The Thaw

1953- 1964

From the Victory to the “Thaw”

• The victory of 1945: great expectations frustrated.

• Zhdanov’s suppression of the arts: attacks writer Mikhail Zoshchenko and poet Anna Akhmatova.

• Anti-semitic policies: “struggle against cosmopolitanism” and the “Doctors’ plot.”

Film from 1945 to 1953

• Ivan the Terrible II not released.

• Film industry stultified, bureaucratized.

• In 1951 nine feature films made!

5 March 1953: Joseph Stalin dies

“The Thaw” in politics 1953-1964

• Nikita Khrushchev’s speech about Stalin’s “cult of personality” at the XXth Party Congress (1956).

• Stalin’s embalmed corpse removed from the Mausoleum (Lenin’s tomb).

• The city of Stalingrad renamed Volgograd.• Peasants got passports: began migration

to cities.• Housing construction: low-end apartment

blocks, khruschevkas.

Scientific and technical achievements

4 October 1957: the Sputnik.

12 April 1961 Yury Gagarin’s flight.

The Thaw culture

• Post-secondary education boom.• The country opens itself to the world:

the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957.

• Jazz, new music, style in arts, fashion.

• Freer exchange of information. • The 60s generation emerges.

The Thaw Cinema• Inflow of foreign films (trophy films, such as The Girl of my Dreams

and Tarzan; French New Wave and Italian neorealism).

• The number of films produced per year rises from under 10 in early 1950s to 75 in 1956.

• New beginnings in cinema: funds, cinemas built.• • 1954 director Ivan Pyriev appointed head of Mosfilm, later of entire

film industry.

• “Old masters” achieve a new degree of freedom (Abram Room, Mikhail Romm, Grigori Kozintsev); new breed of directors appears: “generation of lieutenants” and younger.

• Cinema studios in Soviet republics develop film production (both quantity and quality).

War Movies with a twist

• The Cranes Are Flying (Dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, Mosfilm, 1957) wins Golden Palm (Palme d’or) at Cannes in 1958.

• Ballad of a Soldier (Dir. Grigory Chukhrai, Mosfilm, 1959) nominated for Oscar.

• Events depicted from the perspective of the audience, not the authorities.

Typical motifs

• Contrast between battlefront and rear.

• Ironic heroism of soldiers.• The good commanding officer.• Corruption among officials in rear

(party).• Faithfulness of soldier. • Unfaithfulness of woman left behind.

Ideological content

• No mention of Stalin or communism.• Simple moral system : good versus

bad.• Enemy is faceless.• Heroism and endurance of

Russian/Soviet people.• Solidarity of all peoples of Soviet

Union and beyond against Fascism.

Typical poetic of war film post 1953

• Engaging narrative line.• Realism of depiction.• Strong acting values.• Innovative camera technique.• Absence of irony, little satire.• Interweaving of humour and

dramatic moments.

New themes in film: literature and private lives

• Screen versions of Russian classics…

• The Lady with the Little Dog (Lenfilm, 1960) by Iosif Heifits, based on the story by Anton Chekhov.

Ia Savvina and Aleksei Batalov in The Lady with the Little Dog

Soviet Shakespeare!

• G.Kozintsev directs two screen versions of Shakespearean tragedies at Lenfilm:

• Hamlet (1964) • King Lear (1971)

Private lives of Russians

• Feel good youth movies about people meeting and falling in love.

I walk around Moscow (Dir. Georgy Danielia, Mosfilm, 1964)

The Cranes Are Flying

• Director Mikhail Kalatozov, Mosfilm, 1957.• Camera: Sergei Urusevsky• Starring: Aleksei Batalov, Tatiana Samoilova• Simple plot, complicated psychology.• Influence of the war on lives of individuals.• The film does not condemn a “morally

flawed” heroine: humanism and compassion.

• Tragedy containing elements of humour and satire.

Composition (examples)

• The film starts as films usually end: blissful happiness of young sweethearts running towards the horizon. The line of the embankment on the screen points to the “future.”

• Important dialogues take place on the embankment, but the line is cut short.

• The heroine carries a little boy, her perished lover’s namesake, along (another) embankment – the horizon opens again.

The Cranes are flying…as they will when it is all over.

Innovative filming technique

• Extensive use of handheld camera (“off-duty camera”) – frantic camera movements when the heroine, desperate, runs along the street (realism: Urusevsky, the cameraman, used to be a war correspondent).

• Camera follows the heroine, without a cut, at eye level and then flies up to give a panorama. Speeds up – slows down.

• Extreme close-ups. Eyes.• The villain’s feet trampling the broken glass

(Hitchock-like, sinister shots). The heroine’s face upside down (her life turns upside down).

On the Embankment…

On the stairs...