The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
About The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
John West, a YMCA man from Detroit, comes to Soviet Russia in 1924 with his cowboy bodyguard Jeddie, sure the country is savage. His luggage is stolen and he is split from Jeddie. A gang stages a fake arrest and a fake trial, then offers to save him for money. The real police break it up. West drops the picture he arrived with and celebrates the place.
Cast & crew
More about The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
Lev Kuleshov directed it as a test of his montage ideas, looking to American pictures more than to Russian ones. Nikolai Aseev wrote it. Aleksandr Levitsky photographed. Porfiri Podobed plays West. Boris Barnet plays Jeddie. Aleksandra Khokhlova, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Sergei Komarov are in the gang and the police. The Russian title is Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране большевиков. It was censored two years after release.
Themes
Look
Aleksandr Levitsky shot the Moscow streets and the staged trial. Kuleshov cuts them like an American chase.
Preservation
Prints survive. The film was censored two years after it opened.
Notes
- Jeddie is a cowboy. The lasso work is his.
- The trial that frightens West is put on by criminals, not by the state.
- Pudovkin acts in it, before his own features.
- Soviet critics at the time objected to the American jokes and the light politics.
Scenes
- The gang stages the arrest and then sells West his freedom.
- The police walk in, and West's idea of the country collapses.
