1952 Sofia, Bulgaria

Fannie Krispin
Born 1952
First movie memories in Sofia, Bulgaria, population: 644,000
Interviewed on 01/25/2018
by Georgi Dumanov

The first movie I remember seeing at the tender age of five or six is the Battleship Potemkin (Russian: Бронено́сец «Потёмкин», Bronenosets Potyomkin). My memories are not only about the movie but they sort of waver between the screen and the cinema hall. The thing that I remember about the theatre is the spittoons and the austere ushers who perched like hawks were always on the watch out for young vandals. I have this terrible memory about the spittoons which were the most unbearable aberrations for me at the time, even though they were so common in every public place. As for the movie, the first scene that comes to my mind is the mutiny scene on the Odessa steps especially the scene when a little boy is almost trampled to death and then shot with his mother while she is pleading for mercy. The second startling scene that I remember and has remained so fresh in my mind as if I have just seen the film is that of a mother with a baby in a pram. She is shot in cold blood and while she is sliding down to the ground with blood oozing through her dress the pram with the baby slides down the stairs flying with the speed of lightning. There is also the chunk of meat, teeming with maggots that has taken a permanent hold over my memories.
It was a breathtaking movie with the exception of certain repetitive episodes considering my age and the fact that there were certain allusions that I could not understand at the time. The personages were incredible. As it was a silent movie it was heavily reliant on exaggerated facial expressions and prototypes. There are still certain characters that loom large in my mind i.e. the satanic looking cleric, holding the cross in his hand, the two mothers, the ship’s doctor, the captain and his conniving grimaces, the brutal admiral. Now that I am prompted into these recollections I am in awe of how much I remember even though I was only five or six at the time.
I went to see the movie with my grandfather a meek and gentle person, always in a suit with a vest and white shirt and tie. He had a pocket watch on a silver chain which he kept in the small pocket of his vest with the chain elegantly hanging from it. My grandfather was deaf and as he rarely wore his hearing aid we had the most wonderful silent ways of understanding each other. I loved every silent minute with him for he would never order me about while I was also quite obedient in his presence, and only in his presence. The cinema hall was just around the corner from our house and we walked there. Right next to the cinema there was this small pastry shop and I remember that after every movie we would have a semolina cake in syrup (the Turkish Revani) with a beverage called buza usually made from barley with a slightly acidic sweet flavor and thick consistency. Sitting in the tiny joint, which stands in the same place to this day, my grandfather would elaborate on the film that we had seen, making it understandable for me. I liked it when he would narrate the scenes, clarifying all the ambiguities for me with simple words and answer vividly all the questions that I had ready for him.

Before the films, there was always a newsreel. Newsreels were invariably fraught with sanguine factory workers with an upsurge of working enthusiasm. They worked to live and lived to work for the motherland and the party. The factory shops were spacious and bright. The machines were loud and imposing, the workers were all cheerful. As Sinclair Lewis described a similar scene in Babbitt “Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistles rolled out in a greeting chorus, cheerful as the April dawn; the song of labor in a city built—it seemed—for giants.” The elated voice of the speaker would overwhelm the audience with news of great economic growth and of the timely fulfillment of yet another five-year plan, while the shops outside the theater were empty and the food was scarce. In the fields tractors and reaping machines were plowing through the immensity of fields under the bright sun, the machinists were strong men of vitality always singing with joy. Young and sprightly girls would be picking apples, all smiles, chirping like morning birds. Life was a song according to the newsreel. The newsreel was in stark contrast with the story of the Battleship Potemkin and yet one was lead to infer that there was a natural transition of events. The revolution was a necessity without which the life presented in the newsreel would have been inconceivable. The only difference was that the film was good; there was more reality in it than there was in the newsreel. Therefore people could easily relate to the themes in the film than to the reality which they were supposed to be living. Of course, now I perceive the past from the perspective of my present awareness while at the time, being just an impressionable child, I could have only soaked in all that was happening so as to define the meaning of it all later on in life.