In these endnotes works cited frequently or by several authors are abbreviated as follows:
Introduction
1 FF, p. 1.
2 Yuri Tsivian et al. (eds), Testimoni silenziosi. Film russi 1908–19191 Silent Witnesses. Russian Films, 1908–1919(Pordenone and London: 1989).
3 L.Schnitzer, J.Schnitzer and M.Martin (eds), Le Cinéma soviétique par ceux quil’ont fait (Paris: 1966), translated and edited by D.Robinson as: Cinema in Revolution(London: 1973).
1
Early Russian Cinema: Some Observations
1 The Moving Picture World, vol. 35, no. 5 (1918), p. 640.
2 Kino-gazeta, no. 15 (1918), p. 5.
3 S.Goslavskaya, Zaplski kinoaktrisy [Notes of a Cinema Actress] (Moscow: 1974), p. 116; for lubok, see p. 167 this volume.
4 Transcript of a conversation with Giatsintova. T.Ponomareva Archive.
5 G.A.Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973), p. 126.
6 For Aleinikov, see pp. 84–6, 102 this volume.
7 The word for cinema in Russian, as in English, was neither static nor consistent at this time: kino, kinematograf, kinema, sinema, sinematograf, kinotvorchestvo and svetopis’ were among the more common terms deployed. I have used ‘cinema’, except where ‘cinematograph’ seemed obviously more appropriate. Stainslavsky consistently used sinematograf to describe his stage concept. (Translator’s note)
8 Ezhegodnik MKhT. 1944, vol. 1 (Moscow: 1946), p. 120.
9 M.Aleinikov, ‘Zapiski kinematografista. Vospominaniya’ [Notes of a Cinematographer. Memoirs], TsGALI (Central State Archive of Literature and Art), 2734/1/19, p. 33.
10 Valeri Bryuov (1873–1924), leading Russian Symbolist poet.
11 Aleinikov, p. 34.
12 M.A. [Moisei Aleinikov], ‘Khudozhestvennaya postanovka i sinematograf’ [Artistic Production and the Cinematograph], Cine-Phono, no. 3 (1907), p. 1.
13 Khanzhonkov and Pathé were the two leading film companies in Russia at that time.
14 N.I.Orlov, ‘Pervye kinos”emki v Rossii’ [The First Filming in Russia], Central Film Museum Archive, Moscow.
15 Peterburzhskaya gazeta [The Petersburg Gazette], no. 161, 15 June 1907.
16 Orlov, p. 6.
17 ibid., pp. 7–8.
18 ibid., p. 7.
19 ibid., p. 8.
20 ibid.
21 Aleinikov, p. 45.
22 F.Otsep, Kinematograf [Cinema] (Plan for a book), TsGALI, 2734/1/72.
23 I.Petrovskii, ‘Kinodrama ili kinopovest’?’ [Film Drama or Film Story?], Proektor, no.20(1916), p. 3.
24 Proektor, no. 19 (1916), p. 11.
25 Proektor, no. 9(1916), p. 15.
26 Petrovskii, p. 3.
27 V.R.Gardin, Vospominaniya [Memoirs], vol. 1: 1912–21 (Moscow: 1949), p. 151.
28 V.Gaidarov, V teatre i kino [In Theatre and Cinema] (Moscow: 1966), pp. 101–2.
29 I.Mozzhukhin [Mosjoukine], ‘V chem defekt?’ [Where Lies the Defect?], Teatral’naya gazeta, no. 30 (1915), p. 13.
30 Teatral’naya gazeta, no. 19 (1914), p. 11.
31 Teatral’naya gazeta, no. 43 (1915), p. 16.
32 A.Levinson, ‘O nekotorykh chertakh russkoi kinematografii’ [Some Character istics of Russian Cinema], Poslednie novosti [The Latest News] (Paris), no. 1512, 29 March 1925.
33 Petrovskii, p. 3.
34 Moscow Art Theatre Museum, 5323/1250.
35 Petrovskii, p. 3.
36 Proektor, no. 17 (1916), p. 3.
37 A.Voznesenskii, ‘Kinodetstvo’ [Cinema Childhood], Iskusstvo kino [The Art of Cinema], no. 11 (November 1985), p. 93.
38 V.Meierkhol’d [Meyerhold], ‘Portret Doriana Greya’ [The Picture of Dorian Gray], in Iz istorii kino 6 (Moscow: 1965), p. 24.
39 ‘Mister Ray’, ‘Leonid Andreyev u Tolstogo’ [Leonid Andreyev at Tolstoy’s], Utro Rossii [The Morning of Russia], no. 134 (29 April 1910), p. 2.
40 I have used the term ‘speaking picture’ for the Russian ‘kinogovoryashchaya kartina’ to distinguish it from the rather different ‘talking picture’ [govoryashchaya kartina] which emerged in the late 1920s. (Translator’s note)
41 Ya.Zhdanov, ‘Po Rossii s kinogovoryashchimi kartinami’ [Through Russia with Speaking Films], Central Cinema Museum Archive, pp. 2–3. The film to which Zhdanov referred was the early Lumière short L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat [The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, France, 1895], which formed part of the first cinematograph programmes.
42 K.Novitskaya, ‘Vospominaniya o stareishem rezhissere Petre Ivanoviche Chardynine’ [Memoirs of the Senior Director Pyotr Ivanovich Chardynin], Central Cinema Museum Archive, no page nos.
43 Zhdanov, p. 3.
44 L.Forest’e [Forestier], Velikii nemoi [The Great Silent] (Moscow: 1945), p. 55.
45 Zhdanov, p. 5.
46 Novitskaya.
47 Cine-Phono, no. 3 (1913), p. 26.
48 M.Daniel’, Pervyi raz v kino [First Time at the Cinema] (Moscow/Leningrad: 1940), p. 13.
49 Zhdanov, p. 11.
50 Novitskaya.
51 M.Malthête-Méliès, Méliès l’enchanteur [Méliès the Enchanter] (Paris: 1973), pp. 398–9.
52 ‘Agasfer’, ‘Maks Linder v Peterburge’ [Max Linder in St Petersburg], Kinokur’er [Cine-Courier], no. 1 (1913), p. 15.
53 P.Konradi, ‘Teatr i kinematograf’ [Theatre and Cinema], Kinematograficheskii teafr- [Cinema Theatre], no. 15 (1911), p. 6.
54 Artist istsena [The Artist and the Stage], no. 10 (1911), p. 22.
55 ‘Impressionist’ [B.Bentovin], ‘Samooborona’ [Self-Defence], Teatr i iskusstvo [Theatre and Art], no. 40 (1911), p. 740.
56 E.Beskin, ‘Karamazovy na stsene’ [Karamazov on Stage], Rannee utro [Early Morning], 15 October 1910.
57 V.I.Nemirovich-Danchenko, Izbrannye pis’ma [Selected Letters] (Moscow: 1979), vol. 2, p. 42.
58 ibid., p. 43.
59 Impressionist’, p. 740.
60 Teatral’naya gazeta, no. 12 (1913), p. 11.
61 Gardin, pp. 79–80.
62 E.Beskin, ‘Ne tovarishch’ [Not a Comrade], Teatral’naya gazeta, no. 47 (1914), p. 3.
63 P.Orlenev, Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo russkogo aktera Pavla Orleneva, opisannye im samim [The Life and Work of the Russian Actor Pavel Orlenev as Described by Himself] (Leningrad/Moscow: 1961), pp. 251–2.
64 Teatr,no. 1684 (1915), p. 3.
65 ibid.
2
Kuleshov’s Experiments and the New Anthropology of the Actor
1 Yu.A.Ozarovskii, ‘Sushchnost’ mimicheskogo ucheniya Del’sarta’ [The Essence of Delsarte’s Teaching on Mime], Golos i rech’ [Voice and Speech], no. 1 (January 1913), p. 5.
2 J.d’Udine [Zh. D’Udin], Iskusstvo i zhest [Art and Gesture] (St Petersburg: 1912), p. 73.
3 ibid., p. 95.
4 ibid., p. 22.
5 ibid., p. 100.
6 ibid., p. 220.
7 S.Volkonskii, Chelovek na stsene [Man on Stage] (St Petersburg: 1912), p. 150.
8 ibid. p. 127.
9 S.Volkonskii, Vyrazitel’nyi chelovek. Stsenicheskoe vospitanie zhesta (po Del’sartu) [Expressive Man. Stage Gesture Training (after Delsarte)] (St Petersburg: 1913), p. 79.
10 Cited in: S.Volkonskii, Otkliki teatra [Theatre’s Responses] (Petrograd: 1914), p. 123.
11 ibid., p. 152.
12 ibid., p. 169.
13 ibid., p. 178.
14 Volkonskii, Vyrazitel’nyi chelovek, p. 132.
15 V.R.Gardin, Vospominaniya [Memoirs], vol. 1: 1912–21 (Moscow: 1949), p. 143.
16 ibid., p. 139.
17 ibid., p. 170.
18 ibid., p. 178.
19 L.V.Kuleshov and A.S.Khokhlova, 50 let v kino [50 Years in Cinema] (Moscow: 1975), p. 74.
20 See: E.Gromov, L. V.Kuleshov (Moscow: 1984), p. 103.
21 The Film School became GTK in 1925–30 and then GIK in 1930–4, since when it has been called VGIK.
22 Kuleshov and Khokhlova, pp. 74–5.
23 Gardin, p. 52.
24 ibid., p. 134.
25 ibid., p. 120.
26 ibid., p. 138.
27 ibid., p. 192.
28 ibid.
29 ibid., p. 203.
30 Golos i rech’, no. 3 (March 1913), p. 26.
31 V.Turkin, ‘Litsedei i naturshchiki’ [Simulators and Models], Kino-gazeta, no. 29 (July 1918).
32 A.Lee, ‘Ekran i ritm’ [The Screen and Rhythm], ibid.
33 ibid.
34 ibid.
35 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘Iskusstvo svetotvorchestva’ [The Art of Cinema] (svetotvorchestvo, literally ‘light creation’, was one of the early Russian words for cinema), Kino-gazeta, no. 12 (March 1918); FF, pp. 45–6.
36 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘Znamya kinematografii’ [The Banner of Cinema], first published in: LVK, p. 90.
37 Strzhigotskii (pseudonym of V. Turkin), ‘Spor o printsipakh ili bor’ba za stil’? [An Argument about Principles or a Battle for Style?], Kino (Moscow), no. 1 (20 October 1922), p. 11.
38 Gardin, p. 174.
39 ibid., p. 195.
40 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘Chto nado delat’ v kinematograficheskikh shkolakh’ [What Must Be Done in Film Schools], probably written in 1921 and first published in: LVK, p. 158.
41 ibid.
42 ibid., p. 159.
43 ibid., p. 160.
44 ibid.
45 Cited in: ibid., p. 134.
46 Kuleshov and Khokhlova, pp. 68–9.
47 V.T. [V. Tikhonovich], ‘Zakonomernyi teatr’ [Regulated Theatre], Vestnik iskusstv [Herald of the Arts], no. 1 (1922), pp. 12–13.
48 B.Ferdinandov, ‘Teatr segodnya’ [Theatre Today] in the book O teatre [On Theatre] (Tver: 1922), p. 47.
49 ibid., p. 44.
50 ibid., p. 46.
51 N.L’vov, ‘Analiticheskii teatr’ [Analytical Theatre], Vestnik iskusstv, no. 2 (1922), pp. 5–6.
52 I.Sokolov, ‘Metro-ritm Ferdinandova’ [Ferdinandov’s Metro-Rhythm], Vestnik iskusstv, no. 3/4 (1922), p. 15.
53 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘Kinematograf kak fiksatsiya teatral’nogo deistviya’ [Cinema as the Fixing of Theatrical Action], Ermitazh, no. 13 (8–13 August 1922), p. 15; reprinted in LVK, p. 116; translated in: FF, pp. 66–7.
54 ‘Plan rabot eksperimental’noi kinolaboratorii na 1923/24 god’, first published in: LVK, p. 199.
55 Volkonskii, Otkliki, p. 188.
56 N.M., ‘Ballet i kinematografiya’ [Ballet and Cinematography], Ekran, no. 22 (21–28 February 1922), p. 4.
57 V.Turkin, Kino-akter [The Cinema Actor] (Moscow: 1925), pp. 9–10.
58 ibid., p. 10.
59 A.Belenson, Kino segodnya. Ocherki sovetskogo kino-iskusstva (Kuleshov-Vertov-Eizenshtein) [Cinema Today. Essays in Soviet Cinema Art (Kuleshov-Vertov-Eisenstein)] (Moscow: 1925), p. 23.
60 L.V.Kuleshov, Iskusstvo kino [The Art of Cinema] (Moscow: 1929), pp. 24–7; translated in: Levaco, p. 51.
61 I.Sokolov, ‘Industrializatsiya zhesta’ [The Industrialisation of Gesture], Ermitazh, no.10(July 1922), p. 6.
62 ibid., p. 7.
63 O.Bir, ‘Chelovek i mashina. Kino i teatr’ [Man and Machine, Cinema and Theatre], Vestnik iskusstv, no. 3–4 (1922), p. 14.
64 ibid.
65 A.Gan, ‘Kino-tekhnikum’ [The Cine-Technicum], Ermitazh, no. 10 (July 1922), p. 11.
66 Istoriya gosudarstvennogo Instituta Kinematografii’, Kino-Fot, no. 3 (19–25 September 1922), pp. 8–9.
67 A.Voznesenskii, Iskusstvo ekrana. Rukovodstvo dlya kino-aktërov i rezhissërov [The Art of the Screen. A Guide for Film Actors and Directors] (Kiev: 1924) pp. 121–2.
