''Fragment of an Empire'' (russian: Обломок империи, Oblomok imperii) is a 1929 Soviet silent

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...

directed by

Fridrikh Ermler Fridrikh Markovich Ermler (russian: Эрмлер, Фридрих Маркович; born Vladimir Markovich Breslav; 13 May 1898 in Rēzekne – 12 July 1967 in Leningrad) was a Soviet film director, actor, and screenwriter. He was a four-t ...

Plot

A soldier called Filimonov lost his memory due to

shell shock Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...

during the Russian Civil War. In 1928 he sees a woman in a passing train, and suddenly remembers his own history. He decides to leave for his hometown,

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, now renamed to Leningrad. He is confused by the rapid changes in modern Leningrad and gets a job at his old workplace, where he slowly realises what it means that peasants are now in charge of the factory. His co-workers find the new address of his wife and send him there. Filimonov is confronted by the fact that his wife is now married to a Soviet apparatchik who treats her badly. In the final scene, Filimonov breaks the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

and declares to the audience that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Restoration

The movie was restored in 2018 by an international team of silent movie experts, including

San Francisco Silent Film Festival The San Francisco Silent Film Festival is a film festival first held in 1996 and presented annually at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco, California, United States. It is the largest silent film festival in the United States, although the largest ...

board president Robert Byrne and Peter Bagrov, a former archivist from the Russian

Gosfilmofond Gosfilmofond is a state film archive in Russia. It is the main film archive of the Russian Federation and a member of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). It is a state cultural institution — curator of films collection and oth ...

. The restoration was primarily based on a 35mm print from the EYE Filmmuseum in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

, the Netherlands. A couple of missing shots and

intertitle In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...

s were taken from a print sourced from the Swiss Cinémathèque. Crucially, the scene where Jesus on the

crucifix A crucifix (from Latin ''cruci fixus'' meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the ''corpus'' (Lati ...

is shown with a gas mask was inserted again. A new soundtrack was composed for the Dutch premiere at the EYE Filmmuseum by Colin Benders, using a

Eurorack Eurorack is a modular synthesizer format originally specified in 1995 by Doepfer Musikelektronik. It has since grown in popularity, and as of 2022 has become a dominant hardware modular synthesizer format, with over 15,000 modules available from ...

modular synthesizer.

Cast

Fyodor Nikitin Fyodor Mikhailovich Nikitin (russian: Фёдор Миха́йлович Ники́тин; May 3, 1900 in Lokhvytsia – July 17, 1988 in Moscow) was a Soviet film and theater actor. People's Artist of the RSFSR. Winner of two Stalin Prizes firs ...

as Filimonov * Yakov Gudkin as The wounded soldier * Lyudmila Semyonova as Filimonov's wife * Valeri Solovtsov as Filimonov's wife's new husband * Emil Gal as Passenger in the train * Sergei Gerasimov * Ursula Krug * Varvara Myasnikova * Vyacheslav Viskovsky as Former Employer * Aleksandr Melnikov as Member of the Komsomol

References

Bibliography

* Christie, Ian & Taylor, Richard. ''The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896–1939''. Routledge, 2012.

External links

* Films directed by Fridrikh Ermler 1929 films 1929 drama films Soviet drama films Soviet silent feature films 1920s Russian-language films Silent drama films {{1920s-USSR-film-stub