BY THE WAY

Southland Times, Issue 20771, 11 May 1929, Page 13

BY THE WAY

BANNED RUSSIAN FILMS

(By

“Rowan.”)

When early this year the Sunday Film Society presented “The End of St. Petersburg,” a Russian film produced by Pudowkin, to a critical London public, a section of the audience made a vocal demonstration in favour of the picture and of the showing of Russian pictures generally, and according to the account given by indignant Conservative members afterwards in Parliament it took the ill-advised form of cheering the words “All Power to the Soviet, and hissing the British National Anthem.” In the House of Commons this was called “a pro-Bolshe-vist demonstration,” and Mr. Anthony Asquith, himself a member of the Sunday Film Society, which he describes as being composed “of all the most respectable of London matrons,” in deploring a gesture as must all those who yet admire Russian films on the ground of their artistic merit, remarked: “It is the sort of thing that leads to the censorship of films, and prevents people who want to see films on their merits from doing so.” As an indirect result, Russian films almost certainty will not effect an entrance into the British market, although they achieved a certain success by entering the arena of parliamentary discussion. The final decision must have arisen out of reports from Berlin of the anti-British character of Pudowkin’s “Storm Over Asia,” a picture which seemed designed for use in China and the bazaars of India, let alone Russia's own considerable Mongolian population. Such reports hardened the heart of the British public, and it is extremely unlikely that the ardent attempt of a pro-Sovict organization, which has its headquarters in Switzerland, will be able to soften them. This organization, which maintains a branch office in London itself, has been collecting signatures to a manifesto declaring that the signatories “desire films of artistic merit to be submitted in their original form for limited showing to a board of censors that will include individuals of proved artistic and scientific capacity.” Among the films mentioned in this connection arc practically all the forty-odd pictures produced to date by Sovkino, the Soviet Film Trust, which will probably never be seen in England. Sovkino is both a producing and distributing agency, supplying the film houses throughout Russia in about the same manner as the wholesale departments of the Government supply food and other commodities to co-operative branches. Each motion picture house pays a fixed rate' for a production, the Sovkino seeking profit only when selling its films abroad. Then its earnings are infinitely larger than those of other producers, because the high prices prevailing abroad are not diminished by large royalties to Russian directors, authors and stars. Seldom is a director paid more than 600 rubles a month (£60); only on rare occasions does a star receive as high as 500 rubles a week. Usually it is less than that per month. Although the cinema in Russia is controlled by the Board of Education, who see in it the greatest of mediums for educating and liberalizing the masses, yet the import of foreign films depends on the Commissariat of Foreign Trade for it entails paying out Russian Gold. This explains why so few foreign films find their way to the screens of Russia. The Government is generous in subsidizing films, for the officials realize that directors and actors feel themselves to be a part of the national educational movement. Serge M. Eisenstein, director of the Sovkino, received only 600 rubles for the scenario of his latest picture, ‘The General Line,” which cost only 75,000 rubles to produce. It tells of the attempts of a village to establish a co-operative to dispose of their dairy products. The struggle is be-

i tween the peasants, who try to pool their r resources and organize, and the rich farmr ers who want to keep them poor and in • their power. The wealthy farmers are so 1 eager to suppress the co-operative efforts • that when the peasants buy blooded bulls i to improve the local milk supply, the rich , villian tries to poison the animals. When asked who starred in “The General Line,” Eisenstein said he did not believe in ’ stars or the star system, his main characters ■ being a milkmaid, a bull, and a separator. “I never use real actors,” said the director. “Why not? Because an actor creates the • type, which then becomes artificial. I want i only the real type. Although it is often difficult to find it, I seek it in real life. I looked over 3,000 women before I found a leading lady for my present film. This quest took me to different parts of the country. I haunted employment bureaus, factories and villages before I found one. When I took her to location I suddenly didn’t like her—so filmed her only from the back. I soon discovered that the girl—you couldn’t really call her that, for she had already had twelve children and been in prison six times for moonshining—was not really the type for a heroine. When we went out to a village to film cows I found her drunk. So, because only shots of the heroine’s back were needed, I engaged as a substitute the peasant girl who was milking the cows.” “I liked the back of the farm girl and decided to have a look at her face, and if it pleased me, make her the heroine. It did—and thus, actually, Marfa Lapkina stepped into pictures backwards! She is 28 and has been working on a farm since she was 9. I gave her a contract for £l5 a month—with which she is delighted—on condition that she will go back to her cows and cabbages when the film is finished—a la Cincinnatus and his plough.” “I am always afraid high salaries and their new metier will cause my players to turn ‘bohemian.’ ” Eisenstein confessed, “so I never let them live like stars or in anyway change their mode of living. They are always peasants, working part time in the film. I give them parts to correspond with whatever they do in real life, and never let them feel they are artists for fear of spoiling their type. My feminine star, the farm girl, for instance, has worked all her life among cattle, and when she plays with the bull' in the picture, she is merely going on with her usual work.” In his opinion the masses must always figure in Russian movies. They go as volunteers, wanting no pay for their services. Neither do the orchestras which ( play during the filming. When the storming , of the Winter Palace was pictured, two or ‘ three thousand factory workers went every ‘ evening, taking their own orchestras, to , work for them. Romantic entertainment does not enter their films. They have a message to bring art that will help build , up the country under its new regime, and t show the change in living brought about ( by the October revolution. Eisenstein’s , next picture, for instance, “The Pathos of the Separator,” will glorify separators, cows, ' and milk, showing the important roles they , play in Russian life.

“Our films are not made with one eye on the box office,” he said, “but always for the benefit of the people. That explains why they are all so glad to help in every way they can. By living among them we find types we would not find otherwise, and these types are more convincing than

professional actors. For a subject, wc always go to the heart- of the masses, find out what they need, and then build a scenario about it. Moulding the feeling and intelligence of the masses is one of our political problems, and for this end we find movies most effective. •

“Another way in which we differ from America," he stated, “is in the fact that we do not build sets in the studio but go to the actual locale of our scenes. American producers make marvellous sets of Monte Carlo, for instance, on their own grounds. But if we want to film a bridge, we go to that very bridge. In ‘October’ we went to the Winter Palace for atmosphere, and the people surrounding it in the mob scenes had been actual revolutionists. In ‘Potemkin’ nothing was filmed in the studio. We went to the fleet and lived there. Thus was absorbed the life and social habits of the sailors and even had the help of officers who had been in the fleet for twenty years.”

When asked for his opinion of American films he hesitated a moment. ‘T think the crisis is at hand in American films,” he replied. “I don’t see how they can go any further. There is no art in them now. That explains why American producers now pay millions for ideas. But new ideas can come only from new social forms. Russia has them, and so Russia cinema leads the world to-day. The Renaissance, for instance, could come about only when the old order was changed. So it is with film art, which only comes after a big social change.” At present Eisenstein, who is twenty-five years old, is working on the psychology of audience-reactions, trying to measure the effects of a film on the audience. In addition to this he is working out new methods of acting and directing, searching for them as a science rather than as an art. These he will apply at the State School of Cinema Art, where he is professor of motion-picture directing, having worked out the system of stage and movie technique used there.