Table Of Content

Real Images Published and Forthcoming in KINO: The Russian Cinema Series Series Editor: Richard Taylor Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (second, revised edition) Richard Taylor Forward Soviet! History and Non-fiction Film in the USSR Graham Roberts Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema Edited by Birgit Beumers Forthcoming KINOfiles (paperback companion handbooks to films in Russian cinema from its inception to the present day) The Battleship Potemkin Richard Taylor Bed and Sofa Julian Grafiy Burnt by the Sun Birgit Beumers The Cranes are Flying Josephine Woll The Man with the Movie Camera Graham Roberts Mirror Natasha Synessios Repentance Denise Youngblood REAL IMAGES Soviet Cinema and the Thaw JOSEPHINE WOLL I.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON • NEW YORK First published in 2000 by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B 4DZ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 website: http://www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and in Canada distributed by St Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © Josephine Woll, 2000 The right of Josephine Woll to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. A full cip record for this book is available from the British Library A full cip record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 1 86064 369 8 hardback ISBN 1 86064 550 X paperback Library of Congress catalog card number: available Set in Monotype Calisto by Ewan Smith, London Printed and bound in Great Britain By WBC Ltd, Bridgend Contents Illustrations vii KINO: The Russian Cinema Series General Editor’s Preface viii Preface x Part I The Big Sleep, 1953-56 1 1 The Big Sleep: Introduction 3 2 The Fallen Idol 14 3 Beat the Devil 30 4 Modem Times 42 Part II The Rules of the Game, 1957-59 57 5 The Rules of the Game: Introduction 59 6 The Best Years of Our Lives 66 7 Great Expectations 83 PartHI The Grand Illusion, 1960-64 101 8 The Grand Illusion: Introduction 103 9 Children of Paradise 112 10 Lost Horizon 125 11 Kameradschaft 138 12 Meet John Doe 151 PartlV Strange Interlude, 1964-65 161 13 Strange Interlude: Introduction 163 14 Odd Man Out 169 15 The Last Laugh 184 PartV Forbidden Games, 1965-67 199 16 Forbidden Games: Introduction 201 17 To Have and Have Not 209 18 Farewell, My Lovely 225 Notes 229 Filmography 252 Bibliography 255 Index 258 Illustrations 1. Soldier Ivan Brovkin 15 2. The Big Family 17 3. The Forty-first 40 4. Spring on Zarechnaia Street 49 5. Carnival Night 54 6. Heights 68 7. Heights 70 8. The Cranes are Flying 73 9. The Cranes are Flying 76 10. The House I Live in 80 11. The Communist 85 12. The Fate of a Man 88 13. The Fate of a Man 89 14. The Fate of a Man 90 15. Ballad of a Soldier 98 16. Serezha 114 17. Clear Skies 119 18. Peace to Him Who Enters 122 19. Nine Days of a Year 132 20. And What If It’s Love? 135 21. Ivan’s Childhood 140 22. Ilich’s Gate 147 23. I Walk Around Moscow 159 24. A Boy Like That 172 25. Welcome, or No Trespassing 174 26. The First Teacher 196 27. The Sky of Our Childhood 211 28. Watch the Car 215 29. Wings 219 30. Brief Encounters 220 31. July Rain 222 KINO: The Russian Cinema Series General Editor’s Preface Cinema has been the predominant popular art form of the first half of the twentieth century, at least in Europe and North America. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the former Soviet Union, where Lenin’s remark that ‘of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important’ became a cliché and where cinema attendances were until recently still among the highest in the world. In the age of mass politics Soviet cinema developed from a fragile but effective tool to gain support among the overwhelmingly illiterate peasant masses in the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution, through a welter of experimentation, into a mass weapon of propaganda through entertainment that shaped the public image of the Soviet Union - both at home and abroad and for both élite and mass audiences - and latterly into an instrument to expose the weaknesses of the past and present in the twin processes of glasnost and perestroika. Now the national cinemas of the successor republics to the old USSR are encountering the same bewildering array of problems, from the trivial to the terminal, as are all the other ex-Soviet institutions. Cinema’s central position in Russian and Soviet cultural history and its unique combination of mass medium, art form and entertainment industry, have made it a continuing battlefield for conflicts of broader ideological and artistic significance, not only for Russia and the Soviet Union but also for the world outside. The debates that raged in the 1920s about the relative revolu tionary merits of documentary as opposed to fiction film, of cinema as opposed to theatre or painting, or of the proper role of cinema in the forging of post- Revolutionary Soviet culture and the shaping of the new Soviet man, have their echoes in current discussions about the role of cinema vis-à-vis other art forms in effecting the cultural and psychological revolution in human conscious ness necessitated by the processes of economic and political transformation of the former Soviet Union into modern democratic and industrial societies and states governed by the rule of law. Cinema’s central position has also made it IX General Editor’s Preface a vital instrument for scrutinizing the blank pages of Russian and Soviet history and enabling the present generation to come to terms with its own past. This series of books intends to examine Russian and Soviet films in the con text of Russian and Soviet cinema, and Russian and Soviet cinema in the context of the political and cultural history of Russia, the Soviet Union and the world at large. Within that framework the series, drawing its authors from both East and West, aims to cover a wide variety of topics and to employ a broad range of methodological approaches and presentational formats. Inevitably this will involve ploughing once again over old ground in order to re-examine received opinions but it principally means increasing the breadth and depth of our knowledge, finding new answers to old questions and, above all, raising new questions for further inquiry and new areas for further research. The continuing aim of the series is to situate Russian and Soviet cinema in their proper historical and aesthetic context, both as a major cultural force in Russian history and Soviet politics and as a crucible for experimentation that is of central significance to the development of world cinema culture. Books in the series strive to combine the best of scholarship, past, present and future, with a style of writing that is accessible to a broad readership, whether that readership’s primary interest lies in cinema or in Russian and Soviet political history. Richard Taylor Swansea, Wales