Novyi Vavilon
(New Babylon)
Also known as [Shturm neba]
(1929) Soviet Union
B&W : [?] Seven? reels
Directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg
Cast: David Gutman [‘New Babylon’ shop owner], Yelena Kuzmina [Louise Poirer], Andrei Kostrichkin [main shop assistant], Vsevolod I. Pudovkin [shop assistant], Sophia Magarill [an actress], A. Arnold [deputy], Sergei Gerasimov [Lutro, a journalist], Pyotr Sobolevskii [Jean, a soldier], Evgenii Chervyakov [national guard soldier], Oleg Zhakov [national guard soldier], Yanina Zhejmo [Therese], Ludmilla Semyonova (Liudmila Semenova) [a dancer], Tamara Makarova [a dancer], A. Glushkova [washerwoman], Natalya Rashevskaya [washerwoman], Emil Gall [a bourgeois], S. Gusev [old Poirier], Aleksandr Orlov [the actor portraying ‘King Menelay’], R. Rubinstein [the singer in the play], Anna Zarzhitskaya [the young woman on the barricade], Boris Azarov [soldier]
Sovkino production. / Scenario by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. Art direction by Evgenii Enei. Assistant directors, Sergei Bartenev, Sergei Gerasimov, Nadezhda Kosheverova, S. Shklyarevskii and M. Yegorov. Cinematography by Andrei Moskvin + [Evgenii Mikhailov]. Original music score by Dmitri Shostakovich. / Released 18 March 1929. / Standard 35mm spherical 1.33:1 format. / The production was shot in Leningrad. Kozintsev and Trauberg’s final silent film. The film was released in the USA on 30 November 1929. In the early 1980s, German film archivists assembled a ‘restoration’ version of the 1929 German release print, expanded with outtake scenes and shots edited from the original version before the film’s release. Director Trauberg condemned this expansion of the film in October 1983, at which time he documented the shots that he had edited from the original film intentionally. / Silent film.
Drama.
Survival status: Prints exist in the Gosfilmofond film archive [1929 original release version (approximately 2000 metres)]; and in a German film archive [‘restoration’ of the 1929 German release version (expanded to 2500 metres)].
Current rights holder: (unknown)
Listing updated: 7 May 2009.
References: Bardèche-History p. 278; Bohn-Light p. 153; Geduld-Birth p. 39; Sinyard-Silent pp. 8, 168, 187; Youngblood-Soviet pp. 195, 204, 206-207, 209, 236, 318 : Website-IMDb : with additional information provided by Theodore J. van Houten.
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