A viewing and discusson of the film Confidential Agent

June 29, 7:30 pm

Confidential Agent, dir. Herman Shumlin, USA, 1945.

Visually shaky like a nightmare, a film-noir spy movie based on the Graham Greene novel made by the great Broadway producer Herman Shumlin, starring Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall and Peter Laurie: such a film should be known off by heart by film-buffs in the same way that they know The Big Sleep. And yet, Confidential Agent has vanished without trace from the history of cinema, as do all films which are out of place and out of time, either ahead of or behind the zeitgeist. Confidential Agent was made too late: the “red years” of America were giving way to the “black”. The Cold War’s first victim was a film whose main hero was based (as was Kurt Müller in The Guard on the Rhine and Victor Laszlo in Casablanca) on the legendary Comintern operative known in Hollywood under the pseudonym Rudolf Bred (it’s actually Otto Katz — it’s him, it’s him, it’s him). The second victim was the film’s director, sentenced to a spell in prison, just like the “confidential agent” himself, for aiding the Spanish Republic.

Mikhail Trofimenkov (St Petersburg) is a film critic and regular contributor to the Kommersant newspaper, and specialises in the political history of cinema. A Doctor of the Arts, from 1997-99 he lectured at the University of Metz in France, and since 2000 he has worked as a reviewer for the Kommersant publishing house. He is author of France: Murderous Paris and The Cinema Theatre of War, and a member of the editorial board of the publisher Séance.

The film is screened in its original language with subtitles. 

Curator: Aleksey Artamonov, film critic.

For participants 18 years and older. Admission is free of charge. The number of participants is limited. Please register in advance.

Hidden, Film Club:
As part of the program, Hidden, film critics and film historians will showcase important films that have, for whatever reasons, remained in the shadows of the official canon, explaining their significance and what makes them extraordinary. But Hidden isn’t limited to the marginal, the forgotten or lost. It also explores the underbelly of films we thought we knew. By choice, the guests of these lectures on films will attempt to uncover these contradictions, leading us down into the depths of the human psyche and political systems, past and present. The speakers of this particular program include: Mikhail Ratgauz, Boris Nelepo, Vasily Koretsky, Mikhail Trofimenkov and many others, including one of Great Britain’s most preeminent film critics, Neil Young, and the renowned German media theorist Thomas Elsaesser. All of the films will be screened with subtitles.