Vasilij Ordynskij could be considered
the sole representative of the Soviet ‘cinema of moral anxiety’ in the 1950s-early
1960s. He was praised (particularly for his first feature,
Čelovek rodilsja,
A
Man is Born
, 1956), for his true-to-life
portrayal of various social layers. But as
excellent and accurate an observer as he
was, social matters where not as important to him as existential ones. Perhaps hat’s the reason why
Četvero
was filmed
in colour: that seemed almost scandalous
for a ‘serious’ Soviet film in the the 50s
with their striving for documentary. But
this is not the festive colour of the early
Thaw, it is deliberately irritating in its
irrelevance to the distressing story.
The opening shot can explain something
in Ordynskij’s cinema. A long take of a
man’s room: the camera passes by massive
velvet drapes, a table with manuscripts,
autographed photos of famous scientists
of the past, of a woman in a
fin de siècle
costume, a glass of tea in a silver holder,
a sofa with a heap of pillows and a shep-
herd dog reclining at ease. By the end of
the shot we know everything about the
old man, his habits, his past – and we
see him for the first and last time, sitting
in his armchair, dead.
The film deals with the four pupils of the
dead professor, their struggle for a cure
for an epidemic fever. The true plot however is a story of four failures, for whom
their science might be the only way to
feel themselves needed. Soviet film plots,
both good and bad ones, are as a rule
awfully consistent. But Ordynskij believes neither in logic nor coincidence,
and conventional storylines in his films
rarely come to a resolution. When one of
the characters, desperately trying to impress a girl who despises him, gives him-
self a deadly injection, nothing is proved
to anyone: he is still not a great scientist,
only a naïve and ambitious technician.
The girl is about to buy the newspaper
with his obituary, but her bus comes,
and she disappears in a Moscow crowd
– turning a melodramatic shot into a
documentary one.
Peter Bagrov