REEES Film Series: The Good, the Bad, the Ostern: Westerns in Eastern Europe and Eurasia

"By the Law" (dir. Lev Kuleshov, 1926, 83 min)

Based on Jack London’s “The Unexpected,” By the Law tells the story of a group of gold prospectors on the banks of the Yukon river during the Klondike Gold Rush. Written and directed by Lev Kuleshov in collaboration with Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky, the silent action film is a triumph of montage, though it was received with limited commercial success domestically. A visual masterpiece, By the Law follows no single discernible hero or villain: after a gold strike and two murders, the group of prospectors find themselves faced with an existential crisis, in the midst of ice and darkness.
To continue working on the film, Kuleshov persuaded Goskino, the State Committee for Cinematography, to define By the Law as an “experiment,” allowing him to film with a limited budget. It’s perhaps exactly such an experiment that would ultimately lead to Kuleshov being accused of committing “the sins of formalism.”

Sponsored by: PIIRS, REEES, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures.

Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (OWNER), Slavic Languages & Literatures

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