Intolerance and the Soviets: A Historical Investigation
1 S.M.Eisenstein [Eizenshtein] ‘Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today’, in: Film Form, pp. 195–255; Pudovkin, pp. 47 et passim; L.V.Kuleshov, ‘David Griffith and CharlieChaplin’, in: Levaco, pp. 144–5. For other Soviet acknowledgements see: S.I.Yutkevich, ‘Griffit i ego aktëry’ [Griffith and His Actors’], in O kinoiskusstve [On Cinema Art] (Moscow: 1962), pp. 154–72; and Leonid Trauberg’s letter to Griffith, 7 September 1936, in the Griffith Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
2 See: I.Barry, D.W.Griffith: American Film Master (Nev/York: 1965), p.26; and S.Stern, The Soviet Directors’ Debt to D.W.Griffith’, Films in Review, vol. 7, no. 5 (May 1956), pp. 203–9. In the standard English-language history of Soviet cinema, Jay Leyda (Leyda, p. 143) even goes so far as to claim that, in the wake of the introduction of Intolerance into the Soviet Union, no important film made in the USSR for the next decade ‘was to be completely outside Intolerance’s sphere of influence’.
3 See: D.Bordwell, ‘The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 11, no. 2 (Spring 1972), pp. 9–17; and G.Huaco, The Sociology of Film Art (NewYork: 1965), pp. 347–9.
4 ‘Amerikanshchina’, Kino-Fot, no. 1 (25–31 August 1922), pp. 14–15; ‘Americanitis’ in Levaco, p. 128; ‘Americanism’, FF, pp. 72–3. For a detailed discussion of the detektiv and its evolution in the hands of the Soviets, see: V. Revich, ‘Soratniki Zorge’ [‘Sorge’s Advisers’], in: M.Dolinskii and S.Chertok (eds), Ekran 1968–1969 (Moscow: 1969), pp. 139–44; and S.Yutkevich et al. (eds), Kinoslovar’ v dvukh tomakh [Cinema Dictionary in 2 vols] (Moscow: 1966), vol. 1, cols 447–8.
5 Pudovkin interview with Jeanne Gauzner, cited in Leyda, p. 150.
6 Marchand and Weinstein, p. 42.
7 Conflicting accounts of this survive. Leyda (p. 142, n. 2) reports that distributor Jacques Cibrario was commissioned to persuade Griffith to work in the USSR.Journalist George MacAdam claims that a Soviet emissary named Joseph Malkin extended the invitation (‘Our New Art for Export’, New York Times, 13 April 1924, sec. 4, p. 2).
8 S.P.Hill, ‘Kuleshov—Prophet Without Honor?’, Film Culture, no. 44 (Spring 1967), pp. 8, 21. See above, ch. 2, n. 35.
9 D.Vertov, Stat’i. Dnevniki. Zamysli [Articles. Diaries. Projects] (ed.: S.V.Drobashenko) (Moscow: 1966), p. 116; A. Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (trans. K. O’Brien) (Berkeley, Calif.: 1984), p. 94.
10 S.Ginzburg, Kinematografiya dorevolyutsionnoi Rossii [The Cinema of Pre-Revolutionary Russia] (Moscow: 1963), pp. 273–4. Cf. the discussion by Yuri Tsivian, p. 7 this volume.
11 For examples of widely read histories that repeat the legend, see: Leyda, p. 142; and G.Mast, A Short History of the Movies (New York: 1971), p. 190.
12 Ginzburg, p. 212.
13 ibid., p. 213, n. 1. Cibrario was to become an infamous figure in the annals of Soviet film when he later swindled the Soviets on an equipment deal.
14 V.Listov (ed.), ‘Prolog k Neterpimosti’ [The prologue to Intolerance], Iz istori ikino 9 (Moscow: 1974). p. 189.
15 ibid.
16 Izvestiya, 27 May 1919. p. 4.
17 E.Kartseva (ed.), ‘Amerikanskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [American Silent Films in Soviet Distribution], Kino i vremya 1(Moscow: 1960), p. 193.
18 The appearance of Intolerance in the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a period in which foreign films dominated Soviet screens. For catalogues of foreign films appearing in the USSR in the 1920s, see: Kartseva, pp. 193–225; Yu. Greidung (ed.),’Frantsuzskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [French Silent Films in Soviet Distribution], Kino i vremya 4 (Moscow: 1965), pp. 348–79; and N.Egorova (ed.),’Nemetskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [German Silent Films in Soviet Distribution], ibid., pp. 380–476.
19 Listov, p. 189.
20 ibid., p. 191.
21 Pravda, 29 May 1921, p. 4.
22 The screening was even delayed to allow the Cinema Committee to prepare multi-language texts of the prologue for the delegates (Listov, p. 191). This was all in keeping with the policies of internationalism of the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union. In the same vein as the Intolerance prologue, for instance, Glebov Putilovsky and his Petrograd Cinema Committee published a photographic history of the October Revolution for workers and radicals in Western Europe and America. The book was supposed to demonstrate the utility of the ‘new international language of picture facts’(Fotoocherk po istorii Velikoi oktyabr’skoi revolyutsii, 1917–1920 [A Photographic Essay on the History of the Great October Revolution, 1917–20] (Petrograd: n.d.)).
23 Listov, pp. 189–90.
24 ibid., p. 190.
25 ibid.
26 ibid.
27 ibid.
28 ibid., p. 191.
29 Playbill for Intolerance, from the Griffith Collection, Museum of Modern Art, NewYork.
30 Film Form, p. 243.
31 I am indebted to Professor Steven P.Hill of the University of Illinois and to Professor Russell Merritt of the University of Wisconsin for their advice and assistance.
32 This translation by Richard Taylor is based on a draft by Betty and Vance Kepley of: N.N.Glebov-Putilovskii, Prolog k kinospektaklyu ‘Neterpimost”[Prologue to the Film Show Intolerance] (Petrograd: 1921), reproduced in Listov, pp. 189–91.
33 This anachronism is in the original Russian text.
4
The Origins of Soviet Cinema: A Study in Industry Development
1 See: E.Schmulévitch, ‘Le Décret de nationalisation du cinema russe’, Positif, no. 178 (February 1976), pp. 34–40; ibid., no. 179 (March 1976), pp. 55–62; ibid., no. 180 (April 1976), pp. 55–61.
2 See the figures provided in S.P.Hill. ‘A Quantitative View of Soviet Cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 12, no. 2 (1972), p. 21.
3 See, for example: G.Mast, A Short History of the Movies (3rd edn, Indianapolis, Ind.: 1981), ch. 8; and A.Knight, The Liveliest Art (rev. edn, New York: 1979), pp. 65–85.
4 Leyda (3rd edn, Princeton, NJ: 1983), p. 7.
5 Babitsky and Rimberg, ch. 1; Taylor, chs 3–7.
6 The following outline of developmental principles and their application to the Soviet economy, encompassing the next several paragraphs of text, draws from several sources. On developmental principles generally, see: C.R.McConnell, Economics: Prlnciples, Problems, and Policies (7th edn, New York: 1978), ch. 21. On their applications to the Soviet system, see: N.Spulber, Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth (Bloomington, Ind.: 1964); D.A.Dyker, The Soviet Economy (New York: 1976), ch. 1; R.W.Campbell, The Soviet-Type Economies (3rd edn, Boston, Mass.: 1974), chs 1, 4 and 6; E.Zaleski, Planning for Economic Growth in the Soviet Union,1919–1932 (Chapel Hill, NC: 1971), chs 1–2. On the history of the Soviet economy, especially the transition from War Communism to the New Economic Policy, see: A.Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (Harmondsworth: 1969), chs 3–4; M.Dobb, Soviet Economic Development since 1917 (rev. edn, New York: 1966), chs4–8.
7 Nove, pp. 46–69.
8 ibid., p. 47; Dobb, pp. 84–8.
9 I.S.Smirnova (ed.), Samoe vazhnoe iz vsekh iskusstv: Lenin o kino [The Most Important of All the Arts: Lenin on Cinema] (Moscow: 1973), pp. 116–17; Marchand and Weinstein, pp. 14–15; I.N.Vladimirtseva and A.M. Sandler (eds), Istoriya sovetskogo kino 1917–1967 [The History of Soviet Cinema 1917–1967] (4 vols, Moscow: 1969–76), vol. 1, p. 14.
10 L.Aksel’rod,’ Dokumenty po istorii natsionalizatsii russkoi kinematografii’[Documents on the History of the Nationalisation of Russian Cinema], Iz istorii kino 1(Moscow: 1958), pp. 25–7; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 19.
11 Aksel’rod, pp. 26–8; Marchand and Weinstein, pp. 17–19; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 15–18.
12 Marchand and Weinstein, pp. 33–4; Aksel’rod, p. 31.
13 Aksel’rod, pp. 29–34.
14 ibid., pp. 32–4; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 19; N.F. Preobrazhenskii,’ Vospominaniya o rabote VFKO’ [Reminiscences of the Work of VFKO], Iz istori ikino 1 (Moscow: 1958), pp. 85–90.
15 Smirnova, p. 51.
16 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 22–3; Preobrazhenskii, pp. 88–9.
17 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 22.
18 ibid., p. 21; Aksel’rod, pp. 35–6.
19 These figures are derived from production catalogues in SKhF, vol. 1, pp. 5–31 and vol. 3, pp. 249–306. Roughly one-third of the private production activity took place in outlying areas, most commonly on the Black Sea coast.
20 On exhibition arrangements, see: Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 15 March 1932, p. 142; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 16–17; Aksel’rod, p. 31; Preobrazhenskii, p. 90. On precedents for the portable cinemas, see: M.L. Sanders, ‘British Film Propaganda in Russia, 1916–1918’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television, vol. 3, no. 2 (1983), pp. 117–29; Taylor, p. 9. On the intensive utilisation of the rail system, see: Campbell, pp. 150–1.
21 Nove, pp. 83–90.
22 Dobb, pp. 132–8.
23 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 23; Marchand and Weinstein, pp. 45–57; S.Bratolyubov, Na zare sovetskoi kinematografii [At the Dawn of Soviet Cinema](Leningrad: 1976), p. 13.
24 A.M.Gak, ‘K istorii sozdaniya Sovkino’ [Towards a History of the Creation of Sovkino], Iz istorii kino 5 (Moscow: 1962), p. 131; A.V.Ryazanova et al. (eds), Lunacharskii o kino [Lunacharsky on Cinema] (Moscow: 1965), pp. 29–35; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 23; Babitsky and Rimberg, pp. 270–1. The value of the rouble fluctuated during the 1920s, but the exchange rate of gold-backed currency averaged about two roubles to the US dollar.
25 Gak, pp. 134–5; Ryazanova, pp. 22–4, 28–35.
26 Nove, p. 89; E.H.Carr, A History of Soviet Russia (14 vols, London: 1954–78), vol. 5, pp. 454–5.
27 Gak, pp. 134–5; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 30; Ryazanova, p. 264; Smirnova, pp. 105–7, 169–70.
28 Y.A.L’vunin, ‘Organizatsiya Mezhdunarodnaya Rabochaya Pomoshch’ i sovetskoekino’ [The Workers’ International Relief Organisation and Soviet Cinema], Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta, 9th series, no. 4 (1971), pp. 21–6; Yu.A.L’vunin and I.Polyanskii, ‘Blagodarya lichnomu sodeistviyu V.I.Lenina’ [Thanks to Lenin’s Personal Assistance], Iskusstvo Kino (January 1978), pp. 7–8.
29 L’vunin and Polyanskii, pp. 6–8; L’vunin, pp. 27–33; W.Münzenberg, Solidarität: Zehn Jahre Internationale Arbeiterhilfe, 1921–1931 (Berlin: 1931), pp. 519–20.
30 L’vunin and Polyanskii, p. 8; Münzenberg, pp. 510–13.
31 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 24–6, 30; Gak, p. 132; New York Times, 5 August 1932, sec. 2, p. 1..
32 Ryazanova, p. 262; Smirnova, p. 42; the Lenin quotation is translated in: FF, p. 57.
33 Nove, p. 89; Carr, vol. 5, pp. 441–4, and vol. 10, p. 708.
34 On the government’s foreign trade monopoly, see: A.Nove, The Soviet Economic System (London: 1977), pp. 267–87; on the USSR’s general procedures for importing foreign films, see: B.Kepley and V.Kepley, ‘Foreign Films on Soviet Screens, 1922–1931’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 4, no. 4 (1979), pp. 429–42.
35 Gak, p. 136; V.Golovskoi (ed.), Kino i zritel’ [Cinema and the Audience] (Moscow: 1968), p. 14. See above, ch. 3, n. 18.
36 Gak, pp. 133–8; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 27–9.
37 Nove, Economic History, p. 103; Dobb, pp. 142–3.
38 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 28–9; Gak, pp. 139–41.
39 The number of operating commercial theatres dropped to 20 per cent of the 1917level in Ural-Siberia, for example, 20 per cent in Samarkand, 50 per cent in Tashkent, and 40 per cent in Rostov: Gak, p. 136.
40 Gak, pp. 139–44.
41 ibid., pp. 141–4; Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, pp. 30–1.
42 M.D.Kann (ed.), Film Daily Yearbook-1927 (New York: 1928), pp. 949–50; idem, Film Daily Yearbook–1930 (New York: 1931), p. 1043; Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 1 January 1930, p. 8; A.V. Troyanovskii and R.I. Eliyazarov, Izuchenie kinozritelya [The Study of the Cinema Audience] (Moscow: 1928), pp. 39–43.
