Sound, speech, music in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema

314 Pages·2014·4.679 MB·English

by  Kaganovsky, Lilya;Salazkina, Masha

Sound, Speech, MuSic in Soviet and
poSt-Soviet c ineMa
This page intentionally left blank
Sou nd, Speech, MuSic
in Soviet and
po St-Soviet c ineM a
Edited by Lilya Kaganovsky and
Masha Salazkina
indiana university press
Bloomington and indianapolis
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Library of congress cataloging-in-publication data
Sound, speech, music in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema / edited by
Lilya Kaganovsky and Masha Salazkina.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-0-253-01104-6 (paperback) — iSBn 978-0-253-01095-7
(cloth) — iSBn 978-0-253-01110-7 (ebook) 1. Motion pictures—
Soviet union. 2. Film soundtracks—Soviet union. 3. Motion
picture music—Soviet union—history and criticism.
i. Kaganovsky, Lilya, editor. ii. Salazkina, Masha, editor.
pn1993.5.R8S67 2013
781.5′420947084—dc23
2013042567
1 2 3 4 5 19 18 17 16 15 14
contents
acknowledgments vii
note on transliteration ix
List of abbreviations xi
introduction • Masha Salazkina 1
Part I. From Silence to Sound
1 From the history of Graphic Sound in the Soviet union; or,
Media without a Medium • Nikolai Izvolov 21
2 Silents, Sound, and Modernism in dmitry Shostakovich’s Score to
The New Babylon • Joan Titus 38
3 to catch up and overtake hollywood: early talking pictures
in the Soviet union • Valérie Pozner 60
4 aRRK and the Soviet transition to Sound • Natalie Ryabchikova 81
5 Making Sense without Speech: The use of Silence in
early Soviet Sound Film • Emma Widdis 100
Part II. Speech and Voice
6 The problem of heteroglossia in early Soviet Sound
cinema (1930–35) • Evgeny Margolit 119
7 challenging the voice of God in World War ii–era
Soviet documentaries • Jeremy Hicks 129
8 vocal changes: Marlon Brando, innokenty Smoktunovsky,
and the Sound of the 1950s • Oksana Bulgakowa 145
9 Listening to the inaudible Foreign: Simultaneous translators
and Soviet experience of Foreign cinema • Elena Razlogova 162
vi | Contents
Part III. Music in Film; or, The Sound Track
10 Kinomuzyka: Theorizing Soviet Film Music
in the 1930s • Kevin Bartig 181
11 Listening to Muzykal’naia istoriia (1940) • Anna Nisnevich 193
12 The Music of Landscape: eisenstein, prokofiev, and the
uses of Music in Ivan the Terrible • Joan Neuberger 212
13 The Full illusion of Reality: Repentance, polystylism, and
the Late Soviet Soundscape • Peter Schmelz 230
14 Russian Rock on Soviet Bones • Lilya Kaganovsky 252
Bibliography 273
contributors 291
index 295
acknowledgments
t
his volume came about as a result of our mutual frustration with the lack
of english-language materials on sound in Soviet and post-Soviet cinema. in it,
we have tried to bring together new work by scholars from several disciplines,
providing a larger historical framework for the discussion of the “sonic turn”
in Soviet film studies, as well as close readings of individual films that pay par-
ticular attention to the way sound, speech, and music operate in Soviet and post-
Soviet cinema. We are grateful to indiana university press and in particular to
our editor Raina polivka, for her enthusiasm, advice, and support of this project.
We also owe many thanks to the commitment and patience of our contributors
to this project as the volume has gone through its various incarnations, as well as
to the support and interest of several fellow-travelers and interlocutors, in par-
ticular polina Barskova, Birgit Beumers, vincent Bohlinger, andrew chapman,
Katerina clark, nancy condee, Julian Graffy, naum Kleiman, vera Kropf, Susan
Larsen, John MacKay, Joshua Malitsky, Simon Morrison, Sergei oushakine, amy
Sargeant, and Mark Slobin, as well as to our two external reviewers, whose atten-
tive appraisals helped shape this book.
Likewise, we owe many thanks to our translators andrée Lafontaine, Sergei
Levchin, and Katrina Sark, and our team of editorial assistants for their work on
this collection. We are particularly grateful to dru Jeffries, whose meticulous
readings helped bring this volume to completion.
Sound, Speech, Music in Soviet and Post-Soviet Cinema received generous
support at both of our home institutions, as well as from national organizations,
and of course, from family and friends.
Lilya Kaganovsky would like to thank the university of illinois’s Research
Board; the federally funded Russian, east european, and eurasian center; the
department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and the program in compara-
tive and World Literature for providing research assistance, conference travel,
and research travel support; and the american council of Learned Societies, to-
gether with the national endowment for the arts and Social Science Research
council, for fellowship support that provided leave time for this project. She is
particularly grateful to her friends and colleagues at illinois, cambridge, and
beyond; and most importantly to R.R., S.R., Н.К., А.К., and О.П.
Masha Salazkina would like to thank concordia university’s aid to Re-
search Related events, exhibition, publication, and dissemination activities and
the Faculty of Fine arts for providing research and translation funds for this
viii | Acknowledgments
project, as well as her colleagues at the Mel hoppenheim School of cinema for
their advice and support. Without igor Salazkin’s tireless search for books and
Luca caminati’s unfaltering patience and unconditional support, none of this
would have been possible.
* * *
two of the chapters in the present volume were originally published in Rus-
sian in the excellent collection Sovetskaia vlast’ i media (Soviet power and the
Media, 2006), edited by hans Günther and Sabine hänsgen. We are grate-
ful to the editors, Günther and hänsgen, and to the authors, nikolai izvolov
and evgeny Margolit, for their permission to translate their work here. While
the volume itself is out of print, an electronic version of the text is available at
http://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/publication/23050177.
note on transliteration
t
he transliteration system we use in this volume aims for readability in
the text and accuracy in the notes. Russian names in the text are given in their
conventional english-language spelling to render them more accessible, while
Library of congress system of transliteration is followed in all other instances.
in translating titles of Russian films, we have also inserted articles where english
fluency requires them.