The New Babylon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Novyy Vavilon (Eng:New Babylon) (1929), is a black and white silent film directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. It lasts 120 minutes in its original version and 93 minutes in its 2004 restored version. The propaganda film in the expressionist tradition of the early 20th century deals with the 1871 Paris Commune and the events leading to it, and follows the encounter and tragic fate of two lovers separated by the barricades of the Commune.
Passages are set in a fantastic department store.
Composer Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his first film score for this movie. In the fifth reel of the score he quotes the revolutionary anthem, "La Marseillaise" (representing the Commune), juxtaposed contrapuntally with the famous "Can-can" from Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld.
Footage from The New Babylon was included in Guy Debord's feature film The Society of the Spectacle (1973).
New Babylon is also a concept by Dutch philosopher Constant Nieuwenhuys.
See also
- Political film
- Propaganda film
- New Babylon (Constant Nieuwenhuys)
- Babylon
- The Society of the Spectacle (film)
