The Death Ray

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Country:Russia

Director:Lev Kuleshov

Program:Multiplying Parallels

Year: 
1925

Summary:

Kuleshov in particular was fascinated by Western films of popular culture which he was eager to transform and energize by both embracing them wholeheartedly yet satirizing them with targeted irony. Luch Smert, as it is known in Russian, is made like an adventure serial, fast moving, funny and crammed full of amazing moments. Lann needs the ray of the title to make the revolutionary rising at the helium factory a success while an international gang of reactionaries, headed by Revo, try to get hold of the deadly contraption for themselves. Kuleshov boldly reappropriates genre elements and reconceives them as inverse signs of frustrated subjective experience.