Po Zakonu
By the Law
Three men, one couple, one dog; all searching for gold on the banks of the Yukon in Alaska, the home of the gold rush. Everything runs smoothly at first, then Dennin suddenly shoots two of the prospectors. And then there were three. Nelson and his wife Edith subdue the murderer. The corpses are taken away and buried; Dennin is tied up in the cabin and kept under constant guard. None can leave, as the ice and snow have begun to melt, flooding the Klondike Fields. By the Law is an absolute masterpiece, the greatness of which stems from its very minimalism. One can label By the Law a formalist action film, a Western psychodrama or an experimental study in bigotry. There is as much of the silent Westerns of John Ford as there is of Erich von Stroheim’s Greed and Charles Chaplin’s The Gold Rush in By the Law. (Barbara Wurm)
Director's Biography
Lev Kuleshov, 1899-1970, Tambov, studierte Kunst in Moskau. Als 1917 die Russische Revolution begann, schloss er sich den Bolschewiken an und dokumentierte mit einem Filmteam den Krieg. Danach lehrte an der Staatlichen Filmschule, unter seinen Schülern Eisenstein und Pudovkin. Er blieb dem Film treu und entwickelte Schnitttechniken, für die er heute noch bekannt ist.
Filme (Auswahl): Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov (The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924), My s urala (We from the Urals, 1943)
Filme (Auswahl): Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov (The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, 1924), My s urala (We from the Urals, 1943)
Special 2011
Lev Kuleshov
USSR 1926
black & white
78 minutes
OV with English subtitles
Screenplay Viktor Shklovsky, Lev Kuleshov (nach der Kurzgeschichte The Unexpected von Jack London)
Cinematography Konstantin Kuznetsov
Music Stummfilm mit Live Vertonung von Franz Reisecker
With Aleksandra Khokhlova, Sergei Komarov, Vladimir Fogel, Pyotr Galadzhev, Porfiri Podobed