43 The figures are from E. Lemberg, Kinopromyshlennost’ SSSR [The Cinema Industry of the USSR] (Moscow: 1930), appendix 4, n.p.
44 ibid., p. 71.
45 Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 15 March 1932, p. 142; ibid., January 1935, p. 8.
46 New York Times, 31 July 1927, sec. 7, p. 2; N. Lebedev (ed.), Lenin, Stalin, partiya o kino [Lenin, Stalin, the Party on Cinema] (Moscow: 1939), p. 56.
47 Economic Review of the Soviet Union, January 1930, p. 8.
48 Hill, p. 21; Lemberg, p. 47.
49 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 32; Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 1 January 1929, p. 17; ibid., 15 March 1932, p. 143; Carr, vol. 10, pp. 705–16.
50 Hill, p. 21.
51 wish to thank Betty Kepley for her advice and assistance.
5
Down to Earth: Aelita relocated
1 ‘O literature, revolyutsii, entropii i prochem’ [On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters], in: Pisateli ob iskussive i o sebe [Writers on Art and on Themselves] (Moscow: 1924), translated in M. Ginsburg (ed. and trans.), A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Chicago: 1970), p. 109.
2 High Treason [Great Britain, 1929], directed by Maurice Elvey, and Things to Come [Great Britain, 1936], directed by William Cameron Menzies, are typical of the many science-fiction and fantasy films widely reputed—in the absence of frequent screenings—to be less impressive in dramatic terms than their striking publicity stills. Another instance, closer to the case of Aelita, is Harry Lachman’s Dante’s Inferno [USA, 1935] from which only stills of the final ‘Hell’ sequence, uncharacteristic of the film as a whole, are ever reproduced.
3 See, for example, C.Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, Conn.: 1983), p. 292, and J.Milner, Russian Revolutionary Art (London: 1979), p. 64. Both of these use a number of Aelita stills and reach different verdicts on the ‘Martian’ decor, but fail to make clear that it features as a dream. Similarly D. Albrecht, Designing Dreams: Modern Architecture in the Movies (London: 1987), describes the film as ‘a science-fiction fantasy set mainly on Mars’ (p. 52); and D.Elliott, New Worlds: Russian Art and Society, 1900–1937 (London: 1986), refers to ‘a Soviet expedition to Mars’ in a section headed ‘Visions of the future’ (p. 99). Typical of the synoptic surveys that describe the film as an expedition to Mars is D.Menville and R.Reginald, Things to Come: An Illustrated History of the Science-Fiction Film (New York: 1977), p. 29.One of the few general cinema histories to describe Aellta accurately and discuss it sympathetically is E. Rhode, A History of the Cinema from its Origins to 1970 (London: 1976), pp. 115–16.
4 The most famous contemporary attacks were by Kuleshov, himself a former art director in the pre-Revolutionary cinema. For instance, ‘Pryamoi put’. (Diskussionno)’ [A Straight Path (Ideas for Discussion)], Kino-gazeta, no. 48 (25 September 1924); in Ye. Khokhlova (ed.), Lev Kuleshov: Fifty Years in Films (Moscow: 1987), pp. 60–1. For other dismissive mentions, see also: V. Blyum, ‘Against the “Theatre of Fools”—For Cinema’, FF, p. 117; A. Goldobin, ‘Our Cinema and its Audience’, FF, p. 125.
5 The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks [Neobychainye priklyucheniya Mistera Vesta v strane bol’shevikov, 1924] consists of a series of tricks played by conmen on the innocent Mr West, ending with a tour of the ‘real Moscow’ after his rescue. The Great Consoler [Velikii uteshitel’, 1933] sets a fantastic tale of the Wild West within a framing story of the author O. Henry’s imprisonment.
6 The New Economic Policy came into force during 1921, as it became clear to Lenin that full-scale nationalisation and centralisation of the Soviet economy were not working. In a series of measures, private trading was re-legalised, co-operatives were encouraged, the state monopoly on trade was abolished and the right to organise small business enterprises was granted. Heavy industry, banking and foreign trade remained state monopolies. The entrepreneurs of the NEP were known as ‘Nepmen’, who soon became popular targets of rumour and satire. For many Bolsheviks, NEP represented a retreat, though Lenin defended it as a return to the policies of 1918, before these had been distorted by the exigencies of ‘War Communism’. However, his failing health from 1922 limited his contribution to the debate over NEP, which reached its peak in 1923–4. The policy theoretically continued until the start of the first Five Year Plan in 1929. See A.Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (Harmondsworth: 1969), chs 4 and 5. See also pp. 67–79 this volume.
7 Nikolai Tsereteli (Los/Spiridonov) and Konstantin Eggert were leading actors at the Moscow Kamerny [Chamber] Theatre; Igor Ilyinsky (Kravtsev) belonged to Meyerhold’s company from 1920; Yuliya Solntseva (Aelita) had no previous stage or screen experience. All were making their film début—and Eggert was so impressed that he left the theatre permanently for cinema, according to M. Arlazorov, Protazanov (Moscow: 1973), pp. 120–1. Other actors were drawn from cinema and theatre, making the production famous for its diversity of acting talent. (I am grateful to Richard Taylor for this and other translations from Arlazorov.)
8 For contemporaneous accounts, see: H.Carter, The New Theatre and Cinema of Soviet Russia (London: 1924); O. Sayler, Inside the Moscow Art Theatre (NewYork: 1925); R.Fülöp-Miller and J.Gregor, The Russian Theatre (trans. P. England) (London: 1930). The Kamerny Theatre toured Western Europe in 1923.
9 See Sayler, pp. 96 ff. for a description of Rabinovich’s set, consisting of grouped classical columns connected by curving pediments, for Lysistrata; also an interview with this prolific designer, who also worked for the Kamerny and Habima theatres.
10 Arlazorov, p. 122.
11 Pravda, 1 October 1924 (thanks are due to Jeffrey Brooks for this reference); Kino-gazeta, no. 48 (23 September 1924), quoted in Arlazorov, p. 123, which is also the source for other information about the film’s première.
12 A copy of this is preserved in the Central Film Museum at the Moscow Film Centre and was kindly made available by Rashit Yangirov.
13 No actual figures are available, but these should emerge from the empirical work on Soviet popular cinema currently being done by Maya Turovskaya and Yekaterina Khokhlova. All sources, however, point to Aellta as probably the biggest box-office success before The Bear’s Wedding.
14 The Bear’s Wedding was scripted by Lunacharsky, whose wife appeared in it. Konstantin Eggert played the lead and co-directed with the experienced Vladimir Gardin. Leonid Trauberg recalled, in conversation, Eggert’s popularity with women after his portrayal of the vampire count.
15 Pravda, 1 October 1924.
16 Izvestiya quoted in: J.-L.Passek (ed.), Le Cinéma russe et soviétique (Paris: 1981), p. 183; Lunacharsky quoted by L.Pliushch in a note on Aelita, in: La Victoire sur le soleil: Russe 1905–1935, documentation accompanying an exhibition and film programme at the Cinémathèque de Toulouse, 1984.
17 T.Dickinson and C.De la Roche, Soviet Cinema (London: 1948), p. 20. Although there are references to a print of Aelita in London in the 1920s, it appears never to have been shown publicly.
18 Bryher [pseud. of W.Ellerman], Film Problems of Soviet Russia (Territet, Switzerland: 1929), pp. 113–14.
19 ibid.
20 P.Rotha, The Film Till Now (London: 1929; expanded edn 1960), p. 98.
21 This short account of Mezhrabpom-Rus and its links with Germany owes much to Vance Kepley’s valuable article, ‘The Workers’ International Relief and the Cinema of the Left 1921–1935’, Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1983), pp. 7–23. ‘Left’ in the Soviet context of this time meant formally experimental or avant-garde, while elsewhere it tended to mean socialist or sympathetic to the USSR. See also pp. 70–1 this volume.
22 Leyda, p. 146.
23 ibid., p. 147.
24 Kepley, ‘The Workers’ International Relief...’, p. 12.
25 FF, p. 97.
26 Four and Five was announced as opening at the Ars Cinema on 19 September 1924 and reviewed in Pravda on 24 September.
27 A.V.Lunacharskii, ‘Revolyutsionnaya ideologiya i kino—tezisy’, Kinonedelya, no.24 (1924); FF, p. 109.
28 On Protazanov’s career in France, see: L.Borger, ‘From Moscow to Montreuil: The Russian Emigrés in France 1920–1929’ and K.Thompson, ‘The Ermolieff Group in Paris: Exile, Impressionism, Internationalism’, Grifftthiana (Pordenone, Italy), no. 35–6 (October 1989), pp. 28–39, 50–7. On the terms of Protazanov’s invitation, see Leyda, p. 186n. Arlazorov refers to an ‘Ivan the Terrible’ project he had interrupted and did not return to (p. 128).
29 Arlazorov, p. 119.
30 Letter to Nikolai Chaikovsky quoted in M.Slonim, Modern Russian Literature(Oxford: 1957), p. 370.
31 Surveyed in D.Suvin, ‘The Utopian Tradition of Russian Science Fiction’, Modern Language Review, no. 66 (1971), pp. 145–51.
32 All references to the translation by Leland Fetzer, Aelita, or the Decline of Mars (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1985).
33 Ye. Zamyatin, ‘Novaya russkaya proza’ [The New Russian Prose], Russkoe iskusstvo, nos 2–3 (1923); translated in Ginsburg, p. 102.
34 Arlazorov, pp. 118–19, quotes an interview with Tolstoi in Literaturnyi Leningrad (n.d., but probably 1937).
35 Dates taken from English-language titles on an American distribution print (Films Inc.) of unknown provenance. Bryher cites the period as 1919–23, but had not seen the film.
36 V.Alexandrova, A History of Soviet Literature 1917–64 (New York: 1964), pp. 239–40.
37 Yu.Tsivian et al. (eds), Silent Witnesses: Russian Films 1908–1919 (Pordenone and London: 1989), pp. 160–2.
38 ibid., pp. 422–6; see also: Denise J.Youngblood, p. 107 this volume.
39 Arlazorov, p. 117.
40 ibid., p. 119.
41 See: I.Christie, ‘Making sense of early Soviet sound’, p. 190 this volume.
42 On the ‘boundary situation’, or entry from the real into the fantastic world, see M.Mendelson, ‘Opening Moves: The Entry into the Other World’, Extrapolation, vol.25, no. 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 171–9.
43 H.Carter, The New Spirit in the Cinema (London: 1930), p. 251n.
44 P.Jensen, The Cinema of Fritz Lang (New York and London: 1969), p. 62.
45 Thompson, pp. 51–4; Albrecht, Designing Dreams, pp. 43 ff.
46 S.Lawder, The Cubist Cinema (New York: 1975), pp. 200–2.
47 P.de Francia, Fernand Léger (New York and London: 1983), p. 62.
48 ibid., p. 94.
49 R.Cohen, ‘Alexandra Exter’s Designs for the Theatre’, ArtForum (Summer 1986), pp. 46–9.
50 ibid., p. 47.
51 R.Williams, Artists in Revolution: Portraits of the Russian Avant-Garde 1905–25 (London: 1978), pp. 87, 95.
52 S.Makovskii, ‘Golubaya roza’, Zolotoe runo [The Golden Fleece], no. 5 (1907); quoted in C.Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863–1922 (London: rev. edn 1986, p. 75 and ch.5.
53 A.Nakov, Avant-Garde Russe (Paris and London: 1986), p. 62. The translations from this source are by Ian Christie.
54 J.Bowlt, Catalogue: Stage Designs and the Russian Avant-Garde 1911–29 (Washington DC: 1976), pp. 8–9.
55 Nakov, p. 62.
56 See: H.Marshall, The Pictorial History of the Russian Theatre (London: 1977), p. 113, for striking photographs of the Kamerny Romeo and Juliet
57 Lodder, p. 155.
58 Bowlt, pp. 8–9.
59 ibid.
60 ibid.
61 Arlazorov, p. 119. Simov and Kozlovsky worked together on Starewicz’s Cagliostro [Kaliostro, 1918] and on Masons [Masony, 1918], begun by Starewicz but finished by Chargonin.
62 A.A.Bogdanov, Krasnaya zvezda (St Petersburg, 1908) and a sequel, Engineer Menni [Inzhener Menni, Moscow, 1913], both included in: L.Graham and R.Stites (eds), Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia (trans. Charles Rougle) (Bloomington, Ind.: 1984).
63 L.Heller, De la Science-fiction soviétique (translated from Russian: Lausanne: 1979), p. 39.
64 On Shaginyan’s inspiration from pre-Revolutionary material, see: J.Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, NJ: 1985), p. 153.
65 See, for example, the FEKS manifesto with its reference to ‘Music-Hall Cinematographovich Pinkertonov’, Ekstsentrism (Petrograd: 1922); translated in: FF, pp. 58–64.
66 K.Lewis and H.Weber, ‘Zamyatin’s We, the Proletarian Poets, and Bogdanov’s Red Star’, in Russian Literature Triquarterly, no. 12 (1975), pp. 252–78.
67 L.Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1960), p. 210.
68 Heller, pp. 40–1; Williams, pp. 129–30.
69 Pliushch, see above, n. 16.
70 Published in 1877.
71 Suvin, p. 143.
72 C.Pike, ‘Dostoevsky’s “Dream of a Ridiculous Man”: Seeing is Believing’, in: J.Andrew (ed.), The Structural Analysis of Russian Narrative Fiction (Keele: n.d.), pp. 26–53. Bakhtin’s analysis of the story is in: M.M. Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo (2nd edn, Moscow: 1963); translated by R.W.Rotsel as Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1973), pp. 122–3.
