IV - An ambivalent NEP satire of bourgeois aspirations: The Kiss of Mary Pickford

Summary

The most celebrated Soviet films have not been comedies. From Pudovkin's Mother to Tarkovsky's Stalker to Abuladze's glasnost-era Repentance, most of the deserved critical praise has gone to the weightiest films. Relatively little attention has been given to humorous films both old and new, and it remains to be seen in our day of greater Russian access to the West if future Soviet comedies will bear any resemblance to NEP film satires concerned with the desire for Western products and bourgeois lifestyles.

One of the lesser known (but most accessible for rental in the United States) of these NEP film comedies is The Kiss of Mary Pickford (Potselui Meri Pikford) released by Mezhrabpom-Rus in September 1927. This genuinely amusing hour-long film directed by Sergei Komarov makes use of newsreel footage of the mobs of people who greeted the visit of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to Moscow in July 1926, and it was popular with audiences when it was released. Komarov (at the time of our conference one of the senior members of the Soviet film community) was one of the graduates of Kuleshov's workshop, and by mixing newsreel and fictional footage, he followed the example of Pudovkin in the comic Chess Fever (1925).