Posle Smerti [After Death]
A titan of the early Russian cinema, Evgenii Bauer was born in Russia in 1865. His father was a renowned zither-player, while his sisters became actresses. Bauer graduated from the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Over the years, he was an amateur actor, a caricaturist for magazines, a newspaper satirist, a theatrical impresario, and an artistic photographer. He was especially recognized for designing sets for theatrical productions, a talent that eventually brought him into the cinema when he designed the sets for Drankov and Taldykin’s commemorative historical film, Trekhsotletie Tsarstvovaniya Doma Romanovykh (The Tercentenary of the Rule of the Romanov Dynasty), released in 1913. Encouraged by Drankov and Taldykin, Bauer, then 48 years of age, graduated to directing for their company. After making four films for them, he went over to Pathe’s Star Film Factory for whom he made an additional four films. Then in late 1913, he moved to the Khanzhonkov company where he remained for the rest of his career. As an artist, he quickly came to the fore, with his films proving very successful with Russian audiences and critics. He worked in a variety of genres including comedies, patriotic subjects, social dramas, and tragedies of psychological obsession.

Posle Smerti (After Death), also produced in 1915, was adapted from Turgenev’s story, “Klara Milich.” It deals with a man who becomes obsessed with an actress he casually meets several times.
In Posle Smerti, Bauer continually tracks with the camera to depict the crowded reception in which the hero first meets the female protagonist. Later, when he attends her dramatic recital, Bauer intercuts long-shots of the theatre with close-ups of the hero and heroine, including a huge close-up of her face filling the entire screen.

808MB | 46m 07s | 640×534 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4444655D0429019/After.Death.1915.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Russian intertitles
Subtitles:English hardsubbed

The post Yevgeni Bauer – Posle smerti AKA After Death (1915) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Despite living in luxury, Vera is lonely and discontented. When she accompanies her mother, the Countess, on a charity visit to the poor, she is troubled by what she sees, and she resolves to do whatever she can to help them. But one man takes advantage of her innocence, and he lures her into a trap so that he can assault her. The dreadful results of this attack will affect Vera’s life long afterward. –imdb

761MB | 48m 25s | 646×524 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/4218769DD446AFB/Twilight.of.a.Woman’s.Soul.1913.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language:Silent
Subtitles:English hardsubbed

The post Yevgeni Bauer – Sumerki zhenskoi dushi AKA Twilight of a Woman’s Soul (1913) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Mike Pinsky, DVDVerdict wrote:
Russian film poet Evgeni Bauer combined the technical virtuosity of D.W. Griffith with the haunting terror of Edgar Allan Poe and the artist’s eye of Johannes Vermeer. He is — perhaps — the greatest film director you have never heard of. During his brief four-year career, Evgeni Bauer created macabre masterpieces. They are dramas darkly obsessed with doomed love and death, astonishing for their graceful camera movements, risqué themes, opulent sets and chiaroscuro lighting. Tragically, Bauer died in 1917, succumbing to pneumonia after breaking his leg.

For many decades, Bauer’s films were buried in the Soviet archives — declared too “cosmopolitan” and bizarre for the puritanical Soviet regime. But with the fall of the Iron Curtain, Bauer’s work has risen like a glorious phoenix out of the ashes of time. by MilestoneFilms

767MB | 48m 58s | 632×518 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/CCD0AC49A330103/The.Dying.Swan.1917.DVDRIP.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Russian Intertitles
Subtitles:English hardsubbed

The post Yevgeni Bauer – Umirayushchii Lebed aka The Dying Swan (1917) first appeared on Cinema of the World.