73 Pliushch, see above, n. 16.
74 See, for example, R.Yurenev, quoted in: Passek, p. 113; I. Vorontsov and I.Rachuk, The Phenomenon of Soviet Cinema (Moscow: 1980), p. 60.
75 Bakhtin, pp. 94–7.
76 ibid., p. 100.
77 Leyda, p. 274.
78 I am indebted to Rashit Yangirov for information about the Foregger script.
79 Leyda, p. 186.
80 Erlich, the returning crook, ‘takes pleasure in his new role as a Soviet official’, but continues to cheat and steal. The NEP was widely believed to be an excuse for such activities.
81 The Serapion Brotherhood (named after a story by Hoffmann) was a group of young Petrograd writers who experimented enthusiastically with language, narrative andgenre in the early 1920s, under the patronage of Shklovsky, Zamyatin and Gorky.One of the founders, Lev Lunts, envisaged ‘a brotherhood of the plot’ who would study Western popular writing in order to inject its dynamism and variety into traditional Russian literature. See: G.Kern and C.Collins (eds), The SerapionBrothers: A Critical Anthology (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1975). Yevgeni Zamyatin (1884–1937), author of the celebrated dystopia and parody of Bogdanov, We [My], a versatile novelist, playwright, essayist and eventually film scenarist, was driven intoexile after a campaign to silence him in the late 1920s. Yuri Olesha (1899–1960)wrote some remarkable satirical fantasies in the 1920s, The Three Fat Men [Tri tolstyaka] and Envy [Zavist’], as well as journalism; but in 1934 was severely reprimanded for scripting Room’s long-banned A Severe Young Man [Strogii yunosha, 1934].
82 Chess Fever was co-directed by Nikolai Shpikovsky and Pudovkin, and includes in its eclectic cast members of the Kuleshov group, Vladimir Fogel and Ivan Koval-Samborsky, the future star of several of Protazanov’s films, Anatoli Ktorov, the chess master José Capablanca (as himself), and Protazanov with his then assistant, the long-serving director Yuli Raizman. As well as demonstrating many of Kuleshov’s tropes in action, it incorporates American-style sight gags along very similar lines to Kravtsev’s role in Aelita.
83 A Severe Young Man has remained banned until recent years. It includes degrees of stylisation and outright fantasy that were unique in Soviet cinema of the time, outside Alexandrov’s musicals.
84 Lady in the Dark [USA, 1944], directed by Mitchell Leisen, analyses its heroine by means of her lurid dreams; Spellbound [USA, 1945], directed by Alfred Hitchcock, features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali; Dead of Night [Great Britain, 1945] is a compendium of ghost stories; A Matter of Life and Death [Great Britain, 1946], directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, pits the subjective fantasy of a heavenly trial against its hero’s medical treatment, and his love of a woman against love of country; Orphée [France, 1950], directed by Jean Cocteau, takes its poet-hero through the looking-glass into a highly charged netherworld of symbols and portents.
85 Protazanov will be the subject of a future retrospective, to include all his extant films, jointly organised by the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley and the British Film Institute in London, which will provide scope for testing the claims made here and elsewhere by Denise J.Youngblood and others. Thanks are due to Richard Taylor, Julian Graffy and Jeffrey Brooks for advice and help with research for this essay, which was begun while teaching in Spring 1989 in the Art Department of the University of South Florida, Tampa. I am grateful to Bradley Nickels and other colleagues, the USF Library and my students studying Russian art for their encouragement and enthusiasm.
6
The Return of the Native: Yakov Protazanov and Soviet Cinema
1 The research for this essay was supported in part by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board. My thanks to Anna Lawton for her careful reading of an earlier version and to the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, and the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography [VGIK], Moscow, where I viewed the films.
For descriptions of Protazanov’s pre-Revolutionary work, see: Leyda, pp. 63, 80, 88; Ginzburg; M.N.Aleinikov (ed.), Yakov Protazanov. O tvorcheskom puti rezhissera [Yakov Protazanov: On the Director’s Creative Path] (2nd edn, Moscow: 1957), hereafter cited as YaP; M.S.Arlazarov, Protazanov (Moscow: 1973). See also Tsivian, pp. 15–16 this volume.
On Protazanov’s French films, see: R.Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915–1929 (Princeton, NJ: 1984), pp. 19–20; Abel, who uses the French spelling of the director’s name, Jakob Protazanoff, does not mention his important role in either Russian or Soviet cinema.
2 Aleinikov, ‘Zasluzhennyi master sovetskogo kino’ [An Honoured Master of Soviet Cinema], YaP, p. 27. Aleinikov says that Protazanov was homesick, but adds no supporting detail.
3 N.M.Zorkaya, ‘Protazanov’, in: Kino. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ [Cinema. An Encyclopaedic Dictionary] (Moscow: 1986), p. 337. Zorkaya has also written an insightful analysis of the director, ‘Ya. Protazanov’, in her collection of essays Portrety [Portraits] (Moscow: 1965), pp. 140–75, in which she persuasively stakes a claim for Protazanov as one of the key figures in Soviet cinema. It should be added that some latter-day support for Protazanov may arise from aesthetic conservatism, in that it is ‘anti-montage’ rather than pro-Protazanov.
4 Of course, some of the younger directors, like Eisenstein and Vertov, courted controversy at first and were only troubled by it later.
5 Given that Protazanov’s pre-Revolutionary estate [soslovie] was merchant [kupechestvo] and that he was a native of Moscow, it is almost certainly not coincidental that an editorial in Kino-Front [Cine-Front], denouncing the state of cinema affairs, referred in several places to an unnamed ‘little Moscow merchant’: ‘Za ratsionalizatsiyu proizvodstva’ [For the Rationalisation of Production], Kino-Front, no. 7/8 (July/August 1926), pp. 9–13.
6 Protazanov’s long-time friend and colleague Aleinikov confirms this and reports that Protazanov was fond of saying ‘My pictures speak for me’—as of course were other directors who had no taste for aesthetic controversies, like Boris Barnet, Ivan Perestiani and Fridrikh Ermler; Aleinikov, ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 27.
7 Vladimir Gardin and Alexander Ivanovsky were in the same position.
8 Unless otherwise noted, biographical details are drawn from Arlazorov, pp. 5–30, and from ‘Protazanov o sebe’ [Protazanov on Himself], YaP, pp. 287–309. Arlazorov’s book, the most comprehensive account of Protazanov’s life and work, is unfortunately somewhat ‘novelised’ and completely undocumented. Arlazorov did, however, have extensive conversations with Protazanov’s youngest sister, N.A.Andzhanaridze, and details in this early section of the book ring true. ‘Protazanov o sebe’, pieced together by Aleinikov from various jottings by the director, is a disjointed account that ends with the Revolution.
9 ‘Protazanovo sebe’, YaP, p. 287. Aleinikov, in ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 6, says Protazanov mainly attended the Moscow Art and Maly theatres, noted for their realism.
10 ‘Protazanov o sebe’, YaP, p. 288.
11 This is the image of Protazanov that emerged from his biographers, but it is based on inference, rather than on any statement that he made.
12 Arlazorov, pp. 22–3; O.L.Leonidov, ‘Yakov Aleksandrovich Protazanov’, YaP, p. 345, says Protazanov’s family was ‘horrified’. On money matters, see ‘Protazanov o sebe’, YaP, p. 297.
13 Arlazorov, p. 29, implicitly contradicts Protazanov’s account by saying that Gloria was purchased by Thiemann & Reinhardt. The studio’s name was actually ‘Gloria’, spelled with Roman letters, and not its Russian equivalent, slava.
14 ‘Protazanov o sebe’, YaP, p. 297.
15 Protazanov attributed his success with actors to the high regard he felt for them; see: ‘Protazanov o sebe’, YaP, pp. 307–8.
16 Preobrazhenskaya went on to become Russia’s first woman director and an important director in the Soviet period, too.
17 Aleinikov, ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 20.
18 See Leyda’s description of the reception of this film, p. 63; unfortunately Leyda does not credit his source but it was probably: B.S.Likhachev, Kino v Rossii (1896–1926) [Cinema in Russia (1896–1926)] (Leningrad: 1927). See also: Arlazorov, who reports that the box-office receipts were ‘insane’, pp. 47–8; and ‘Protazanov o sebe’, YaP, p. 299. Aleinikov rather obviously disapproves of the film and stresses that Protazanov adapted classics as well; see ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 16.
19 See: J.Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, NJ: 1985), e.g. his comments on Verbitskaya’s readership, pp. 158–60.
20 Satan Triumphant, described by Leyda, p. 88, does not fit the image that Soviet scholars have painstakingly crafted of Protazanov as maker of healthy entertainment pictures. The movie is, however, included in the apparently complete filmography which appears in YaP, pp. 387–412.
21 Aleinikov, ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 17, and Arlazorov, p. 60.
22 The information comes from Arlazorov, pp. 72–3.
23 Aleinikov calls Father Sergius a pre-Revolutionary film, giving its date of release as 1917, although the filmography contradicts this. This can probably be explained by confusion between production and release dates. See: ‘Zasluzhennyi master’, YaP, p. 26.
24 Arlazorov, pp. 80–2, making reference to Frida Protazanova’s diaries. No date is given for the departure from Moscow, nor have I been able to find it in any other source. Protazanov himself is completely silent on this subject.
25 The reason for Protazanov’s sudden move to Berlin remains a mystery; even Arlazorov refuses to speculate, p. 90.
26 As Lev Kuleshov’s ruined career only too convincingly demonstrates, however, efficiency was not necessarily a saving grace.
27 Thiemann & Reinhardt’s ‘Golden Series’, to which Protazanov had been the chief contributor (as everyone well knew), was frequently used as an epithet in the 1920s.See, e.g.: I.Fal’bert, ‘Zolotaya seriya (Medvezh’ya svad’ba)’ [The Golden Series (The Bear’s Wedding)], Kino, no. 6 (1926), p. 2.
28 These aesthetic controversies are discussed in detail in Youngblood, pp. 63–80 and 133–44.
29 V.Kepley, Jr and B.Kepley, ‘Foreign Films on Soviet Screens, 1922–31’, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, vol. 4, no. 4 (Fall 1979), pp. 429–50.
30 The Petrov-Bytov/Piotrovsky debate of 1929 summarises this issue well; FF, pp. 259–64.
31 Movies scripted by Lunacharsky or based on his plays include: The Locksmith and the Chancellor [Slesar’ i kantsler, 1924], The Bear’s Wedding [1925], Poison [Yad, 1927] and The Salamander [Salamandra, 1928]. He also wrote Kino na zapade i u nas [Cinema in the West and at Home] (Leningrad: 1928).
32 V.Kepley, Jr, ‘The Workers’ International Relief and the Cinema of the Left, 1921–1935’, Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 1 (Fall 1983), pp. 7–23. ‘Mezhrabpom’ was the Russian acronym for the WIR.
33 Aelita. Kino-lenta na temu romana A.N.Tolstogo [Aelita. A Film Based on A.N.Tolstoi’s Novel] (1924), p. 45.
34 Information on casts and crews for all films discussed is drawn from SKhF, vol. 1; Kinoslovar’ [Cinema Dictionary] (2 vols, Moscow: 1966–70); and Kino. Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, cited in n. 3 above. I have seen all ten of Protazanov’s Soviet silents, plus Father Sergius and Without a Dowry, information on content comes from my viewing notes, unless otherwise indicated.
35 ‘Po SSSR’ [Around the USSR], Kinonedelya [Cine-Week], no. 1 (1925), p. 25.
36 P.Rotha, The Film Till Now (London: 1930; reprinted 1967), p. 228. For Soviet reactions, see especially ‘N. L.’ [probably Nikolai Lebedev], ‘Aelita’, Kinogazeta, no.39 (1924), p. 2, and ‘Poputchiki ili prosoedinish’sya’ [Fellow-Travellers or Ralliés], ibid., no. 43, p. 1. These sentiments did not, however, constrain Kino-gazeta from running advertisements for Aelita (money talked in the early days); see: no. 43, p. 7.The term ‘ralliés’ was introduced into Soviet cultural politics by Trotsky: ‘ralliés’ were the pacified Philistines of art’, lesser creatures than fellow-travellers; L.Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1960), p. 37.
37 A.V.Goldobin, ‘Blizhaishie zadachi kino’ [The Immediate Tasks of Cinema], Proletarskoe kino [Proletarian Cinema], no. 1 (1925), pp. 4–5; G.Lelevich, ‘Proletarskaya literatura i kino’ [Proletarian Literature and Cinema], Kinonedelya, no. 3 (1925), p. 5; A.Syrkin, ‘Mezhdu tekhnikoi i ideologii (O kinopoputchikakh i partiinom rukovodstve)’ [Between Technique and Ideology (On Cinema’s Fellow-Travellers and the Party Leadership)], Kinonedelya, no. 37 (1924). (This Proletarskoe kino should not be confused with the journal of the same name published during the Cultural Revolution.)
38 These viewers were assuredly carefully selected, although Kinonedelya implied that they were ‘typical’: ‘Chto govoryat ob Aelite’ [What They Say about Aelita], Kinonedelya, no. 37 (1924), p. 6.
