ENF from Master & Margarita (1972)

[lonmol]

Continuation of the scene. DVD quality, but some of the women on display are, to put it kindly, less than attractive.

[lonmol]

Caps.

[karaban]

I found out about this great book thanks to this thread! So thanks. There have actually been many adaptations of this book for film & TV. The first videos come from the Aleksandar Petrovic 1972 version. The one lonmol posted in the previous comment come from what is apparently the most famous adaptation, the 2005 miniseries from Vladimir Bortko. Here, for your delectation, is the scene from the 1994 Yuri Kara movie version. Apparently, this movie was in terrible quality for years, but it came out on remastered DVD this year:

http://www.multiupload.com/1WEAFFB312

It's a good version of the scene, but not a great one. There's good nudity in it, but some of the shots, especially the fourth one with nudity, of the women running hither and thither, make little sense. Where are they going? Still, bonus points for lots of full frontal. The first and third shots are the ones to look out for, especially the woman in the foreground of the first shot, desperately tottering on high heels, trying to cover herself with her handbag.

This is a classic ENF circumstance from the book. The women take the clothes because they're greedy and materialistic, only for the Devil to take them away again as a punishment. It's a great setup. Luckily for us, there's a big budget Hollywood adaptation due next year. Whether that will contain any actual nudity is anyone's guess, though I'm pretty hopeful since the scene is both one of the most important in the novel, one of the most dramatic, and one of the easiest to dramatise. We'll see, I guess.

Final thing - don't bother getting hold of any of the other adaptations hoping for nudity from any of them. I can tell you now they don't have any worth speaking of.

[bobh_6]

I bought the novel " Masters and Margarita" can you give me a clue what chapters the enf segments are in. thanks very mutch. bobh_6

[karaban]

Originally Posted by bobh_6

I bought the novel " Masters and Margarita" can you give me a clue what chapters the enf segments are in. thanks very mutch. bobh_6

Hi bobh,

Sorry for the late reply for this request. Maybe you've already found the sections. For you, or for anyone else, the relevant parts of the book are Chapter 12, 'Black Magic & Its Exposure', Chapter 14 'Glory To The Cock!' and the Epilogue. Chapter 12 sets up the black magic show that the Devil puts on, and in this chapter the women in the Variety Theater put on the clothes that will later disappear. However, Bulgakov doesn't describe that until Chapter 14. I've copied out the relevant quote here:

'Rimsky's extremely sharpened hearing suddenly caught the distant trill of a policeman. That in itself never bodes anything pleasant. But when it was repeated and, to assist it, another joined in . . . and to them was added a clearly audible guffawing and even some hooting, the findirector understood at once that something scandalous and vile had happened in the street . . . In the bright glare of the strongest street lights he saw, just below him on the sidewalk, a lady in nothing but a shift and violet bloomers. True, there was a little hat on the lady's head and an umbrella in her hands . . . The lady was in a state of utter consternation, now crouching down, now making as if to run somewhere . . . Grigory Danilovich saw a second lady, in pink underwear. She leaped from the street to the sidewalk, striving to hide in the hallway, but the audience pouring out blocked the way, and the poor victim of her own flightiness and passion for dressing up . . . dreamed of only one thing - falling through the earth.'

In this passage, we can see that the women are portrayed as being just in their underwear. However, in the epilogue, we find this:

'The writer of these truthful lines himself, personally, on a trip to Feodosiya, heard a story on the train about two thousand persons in Moscow coming out of a theater stark-naked in the literal sense of the word and in that fashion returning home in taxi-cabs.'

So here, they are described as completely naked. This has left those attempting adaptations of the story a choice between showing the victims naked or in their underwear. Most have followed 'naked' route, thank goodness, though some haven't, such as Alexsandr Dzekun's 1989 TV series. Let's hope the forthcoming Hollywood adaptation, still tentatively pencilled in for this year (though that's probably way too optimistic) keeps up the tradition, although recent rumours that Tim Burton might be directing don't give me much hope, frankly.

[adorenues]

A clip of the scene from the Yuri Kara Adaptation mentioned above (9 years ago!).

[karaban]

Just an FYI -

After years of aborted Hollywood adaptations (Tim Burton! Baz Luhrmann!) failed to get off the ground, a new Russian version of the tale has been filmed. Called 'Woland', the name of the Devil incarnate who goes to Moscow, the film looks like it (sensibly) focuses more on the more cinematic and accessible early parts of the novel, rather than the austere Jesus stuff. A trailer has already been released:

youtu.be/FUf8oNs3V_4

. . . and a release date is pencilled in for Jan 1st next year. The good news is I think the trailer suggests the women's clothes vanishing at the Variety Theatre is likely to be included. The trailer shows women in bras or undressing in other scenes (not terribly sexy, but enough to suggest it's prepared to 'go there') and more importantly at 57 seconds it shows the previous trick in Woland's show, when the money rains down from the ceiling, so the show is in the movie. Whether they went with filming women naked or in underwear, for any length or just a shot or two, who knows, it's not in the trailer.

The possible bad news is that of course the movie is Russian, so who knows whether the current geopolitical situation might prevent it ever being seen on western screens.