Soviet Cinema
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Transcript of Soviet Cinema
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Soviet Cinema
Context Revision
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“You must remember that, of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important” - Lenin
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Key Films
1926:Mother – Vsevelod Pudovkin
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1925-27: Strike, Battleship Potemkin, October – Sergei Eisenstein
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Soviet RussiaThe Basic Context
• The Communist revolution in 1917
• Many of the films are set in pre-communist times, specifically to show that life under Tsar Nicholas II had been oppressive
• Films set in contemporary Soviet times had to portray life as positive
• Cinematic experimentation was intended to separate communist cinema from ‘bourgeois film’
• The film industry was nationalised
• Constructivism – art has a purpose
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Agit-train
Film as propaganda – ideological message
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Aelita, Queen of Mars – crude propaganda
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The Kuleshov effectLeading the spectator to assume spatial or temporal continuity from the shots of separate elements
The filmmaker built up a space and time that did not exist.
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Applying context to a scene from Mother – the Kuleshov effect
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Political context and film form
Bold images of communist martyrdom – propaganda value to domestic and international audiences
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Construction of film as Soviet in form
Symbolism – the Tsar presides over the court scene
The Father/Mother/Son as symbolic of old/current/future Russia
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More symbolism
Breaking ice – a ‘Soviet spring’
The mother’s journey from drudge to martyr
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Constructivism
• Art has a purpose in society
• Influence of Alexander Rodchenko and photomontage
• The ‘Russian cutting’ as it was known in Hollywood gave a distinctly Soviet character to the films
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Ideology in film formSergei Eisenstein’s rules of montage:
• Intellectual: how editing generates ‘meaning’ from juxtaposition
• Metric: editing tempo• • Rhythmic: compositional contrasts (movement, e.g. order/chaos)
• Tonal: compositional contrasts (image, e.g. intersecting lines across the edit)
• Overtonal: the emotional pull of the above three
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Also in Eisenstein• The shocking image• Typage• Performance style
difference in proletariat/bourgeois characters
• Location shooting• Dynamic cinematography• Negative portrayal of
religion
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Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Pravda• Ideology of
documentary over fiction
• Dismissal of narrative, performance, etc
• Focus on the act of shooting the film itself as ‘truthful’
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What is the relationship between visual style and the subject matter of the films you have
studied?