At the end of this short film, troops once again stride down the Odesa steps, ten years after Bronenosets Potyomkin. But these naval cadets, all clad in white, are singing happily and appear to dance like a musical chorus; children and young people rush towards them laughing; Soviet power has healed all wounds and brought sunshine and happiness. Odesawas directed by Frenchman Jean Lods, co-founder of the revolutionary Ciné-club des Amis de Spartacus in 1928 (and later of the IDHEC) who stayed for three years, 1934-1937, in the Soviet Union where he made Odesa, apparently in collaboration with Isaac Babel; very likely the two knew each other from Paris. Babel, who spoke excellent French (and had written his youthful works in French), made several long journeys to the west; in 1927-28 he was in Berlin, in Paris with his emigrated wife, in Brussels with his sister and mother; in 1933 he visited his wife and daughter in Paris and, in April 1933, Maxim Gorky in exile in Sorrento. On this occasion he mentioned to Gorky a proposal from French film producers for a film about the double agent and revolutionary Asef and actually worked on the project for some time. In 1935, he got permission to travel to Paris for a last time and participated at the First International Writers’ Congress for the Defence of Culture, organised by Ilya Ehrenburg, Malraux and Gide. The appeal launched by this meeting of 250 writers from 38 countries has a sinister echo today: “Faced with the threats to culture in many countries, several writers had taken the initiative to organise a congress to discuss and evaluate the means of defending culture.”

Mariann Lewinsky