The Bear's Wedding
About The Bear's Wedding
Count Shemet carries a curse from his mother's encounter with a bear. In seizures he becomes, in the story the household tells, a bear that kills. He marries. The bride is found dead. The film shows the killing only afterward, and it does not show a body changing into an animal. Dream scenes and other people's stories carry the idea that he is a beast. Konstantin Eggert plays the count.
Cast & crew
More about The Bear's Wedding
Konstantin Eggert and Vladimir Gardin directed. Georgy Grebner and Anatoly Lunacharsky wrote it from Lunacharsky's play, which comes from Prosper Mérimée's novella Lokis. Eduard Tisse and Pyotr Yermolov photographed. Eggert plays Shemet. Vera Malinovskaya and Natalya Rozenel are the women in the cast. Yuri Zavadsky also appears. It runs 68 minutes and was released in 1925.
Themes
Background
Lunacharsky, the Soviet education commissar, had written the play from Mérimée. Mezhrabpom-Rus filmed it as a silent horror story in 1925.
Making
Eggert directs himself as the count and keeps the horror in dreams, rumor, and the wedding night's result.
Reviews
Kat Ellinger, after a viewing, writes that the count's animal nature stays in dream images and secondhand stories. Troy Howarth had called the film a possible first movie transformation and also treated prints as nearly unavailable.
Look
Eduard Tisse and Pyotr Yermolov shot the estate, the dreams, and the wedding.
Preservation
Prints exist. A Russian television recording from the video era circulates, and the Internet Archive holds a copy.
Notes
- Lokis is Lithuanian for bear. Mérimée leaves it open whether the count is an animal.
- Kat Ellinger, having seen the film, reports no on-screen change of body. The bride's death is an aftermath.
- A Russian television broadcast from the video era circulates. The picture is not lost.
- Internet Archive holds a copy as the-bears-wedding_1928.
- Tisse, Eisenstein's cameraman, shares the photography with Yermolov.
- Troy Howarth's suggestion that this is the first movie man-into-beast scene does not match what is on the print.
Scenes
- The count's seizures are told as the bear coming back.
- Dream images suggest the animal without showing a change of body.
- The bride is found dead after the wedding.
Influenced by
- Prosper Mérimée's novella Lokis, via Anatoly Lunacharsky's play
Also available
- Internet Archive (the-bears-wedding_1928)
