Juan Monroy — Outline: Lecture 4, Soviet Union and Soviet Montage

1 Bolshevik Revoltuon
- 1.1 not immediately able to finance filmmaking
- 1.2 set up a new regulatory body
- 1.3 most of the major pre-war firms fled after 1918 with equipment and raw stock
2 1918–1920
- 2.1 Civil War: Reds vs. White
- 2.2 not much production
- 2.3 short propaganda newsreels
- 2.4 great concern with getting film out to troops and villagers in the countryside
  - agit-trains
  - trucks
  - steamboats visiting countryside
  - putting on skits
  - showing movies on outdoor screens
3 State Film School
- 3.1 established by Lenin, 1919
- 3.2 Lev Kuleshov
  - experimented with film
  - developed montage experiments
4 Lenin and Film
- 4.1 “of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important"
- 4.2 instrument for propaganda
- 4.3 education among illiterate population
- 4.4 Lenin Proportion
  - entertainment
  - education
- 4.5 pour resources into Soviet filmmaking
  - 1923: 99% of all films were foreign
  - gov’t set up production centers throughout the country
  - ethnic populations could see films reflecting their own culture
  - raw film stock acquired
  - more fiction films produced
5 Sovkino
- 5.1 created 1925
- 5.2 faced tough problems of opening urban theaters
- 5.3 sending 1000 portable projection units to rural areas
- 5.4 made money distributing foreign films, considered ideologically harmful by the late 1920s
- 5.5 domestic film production
  - success in Germany with POTEMKIN (Eisenstein)
  - success abroad with MOTHER (Vsevolod Pudovkin)
  - allowed Sovkino to buy foreign film equipment
  - could make money supporting these new montage directors
6 Constructivism
- 6.1 movement of artists with political aims
- 6.2 manifestos and articles about how abstract art (which had led the avant-garde prior to the revolution) could be designed for useful ends
- 6.3 art fulfilled a social function for Constructivism
  - skilled artisans using materials of medium to create an artwork
  - artists not seen as visionaries or people in search of some enduring higher truth
  - compared to engineers using tools and a rational, scientific, approach
  - work of art was process of assemblage (montage)
  - machine analogy for art looked upon favorably
  - artists’ studio were often seen as factories
- 6.4 art should be understandable by all
  - elicit a particular reaction
  - ideal for propaganda
    - posters
      - El Lissitsky’s BEAT THE WHITES WITH THE RED WEDGE
    - book covers
    - workers uniforms
    - cups and saucers
- 6.5 Vsevolod Meyerhold
  - theater work in early 1920s influenced filmmakers
  - Constructivist design principles
  - set was like a large factory
  - actors’ body was like a machine
    - controlled physical movements
    - biomechanical acting
7 Montage Filmmakers
- 7.1 Sergei Eisenstein
  - early life
    - came from educated family
    - influenced by Melies at age eight and by circus
    - Studied engineering
    - fought in Revolution
    - studied under Meyerhold in 1921
    - directed first play ENOUGH SIMPLICITY IN EVERY WISE MAN
  - Strike (1925)
    - shot and set in a factory
    - first major film of the montage movement
  - Montage
    - Potemkin (1925)
    - October
    - Old and the New
    - believe in cinema of attractions
- 7.2 V. I. Pudovkin
  - wanted to be a chemist until he saw INTOLERANCE in 1919
  - joined Kuleshov’s workshop
    - actor
    - director
  - Mother
    - montage film
- 7.3 Dziga Vertov
  - wrote poetry and science fiction in the mid–1910s
  - started making documentaries in 1924
  - Man with a Movie Camera (1929)
  - tried to understand film “scientifically”
- 7.4 Features
  - distinctive camerawork
    - shots sometimes don’t use conventional framing
    - dynamic angles
  - distinctive mise-en-scene
    - dynamic tensions could be achieved within the shot
- 7.5 Decline of montage
  - only Soviet style until 1920s
  - about 30 films made in this style
  - criticized for their “formalism”, more appropriate for sophisticated foreigner
  - First Communist Party Conference on Film Questions in 1928
    - govt instituting first five year plan
    - wanted film to be centralized
    - no more import or export
    - films could be tailored strictly to needs of the workers and the peasants
  - filmmakers forced to adopt more accessible styles
  - Eisenstein left 1929 until 1932
  - Replaced by Socialist Realism, by 1933
    - embraced by Stalin