The Nail in the Boot

During manoeuvres the crew of an armoured train is caught in a gas attack. The soldier sent for help does not make it: a nail inside his boot cuts his foot and he arrives too late. The train and its crew are lost. The film then puts the factory that made the faulty boot on trial. The film is not interested in war. It is interested in the quality of production: the whole structure rests on the old proverb that for want of a nail the battle was lost. Kalatozov designed it as a warning about efficiency in Soviet industry. The form is early Soviet formalism: hard angles, fast cutting, close-ups of machines and faces. The photography already announces the moving camera of his later work. The result was a disaster for the director. The state banned the film for making the Red Army look inadequate; the criticism was that Kalatozov proceeded from formalist aestheticism rather than dialectical materialism. He was kept from directing his own projects for seven years and given an administrative post in Tbilisi. Who it is for: viewers curious about Soviet silent film and the history of censorship. Who it is not for: anyone looking for character. The film is almost entirely a thesis, its people exist for the thesis, and the final section speaks in plain propaganda.