Marionettes
About Marionettes
A master of ceremonies brings on puppets named for the musical notes. The scene becomes Boufferia, a European kingdom on a militarized border with the USSR, with a boy king and a parliament of monarchists, liberals, fascists, and socialists. Capitalists decide to replace the child with Prince Do, a drunk playboy in debt, played by Anatoli Ktorov. Do falls out of the airplane on the way. The crowd takes his barber, So, played by Sergei Martinson, for the prince and crowns him. So's barber talk is read as policy, and the fascist leader Fa is delighted. Boufferia moves to attack the Soviet Union. The picture freezes back into puppets, the strings in one pair of hands. At the border gun, the real prince hits the impostor with a book called The Philosophy of Fascism.
Cast & crew
More about Marionettes
Yakov Protazanov and Porfiri Podobed directed. Protazanov and Vladimir Shveitser wrote it. Pyotr Yermolov photographed and Leonid Polovinkin composed the score. It opened on February 3, 1934, and runs 97 minutes. Konstantin Zubov plays Fa. Nikolai Radin and Valentina Tokarskaya are in the cast. Ivan Arkadin is the master of ceremonies.
Themes
Background
Released in February 1934, the year after Hitler took office, the film puts fascists, capitalists, and a puppet king in one invented country aimed at the Soviet border.
Making
Protazanov opens and closes on a puppet booth so the coup, the wrong king, and the border attack can be yanked back to strings.
Look
Pyotr Yermolov shot the parliament, the airplane, and the puppet prologue.
Music
Leonid Polovinkin wrote the score for the musical-comedy numbers and the puppet opening.
Preservation
A print survives.
Notes
- The leads are named Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, and Ti.
- So's answer about hot compresses and lead lotion is taken as a political program.
- The Russian title is Marionetki. The country is Boufferia.
- The last shot returns the actors to the puppet stage.
- Protazanov billed it as satire, musical comedy, and political propaganda together.
Scenes
- The notes of the scale are introduced as marionettes.
- Prince Do falls out of the airplane and the barber is crowned.
- The real prince clubs the impostor with The Philosophy of Fascism as the border gun fires.
