By the Bluest of Seas

Boris Barnet's 1936 Soviet film, made in the middle of the propaganda era, is built almost entirely on lightness. Two sailors washed up on an island in the Caspian Sea are rescued by members of a collective farm; they start working on its fishing boats and both fall for the young woman who leads the fishermen. The story turns around that triangle without being a story of conflict. What Barnet does is present the collective farm not as an ideological showcase but as a place where life happens; sun, water and wind are the film's real subject. Mashenka, played by Yelena Kuzmina, refuses to take the desire of the two men seriously, an autonomy unusual in the cinema of the period. The film was overlooked at the time for not being ideological enough and was reassessed later. Who it's for: viewers interested in the poetic wing of Soviet cinema and in 1930s film history. Who it's not for: anyone wanting plot and dramatic tension, or bothered by the technical condition of surviving prints.