Miss Mend (review)

Standard accounts of the early days of Soviet cinema tend, with some justification, to downplay the influence of studios in favor of directors, but spare a thought for the Mezhrabpom-Rus group. Formed in the aftermath of the civil war, at which point the Russian film industry was pathetically dependent on imports of titles, equipment, and even raw film stock, this concern was the result of an alliance between German-based left-wing relief agency International Workers' Aid (IWA) and the Rus studio, one of the few private firms to more or less successfully weather the post-1917 upheavals. ¹ Despite the political designs of the IWA (to say nothing of the Soviet state, which early on realized the importance of cinema as a possible instrument of propaganda) and its involvement with the early work of Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mezhrabpom-Rus's films were baldly commercial; according to Denise Youngblood's study of popular Soviet cinema of the 1920s, the studio "turned out unabashedly 'bourgeois' films—films with the dash and glamour which had characterized the pre-revolutionary cinema." ²

Not every Soviet film was a dense work of avant-garde leftist agitprop. Exhibitors' reliance on imports meant that the Russian audience was exposed to the same genre exercises as the rest of the international filmgoing public. "The first films to enter the U.S.S.R. . . . were also westerns and serials, because these were generally regarded as innocent of any harmful thematic content, depending as they did largely upon action, which the Russian public adored." ³ Even Battleship Potemkin (Bronyenosyets Potyomkin; 1925), despite wild success abroad (particularly in Germany), was something of a flop at home; Russian audiences saved their enthusiasm (and their rubles) for Buster Keaton and Douglas Fairbanks. ⁴ Desperate as it was to generate some capital, it should come as no surprise that at least some elements of the Soviet film industry were only too happy to give the public what it wanted.

One of Mezhrabpom-Rus's more interesting attempts to do just that was Miss Mend (1926), based on the successful Mess Mend series of short pulp novels (allegedly written by American "Jim Dollar" but actually authored by Russian Marietta Shaginan) and featuring plenty of the domestic audience's beloved action.

In the American city of Littletown, Vivian Mend (Natalya Glan) works as a typist at a cork factory in the midst of a bitter strike. An agent provocateur starts a riot between the picketing workers and police, and Vivian finds herself caught in the middle, along with Barnet (director Boris Barnet), Vogel (Vladimir Fogel), and Tom (Igor Ilyinsky), three journalists sent to cover the strike for the local paper, with instructions to focus on the "heroic policemen." After several minutes of havoc, a passing motorist helps Vivian flee the scene; he introduces himself as "Engineer Johnson" (Ivan Koval-Samborsky) and escorts her to her apartment, making a good impression on her young orphaned nephew, John, in the process. The seeds of a romance appear to have been planted, but only after he leaves Vivian at home is it revealed that "Johnson" is really Arthur Stern, son of a wealthy capitalist. Later that night, while relaxing in his extravagantly furnished mansion, Arthur receives word that his father has been murdered by Bolsheviks while on a trip abroad.

Or so he is led to believe. His father has actually been kidnapped by Chiche, the head of a shadowy international anti-Communist conspiracy known only as the Organization. Having convinced the public of the elder Stern's death, Chiche has sedated his hostage and brought his remains back to Littletown in a coffin. But at the last minute, Stern is able to pin a note to the outside of the box; this note is found by Tom, waiting at the dock to cover the arrival of Stern's body. A sailor in Chiche's employ notices this; after dulling Tom's already none-too-sharp senses with several rounds of drink at a local tavern, the crook tries to steal the incriminating note. A brawl ensues, and despite the...