Film Daniel Rok 1916
Daniel Rok , ..., is pulp
fiction, one of the many attempts to create an action film, following the footsteps of the Danish, the French, and the Americans. A good quarter of Russian pre-revolutionary film industry consisted of pictures like this. A circus drama was almost a sub-genre of its own. What distinguishes this film is the involvement of actual circus performers, some of the biggest names in the industry, many of
them having never made another film.
One could only wish that all of them
would perform their signature acts, like Sergei Alperov and his son Dmitry Alperov, the legendary acrobats. Instead, Williams Truzzi, arguably the most famous Russian circus jockey of his time, plays the villain, Tamara Gamsakurdia, a horseback dancer, appears as his innocent victim, and Nikolai Nikitin, who would soon become the owner and director of the Moscow circus, becomes the noble hero.
Acquired by the „Aušros“ muziejus in
1983, along with a carbon arc projector, these two films remained unprocessed until 25 years later, when Vilija Ulinskytė-Balzienė, the new museum director, came across them. The restoration started another decade later, with the initiative of Aleksas Gilaitis, an independent film preservationist. Unfortunately, by then the reels were in severe state of decomposition, and most of the footage had to be discarded.
Peter Bagrov
