FILM-MAKING IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29234, 18 June 1960, Page 3

FILM-MAKING IN RUSSIA

Kino. A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. By Jay Leyda. Allen and Unwin. 472 p.p. Index.

“Kino” is a curiously revealing book. From early days it is insisted that the Soviet film industry had had its triumphs; but the reader will note that its progress is subject to sudden full stops and jerky starts. The pattern is given at the beginning of chapter 15. “The structure of the cinema industry was completely overhauled, for the ninth time since the October Revolution. After the Shumyatsky years all agreed that this was a change for the better: ‘With the aim of impA>ving and unifying the management of cinema affairs and of regulating the, film industry, its production and distribution, a Committee on Cinema Affairs is decreed to be formed directly subject to the Council of People’s Commissars o fthe U.S.S.R.’ ” The next sentence ushers in an old friend in a brand new role. "Stalin’s happy experience of personally supervising the success of ‘Lenin in October’ was behind this reorganisation, making the new Cinema Committee directly responsible to the top.” It is interesting to realise that even in the picture world events follow a familiar pattern. The unfortunate Shumyatsky, mentioned above, was the man who projected a Soviet Hollywood on the shores of the Black Sea. But in 1937, “the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution was at hand, without a film to mark the date.” However, “with constant prodding from above, ‘Lenin in October’ was ready for release three months after shooting commenced.” As Mr Leyda elegantly comments, “Why had there not been other films made this quickly, this economically, and this well? There were grand plans, but look at your record, Comrade Shumyatsky.” It naturally follows that this listless aesthete was denounced in “Pravda” (January 9, 1938) as “politically blind” and a tool of enemy wreckers around him. He was put in charge of a small provincial factory and nothing further was heard of his assistants —or of his Soviet Hollywood. It need hardly be added that Mr Leyda “heard from friends that all of Moscow’s film-makers gave parties on the night of January 9.” It is obvious that there are empire builders here who are prepared to play the game the hard way. “Kino,” however, is not without its comic side. For instance, “On October 7, 1920, a happier visitor, H. G. Wells, attended a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, to which he made a brief statement clarifying his political position. The meeting ended with a

debate on the production of vegetables in the Petrograd district.” Equally simple is the summing-up of the results of the Conference of American and British Cinema held in August, 1942. “Looking back, it now seems almost dreamlike to read the messages of greeting to this conference from Samuel Goldwyn, the Warner Brothers, Darryl Zanuck, David Selznick, Walt Disney and to read the speeches of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, who were to speak so differently about the American cinema a few years later.”

In “Kino,” Mr Leyda insists on the two features that appear to dominate most of the films he discusses. The really praiseworthy setting is proletarian, and the aim is always to improve the Soviet citizen. Typical of this is the director Pudovkin’s visit to Hamburg to realise the idea of a new film. He wanted to see the city for himself; “two young journalists, Lazebnikov and Krasnostavsky, had shown him a carefully documented script on the life and struggles of the Hamburg dockworkers—“S.S. Pyatiletka.” The result appears to have been the desired “cascade of factual images.” Needless to say, Pudovkin had his ups and downs like everyone else. Audiences who saw his new film, “Life’s Very Good,” challenged “its ethics, its reality, its logic, its usefulness, everything about it; they asked, ‘For whom is life very good—for the philandering husband, for the deserted wife, for the author?” More ominously still, when this film was shown “to the party chiefs (including Stalin and Voroshilov) they greeted it with some applause, but more irritation.” Mr Leyda adds, “thereafter Pudovkin was in trouble.”

From the purely historical point of view there is much information in this book. Mr Leyda is nothing if not thorough. But as he remarks in his postscript, “The mystique of socialist realism is still a governing factor.” Readers of “Kino” will probably agree, but some of them will consider this a very mild way of stating a brutal fact.