The New Babylon 1929

Commune graffiti
Vive la commune

The film The New Babylon (Novyy Vavilon) was directed by Kozintsev and Trauberg in 1929. It is a sympathetic account of the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 and tells the story of two lovers who are separated by the fighting.

Submitted by Malva on February 4, 2013

The film The New Babylon (Novyy Vavilon) was directed by Kozintsev and Trauberg in 1929. It is a sympathetic account of the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 and tells the story of two lovers who are separated by the fighting. The film was ultimately suppressed by the Bolsheviks for its anti-war message. It also contained a lot of formal innovations and the musical score for the film was written by the young Dimitri Shostakovitch. Guy Debord used extracts from the film in his own The Society of the Spectacle in 1973. This version uploaded onto youtube unfortunately doesn't have the original score.

[youtube]OWbK412Xx_o[/youtube]

This version has the original score and comes with three different subtitle languages (English, German, French) in the captions tab.

[youtube]rUR6kJVXwK0[/youtube]

Comments

Malva

11 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Malva on February 4, 2013

The contributor suggests you turn off the jazz soundtrack and play some Joy Division over the top instead. In particular this goes well: http://youtu.be/9qgFGqJz9yc

Reddebrek

10 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Reddebrek on April 8, 2013

The original score by Shostakovich is available for purchase. I bought it so you don't have to http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?k5q3ysiccqow48p there's no password so you just have to extract it.

Dannny

9 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Dannny on April 6, 2014

This film is amazing!