Woman's World (1932) User Reviews

Beautifully Visualized Feminist Statement From Soviet Golden Age

[lchadbou-326-26592 · 7/10 · 9 July 2015]

"Woman's World" is now available in a lovely copy, but with somewhat crudely translated and woefully mistimed subtitles, on You Tube under an alternate, and perhaps more appropriate title, "The Trial Should Continue." (This also helps distinguish it from the totally different, slick 1950's Hollywood movie called Woman's World.) It is a beautifully visualized feminist statement from the last years of the golden age of Soviet silent cinema. The story involves what should be the place for women in the developing Russian industrial workplace. At the beginning, five men are on trial in a crowded people's court, accused of raping a female laboratory assistant in the Elektrozavod plant.A husband (S Langovoy) does not want his wife Mashka (Raisa Yesipova) to continue to work there, he argues with her that a wife's place should be in the home. There's a nice touch when after they have both left the frame the camera lingers on their empty apartment and several of the objects in it. The wife walks through the lonely night streets by the river and comes to the entrance of the plant, lit by night, just as the door swings open and an agronomist(P Molchanov) working late drives out. He offers her a ride, she is at first grateful but then when he comes on to her, putting his arm around her, she asks him to stop and gets out of the car. As it starts to rain she sits alone in a park. A lamp overhead reminds her of the lighting tubes in the workplace.The attorney assigned to the five suspects, who we have seen earlier refusing to defend them, suddenly walks by and she lands up going to his home. But another misunderstanding ensues when he in turn comes on to her, taking her for a woman of the streets, and offers her money (What the intertitle calls "the normal price") She leaves and the next morning lands up on a bench with another woman, a prostitute, who has just received money, shows it to her, and repeats the words of the intertitle about the normal price. The attorney walks by, she asks him if he is any better than the five men he refused to defend, and tries to stop his horse drawn carriage when he attempts to pull away. We next see Mashka on a bed in the workplace, resting. The agronomist, with some nerve, visits her and continues to molest her, so she throws a glass at him, Other workers come in to comfort her and throw him out.Meanwhile her husband, in the office, reiterates that she should not be working there but should stay at home, which the other workers argue with him about. We are back to the courtroom verdict,the film's climax. After the men are sentenced and denounced not only for the rape but for harming socialism,and the crowd starts to file out, Mashka takes to the floor and denounces the two men who molested her as well as her husband. A dramatic spotlight, somewhat expressionistically, focuses on her, then on the men she has pointed to. As the crowd surrounds her, she makes her powerful plea that "the trial should continue," for these kind of men. If the message of this film sounds a bit heavy handed, it is conveyed quite effectively through the photography, the close ups, and the editing. It is an obscure work that is worth rediscovery.