39 For Kuleshov’s remarks see ‘Ob Aelite’ [On Aelita], Kinonedelya, no. 47 (1924), p. 3.For Sokolov’s see: I. Sokolov, Kinostsenarii: Teoriya i tekhnika [The Film Scenario: Theory and Technique] (Moscow: 1926), p. 64; idem, ‘Material i forma’ [Material and Form], Kinozhurnal ARK [ARK Film Journal], no. 9–10 (1926), p. 15; idem, ‘Kuda idet sovetskoe kino’ [Where Is Soviet Cinema Heading], Sovetskii ekran [Soviet Screen], no. 37(1926, p. 3.
40 Aelita is listed among films scathingly labelled ‘first class Russian cigarettes’ [papirosy vysshego sorta] in Novyi Lef [New LEF], no. 2 (1928), p. 28.
41 E.Kuznetsov, ‘Kak vy zhivete?’ [How Are You?), Kino [Cinema], no. 45 (1932).Others cited as living well were Vsevolod Pudovkin, Oleg Leonidov, Osip Brik and Natan Zarkhi—an odd assemblage.
42 ‘Nasha kino-anketa’ [Our Cinema Questionnaire], Na literaturnom postu [On Literary Guard], no. 1 (1928), pp. 71–6, and no. 2 (1928), pp. 50–4. Protazanov’s response, bringing up the rear, appears on p. 54. Ilyinsky’s anecdote can be found in I.V.Il’inskii, ‘Bogatoe nasledstvo’ [A Rich Legacy], YaP, p. 203.
43 A.Dubrovskii, ‘Opyt izucheniya zritelya (Anketa ARK)’ [An Attempt to Study the Audience (An ARK Questionnaire)], Kinozhurnal ARK no. 8 (1925), p. 8.
44 See: A.Kurs, ‘O kino-obshchestvennosti, o zritele i nekotorykh nepriyatnykh veshchakh’ [On the Cinema Public, the Audience and Some Unpleasant Things], Kinozhurnal ARK, no. 3 (1925), pp. 3–4; Sokolov, ‘Material i forma’, p. 17; B.Mal’kin, “Mezhrabpom-Rus”, Sovetskoe kino [Soviet Cinema], no. 8 (1926), p. 9; and G.Boltyanskii, ‘Kino v derevne’ [Cinema in the Countryside], in: I.N. Bursak (ed.), Kino [Cinema] (Moscow: 1925), p. 41. Khrisanf Khersonskii complained somewhat half-heartedly that His Call lacked detail about workers’ lives and the mass movement in ‘Ego prizyv’ [His Call], Klnozhurnal ARK, no. 3 (1925), pp. 31–2.
45 A.V.Troyanovskii and R.I.Eliazarov, Izuchenie kinozritelya (Po materialam issledovatel’skoi teatral’noi masterskoi [The Study of the Cinema Audience (From Materials of the Theatre Research Workshop)] (Moscow: 1928), p. 31.
46 See: O.Beskin, ‘Neigrovaya fil’ma’ [Non-Played Film], Sovetskoekino, no. 7 (1927), p. 10, for a somewhat back-handed compliment. In Kino for 1927 see: ‘Na temuGrazhdanskoi voiny (O Sorok pervom)’ [On the Civil War Theme (On The Forty-First)], no. 11, p. 4; and Khersonskii, ‘Sorok pervyi’[The Forty-First], no. 12, p. 3.
47 Arsen, ‘Sorok pervyi’ [The Forty-First], Kino-Front, no. 6 (1927), pp. 15–19.I have not been able to learn Arsen’s real name.
48 According to legend anyway; I have yet to find this piece in Pravda. See: L.V., ‘O sovetskoi komedii: Disput v Dome pechati’ [On Soviet Comedy: A Debate in the House of the Press], Kino, no. 19 (1928), p. 6.
49 On the problems of comedy as a genre, see: Youngblood, especially pp. 137 and 177–80; R. Taylor, ‘A “Cinema for the Millions”: Soviet Socialist Realism and the Problem of Film Comedy’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1983), pp. 439–61. For reviews of Don Diego see: ‘Rezolyutsiya po kartine Don Diego i Pelageya’ [A Resolution on the Film Don Diego and Pelageya], Kino-front, no. 2(1928), p. 6; A.Aravskii,’ Don Diego i Pelageya’, ibid., pp. 20–1; as well as L.V., op. cit.; B.Gusman, ‘Po teatram i kino’ [Round the Theatres and Cinemas], Revolyutsiya i kul’tura [Revolution and Culture], no. 3/4 (1928), pp. 13–14; and M.Bystritskii, ‘Shag vpered (Don Diego i Pelageya)’ [A Step Forward (Don Diego and Pelageya)], Kino, no. 3(1928), p. 3.
There is an interesting discussion of the film preserved in TsGALI, Moscow, in the ARK files, 2494/1/99: ‘Stenogramma sobraniya chlenov ARK po obsuzhdeniyu kino-fil’my Don Diego i Pelageya Demina’ [Minutes of a Meeting of ARK Members to Discuss the Film Don Diego and Pelageya Demina], dated 1 December 1927. In addition to the fear cited above that the film might be misused by enemies of the Soviet Union, there was a heated debate about the recent ‘excesses’ and abuses of film critics.
50 I.Sokolov, ‘NOT v kino-proizvodstve’ [The Scientific Organisation of Labour in Film Production], Kino-Front, no. 7–8 (1926), p. 11. S.Gekht, ‘Kino-parad’ [Film Parade], Sovetskii ekran, no. 30 (1926), p. 3, says that viewers liked it because it was well shot, had good actors, and a plot with romantic interest.
51 Kh.Khersonskii, ‘Komicheskaya i komedii’ [The Comic and Comedies], Kinozhurnal ARK, no. 11–12(1925), pp. 27–8.
52 On the Fairbanks/Pickford visit, see: ‘Ferbenks i Pikford v SSSR!’ [Fairbanks and Pickford in the USSR!], Kino, no. 30 (1926), pp. 1 and 3.
53 Troyanovksii and Eliazarov, p. 32; and TsGALI in the Glaviskusstvo files, 645/1/389, ‘Svodki anketnogo materiala po izucheniyu vpechatlenii zritelei kinokartin’ [The Results of Surveys of Audience Reaction to Films], pp. 3–4.
54 E.Arnoldi, Avantyurny i zhanr v kino [The Adventure Genre in Cinema] (Leningrad: 1926), p. 68; A.Kurs, Samoe mogushchestvennoe [The Most Powerful] (Moscow: 1927), p. 59; and M.Zagorskii, ‘Tapioka—Il’inskii—teatr—kino’ [Tapioca, Ilyinsky, Theatre, Cinema], Sovetskii ekran, no. 38 (1926), p. 5. Kurs noted resignedly:
The Three Millions Trial is a successful picture. I do not want to argue with the viewer. The viewer is always right.
In general one should not argue with the viewer. One needs to study him.
55 S.Eizenshtein, ‘Za “rabochii boevik’”, Revolyutsiya i kul’tura, no. 3/4 (1928), p. 54; ESW1, p. 110.
56 For an in-depth discussion of these issues, see: Youngblood, chs 5–6.
57 As examples of the extremely negative reviews of this film, see in Kino (1927): P.Neznamov, ‘Chekhov— Krupnym planom’ [Chekhov in Close-Up], no. 34, p. 4; M.Shneider, ‘Po tu storonu 17-go goda: Chelovek iz restorana’ [Beyond 1917: The Man from the Restaurant], no. 36, p. 3; R.Pikel’, ‘Ideologiya i kommertsiya’ [Ideology and Commerce], no. 41, p. 2. See also: K.Fel’dman, ‘Itogi goda v Mezhrabpom-fil’me’[The Year’s Results at Mezhrabpom-Film], Sovetskii ekran, no. 42 (1928), and V.Kirshon, Na kino-postu [On Cinema Guard] (Moscow: 1928), p. 12.
58 See: ‘Lef i kino: Stenogramma soveshchaniya’ [LEF and Cinema: Minutes of a Conference], Novyi Lef, no. 11–12 (1927), p. 54, for Tretyakov’s remarks. These were echoed by Osip Brik, pp. 63–4. Vladimir Korolevich had earlier defined Khanzhonkovshchina as ‘boyar style and the good old days’ in: ‘Dlya Ars i Arsikov [For Ars and Arsists], Sovetskii ekran, no. 5–6 (1927), p. 11.
59 D.MacDonald, ‘Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Others’, Miscellany (March 1931), pp. 145–6.
60 See: P.A.Blyakhin,’ K itogam kino-sezona 1927–28 goda’ [On the Results of the 1927–8 Season], Kino i kul’tura [Cinema & Culture], no. 2 (1929), p. 10; A.Piotrovskii, Khudozhestvennye techeniya v sovetskom kino [Artistic Currents in Soviet Cinema] (Leningrad: 1930), p. 14; I.Sokolov, ‘Prichiny poslednikh neudach’ [The Causes of the Latest Failures], Kino, no. 46 (1928), pp. 4–5; L.Averbakh, ‘Eshche o reshitel’nom’[Once More on What is Decisive], Kino, no. 45 (1928), p. 3. With the exception of Averbakh, who headed RAPP, these men were well-established critics. Blyakhin and Sokolov liked ‘entertainment’ films, while Piotrovsky thought of film as ‘art’ and was attacked as a ‘Formalist’.
61 See, for instance: Prim, ‘General’naya liniya Mezhrabpomfil’ma’ [Mezhrabpomfilm’s General Line], Sovetskii ekran, no. 20 (1929), p. 6; and ‘Kino’ [Cinema], Na literaturnom postu, no. 2 (1930), p. 65.
62 Sovetskoe kino and Kino-Front were liquidated at the end of 1928. ‘Sovetskii ekran was purged and retitled Kino i zhizn’ [Cinema and Life]. Kino also underwent restructuring’ at this time.
63 See: Youngblood, ch. 8; and P.Kenez, ‘The Cultural Revolution in Cinema’, Slavic Review, vol. 47, no. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 414–33.
64 Kh.Khersonskii, ‘Chiny i lyudi’ [Ranks and People], Kino, no. 40 (1929), p. 5; A.V., ’Prazdnik sv. Iorgena’ [The Feast of St Jorgen], Kino, no. 51 (1930), p. 4.
65 At the time of writing little is known about audience reactions and box-office receipts in the late 1920s; research currently under way in the USSR may alter this picture substantially.
66 B.Alpers,’ Prazdnik sv. Iorgena’ [The Feast of St Jorgen], Kino i zhizn’, no. 25 (1930), pp. 7–8.
67 V.B.Shklovskii, Za sorok let [For Forty Years] (Moscow: 1965), p. 94, from Ikh nastoyashchee [Their Reality] (1927); A. Piotrovskii, Teatr, kino, zhizn’ [Theatre, Cinema, Life] (Leningrad: 1969), p. 236, from Khudozhestvennye techeniya v sovetskom kino (1930); A.V.Lunacharskii, p. 76.
68 G.V.Aleksandrov, ‘Protazanov—komediograf [Protazanov, Comic Film-Maker], in: YaP, pp. 162–94.
69 On Ermler, see: D.J.Youngblood, ‘Cinema as Social Criticism: The Early Films of Fridrikh Ermler’, in: A.Lawton (ed.), Red Screen (Washingon, DC: 1990). For the reminiscences of actors who worked with Protazanov, see, for example, in YaP: O.V.Gzovskaya, ‘Rezhisser—drug aktera’ [The Director, the Actor’s Friend], pp. 324–39, and A.I.Voitsik, ‘Kak uchil menya Protazanov’ [How Protazanov Taught Me], pp. 375–82. Laudatory tone aside, both Gzovskaya and Voitsik speak with convincing detail of his calm personality and unflagging professionalism.
70 TsGALI, in the ARK files: 2494/1/99, ‘Don Diego i Pelageya’ [Don Diego and Pelageya], pp. 3–4. On Vertov’s problems with One-Sixth of the World, see: Youngblood, pp. 139–41.
71 For example, Istoriya sovetskogo kino, vol. 1, 1917–1931 (Moscow: 1969), p. 373, rates him sixth after ‘the Five’: Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko.
72 Zorkaya, Portrety, p. 175. It is worth emphasising that these favourable reevaluations of Protazanov come from the ‘old guard’ of present-day Soviet film historians, that is, those who established themselves long before Gorbachev and glasnost
7
A Face to the Shtetl: Soviet Yiddish Cinema, 1924–36
1 I. Babel, Lyubka the Cossack and Other Stories (New York: 1963), p. 131.
2 The most substantial survey in English is: E.A.Goldman, ‘The Soviet Yiddish Film, 1925–1933’, Soviet Jewish Affairs (London), vol. 10, no. 3 (1980), pp. 13–27. A shorterversion appears in: idem, Visions, Images and Dreams: Yiddish Film Present and Past (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1983).
3 Z.Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (New York: 1988), pp. 123–4. The destruction of the shtetl was so overwhelming, Gitelman notes, that between 1918 and 1921 some three-quarters of the Russian Jewish population was without regular income (p. 122).
4 A.Yarmolinsky, The Jews and Other Minor Nationalities under the Soviets (New York: 1928), p. 131.
5 A.Granovsky, letter to Mendel Elkin, 19 September 1924, cited by F.Burko, ‘The Soviet Yiddish Theater in the Twenties’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale: 1978), p. 148.
6 M.Gordon, ‘Granovsky’s Tragical Carnival: Night in the Old Market’, The Drama Review (New York), no. 108 (Winter 1985), p. 92.
7 B.Gorev, ‘Russian Literature and the Jews’, in: V.Lvov-Rogachevsky, A History of Russian Jewish Literature (ed. and trans. A.Levin) (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1979), p. 16.Vasili Golovnin (1776–1831) was a navigator in the Russian navy who was held captive by the Japanese in 1811–13 and subsequently published an account of the experience.
