Happiness (Styazhateli) (Also known as 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 koulaks, 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.

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