Patyat na bezpatnite is a wild silent movie with a massive twist

A wild ride through Bulgarian silent cinema

If you are into those old movies where everything goes wrong for the main character just because the universe is mean, you should probably watch this. It is a weird one, but in a way that keeps you watching even when the plot gets a bit too much.

People who hate the 'it was all a dream' thing will definitely want to throw their shoes at the screen though. It's a classic soap opera but with the grainy, shaky feel of 1920s film. 🎬

The story focuses on Lena, who is the daughter of a cobbler named Mihail. They live in a small town that feels very quiet, maybe too quiet for the drama that's about to happen.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Patyat na bezpatnite (1928) through its definitive frames.

Lena has this big secret—an illegitimate child she’s hiding with strangers. To pay for the kid, she ends up becoming a prostitute in the city, which is handled with that heavy-handed 1920s moralizing you see in movies like Food for Scandal.

There is a scene where she's just staring off into space, and you can tell she's supposed to be thinking about her life choices. It lingers just a bit too long. I found myself looking at the background actors instead of her face because they looked so confused about where to stand.

The movie gets really dark when the kid falls from a cliff and drowns. The way they shot the cliff scene is actually pretty scary for 1928. It’s not smooth at all, but the clunky editing makes it feel more violent and sudden.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Patyat na bezpatnite (1928) through its definitive frames.

Mihail, the dad, goes totally insane after the kid dies. He does that classic silent movie acting where he grabs his head and shakes it like he's trying to shake his brain loose. It reminds me a bit of the over-the-top reactions in Don Juan, though maybe a bit more grounded in actual sadness.

Then Lena comes home with a scarred face after falling off a rock herself. It feels like the movie is just piling on the misery for the sake of it. You start to wonder how much more this family can take before the film just ends in a pile of rubble. 🏚️

But then, the ending happens. Lena wakes up and she's just passed her exam! All the death and the prostitution and the drowning was just a bad dream because she was stressed about school.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Patyat na bezpatnite (1928) through its definitive frames.

It’s such a cheap trick, but I can’t help but feel a little relieved. Watching a kid drown and a guy go crazy is a lot for a Tuesday afternoon.

Nikolay shows up with flowers at the end and everyone is smiling. It’s so jarring compared to the rest of the movie. It's almost like the director, Vassil Gendov, realized he made things too depressing and tried to fix it in the last five minutes.

If you’ve seen The Reward of Patience, you know how these moral stories usually go. This one just takes a much more traumatizing route to get to the happy ending.

The sets are actually quite nice, especially the cobbler's shop. You can see all the little tools and the messy workspace, which makes the world feel real even when the plot feels like a fever dream.

Is it a masterpiece? Probably not. But it’s a fascinating look at early Bulgarian cinema and how they were already using the same tropes we see in TV movies today.

I liked it mostly for the weirdness. It’s not every day you see a movie that tries to be a tragedy and a rom-com at the exact same time.