Love and Hate [USSR 1935]

Любовь и ненависть
Directors: A. Gendelshtein, P. Kolomytsev
Cinematographer: V. Pronin

This film tells the story of a village in the Russian civil war in which the men have all left for the front and it falls upon the women to organise themselves to work and fight for the revolution. Like Lucía, this film is clearly intended to drive home the message that women played a crucial role in the revolution, and that they are just as strong, capable, and brave as men. As such, it is a film undoubtedly directed at women's emancipation, also an important theme during the 1930s as millions of women joined the new industrial workforce.

Formally, the film only gets really interesting about one third of the way through, when the men have left for the front and the women are allowed by the Whites to work in the local mine. Inside the mine, the film comes alive, with vivid textures of mud and rock, mine shafts, tracks, and pipes. As the film becomes more aesthetically interesting, so simultaneously the plot develops and we discover what Soviet women are really made of.

That is, of course, the beauty of the film--like Lucía, we see a transformation from a beginning, in which women are dependent, frightened, and oppressed creatures, to a point at which the women realise they must awaken and harden themselves for the victory of the revolution. In this film, of course, it happens all within one generation rather than across three; and we certainly do not see the problems of post-revolutionary women. Rather, the film necessarily ends with the local victory in the civil war, and it is therefore unlike Lucía in that it does not treat continuing chauvinism. However it seems the message and purpose is basically the same.

Interestingly, the Whites are portrayed very gently, particularly considering their famously savage behaviour in actual life. The film does suggest that they are quartering themselves in the homes of women and forcing some women to sleep with them, and we do see a few killings, but somehow the character of the Whites is much more comical and oafish than demonic. Perhaps this is intended to follow the same logic as the ex-bourgeois in Counterplan; by depicting the vanquished enemy in a comical way, the film simply leads us to have contempt for him rather than fearing him.

Also comically depicted is a musician character who does not care which side he is playing for, and will pretend to side with whichever side is occupying the area at the moment. He seems at first to be opportunistic, but he also shows a redeeming quality when he shares some information with the Red Army. He provides a bit of comic relief precisely because of his opportunism, and we are allowed to like him a bit because it seems innocent and in the end proves not to be malicious.

Basically this is a film geared toward painting a moving image of Soviet women: the aesthetic is carefully paced, framing the gradual coming-to-consciousness of the women with strength rather than tension, and we are made to see that the women have risked themselves, sacrificed, worked, fought, and done everything in the absence of men--all of this after lifting themselves out of a state of ignorance and fear because of the force of circumstance. While there is a common notion that the initial ideas about emancipation of women in the 1920s were faced with a conservative backlash later on, this film perhaps serves as one counterexample to this, at least for 1935.

The score is again written by Dmitri Shostakovich, and it is musically well-integrated with hoofbeats, gunshots, shouts, etc., creating a dramatic but steady soundtrack.