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| "This was a principal feature
of ours as directors, to constantly deny whatever had already been discovered" |
| In 1929 the Soviet anti formalist backlash swept through Leningrad's art world. Caught in the politics and bureaucracy was the celebrated anti-war history of the Paris commune "New Babylon" the last film to be produced by Leonid Trauberg and Grigorii Kozintsev's avant garde "Factory of the Eccentric Actor", and the first film to feature music specially composed by 23 year old prodigy Dimitri Shostakovich. |
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| The "Rites Of Spring" of Soviet cinema, "New Babylon" remained a silent succes d' scandal until a complete manuscript was discovered in 1975 and the film seemingly restored with its original score. However, as this meticulously researched essay shows, this was not the case. |
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| The real meaning of Shostakovich's first work for cinema and the lost history of one of the most important silent movies is traced for the first time. |
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| These pages examine the precise sequence of events behind "New Babylon's" troubled production and its reception by both contemporary and recent critics. |