Language:
English
Pages:
1 DVD-Video (94 Min.)
,
schwarz-weiß
Year of publication:
2005
Uniform Title:
Benya Krik
Keywords:
DVD-Video
Abstract:
The seamy Jewish underworld of Odessa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik ("Mike the Jap") Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya Krik and his gang. They profit from their criminal activities until the Russian Revolution when the local commissar sets them up as a "revolutionary" regiment, complete with tattooed red stars. But this new post backfires for Benya as he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap. "Vladimir Vilner's 1927 "Benya Krik" is a long-lost evocation of Isaac Babel's Odessa, shot on location, and directed from a script written by Babel himself. Babel was 30 years old and at the peak of his popularity when he went to work for the Ukrainian studio, VUFKU. Benya Krik's first two-thirds are taken from a pair of published stories set in Odessa's prerevolutionary Jewish underworld; the last section, set in 1919, is original - albeit based on the actual demise of Benya's real-life prototype, gangster king Mishka Yaponchik ("Mike the Jap") Vinnitsky ... Opening in Kiev in early 1927, "Benya Krik" was almost immediately banned by the Ukrainian office for political education." (J. Hoberman, Village Voice) [jewishfilm.org]
Note:
Stummfilm mit engl. Zwischentiteln
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