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A History of Russian Cinema
Film emerged in pre-Revolutionary Russia to become the "most important of all arts" for the new Bolshevik regime and its propaganda machine. The 1920s saw a flowering of film experimentation, notably with the work of Eisenstein, and a huge growth in the audience for film, which continued into the 1930s with the rise of musicals. The films of the World War II and Cold War periods reflected a return to political concerns in their representation of the "enemy." The 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of art-house films. With glasnost came the collapse of the state-run film industry and an explosion in the cinematic treatment of previously taboo topics. In the new Russia, cinema has become genuinely independent, as a commercial as well as an artistic medium. A History of Russian Cinema is the first complete history from the beginning of film to the present day and presents an engaging narrative of both the industry and its key films in the context of Russia's social and political history.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 14, 2016
1 – The Beginnings of Russian Cinema (1908-19)
p.5 – As part of the Lumières’ tour of their new invention across Europe and the United States, the cinematograph arrived in Russia. On 4 May 1896, the cinematograph was presented at a fairground in the Aquarium Park in St. Petersburg (nowadays the territory of the city’s film studio, Lenfilm). In Moscow it made its debut at a fair in the Hermitage Theatre and Gardens on 26 May. The first Russian shows featured short films made by the Lumières, including their film demonstrating the arrival of a train at a station, with passengers waiting on the platform to board the train (Arrival of the Train at la Ciotat, 1895), which is alleged to have inspired fear, because the train advanced from the back of the screen towards the audience, as though it could ride straight into the spectators.
p.7 – In 1908 a law established guidelines for the distance between cinemas and their number, which had reached a total of seventy-five in Moscow. By 1910 there were eighty-four cinemas in St. Petersburg, rising to 130 by 1913. Before the war there were 1,400 cinemas in Russia, all with seating capacities of 300-800. In contrast to the exhibition sector, which was concentrated in St. Petersburg, the production of films was centered in Moscow, the economic capital, where fifteen studios could be counted in 1913. As the cinema grew from a room in a private apartment to a venue with an auditorium and a foyer, the ‘electric theatre’ became a venue that could break boundaries of social class, of gender and of the private and public divide. The cinema bridged the gap between high and low culture by bringing in both lower-class audiences (at fairs and in cinemas on the urban periphery) and the bourgeoisie (cinemas in the city centres); often cinemas would have boxes for the upper classes, while the stalls were reserved for the bourgeoisie and the balcony for the simple people – a division reinforced through ticket pricing.
p.20 – The war situation imbued the country with a depressive atmosphere as the Russian army suffered defeats. At home, the assassination of Rasputin in 1916 showed the beginning of mistrust in the imperial family, leading ultimately to the abdication of the tsar in 1917, which destroyed the ‘empire’ both physically and symbolically.
p.32 – The film stock crisis continued until the Treaty of Rapallo was signed in 1922, allowing trade with Germany to resume.
p.33 – Cinema visits became a luxury, and many cinemas closed; film stock became a deficit; and numerous film artists and producers moved to the studios In the Crimea (Odessa and Yalta). But in the south too, the political situation changed constantly as the Reds advanced even into the last strongholds of the White army.
2 – Revolutionary Cinema, or Cinema for the Masses (1919-29)
p.49 – According to Roland Barthes, myth is neither lie nor truth, but a compromise. The concept of myth-making is particularly important for the 1920s in the context of rewriting history and assimilating practices in the context of the integration of territories into the new Soviet empire, rather than colonizing the distant republics (which is, however, what effectively happened with the imposition of Russian culture and language on the Soviet republics).
Perhaps the most important aspect of cinema of the 1920s therefore was the development of the documentary film. Newsreels were of crucial importance to inform and educate the illiterate masses. Film-trains were dispatched to document like in the country and to show newsreels to the people.
p.53 – Born in Riga, Eisenstein had studied engineering in Petrograd and joined the Red Army after the 1917 Revolution. From 1920 he worked as set designer in Meterhold’s theatre, where he made his first short film (Glumov’s Diary) to illustrate the main character’s motives in Ostrovsky’s The Wise Man (1923). On the basis of his theatrical experience he developed his ideas on the montage of attractions, influenced by the way in which Meyerhold devised his productions of classical plays, fragmenting them into a series of episodes. Meyerhold used constructivist sets, which turned the actor into a cog in the wheel of larger machinery that represented reality. He perceived theatre as having a social and political function and closely monitored audience responses in order to heighten the comical and agitational elements in his productions; thus, he would shower audiences with leaflets, or record the moments when the spectator laughed. His actors were trained in ‘biomechanics’ (body movement to express states of mind and emotions) and movements on stage were choreographed rather than motivated by psychological identification of the actor with his role, thus bringing man closer to a perfect, machine-like state. Therefore Meyerhold required a completely different set of skills from his actors than the Moscow Art Theatre, where Stanislavsky expected the actor to develop a role from an event that triggered a certain emotional and psychological state, of which movement was a result. Both the textual fragmentation and choreographed movement were important for Eisenstein’s work in the cinema.
