The Bathhouse (Баня, 1962) by Anatoliy Karanovich and Sergey Yutkevich

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The Bathhouse
The Bath
Баня
Banya (ru)

Year 1962
Director(s) Karanovich Anatoliy
Yutkevich Sergey
Studio(s) Soyuzmultfilm
Language(s) Russian
Genre(s) Comedy
Literature (Rus./East Slavic)
Politics
Sci-fi & space
Surrealism/dream-logic
Animation Type(s)  Cutout
Live-action
Mixed
Puppet
Length 00:50:47
Wordiness 12.48
Animator.ru profile Ru, En
280 visitors

Subtitles:
Banya.1962.en.1.25fps.1676804386.srt
Date: February 19 2023 10:59:46
Language: English
Quality: good
Upload notes: 1445 characters long (view)
Creator(s): Animation Obsessive, Eus, Guy Daniels, Julie A. Cassiday, Kathleen Cook-Horujy, Niffiwan, Chapaev

Banya.1962.ru.1.25fps.1674641077.srt
Date: January 25 2023 10:04:37
Language: Russian
Quality: unknown
Upload notes: 199 characters long (view)
Creator(s): Chapaev, Eus, Niffiwan


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Description:

In 1930, the inventor Chudakov invents a time machine but experiences great difficulties from the Soviet bureaucracy. Based on the play by Mayakovsky.

A "banya" is a kind of Slavic sauna or bathhouse used for cleaning. Mayakovsky explained in an article that the bath (or banya) in the title represents the washing-away of bureaucrats. Some of his article appears as dialogue in the film, during the scene where Conquerbonce asks about the meaning of the banya.

An excellent article about the history and impact of this rather unusual film has been written by Animation Obsessive, who also had a large role in creating the new and improved English subtitles.

In the film and original play, Pont Kitsch speaks in gibberish that's somewhere between Russian and English. To create the effect, Mayakovsky constructed "English" sentences out of assorted Russian words that vaguely sound like English ones. The audience heard nonsense with a double meaning in Russian and English. It's not really possible to capture the effect in translation, so Cook-Horujy rendered Pont Kitsch's dialogue phonetically, and these subtitles do the same.

When Ivan Ivanovich says he visited the house of "Aunty Dühring" in Liverpool, it's one of the bureaucrats' many mistakes -- some of which won't be as obvious to modern viewers as they were in their original context. Ivanovich has confused Friedrich Engels with the title of an 1878 book Engels wrote, Anti-Dühring, and Manchester (where Engels once lived) with Liverpool.

In the video above, some 4:3 scenes are unfortunately stretched to widescreen.

 

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