Happiness (“Schastye”)
Directed by Aleksandr Medvedkin
1935/USSR
Vostokfilm
First viewing
[box] Magistrate: If the peasants start killing themselves, where will we get crops?[/box]
Surreal silent Soviet propaganda comedy, quite a combo! In Tsarist Russia, a sad sack peasant named Loser is sent by his wife on a quest to find happiness and told not to come back empty-handed. In his one piece of good luck in the film, Loser stumbles upon a merchant’s purse. Through hard work, especially by his wife who pulls the plow, the Losers grow a bumper crop. However, greedy clergy, landowners, and government officials take all the proceeds. Loser decides to die. But the authorities decide that this is not allowed, punish him and send him off to war instead.
Years pass and Loser, as bumbling as ever, settles on the local collective farm. He still can’t win. Everything he touches turns to disaster. His wife, however, is a star worker and Loser finally finds happiness in the socialist state.
This horse is quite talented – he gets in the funniest positions!This is fairly amusing and very innovative. The characters are all quite stylized and look like they could come straight out of a Russian fairy tale. The clergy is mocked mercilessly. Although there is a message, lots of it is played just for laughs. As might be expected, the film was never released commercially in the USSR.
Extract – opening – to watch on Vimeo
