It’s a story of a woman who is tricked into signing a contract with officers of the German intelligence and has to spy on a Russian engineer whom – naturally – she falls in love with.
Two cans of nitrate, terribly dry, fragile,
sticky, with almost no perforation, were
regularly and proudly demonstrated to
colleagues who visited Gosfilmofond as
The Worst Two Reels in the collection. It
was a matter of principle to do the best
we can. The technical work was conducted in 2015 by Haghefilm Digitaal who
stood up to their reputation: almost 500
meters of the existing 600 have been preserved. The film is still very incomplete,
but the plotline is clear and evident. It’s
a story of a woman who is tricked into
signing a contract with officers of the
German intelligence and has to spy on
a Russian engineer whom – naturally –
she falls in love with.
We know little about those who made
Šëlkovaja Pautina
. There are no records
of the cameraman’s name – which is a
pity since today the most attractive aspect
of this film are views of old St. Petersburg. The capital of Russia was by no
means the capital of Russian filmmaking: until the mid-1920s Moscow was
miles ahead both in experimental and
commercial cinema. With only a dozen
surviving films from St. Petersburg this
one is an important rediscovery.
Practically all the names connected
with
Šëlkovaja Pautina
have a dubious reputation. Aleksandr Drankov, a
producer-adventurer, is responsible not
only for the very first Russian fiction film
Sten’ka Razin
(1907), but also for the
very first Russian serial, the highly criticized and immensely popular
Son’ka
Zolotaja Ručka (Sonka, the Golden
Hand
(1914-15). The Russian audience
was not as keen on meditative, static and
psychologically pervert melodramas as it
may seem today. There was a strong in-
terest in action, particularly among the
‘democratic’ circles. And that was ex-
actly what Drankov offered along with
his leading director Juri Jur’evskij: pure
action, no time for psychology. Nikolaj
Breško-Breškovskij was a perfect match
for such a team: his spy stories were despised in ‘good society’ and kept beneath
the pillow.
Protazanov and Bauer were to remain
in the annals. But it was such films like
Šëlkovaja Pautina
that kept the industry
running. Whether we like it or not.