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6.1/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6.1/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Karnaval cvetov remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly, it’s both and neither. Karnaval Cvetov isn’t something you 'watch' for the story. You watch it because you want to see what 1934 looked like when filmmakers first started playing with the saturation knob.
If you are a fan of From Scales to Antlers or other experimental oddities, you’ll find the rhythm here pretty hypnotic. It’s disjointed, sure. But that’s the charm.
The parade footage from the 1935 May Day celebration is the real standout here. The colors don't just pop; they kind of vibrate off the screen. It feels less like a documentary and more like a fever dream about bureaucracy.
There’s a moment where a group of people walk past, and the red of their flags is so aggressive it feels like the celluloid is actually bleeding. It’s beautiful in a totally unpolished, raw way.
It reminds me a bit of the frantic energy found in The Model, where the visual experiment seems to matter way more than whatever the subjects are actually doing. You can tell Nikolai Ekk was having fun, or maybe he was just losing his mind trying to get the color registration right.
Is it a cohesive masterpiece? Absolutely not. It’s a mess of early color technology.
But it’s a fascinating mess. It’s the kind of thing you show to a friend who claims they’ve seen 'everything' from the 30s just to watch them try to make sense of it. 🌈
Some frames look like they belong in a museum of modern art. Others look like a corrupted digital file from 2005. I don't know, it’s just one of those things you have to sit with for a few minutes before you realize you've been staring at a single frame for way too long.
Don't go in expecting a deep narrative. Just enjoy the weird, saturated chaos.
