Rare Lost Film Discovered

The biggest news in cinema since Murnau’s skull was stolen

Cinema history has forever changed with the recent rediscovery of Soft Soviets, directed by the great silent director Sergei Eisenstein. Long thought to have been destroyed in a fit of jealous passion, Soft Soviets (or Supreme Devotion as it’s subtitled) stars a young Charlie Chaplin and Timothée Chalamet as lovers and revolutionaries, torn between their duty to the proletariat and each other.

Scholars stumbled upon the film while browsing the Chicago Facebook Free and For Sale group. Lukas Wheeler posted an image of the film reels, asking for “whatever, someone to take it off my hands.” Wheeler, 19, found Soft Soviets in his grandfather’s garage while looking for “shit to sell” for the upcoming OVO popup shop. “I had no idea what those tiny pictures were,” he said while shuffling his recently copped Yeezys, “but those movie guys thought it was straight fire, I guess.”

Straight fire, indeed, because Soft Soviets may be the single best movie ever made. In fact, it may be the best artwork ever created. After a brief restoration, Supreme Devotion was screened in a limited run before being locked up in permanent preservation, guaranteeing its soon to be elitist and mythic status. At the screening I attended, Chalamet was conspicuously absent.

Regardless, Soft Soviets is surely the pinnacle of all art, the grail of all grails. It draws on an endless number of high-brow references, as the best art does. The compositions suggest Manet’s Impressionist portraits; the editing captures Basho’s intangible haikus; Chaplin and Chalamet are clearly influenced by the poetry of Sappho. Two viewers passed out in ecstasy; another apparently died as the film came to a close, having seen all there is to see.

The Strand reached out to Chalamet’s agent, but they declined to comment.