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The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks

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Director
  
Duration
  

Country
  
6.8/10
IMDb

Genre
  
Comedy

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks movie poster

Language
  
Silent, Russian and English intertitles

Writer
  
Nikolai Aseyev
,

Release date
  
April 27, 1924

Music director
  
Benedict Mason, Robert A. Israel

Screenplay
  
Vsevolod Pudovkin, Nikolai Aseev

Cast
  
Vsevolod Pudovkin
(Shban), (Jeddy the Cowboy),
Aleksandra Khokhlova
(Countess von Saks),
Sergei Komarov
(The One-Eyed Man), (The Dandy)

Similar movies
  
Soviet Union movies, Silent movies

The extraordinary adventures of mr west in the land of the bolsheviks silent film concert


The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Russian: Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране Большевиков, Neobychainye priklyucheniya mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov) is a 1924 comedy film by Soviet director Lev Kuleshov. It is notable as the first Soviet film that explicitly challenges American stereotypes about Soviet Russia.

Contents

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks movie scenes

Plot

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks movie scenes

The film is a broad satire of American ignorance of the Soviet Union.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks movie scenes

The naive American, Mr. John West, played by Porfori Podobed as a Harold Lloyd type (complete with enormous round glasses), is a YMCA president who is planning a trip to the newly founded Soviet Union to spread the idea of the YMCA. His wife, Madge, is worried that Russia is full of savage Bolsheviks who wear primitive rags and fur for clothing, as depicted in American magazines. He takes along his cowboy friend Jeddie played by Boris Barnet for protection and as a companion.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks movie scenes

However, on arriving in the USSR his briefcase is stolen, he gets separated from Jeddie and he falls into the hands of a group of thieves, including a run-down Countess (played by Aleksandra Khokhlova), who masquerade as counter-revolutionaries. The thieves play on West's fears and engineer his abduction by crooks dressed up as caricature Bolshevik "barbarians." The thieves then "rescue" West from the clutches of these fictional Bolsheviks, extorting thousands of dollars from him along the way.

In the end, it is the real Bolshevik police who rescue West, rather than his friend Jeddie (who meanwhile has hooked up with an American girl living in Moscow). West then takes a sightseeing tour of Moscow, where he sees that the Soviet government did not destroy all cultural landmarks, such as Moscow University and the Bolshoi Theater, as the thieves suggested. The film culminates in Mr.West watching a military parade with the policeman and concluding that the American view of the Soviet Union is wrong. He telegraphs his wife instructing her to hang a portrait of Lenin in his study.

Credited Cast

  • Porfiri Podobed - Mr. John West
  • Boris Barnet - Jeddy - the cowboy
  • Aleksandra Khokhlova - The 'Countess'
  • Vsevolod Pudovkin - Zhban
  • References

    The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks Wikipedia
    The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks IMDb The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks themoviedb.org


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