8 This sequence, singled out for particular praise by Soviet critics, is nearly a full reel.The location—not to mention the crediting of Sergei Eisenstein’s cameraman Eduard Tisse as one of Jewish Luck’s three cameramen—has fuelled speculation that itinspired Eisenstein’s own use of the Odessa Steps in The Battleship Potemkin, which was also shot during the spring and sumer of 1925. In his ‘Five Essays About Eisenstein’, Viktor Shklovsky compares ‘Eisenstein’s flight of steps and the steps in Granovsky’s film’ to show that Eisenstein, and not Tisse, is the visual intelligence behind Potemkin: ‘The flight of steps is the same, and the cameraman is the same. The goods are different.’
9 Leyda, p. 218.
10 Cited in J.-L.Passek (ed.), Le Cinema russe et soviétique (Paris: 1981), pp. 122–3.
11 Jewish Theatrical News (New York), 16 February 1926, p. 2.
12 R.Ben-Ari, Habima (trans. A.H.Gross and I.Soref) (New York: 1957), p. 144.
13 Babitsky and Rimberg, p. 135.
14 S.Daytsherman, ‘About Jewish Films (A Letter to the Editor)’, Der emes [The Truth, cf. Pravda] (Moscow), 15 March 1928, p. 5. In fact, Mishka Vinitsky remained an Odessa folk hero throughout the 1920s because his gang had protected the city’s Jews against White pogroms.
15 ibid.
16 Leyda, p. 230.
17 I.Babel’, Bluzhdayushchie zvezdy. Kino-stsenarii [Wandering Stars: A Film-Script] (Moscow: 1926), p. 3.
18 I.Babel, ‘Wandering Stars: A Film Story’, The Forgotten Prose (ed. and trans. N.Stroud) (Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1978), p. 111.
19 Theatre and Film: Wandering Stars’, Der emes, 19 February 1928, p. 4. Although this review has been cited as part of the political attack on the film, the actual thrust is far less ideological than aesthetic. Dismissing Wandering Stars as an inept American-style melodrama (‘empty and heavy-handed’, ‘a puzzle whose pieces do not fit together’), Lubomirsky blames Gricher-Cherikover for failing to realise Babel’s’ brilliant, cinematographically rich’ scenario.
20 Babitsky and Rimberg, pp. 134–5. See also: Goldman, p. 18.
21 ‘Motion Pictures’, in: V.Kubijovyc (ed.), Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopedia (Toronto: 1971), vol. 2, p. 664.
22 Kino (Moscow), no. 20 (1928), quoted by Youngblood, p. 162.
23 The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (New York: 1982), vol. 29, p. 531a.
24 I.Fefer, ‘Through Tears’, Kino (Kiev), no. 3/39 (1928), p. 3.
25 M.Makotinskii, ‘Trilogy’, Kino (Kiev), no. 39 (March 1928), pp. 8–9.
26 I.Fefer, ‘For a National-Minority Film: Regarding a Jewish Cinema’, Kino (Kiev), no.3/39 (1928), p. 2, quoted by Goldman, pp. 21–2.
27 A.Abshtuk, ‘On Alien Paths’, Prolit [acronym for ‘Proletarian Literature’] (Kharkov), no. 8/9 (1928), p. 78, quoted by Ch. Shmeruk, ‘Yiddish Literature in the USSR’ in: L.Kochan (ed.), The Jews in Soviet Russia (Oxford: 1978), p. 259.
28 Goldman, p. 23.
29 Although Kushnirov’s play was anti-Bundist, it did not wholly escape ideological error. In the January 1934 issue of The International Theatre Bulletin Osip Lubomirsky wrote:
Kushnirov sees in Lekert a personification of the passionate urge of the working masses to revolutionary action against the evasive tactics of the conciliatory leadership of the Bund. Kushnirov’s political orientation is communistic, but by his lending justification to certain opinions expressed by Lekert with regard to the Party programme, which bear a strong flavour of anarchism, Kushnirov stumbles into a grave political error.
30 N.Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union since 1917: Paradox of Survival (New York: 1988), pp. 278 ff.
31 N.Sirotina, transcribed interview (1980), p. 19, William E.Wiener Oral History Library, American Jewish Committee, New York.
32 E.Lyons, Assignment in Utopia (New York: 1937), pp. 520–1.
33 S.Dinamov, ‘Film Art in Soviet White Russia’, in: A.Arossev (ed.), Soviet Cinema (Moscow: 1935)’ p. 115.
34 P.Markish, ‘Generations’, in: J.Neugroschel (ed. and trans.), The Shtetl: A Creative Anthology of Jewish Life in Eastern Europe (New York: 1979), p. 462.
35 J.Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia’s City of Steel (Cambridge, Mass.: 1942), pp. 91–2.
36 M.Gordon, ‘Program of the Minor Leftists in the Soviet Theater, 1919–1924’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University: 1982), p. 205.
37 K.Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: 1981), p. 94.
38 Morgn freyheyt [Morning Freedom] (New York), 14 April 1933, p. 7.
39 Variety (New York), 25 April 1933, n.p.
40 Scott, p. 240.
41 Ekstsentrizm (Petrograd: 1922); FF, p. 58.
42 M.Heller and A.M.Nekrich, Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present (New York: 1986), p. 217. The hero of N.Smirnov’s popular novel Jack Vosmerkin the American, also cited by Heller and Nekrich, anticipated Nathan Becker in returning from America to his native village in order to serve the Revolution with New World know-how.
43 B.J.Choseed,’ Jews in Soviet Literature’, in: E.J.Simmons (ed.), Through the Glass of Soviet Literature (New York: 1961), p. 132.
44 ‘Mass Struggle’, New York State Board of Censors file, New York State Archives, Albany.
45 B.Berest, History of the Ukrainian Cinema (New York: 1962), p. 233.
46 Variety (New York), 23 October 1935, n.p.
47 D.Maryan, Kino, 4 June 1935; M.Grinberg, Kino, 10 June 1935, quoted in notes prepared by Naum Kleiman for the ‘Unknown Soviet Cinema’ screenings at the Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley, Calif., November 1989.
48 ‘Russia’s Daniel Boones: Jewish Pioneers Who Are Blazing a New Trail in Biro-Bidjan’, 1934 mimeographed text, cited in: Z. Szajkowski, The Mirage of American Jewish Aid in Soviet Russia 1917–1939 (New York: 1977), p. 163.
49 J.Leyda, ‘New Soviet Movies: Films of the National Minorities’, New Theatre (New York), vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1935), p. 20.
50 M.Epstein, The Jew and Communism (New York: 1959), p. 313.
51 S.Schwartz, The Jews in the Soviet Union (Syracuse, NY: 1951), p. 181.
52 B.Shumyatskii, ‘Za sovershenstvo masterstva’, Iskusstvo kino, no. 7 (July 1936), pp. 6, 8; ‘Perfecting Our Mastery’, FF, p. 374.
53 Quoted by Lvov-Rogachevsky, p. 300. According to figures given by Szajkowski (p. 167), between 1931 and 1936 fewer than 1,400 Jews immigrated to Birobidzhan fromabroad.
54 As in Nathan Becker agitprop was leavened with entertainment value. The film was revived in Moscow in the 1960s because of its appeal as ethnic comedy.
55 Moscow Daily News, 11 October 1935, n.p.
56 The lone exception is, of course, Alexander Askoldov’s The Commissar [Komissar, 1967/87], which was completed in 1967 and shelved for twenty years thereafter. The Commissar not only includes a sympathetic, indeed positive, image of a ‘little’ Jew but also several lines of spoken Yiddish—the first heard in any Soviet film since the Second World War.
8
A Fickle Man, or Portrait of Boris Barnet as a Soviet Director Bernard Eisenschitz
1 Henri Langlois (1914–77), co-founder and first director of the Cinémathèque Française from 1936, was well known for his eccentric working methods and his imaginative programming.
2 G.Sadoul, ‘Rencontre avec Boris Barnett’ [sic], Cahiers du Cinema, no. 169 (August 1965).
3 For extracts from this critique of The House on Trubnaya and other valuable contextual material, see: F.Albera and R.Cosandey (eds), Boris Barnet: Ecrits.Documents. Etudes. Filmographie (Locarno: 1985), where this essay first appeared.
4 Valentin P.Katayev (b. 1897) published important works in every decade from the 1920s to the 1970s, beginning with a satirical novel of the NEP, The Embezzlers in 1927. His ‘industrial’ novel, Time, Forward! (1932), applied cinematic techniques tothe description of a vast building project; and later works experimented further with literary ‘montage’. Yevgeni P. Katayev (1903–42) was the brother of Valentin and half of the ‘Ilf and Petrov’ partnership, with Ilya A. Ilf (1897–1937). These populars atirists are best remembered for The Twelve Chairs and The Golden Calf, both about NEP themes, including the stereotypical rich ‘Nepmen’, although they also wrote film scripts and travel books. When Vladimir Mayakovsky committed suicide in 1930, he left behind him two devastating comedies satirising the betrayal of communist ideals under NEP: one was The Bed Bug, the other The Bathhouse.
5 J.L.Borges and A.Bioy Casares, Six Problems for Don Isidro (trans. N.Thomas di Giovanni) (London: 1980), p. 83. Carlos Anglada is a fictitious author of vast erudition encountered by the incarcerated detective-hero of this book.
6 M.Kushnirov, Zhizn’ i fil’my Borisa Barneta [The Life and Films of Boris Barnet] (Moscow: 1977), p. 153.
7 Télérama, 8 February 1984.
8 The film officially purports to be a thinly fictionalised account of the origins of the Stakhanovite movement, set in the Donbass in 1935, but there is little in the story-lineto substantiate this claim. However, several film historians claim to have found anti-Semitic touches in the depiction of the criminal doctors.
9 Kushnirov, pp. 157–61. Nikolai R. Erdman (1902–70) was a playwright and author of numerous screenplays from 1927 until his death; see Comédie-Française, no. 129–30(May-June 1984), with texts on Erdman by Jean-Pierre Vincent, Beatrice Picon-Vallin, Jean Ellenstein, Michel Vinaver and Bernard Eisenschitz on Erdman and film. Mikhail D.Volpin (b. 1902) was a poet who worked with Mayakovsky during the Civil War on the ROSTA posters— Volga-Volga was his first screenplay.
10 Leyda, p. 271.
11 ibid., p. 388.
12 ‘Dramaturgiya i masterstvo aktera’, Iskusstvo kino, no. 6 (June 1952), p. 101.
13 The term often used in Russian for a film director is ‘rezhisser-postanovshchik’. The term coined by Barnet, ‘rezhisser-polkovnik,’ is thus a play on words, referring partly to his films having been shelved (‘polka’ means ‘shelf’) and partly to his autocratic style of direction (‘polkovnik’ means ‘colonel’).
14 An indication of the scale of this opportunity is provided by Eisenstein’s diary for 1945, quoted in: J.Leyda and Z.Voynow, Eisenstein at Work (New York: 1982), p. 148. Here Eisenstein records having seen in the space of two and a half months more than thirty films, including The Human Comedy, Bathing Beauty, Laura, Stormy Weather, Gaslight, Phantom of the Opera, Five Graves to Cairo, Shadow of a Doubt, Star-Spangled Rhythm, My Friend Flicka, various war documentaries and Henry V (‘three black marks’).
15 John Gillett recounts the first five minutes of Lyana [1955], which ‘shows a village band gathering from various scattered parts of the village’. But it was Bounteous Summer which prompted Jacques Rivette to write: ‘Eisenstein apart, Boris Barnet must be considered the best Soviet film-maker’ (Cahiers du Cinema, no. 30 (February 1953)). Even if this was a provocation launched on the spur of the moment, time has confirmed its prescience, especially in linking these two names. Reading Tarkovsky’s The Mirror as situated in the tension between Eisenstein and Barnet certainly is not overly interpretative. As to Rivette’s remarks on the film itself, however inaccuratethese may sound, they are none the less to the point (for Barnet’s talent lay in reanimating the most petrified forms):
Barnet’s outlook on the world and on the Soviet universe is one of innocence, but not that of an innocent. He knows that most demanding purity and guards it jealously as his most precious yardstick, the surest protection against a cruel universe which he instinctively mistrusts.
From one film to the next, Barnet’s universe is peopled by the same shy and modest characters, who prove unexpectedly impulsive, and whom their humour or heroism does little to protect, although here they have invented a new form of modesty, ‘Stakhanovism’.
16 See, for example: J.-L.Godard, ‘Boris Barnet’, Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 94 (April 1959) (trans. T.Milne) in: J.Narboni (ed.), Godard on Godard (London: 1972), pp. 139–40. It is in the course of this admiring notice that Godard invokes ‘the famous Triangle style’ apropos Barnet.
17 Vasili M.Shukshin (1929–74) was a major writer of fiction and scenarios, a leading director from 1964 until his early death, and a popular actor in the films of other directors.
18 On Shukshin’s career, see: I.Christie, ‘Shukshin: Holidays for the Soul’, Sight and Sound, vol. 55, no. 4 (Autumn 1986), pp. 261–2.
19 Radi P.Pogodin (b. 1925), the screenplay writer for Whistle-Stop, is not to be confused with Nikolai F.Pogodin (1900–62), the better-known playwright and author of The Man with a Gun and Kremlin Chimes.
