SOVIETSKIE IGRUSHKI (Soviet Toys, 1924) ** A gentle children's tale about how to tax a capitalist pig into submission. The targets are, however, legion, considering the slight number of characters, and include clerics and prostitutes. Given all that, in a mere fourteen minutes, it's reasonably good-humoured, what with all the bingeing and vomiting going on. Dziga Vertov creates a visual dialectic between distance and close-ups (the eyes!), that is even less subtle than the subject matter, but is probably more visionary when it comes to the subject of multiple morphing. Not nearly as clever as Wile E. Coyote, or as entertaining as Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, there is nonetheless something downright amusing about cultural reprogramming, now that it's a discarded historical remnant. Or is it?
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