Last week I went to see “The New Babylon”. The movie was written and directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg in 1929, a time where the still young Soviet Union’s artists were experimenting heavily with new languages or media. Almost 80 years later, the movie seemed naive and even a bit silly to me. Its story is quickly told: After the war of 1871 between France and Prussia, which ended in France’s defeat, Paris was ruled for a brief period by the Paris commune. The movie tells the rise and the fall of the commune in eight parts: First, the status quo is shown, with rich Parisienne stuffing their bellies and partying the whole night through, while the poor are working their asses off and the soldiers are sent on their way to kick Prussian ass. But the war is lost, so the rich guys flee to Versailles, leaving the town in the hand of the people and the army. The army follows the orders to return to Versailles, where they are brain washed and told to take Paris by force. Meanwhile, Paris has turned into worker’s paradise, with everyone being happy doing their daily chores. But, oh, beware, the army is back and after a bloody fight, the commune is defeated. In the aftermath, the captured leaders are put to death, but not before they can raise their voices once more to cry out their defiance: “Vive la commune!”

This movie is silent. The score was played by the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra. Now, most silent movies don’t have a dedicated score, usually a pianist would improvise something from a standard repertoire of melodies. Not in this case. Shostakovich, barely into his twenties, composed a whole score (his first) for “The New Babylon”. The score is very much the young Shostakovich: light, fresh, witty, and ironic. His sense for getting the most out of the score shows very well in the scenes where the music is directly describing the action: The first shot of the cannon against the communards, for example, is accompanied by cymbals. Or later, when in a short break an old man plays a memorial to the dead on a piano, this is all we hear.

I think that without the score or a score any less ingenious as Shostakovich would have maqde the movie unwatchable, except for historical and educational purposes. It is the music that makes the rather shallow treaty of an important historical incident almost profound.