NFR Project: 'A Study in Reds' (1932)

NFR Project: ‘A Study in Reds’

Dir: Miriam Bennett

Scr: N/A

Pho: N/A

Ed: N/A

20 min.

An oddity for sure. For some reason, amateurs ganged together to make this short film, a spoof of life in the Soviet Union.

At a women’s club meeting, a guest falls asleep and dreams of the group being submitted to Communist rule – placing their children in child care, working in factories, tilling the land – all under the watchful eye of the state police (who are distinguished by their paper G.P.U. badges and their long cigarette holders).

One worker is caught smuggling a single egg out of the chicken coop, and she is accordingly shot by a firing squad. “From eggs to eggsecution,” quips the simply typed intertitle. The dreamer wakes up and finds herself back among her friends again.

The filmmakers were members of the Amateur Cinema League, a hobby group that promoted amateur filmmaking across the country. This crude but whimsical piece of film seems to have been concocted entirely by women – an empowering fact that underlines how women-created film of the period could pretty much only be done at this level.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Trouble in Paradise.