you must not forget the past, the sacrifice that was made in the civil war, and there are many more battles to come, but the battles you fight will be for the good of all of humanity. This is therefore mainly a film about women--that they are equal to men, that they can and must participate in the struggle and in the revolution--but it is also a film with a universal message about the civil war, the gains of the revolution and the sacrifices that had to be made for those gains.

Cinematographically, there are some interestingly composed shots, particularly in the period before the revolution, in which landscape features, fences and buildings serve to suggest the trapped and servile state of the workers; a bar scene seems somehow far vaster than a small bar, suggesting a wider social scenario. Musically the score by Shostakovich is beginning to show signs of the more mature Shostakovich--it is a string quartet, and heavily prefigures some of his later work. These are the main stylistic strong points.

However, the cinematography is mainly rather unobtrusive, and the main stylistic weak point is the way in which the plot is developed. That is, this film takes on a decidedly Hollywood-style tone at times, making ample use of all-too-convenient plot devices, overly romanticised shots and simplistic, nostalgic portrayals of relationships. One gets the impression that perhaps the priority was on developing the audience's idea of women's participation, rather than their ability to deal with sophisticated film or plot--that is not, of course, necessarily a bad thing, depending on the goals of those who made the film. However it does make for a weaker film all round.