20 Kushnirov, p. 206.
21 The studio logo which appears at the beginning of all Mosfilm productions is a production of the vast rhetorical statue by Vera I.Mukhina (1889–1953) of ‘A Workerand a Collective-Farm Woman’, sculpted originally in 1937 for the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris International Exhibition and now at the main gate of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements in Moscow. To Western eyes, the now widespread use of zoom-lens shots in Soviet cinema, which was just beginning at the time of Whistle-Stop, often seems clumsy and inexpressive.
22 Interview with Otar Ioseliani, Paris, August 1983. Thanks are due to Valérie Pozner and Irène Ténèze for guiding me safely through the book by Kushnirov.
9
Interview with Alexander Medvedkin
1 Alexander Medvedkin (1900–89) was something of an enfant terrible in Soviet cinema. Best known in the West for his satirical feature Happiness [Schast’e, 1935], he was also responsible for the film train that focused on, and tried to solve, industrial problems during the first Five Year Plan in the early 1930s.
2 ARK [Assotsiatsiya revolyutsionnoi kinematografii] had been set up in May 1924 by Eisenstein and others as a revolutionary film workers’ organisation. In May 1929 it became the proletarian-orientated Association of Workers of Revolutionary Cinematography [ARRK, Assotsiatsiya rabotnikov revolyutsionnoi kinematografii].Like the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers [RAPP, Rossiiskaya assotsiatsiya proletarskikh pisatelei], ARRK was dissolved by Central Committee decree in April 1932. Medvedkin must here be referring to ARRK. See also ch. 11, pp. 196, 205 this volume.
3 Lunacharsky was People’s Commissar for Enlightenment until 1929 and as such had overall political responsibility for the film industry. His speech defending Medvedkin was delivered to the Moscow branch of ARRK on 12 July 1931 after his retirement and published as ‘Kinematograficheskaya komediya i satira’ [Film Comedy and Satire], Proletarskoe kino, no. 9 (September 1931), pp. 4–15.
4 Chris Marker made a documentary Le Train en marche [The Train Rolls On] in1971 to accompany the release in France of Happiness. This included a long interview with Medvedkin in which he talked about the film train.
5 Nikolai Okhlopkov (1900–67) was an actor in the Meyerhold Theatre from 1923, the director of the Realist Theatre in Moscow from 1930 till 1937 and director of the Mayakovsky Theatre from 1943 until 1966. He also acted in a number of films, including Macheret’s Men and Jobs [1932], Romm’s Lenin in October [Lenin v oktyabre, 1937] and Lenin in 1918 [Lenin v 1918g., 1938], Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky [1938] and Pudovkin’s Kutuzov [1943]. The Way of the Enthusiasts was the only feature film that he directed.
6 The reference to ‘black bread’ goes back to Lenin’s conversation in 1920 with Clara Zetkin on the role of art in revolutionary culture. See: FF, p. 51.
7 Khmyr is the name of the principal character in Happiness.
8 Eisenstein’s review, entitled ‘The Possessors’ [Styazhateli] (the working title of the film, a reference to the seventeenth-century debate about monastic land-owning), was written in February 1935 but remained unpublished until it appeared in the fifth volume of his posthumous Izbrannye proizvedeniya [Selected Works] (Moscow: 1968), pp. 231–5.
10
Making Sense of Early Soviet Sound
1 C.A.Lejeune, Cinema (London: 1931), p. 167.
2 J.Grierson, ‘Summary and Survey: 1935’, in: F.Hardy (ed.), Grierson on Documentary (London: 1966), p. 182. The ambiguities of Grierson’s position on Soviet cinema (as on much else) remain to be fully explored. Both in this article and elsewhere he slips between admiration for ‘exciting cinema’ and contempt for the ‘airs and ribbons of art’ that have distracted Soviet film-makers from ‘coming to grips ‘with the issues around them.
3 A.Bazin, ‘The Evolution of the Language of Cinema’, (1955) in: What Is Cinema? (Berkeley, Calif.: 1967), pp. 23–6.
4 As Peter Wollen termed it in the discussion following his paper ‘Cinema and Technology: A Historical Overview’, in: T.de Lauretis and S.Heath (eds), The Cinematic Apparatus (London: 1980), p. 24.
5 G.Nowell-Smith, ‘On the Writing of the History of Cinema: Some Problems’, Edinburgh’77 Magazine, p. 11.
6 See: N.Burch, To the Distant Observer (London: 1979), ch. 14. Burch makes a case for regarding the five years after the commercial introduction of sound in 1927 as a ‘Golden Age’ for European cinema.
7 See, for instance: D.Robinson, World Cinema: A Short History (London: 1973), p. 175. Other ‘short histories’, such as G.Mast, A Short History of the Movies (New York: 1971), omit even this cursory remark on the introduction of sound.
8 Ye.Gabrilovich, ‘Adventures and Encounters of a Scenarist’, in: L.Schnitzer, J.Schnitzer and M.Martin (eds), Cinema in Revolution (trans. and ed. D.Robinson) (French edn, Paris: 1966) (London: 1973), pp. 168–9.
9 First published in translation as Composing for the Films (New York: 1947), and attributed to Eisler alone. The revised ‘original’ version, attributed to both authors, appeared in West Germany in 1969; I have used the French translation of this: Musique du cinéma (trans. J.-P.Hammer) (Paris: 1972), ch. 5.
10 Adorno and Eisler, pp. 85–6.
11 There is evidence of an interdisciplinary group which met in the early 1930s to discuss topics such as ‘inner speech’; see: H.Deakin, ‘Linguistic Models in Early Soviet Cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 17, no. 1 (Fall 1977), n. 11, referring to research by Annette Michelson.
12 Paul Willemen extended his original discussion of ‘inner speech’, ‘Reflections on Eikhenbaum’s Concept of Internal Speech in the Cinema’, Screen, vol. 15, no. 4 (Winter 1974–5), pp. 57–79, in: ‘Cinematic Discourse—The Problem of Inner Speech’, Screen, vol. 22, no. 3 (1981), pp. 63–93.
13 B.Eikhenbaum, ‘Problems of Film Stylistics’ (trans. T.Aman), Screen, vol. 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1974), pp. 7–32; originally published as ‘Problemy kinostilistiki’, with contributions by other Formalist critics, in the collection Poetika kino (Moscow/Leningrad: 1927). A complete translation of this collection is now available as The Poetics of Cinema (Russian Poetics in Translation 9, Oxford: 1982).
14 Eikhenbaum, p. 14.
15 ibid., p. 30.
16 ‘Help Yourself!’, ESW 1, p. 236; also translated as ‘A Course in Treatment’, Film Form, p. 106.
17 Eikhenbaum, p. 16.
18 FF, pp. 234–5; ESW1, pp. 113–14.
19 FF, p. 234; ESW1, p. 113.
20 See, for example, texts by Andreyev, Mayakovsky and Meyerhold in: FF, pp. 27–39.
21 FF, pp. 271–5.
22 K.Thompson, ‘Early Sound Counterpoint’, Yale French Studies, no. 60 (1980), pp. 115–40.
23 Willemen, ‘Cinematic Discourse’, p. 66.
24 Thompson, ‘Early Sound Counterpoint’, pp. 119–27; Leonid Trauberg, co-director of Alone, confirmed in an interview with the author, Moscow 1987, that the film was fully post-synchronised.
25 A.Golovnya, ‘Broken Cudgels’, Schnitzer et al., p. 139.
26 V.I.Pudovkin, ‘On the Problem of the Sound Principle in Film’, FF, p. 265.
27 ESW1, p.236.
28 Taylor’s translation corrects several errors in the previously available version: here ‘long shots’ [obshchie plany] in place of Leyda’s ‘close-ups’.
29 N.Burch, ‘Film’s Institutional Mode of Representation and the Soviet Response’, October, no. 11 (Winter 1979), pp. 87–8.
30 FF, p. 235; ESW 1, p. 114.
31 According to Y.Barna, Eisenstein (London: 1973), p. 134.
32 Alexander Walker records in The Shattered Silents (London: 1978), p. 198, the high proportion of European films and actors playing in New York at the beginning of the sound era. By 1930 almost all foreign films had disappeared from mainstream American cinemas.
33 Vladimir Petri has analysed in detail the pattern of Soviet films entering US distribution from 1926 to 1935. The total imported by 1936 was 184 titles, of which 91 were silent and 93 sound. Petri records the verdict of their US importer, Amkino, on its liquidation in 1940: ‘Soviet talkies have always been less popular than Soviet silent films’; ‘Soviet Revolutionary Films in America’ (unpublished PhD thesis, New York University: 1973).
34 For details of Soviet dependence on imported American films in the mid-1920s, see: Taylor, pp. 94–6. See also above, ch. 3, nn. 17 and 18.
35 FF, pp. 129–31.
36 ‘The Cine-Eyes. A Revolution’, FF, p. 93; also translated as ‘Kinoks. A Revolution’, in: A.Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye. The Writings of Dziga Vertov (trans. K.O’Brien) (Berkeley, Calif.: 1984), p. 5.
37 ‘Otvety na voprosy’ [Replies to Questions], here translated by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie from: S.Drobashenko (ed.), Dziga Vertov. Stat’i. Dnevniki. Zamysli [Dziga Vertov: Articles, Diaries, Projects] (Moscow: 1966), p. 129; cf. Michelson, p. 106.
38 ‘Pervye shagi’ [First Steps], Michelson, p. 114. The Sokolov article, ‘Vozmozhnosti zvukovogo kino’ [The Possibilities of Sound Cinema] had appeared in Kino, no. 45 (1929).
39 I.Montagu, With Eisenstein in Hollywood (Berlin, GDR: 1968), pp. 27–8.
40 See my introduction, ‘Soviet Cinema: A Heritage and Its History’, FF, pp. 1–17.
41 A.Nove, An Economic History of the USSR (Harmondsworth: 1969 and 1976), pp. 144–8, stresses the massive and unprecedented task of preparing the Five Year Plan, with minimal planning techniques or statistics; hence the Plan was submitted for approval in April 1929, over six months after it was supposed to have begun.
42 Taylor, ch. 6.
43 FF, p. 208.
44 Montagu, p. 27.
45 The phrase was used in the Party Conference resolutions in March 1928 and became a slogan, later taken up by Shumyatsky; FF, p. 212.
46 The title of one of Shumyatsky’s books, Kinematografiya millionov (Moscow: 1935).
47 Shumyatsky, p. 117.
48 Burch, To the Distant Observer, p. 147.
49 FF, p. 424. Similar figures are quoted in Steven P.Hill’s valuable analysis of Soviet pre-war production, ‘A Quantitative View of Soviet Cinema’, Cinema Journal, vol. 11, no. 2 (Spring 1972), p. 21.
50 See pp. 199–200 this volume.
51 Undertaken, like Kristin Thompson’s, at the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, with the kind assistance of the late Jacques Ledoux and at his staff, and at VNIIK, Moscow.
52 See Willemen, ‘Cinematic Discourse’, pp. 64 ff.
53 S.Freud, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (Harmondsworth: 1975), esp. chs 5, 8 and 9.
54 See above, ch. 9, n. 5.
55 Yuri N.Tynyanov (1894–1943), Soviet author, critic, theorist and scriptwriter, whose earlier scripts included the FEKS films The Overcoat [1926], based on Gogol, and SVD [1927].
56 Little is known about this film, which was directed by Alexander Andreyevsky, mentioned briefly by Leyda, pp. 283n and 363.
57 V.I.Pudovkin, Pudovkin on Film Technique (trans. I.Montagu) (London: 1958), p. 189.
58 R.Jakobson, ‘The Dominant’, (1935) in: L.Mateika and K.Pomorska (eds), Readings in Russian Poetics (Michigan Slavic Contributions 8, Ann Arbor, Mich.: 1978), p. 82.cf. Eisenstein’s ‘The Fourth Dimension in Cinema’, in: ESW1, pp. 181–94.
59 V.N.Voloshinov [M.M.Bakhtin], ‘Reported Speech’, (1930) in: Mateika and Pomorska, p. 158.
60 Even under glasnost, taboos remain which have prevented until recently extensive analysis of Soviet films of the later 1930s. The colloquium organised by FIPRESCI, the USSR Association of Film-makers and VNIIK on ‘Cinema in the Totalitarian Epoch’, in Moscow in July 1989, provided a rare opportunity to pursue this exploration by making comparisons between rhetorical strategies in German and Soviet films of this period.
Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s
1 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘Tvorcheskie zadachi templana’ [The Creative Tasks of the Thematic Plan], Sovetskoe kino, no. 12 (December 1933), pp. 1–15.
2 Bol’shaya sovetskaya entsiklopediya [The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia] (3rd edn, Moscow: 1970–81), vol. 28, col. 1548.
3 See: SKhF, vol. 1, pp. 82–3.
4 Pravda, 2 February and 16 February 1926; Kino-gazeta, 16 February 1926.
5 Pravda, 6 July 1926.
6 V.V.Mayakovskii, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow: 1959), vol. 12, pp. 353–9.
7 A.Piotrovskii, ‘Ob “ideologii” i “kommertsii”’ [On ‘Ideology’ and ‘Commerce’], Zhizn’iskusstva, 27 December 1927, p. 5; FF, pp. 188–90.
8 B.S.Ol’khovyi (ed.), Puti kino. Vsesoyuznoe partiinoe soveshchanie po kinematografii (Moscow: 1929), pp. 429–44.
9 ibid.
10 See above, ch. 9, n. 2.
11 See: FF, pp. 216–17, 219–20, 225–32.
12 P.Petrov-Bytov, ‘U nas net sovetskoi kinematografii’ [We Have no Soviet Cinema], Zhizn’ iskusstva, 21 April 1929, p. 8; FF, pp. 259–62.