5 – The Stagnation: Mainstream and Auteur Cinema (1967-82)
p.147 – The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 led to an international outcry, culminating in an embargo of grain imports and the boycott by sixty-four countries of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. In the same year the United States stationed medium-range missiles in West Germany, adding to the tension between East and West. Thus, the Stagnation period brought about no relaxation in terms of economics or foreign politics. Effectively, nothing shook the balance of power during the 1970s, internally or externally; only Brezhnev consolidated his power as head of Party, state and army by the late 1970s.
The 1960s saw a series of trials of dissidents and human rights activists, ending mostly with prison sentences or sequestration into psychiatric clinics.
p.182 – Vladimir Menshov’s Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979) was one of the last Soviet blockbusters, with 85 million viewers. Its story stretches over twenty years, from the 1950s to the 1970s. in good socialist style, the heroine Katia (played by Menshov’s wife Vera Alentova, b.1942) is rewarded with personal happiness only after she has made her contribution to socialist progress. The film combines romance and realism and impresses with the authentic re-creation of the lifestyle of the 1950s. the music of the bards Yuri Levitansky (1922-96) and Yuri Vizbor (1934-84) befits Alentova’s generation, while her daughter Sasha listens to pop music on her headphones. The atmosphere of 1958 is precisely captured with the French film season, with a couple being told off for embracing in public and with the Mayakovsky Square poetry readings of Voznesensky as well as the importance of social standing and of foreign travel. Katia’s suitor, Rudik (later Rodion), will not marry Katia because she is of a lower social class. His unshaken belief in the future of television is ridiculed: he calls it the ‘art of tomorrow’ that will change life and survive all art forms, and still says the same thing twenty years later. Katia’s reward with the dream husband is at the expense of independence: she has to surrender, at least at home, to being subordinate to her man.
The film’s popularity is largely due to the ‘feel-good factor,’ which effectively shows that man can master his fate even in the most adverse circumstances. Moscow shows the aspiration of three girls from the provinces: Katia, who sacrifices personal happiness for the sake of social good and progress, and is rewarded with the dream man of the 1950s – Alexei Batalov’s Gosha. Tonia (Raisa Riazanova, b. 1944) achieves personal happiness in a family – a safe haven in suburban Moscow, away from the centre. Liuda (Irina Muravieva, b. 1949) achieves personal happiness and advancement of social status through other men and suffers a failed marriage to a drunkard sportsman. The happy ending reclaims patriarchal rule and surrenders emancipation in this modern Cinderella story.
8 – Cinema in the Putin Era (2001-8)
p.251 – Maybe the single most important of Sokurov’s films is Russian Arc (2002), which explores Russia’s national identity. The film is a unique technical feat: it is a single tracking shot lasting ninety-six minutes, filmed with a Steadicam held by the director of photography Tilman Buettner, whose excellent camerawork can be seen in Run Lola Run (1998). The film was recorded directly in high-density digital format on to hard disk, with only the sound mastered in post-production. The filming took place on 23 December 2001, the shortest day of the year, in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, leaving just four hours of daylight for filming after two days of preparation in the museum. The film creates the impression that the uninterrupted journey through 300 years of history and thirty-three rooms of the Hermitage takes just one log breath. The sensation of floating through history is achieved by a sheer technical feat.
p.5 – As part of the Lumières’ tour of their new invention across Europe and the United States, the cinematograph arrived in Russia. On 4 May 1896, the cinematograph was presented at a fairground in the Aquarium Park in St. Petersburg (nowadays the territory of the city’s film studio, Lenfilm). In Moscow it made its debut at a fair in the Hermitage Theatre and Gardens on 26 May. The first Russian shows featured short films made by the Lumières, including their film demonstrating the arrival of a train at a station, with passengers waiting on the platform to board the train (Arrival of the Train at la Ciotat, 1895), which is alleged to have inspired fear, because the train advanced from the back of the screen towards the audience, as though it could ride straight into the spectators.
p.7 – In 1908 a law established guidelines for the distance between cinemas and their number, which had reached a total of seventy-five in Moscow. By 1910 there were eighty-four cinemas in St. Petersburg, rising to 130 by 1913. Before the war there were 1,400 cinemas in Russia, all with seating capacities of 300-800. In contrast to the exhibition sector, which was concentrated in St. Petersburg, the production of films was centered in Moscow, the economic capital, where fifteen studios could be counted in 1913. As the cinema grew from a room in a private apartment to a venue with an auditorium and a foyer, the ‘electric theatre’ became a venue that could break boundaries of social class, of gender and of the private and public divide. The cinema bridged the gap between high and low culture by bringing in both lower-class audiences (at fairs and in cinemas on the urban periphery) and the bourgeoisie (cinemas in the city centres); often cinemas would have boxes for the upper classes, while the stalls were reserved for the bourgeoisie and the balcony for the simple people – a division reinforced through ticket pricing.
p.20 – The war situation imbued the country with a depressive atmosphere as the Russian army suffered defeats. At home, the assassination of Rasputin in 1916 showed the beginning of mistrust in the imperial family, leading ultimately to the abdication of the tsar in 1917, which destroyed the ‘empire’ both physically and symbolically.
p.32 – The film stock crisis continued until the Treaty of Rapallo was signed in 1922, allowing trade with Germany to resume.
p.33 – Cinema visits became a luxury, and many cinemas closed; film stock became a deficit; and numerous film artists and producers moved to the studios In the Crimea (Odessa and Yalta). But in the south too, the political situation changed constantly as the Reds advanced even into the last strongholds of the White army.
