Joel Adlen on Piano

(Styazhateli, a.k.a. Snatchers). "I just saw Medvedkine's Happiness," Eisenstein wrote in 1936, "and I can't contain myself. Because today I have seen how a Bolshevik laughs!" Happiness is one of the last Russian silents, and one of the most original. It is a tragicomic burlesque about a Ukrainian peasant who faces his natural enemies - the kulaks, the police, the Pope, and the Tsar's henchmen. Like Dovzhenko's Ukrainian films, Happiness springs from the depths of Russian folk culture, bringing humor - and more than a touch of people's madness - to the Revolutionary cinema.