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 Short
Synopsis
...Her son-in-law, Ippolit Matwejewitch Worobjaninow, is
a former nobleman and a dandy who is currently wasting away
as a small town magistrate in charge of civil marriages.
He eagerly takes up the quest to find the treasure. Meanwhile,
over the years, the twelve chairs have been dispersed all
over the country. However, Worobjaninow is not the only
one in pursuit of the treasure. Hot on its trail are Ostap
Bender, a clever and colorful conman, as well as Father
Fjodor, a priest to whom the wealthy aristocrat has also
confessed her secret. Thus begins a wild chase that ranges
from North to South, West to East, across water and land,
from the country to the city.
Ulrike Ottinger
In the Making
In 2001, for my film, Southeast Passage, I traveled in search
of blind spots in Europe, sites that have been neglected
by the media. Beginning in Berlin, I traversed through Poland,
the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria,
before reaching my final destination of Odessa. At the same
time, I embarked on a literary voyage and studied the novels,
short stories, and poetry of these countries. At this point
I came across the highly intriguing novel, The Twelve Chairs,
penned by the Odessa writers Ilja Ilf and Jewgeni Petrow.
Published in the late-twenties, it is one of the most amusing
accounts of the turbulent conditions during the post-revolutionary
period in Russia. Today, this novel is once again timely
and can be taken as an allegory of the present state of
the former Soviet Union.
During two additional
research trips to the Ukraine I discovered what would become
the film's central sites. These include Wilkowo, a small
village on the Moldavian-Romanian border that with its canals
resembles a miniature Venice; Nikolajew, formerly a powerful
trade center at the intersection of two tributaries of the
Dnjper; the Tartar villages in the mighty Kriem mountains;
the elegant nineteenth century spa towns on the coast of
the Black Sea that rival the resorts of the Côte d'Azur;
and Odessa, with its mixture of dilapidated back courtyards,
splendid passageways and descending stairways to the harbor.
Every step through Odessa summoned images from Eisenstein's
revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin. These geographies
are not only the setting for The Twelve Chairs; they also
serve as active visual structures that both constitute everyday
life and trigger the action of the film's two protagonists,
Ostap and Ippolit, as they pursue their quest for material
wealth. The result is an exciting story woven out of a dense
tapestry of characters and places that tells of yesterday
and today.
The film's two main
actors recall the authors of the novel, Ilf and Petrow,
in a number of ways. Georgi Deliev, a native of Odessa who
plays the conman Ostap Bender, is a popular actor who in
his own theatre fosters the tradition of Burlesque. Furthermore,
through his appearances in the television series, "Mask
Show," he is widely known throughout the Ukraine. Genandi
Skarga, who plays the tragicomic figure of the former nobleman,
belongs to a dynasty of actors from Odessa. He not only
plays roles from the classical repertory of Russian drama,
but also acts in and directs contemporary American theatrical
productions.
Ulrike Ottinger
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Christine N. Brinckmann
Ulrike Ottinger's picaresque universe
Ulrike Ottinger quickly adopted the picaresque style. Even
her early films have no psychologically sketched characters.
Their structure is episodic and lacks an overall theme.
Instead there is plenty of detail that temporarily binds
the arranged figures into a composition until this is replaced
by a new ambience, new shades, new circumstances. She also
soon began incoporating satirical elements as well as a
love of heterogeneity, the grotesque, the baroque.
The picaresque style
is basically a form of baroque. It arose in 16th-Century
Spain, not least as an ideological counterpoint to the noble
aspirations and characters of the knight epic. The picaro
is the hero of the lower classes, a rogue who survives by
his wits and knows exactly how to profit from every situation,
be it financially or amorously. He wanders through the contemporary
world with a satirical eye, making and losing friends, straying
from the path, having to flee and squeezing himself back
into situations that are none of his business. He is clearly
related to the sly trickster and the fool, who is at once
both naive and clever. The picaro does not develop personally.
The episodic nature of the picaresque style of storytelling
alone prevents psychologising. It is open to addition and
abbreviation, and its baroque richness often contains far
more events than any individual could possibly experience.
Ulrike Ottinger's TWELVE
CHAIRS is based on a novel that itself has picaresque traits.
It transports its protagonists through the after-shocks
of the Russian revolution, and we are amazed at how inventive
they prove. Their country has more than its fair share of
crass contrasts, chaos and asynchrony. The persona of the
picaro is fanned out into a dispossessed upper-class man
and a crafty crook, an unevenly matched pair united by greed
and flanked by a third figure; a hapless priest. This trio
attracts a bizarre group of supporting characters who react
in very different (current) ways to the new social order.
Ottinger has managed to transfer this material to the screen
with humour and storytelling skill, keen attention to detail
and an inexhaustible imagination. This is where she can
apply her apsychological, eagle-eyed narrative style, create
elaborate vignettes, mix poetry with action, the stylised
with the absurd. Heterogeneous elements from Shakespeare,
the Commedia dell'arte, "Stationendrama," tragicomedy,
Gogol, Eisenstein, spaghetti Westerns, documentary filmmaking,
the avant-garde and even romantic landscape painting are
all woven together.
Consequently, she pulls
out all the stops, and her Ukrainian cast keep up. Ottinger
gives the actors ample room for spontaneity, but masters
the narration in expert style. Each vignette is a surprising,
accurately-applied tableau, every shot an opulent painting.
The narrative rhythm is generated by a static composition
that invites the eye to linger and a lively performance
that could almost burst out of its structure. Overall, this
corresponds to the twin movement of com-pleting a numerical
task (that of searching for the twelve chairs, piece-by-piece
and beyond) and unfolding within the autonomy of the individual
episodes. Such structures take a lot of composing. Ulrike
Ottinger's film should not have been shorter, for the picaresque
spirit unfolds only in volume - and time.
Christine N. Brinckmann, Excerpt from the
catalogue of the 34th International Forum of New Cinema
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Premiere:
February 12, 2004, Berlin International Filmfestival, International
Forum
Distribution:
Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek e.V.
Potsdamer Str. 2
D-10785 Berlin
Germany
Contact: Karl Winter
fon +49-30-269 55 150
fax +49-30-269 55 111
verleih@fdk-berlin.de
www.fdk-berlin.de
Worldsales:
Cine-International
Leopoldstrasse 18
D-80802 München
Germany
Contact: Christiane Harris
fon +49-89-39 10 25
fax +49-89-33 10 89
email@cine-international.de
www.cine-international.de
Sales:
Available as DVD and VHS
Ulrike Ottinger Filmproduction
Fichtestraße 34
D-10967 Berlin
fon +49-30-692 93 94
fax +49-30-691 33 30
office@ulrikeottinger.com
All available
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