Torn Boots
About Torn Boots
In the early 1930s, in a city that stands in for Germany, three-year-old Bubbi and his older brother share one pair of torn boots. Their father is out of work, so Bubbi goes to the dumps in those boots and picks scrap to sell. During a dockers' strike the schoolboys chase strikebreakers, and at school they set on scouts who wear swastikas and on the children of the men who broke the strike. The children form their own Red Front column for a communist march. Armed soldiers are ordered to fire on the demonstrators. A fascist bullet kills Bubbi.
Cast & crew
More about Torn Boots
Margarita Barskaya wrote the script in 1931 after a newspaper item about a workers' strike in Germany, and she directed. Russian Wikipedia calls Rvanye bashmaki (Рваные башмаки) the first Soviet children's sound feature. Vladimir Yegorov was production designer. Sound was by E. Derup. It opened in the USSR on December 17, 1933. An opening title says the cast runs from children of one year and three months to children of thirteen.
Themes
Background
Shooting began in 1931. The film reached Soviet screens in December 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor, and the same year as Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite and Hans Steinhoff's Hitlerjunge Quex.
Look
Georgy Bobrov and Sarkis Gevorkyan photographed the film. Political scenes are staged as the children see them, from the dumps to the schoolyard.
Music
Vissarion Shebalin wrote the score for this early Soviet sound feature. E. Derup was the sound engineer.
Preservation
A copy is on Wikimedia Commons under the Russian title.
Notes
- Mikhail Klimov plays a pastor, Ivan Novoseltsev plays Walter's father, and Anna Chekulayeva plays Walter's mother.
- Varvara Alyokhina is a schoolteacher, Klavdiya Polovikova a blind woman, and Vladimir Uralsky a police spy.
- Georgy Milyar, later the demon in Morozko, appears as a passerby.
- An intertitle says, "They play in the same way that they live.
- A 1961 Soviet film catalog notes the signs of a Germany turning fascist: the unemployed, strikes, pickets, Schupos, and fights with strikebreakers, though the city is not named.
Scenes
- Bubbi sets off for the dump in his schoolboy brother's huge torn boots.
- The children heckle strikebreakers and the scouts with swastikas on their sleeves.
- Bubbi is killed when soldiers fire on the demonstration.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (1933. Рваные башмаки.webm)
Quotes
They play in the same way that they live.