Cinema
Little Red Devils
წითელი ეშმაკუნები
Ivane Perestiani · 1923
Synopsis
During the civil war, in Ukraine, a brother, a sister and their acrobat friend set themselves the task of harming the anarchist bands that hold the countryside. Their father was killed at the start of the story, and that is the source of their private war. They slip into enemy camps, devise ruses, escape pursuit on horseback, and one day decide to take on the ataman himself.
Context
The screenplay is drawn from a story by Pavel Bliakhin, who is also credited with directing alongside Perestiani, whereas the Pacific Film Archive catalogue acknowledges him only for the original story. The cinematography is by Aleksandr Digmelov, and the three main roles are played by Pavel Yesikovsky, Sofia Jozeffi and Kador Ben-Salim, a circus acrobat to whom the character owes his stunts. The film was produced by the cinema section of the People's Commissariat of Georgia with the Odessa studio: the young Georgian cinema was then working in Russian and outside its borders. A sequel appeared in 1926.
Who it is for
Eighty-four minutes of silent film, with Russian intertitles. It is necessary to know who Nestor Makhno was, the Ukrainian anarchist leader whom the film treats as a bogeyman.
Prizes and reception
The greatest popular success of Soviet silent cinema, and one of the few titles of 1923 that the major retrospectives still programme.