13 ibid.
14 Quoted in N.A.Lebedev (ed.), Partiya o kino [The Party on Cinema] (Moscow: 1939), pp. 82–5. This is not the same as the book quoted above in ch. 4, n. 46.
15 A.I.Rubailo, Partiinoe rukovodstvo razvitiem kinoiskusstva (1928–1937gg.) [Party Guidance of the Development of Cinema Art (1928–37)] (Moscow: 1976), p. 22.
16 Kinospravochnik [Cinema Handbook] (Moscow: 1929), p. 25.
17 Rubailo, p. 20.
18 Ol’khovyi, p. 38.
19 Rubailo, p. 23.
20 A.V.Lunacharskii, ‘O kino’ [On Cinema], Komsomol’skaya pravda, 26 August 1925.
21 Reported in Zhizn’ iskusstva, 24 January 1928.
22 V.Sutyrin, ‘Ot intelligentskikh illyuzii k real’noi deistvitel’nosti’ [From Intelligentsia Illusions to Actual Reality], Proletarskoe kino, no. 5/6 (May/June 1931), pp. 14–24.
23 E.Lemberg, Kinopromyshlennost’ SSSR [The Cinema Industry of the USSR] (Moscow: 1930), p. 71.
24 E.Gabrilovich, O tom, chto proshlo [About What Happened] (Moscow: 1967), p. 12.See also above ch. 10, n. 8.
25 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘Signal trevogi’ [Warning Signal], Proletarskoe kino, no. 5/6 (May/June 1931), pp. 5–7.
26 See, for instance: B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘Zadachi templana 1934 goda’ [The Tasks of the 1934 Thematic Plan], Sovetskoe kino, no. 11 (November 1933), pp. 1–4; and idem, Tvorcheskie zadachi templana’, op. cit.
27 Reported in Kino, 28 December 1933, pp. 3–4.
28 TsGALI (Central State Archive for Literature and the Arts), 2497/1/64, minute no.32, dated 27 June 1932, pp. 184–7.
29 The speech is in TsGALI, 2497/1/64, minute no. 33, dated 2 July 1932, pp. 188–95.The quotation is from p. 190.
30 ibid., p. 191.
31 ibid.
32 Izvestiya, 12 February 1933.
33 B.Z.Shumyatskii, Sovetskii fil’m na mezhdunarodnoi kinovystavke [Soviet Cinema at the International Cinema Exhibition] (Moscow: 1934) and Kinematografiy millionov [A Cinema for the Millions] (Moscow: 1935).
34 Shumyatskii, ‘Signal...’, pp. 6–7.
35 Shumyatskii, Kinematografiya millionov, p. 52.
36 ibid., p. 53.
37 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘O zadachakh khudozhnika v kinematografe’ [The Tasks of the Artist in Cinema], Vestnik kinematografii, no. 126(1917), p. 15; FF, pp. 41–2.
38 L.V.Kuleshov, ‘Iskusstvo svetotvorchestva’; FF, pp. 45–6.
39 Pudovkin, p. 140.
40 Preface to L.V.Kuleshov, Iskusstvo kino (Moscow: 1929), p. 4; Levaco, p. 41; FF, p. 270.
41 K.Samarin, ‘Kino ne teatr’ [Cinema Is Not Theatre], Sovetskoe kino, no. 2 (February 1927).
42 I.Sokolov, ‘Skrizhal’ veka’ [The Table of the Century], Kino-Fot, 25–31 August 1922, p. 3.
43 G.M.Boltyanskii, ‘Iskusstvo budushchego’ [The Art of the Future], Kino, no. 1/2(1922), p. 7.
44 G.M.Boltyanskii, Lenin i kino [Lenin and Cinema] (Moscow: 1925), pp. 16–17; FF, p. 57.
45 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘Rezhisser i akter v kino’ [The Director and the Actor in Cinema], Iskusstvo kino, no. 2 (February 1936), pp. 8–9.
46 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘Dramaturgiya kino’ [The Dramaturgy of Cinema], Sovetskoe kino, no. 7 (July 1934), p. 4.
47 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘K chemu obyazyvaet nas yubilei’ [What the Anniversary Obliges Us to Do], Sovetskoe kino, no. 11/12 (November/December 1934), p. 13.
48 Shumyatskii, ‘Tvorcheskie zadachi templana’, p. 6.
49 ibid.
50 ibid., p. 7.
51 Shumyatskii, ‘Dramaturgiya kino’, p. 3.
52 S.M.Eizenshtein, V.I.Pudovkin and G.V.Aleksandrov, ‘Zayavka’, Zhizn’iskusstva, 5August 1928, pp. 4–5; translated as ‘Statement on Sound’ in: FF, pp. 234–5 and in: ESW1, 113–14.
53 ibid.
54 Shumyatskii, Sovetskii fil’m, p. 84.
55 S.M.Eizenshtein, ‘Montazh 1938’, Iskusstvo kino, no. 1 (January 1939), p. 37.
56 Denounced by Mayakovsky among others in a speech during a debate on ‘The Paths and Policy of Sovkino’ on 15 October 1927; FF, pp. 171–4.
57 I.V.Vaisfel’d and G.R.Maslovskii, ‘Formirovanie sovetskoi teorii kino’ [The Formation of Soviet Film Theory] in: V.V.Vanslov and L.F.Denisova (eds), Iz istorii sovetskogo iskusstvovedeniya i esteticheskoi mysli 1930kh godov [The History of Soviet Art History and Aesthetic Thought in the 1930s] (Moscow: 1977), p. 336.
58 Shumyatskii, ‘Rezhisser i akter’, p. 8.
59 Shumyatskii, ‘K chemu...’, p. 14.
60 Shumyatskii, ‘Rezhisser i akter’, p. 8.
61 Shumyatskii, Sovetskii fil’m..., p. 81.
62 B.Z.Shumyatskii, ‘O fil’me Bezhin Lug’ [On the Film Bezhin Meadow], Pravda, 19 March 1937, p. 3; FF, pp. 378–81.
63 ibid.
64 ibid.
65 Kino, 22 March 1934, p. 1; 28 March, p. 1; 4 April, pp. 1–2; 10 April, p. 1.
66 Shumyatskii, ‘O fil’me...’, p. 3.
67 See above, n. 14.
68 Shumyatskii, ‘Rezhisser i akter’, p. 8.
69 The minutes were published as Za bol’shoe kinolskusstvo [For A Great Cinema Art] (Moscow: 1935).
70 Shumyatskii, Kinematografiya millionov, p. 8.
71 ibid., p. 31.
72 ibid., pp. 33–4.
73 ibid., p. 8. cf. p. 34.
74 Lebedev, pp. 41–5.
75 Pyatnadtsatyi s”ezd V.K. P.(b). Stenograficheskii otchet [Fifteenth Party Congress.Stenographic Report] (Moscow: 1928), p. 60.
76 L.D.Trotskii, ‘Vodka, tserkov’ i kinematograf’ [Vodka, the Church and Cinema], Pravda, 12 July 1923; FF, pp. 94–7.
77 Shumyatskii, ‘Zadachi templana’, p. 1.
78 Shumyatskii, Kinematografiya millionov, p. 247.
79 ibid., p. 249.
80 ibid., p. 236.
81 ibid., p. 240.
82 ibid., p. 242.
83 Shumyatskii, ‘Tvorcheskie zadachi...’, p. 11.
84 ibid.
85 SKhF, vol. 2, p. 67.
86 Shumyatskii, ‘Zadachi templana’, p. 2.
87 There is an interesting discussion of this film in I.Grashchenkova, Abram Room (Moscow: 1977), pp. 134–75.
88 Shumyatskii, Kinematografiya millionov, p. 148.
89 ibid., p. 154.
90 ibid., p. 152.
91 Cited in ibid., p. 7.
92 A.P.Dovzhenko, ‘Uchitel’ i drug khudozhnika’ [The Artist’s Teacher and Friend], Iskusstvo kino, no. 10 (October 1937), pp. 15–16; FF, pp. 383–5.
93 Shumyatskii, Kinematografiya millionov, p. 36.
94 ibid., p. 38.
95 ibid., p. 18.
96 Macheret’s film Men and Jobs [ 1932] dealt with this theme.
97 Reports in Kino, 17 July 1933, p. 1, and 23 July 1933, p. 1.
98 Doklad komissii B.Z.Shumyatskogo po izucheniyu tekhniki i organizatsii amerikanskoi i evropeiskoi kinematografii [Report of the Shumyatsky Commission to Examine the Technology and Organisation of American and European Cinema] (Moscow: 1935), pp. 5–6. It was only after 1945 that some three dozen German films from the Nazi period went into Soviet distribution. These included the following anti-British propaganda films: Der Fuchs von Glenarvon [The Fox of Glenarvon, 1940; Soviet release title: Vozmezdie (Retribution), 1949]; Das Herz der Königin [The Heart of the Queen, 1940; Soviet release title: Doroga na eshafot (The Path to the Scaffold), 1948]; Mein Leben für Irland [My Life for Ireland, 1941; Soviet release title: Shkola nenavisti (School for Hatred), 1949]; Ohm Krüger [Uncle Kruger, 1941; Soviet release title: Transvaal’ v ogne (The Transvaal in Flames), 1948]; Titanic [1943 but never released in Nazi Germany; Soviet release title: Gibel’ Titanika (The Sinking of the Titanic), 1949]. See: M.Turovskaya (ed.), Kino totalitarnoi epokhi 1933–1945/Filme der Totalitären Epoche 1933–1945 (Moscow: 1989), pp. 45–6.
99 Doklad, p. 148.
100 ibid., p. 57.
101 ibid., p. 150.
102 Rome’s Cine-Città was also cited with approval: Yuzhnaya baza sovetskoi kinematografii (Kinogorod) [The Southern Base for Soviet Cinema (Cine-City)] (Moscow: 1936), p. 18.
103 ibid., p. 16.
104 Osnovnye polozheniya planovogo zadaniya po yuzhnoi baze sovetskoi kinematografii (Kinogorod), [The Basic Propositions of the Planned Project for a Southern Base for Soviet Cinema (Cine-City)] (Moscow: 1936), p. 3.
105 ibid., pp. 9–10.
106 Yuzhnaya baza, pp. 20–6.
107 Osnovnye polozheniya, p. 11.
108 ibid.
109 ibid., pp. 12,58.
110 See above, n. 99.
111 B.Z.Shumyatskii, Sovetskaya kinematografiya segodnya i zavtra [Soviet Cinema Today and Tomorrow] (Moscow: 1936), p. 50. This is the published text of the report delivered by Shumyatsky to the Seventh All-Union Production and Thematic Conference on 13 December 1935.
112 Osnovnye polozheniya, pp. 96–7.
113 As can be seen from the increasing hostility and mockery in newspaper reports appearing throughout 1937 in Kino and Sovetskoe iskusstvo, e.g.: D.Alekseev,’ Zadachi sovetskogo kino’ [The Tasks of Soviet Cinema], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 5 July 1933, p. 3; idem, ‘Nemoshchnyi opekun’ [‘The Powerless Guardian’, i.e. Shumyatsky], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 23 July 1937, p. 3; idem, ‘Vygodnaya professiya’ [A Profitable Profession], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 23 September 1937, p. 5, or the comments made at the First All-Union Congress of the Union of Film Workers at the end of September: see ‘Na s” ezde rabotnikov kino’ [At the Film Workers’ Congress], Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 29 September 1937, p. 5. Kino was less outspoken, probably because Shumyatsky, as head of the State Directorate for the Cinema and Photographic Industry (GUKF), still had nominal control over its contents. See the reports of the congress in Kino, 17 September 1937, p. 2; 24 September 1937, p. 2; 29 September 1937, pp. 2–3.
114 G.Ermolaev, ‘Chto tormozit razvitie sovetskogo kino?’ [What Is Holding Up the Development of Soviet Cinema?], Pravda, 9 January 1938, p. 4; FF, pp. 386–7.
115 To make matters worse, this figure included a number of films carried over from previous years.
116 For details of the prizes awarded in January 1935, see: Iskusstvo kino, no. 1 (January 1935).
117 Leonid Trauberg: interview with the author, March 1983.
118 Related to the author by a Soviet cinema historian who wished to remain anonymous, March 1983.
119 FF, pp. 386–7.
120 In an editorial entitled ‘K novomu pod” emu’ [Towards a New Advance], Kino, 11 January 1938, p. 1.
121 ‘Fashistskaya gadina unichtozhena’ [The Fascist Cur Eradicated], Iskusstvo kino, no.2 (February 1938), pp. 5–6; FF, pp. 387–9.
122 See above, n. 2. Ironically, his old enemy from the days of the ‘proletarian hegemony’, Vladimir Kirshon, was shot the previous day. Both have been posthumously rehabilitated but the only biography of Shumyatsky was published in Siberia: B.Bagaev, Boris Shumyatskii. Ocherk zhizni i deyatel’nosti [Boris Shumyatsky. A Sketch of His life and Activity] (Krasnoyarsk: 1974).
123 V.E.Vishnevskii and P.V.Fionov, Sovetskoe kino v datakh i faktakh [Soviet Cinema in Dates and Facts] (Moscow: 1973), p. 116.
124 ibid., p. 123.
125 Interview with the author, April 1985.
126 Vishnevskii and Fionov, p. 170.
127 Leonid Trauberg, one of the directors closest to Shumyatsky, and Yuli Raizman in separate interviews with the author, March 1985.