Cinema: Silent Comedy

A SLAVE OF LOVE

Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov

Screenplay by Friedrich Gorenstein and Andrei Mikhalkov-Konchalovsky

If A Slave of Love had been made in France, it would not hold too many surprises: the movie is yet another variation on that most imitated of film classics, Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game. But A Slave of Love comes from the Soviet Union, not France, and that single fact casts the film in a startling light. It isn't often that the Soviets export movies that aim to be lyrical, sentimental and commercial. One could sooner imagine Universal Pictures releasing a musical remake of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky—with or without Sensurround.

Once one gets past the initial shock, A Slave of Love proves to be a decent knockoff. Like Renoir's 1939 film, it offers a moving portrait of a society on the brink of convulsive change. Set just after the 1917 Revolution, the film takes place in pastoral Crimea, where a harried group of actors and moviemakers are trying to complete a frivolous silent melodrama. Hundreds of miles away, the government has fallen to the Bolsheviks, but the film company tries to go doggedly about its business. Inevitably, Slave's characters discover that not even artists can hide from the onrushing forces of history.

There is much to admire in Director Nikita Mikhalkov's rendering of this tale. He has shot the movie in summery, impressionistic colors that well evoke the end of imperial Russia. His comic vignettes about the early days of his country's film industry are reminiscent of old-time Hollywood lore, right down to the portrayal of temperamental screenwriters and cost-conscious producers. Slave even has a character who is a Russian equivalent of American Silent-Era Star John Gilbert: a dashing leading man whose speaking voice is disconcertingly high-pitched.

Though the film's show-biz types remain ineffectual to the end, Mikhalkov refuses to poke fun at them. More often he is touched by their plight—especially that of Olga, the movie troupe's star actress. Olga barrels through real-life matters of love, death and conscience in the same florid manner as in her on-screen roles, yet she is more tragic than foolish. As played by Yelena Solovey, an actress of impressive range, this heroine's helpless indecisiveness sometimes achieves Chekhovian dimensions.

Unfortunately the film's screenplay could have used a little Chekhov—or Gorki—as well. Too many lines are overly explicit ("We're like children forgotten in the nursery of a house on fire"); others recall the parody of Woody Allen's Love and Death ("You are choked by boredom"). Mikhalkov could also use some of Renoir's toughness of mind and poetic genius. The Rules of the Game dared to dissect contemporary France; A Slave of Love is essentially a safe nostalgia piece. Where Renoir merged theme, style and narrative into a seamless whole, Mikhalkov must shift gears as his film moves among its various concerns. A Slave of Love is further afflicted by a dippy sound-track score, but such flaws are a real part of this picture's appeal. Somehow it is reassuring to know that the West does not have a monopoly on bourgeois film making, dippiness and all.