Katka’s Reinette Apples (Fridrikh Ermler, 1926)
Also translated as Katka the Apple Seller, Katka’s Reinette Apples tells the story of a young girl named Katka who arrives in Leningrad to sell apples at the beginning of the New Economic Policy. Once there, she meets various members of the underworld and is seduced and cheated.
The film is typical of Fridrikh Ermler’s work in that it offers a realist account of problems that accompanied the rapid shift in social standards and values. In this way, it is very different from the montage films that are typically associated with this period of filmmaking, both in its realist style and in its psychologisation of its lead character. It was praised by critics at the time for being a rare film that managed to be both entertaining and politically correct.[1]
Director: Fridrikh Ermler
Writer: Mikhail Borisoglebsky, Boris Leonidov
Cast: Veronika Buzhinskaya, Bella Chernova, Yakov Gudkin
Year: 1926
Production Company: Sovkino
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[1] Denise J. Youngblood. Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) 145.