The Train Rolls On, Chris Marker (1971)
Directed by digital projection
32 minutes
So begins Sergei Eisenstein’s 1935 review of Alexander Medvedkin’s Happiness, one of the very last silent films made in the Soviet Union. Eisenstein’s excitement for this “new quality,” a kind of communist slapstick, was not, unfortunately, shared by all his contemporaries, and the film was quickly suppressed. Virtually forgotten, Happiness was thought lost until its rediscovery by Jacques Ledoux of the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique in Brussels, who screened it at a 1961 retrospective of Soviet film attended by Ledoux’s friend, Chris Marker. An astonished Marker then became obsessed with finding the film’s creator. In 1967, he participated in the formation of les groupes Medvedkines—filmmaking collectives formed among striking textile and auto workers—and eventually interviewed Medvedkin on-camera for the SLON production The Train Rolls On. Soon after, Marker helped re-release Happiness to cinemas in 1971, preceded by the SLON film for its French run.