2 – Revolutionary Cinema, or Cinema for the Masses (1919-29)
p.49 – According to Roland Barthes, myth is neither lie nor truth, but a compromise. The concept of myth-making is particularly important for the 1920s in the context of rewriting history and assimilating practices in the context of the integration of territories into the new Soviet empire, rather than colonizing the distant republics (which is, however, what effectively happened with the imposition of Russian culture and language on the Soviet republics).
Perhaps the most important aspect of cinema of the 1920s therefore was the development of the documentary film. Newsreels were of crucial importance to inform and educate the illiterate masses. Film-trains were dispatched to document like in the country and to show newsreels to the people.
p.53 – Born in Riga, Eisenstein had studied engineering in Petrograd and joined the Red Army after the 1917 Revolution. From 1920 he worked as set designer in Meterhold’s theatre, where he made his first short film (Glumov’s Diary) to illustrate the main character’s motives in Ostrovsky’s The Wise Man (1923). On the basis of his theatrical experience he developed his ideas on the montage of attractions, influenced by the way in which Meyerhold devised his productions of classical plays, fragmenting them into a series of episodes. Meyerhold used constructivist sets, which turned the actor into a cog in the wheel of larger machinery that represented reality. He perceived theatre as having a social and political function and closely monitored audience responses in order to heighten the comical and agitational elements in his productions; thus, he would shower audiences with leaflets, or record the moments when the spectator laughed. His actors were trained in ‘biomechanics’ (body movement to express states of mind and emotions) and movements on stage were choreographed rather than motivated by psychological identification of the actor with his role, thus bringing man closer to a perfect, machine-like state. Therefore Meyerhold required a completely different set of skills from his actors than the Moscow Art Theatre, where Stanislavsky expected the actor to develop a role from an event that triggered a certain emotional and psychological state, of which movement was a result. Both the textual fragmentation and choreographed movement were important for Eisenstein’s work in the cinema.
5 – The Stagnation: Mainstream and Auteur Cinema (1967-82)
p.147 – The Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 led to an international outcry, culminating in an embargo of grain imports and the boycott by sixty-four countries of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. In the same year the United States stationed medium-range missiles in West Germany, adding to the tension between East and West. Thus, the Stagnation period brought about no relaxation in terms of economics or foreign politics. Effectively, nothing shook the balance of power during the 1970s, internally or externally; only Brezhnev consolidated his power as head of Party, state and army by the late 1970s.
The 1960s saw a series of trials of dissidents and human rights activists, ending mostly with prison sentences or sequestration into psychiatric clinics.
p.182 – Vladimir Menshov’s Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979) was one of the last Soviet blockbusters, with 85 million viewers. Its story stretches over twenty years, from the 1950s to the 1970s. in good socialist style, the heroine Katia (played by Menshov’s wife Vera Alentova, b.1942) is rewarded with personal happiness only after she has made her contribution to socialist progress. The film combines romance and realism and impresses with the authentic re-creation of the lifestyle of the 1950s. the music of the bards Yuri Levitansky (1922-96) and Yuri Vizbor (1934-84) befits Alentova’s generation, while her daughter Sasha listens to pop music on her headphones. The atmosphere of 1958 is precisely captured with the French film season, with a couple being told off for embracing in public and with the Mayakovsky Square poetry readings of Voznesensky as well as the importance of social standing and of foreign travel. Katia’s suitor, Rudik (later Rodion), will not marry Katia because she is of a lower social class. His unshaken belief in the future of television is ridiculed: he calls it the ‘art of tomorrow’ that will change life and survive all art forms, and still says the same thing twenty years later. Katia’s reward with the dream husband is at the expense of independence: she has to surrender, at least at home, to being subordinate to her man.
The film’s popularity is largely due to the ‘feel-good factor,’ which effectively shows that man can master his fate even in the most adverse circumstances. Moscow shows the aspiration of three girls from the provinces: Katia, who sacrifices personal happiness for the sake of social good and progress, and is rewarded with the dream man of the 1950s – Alexei Batalov’s Gosha. Tonia (Raisa Riazanova, b. 1944) achieves personal happiness in a family – a safe haven in suburban Moscow, away from the centre. Liuda (Irina Muravieva, b. 1949) achieves personal happiness and advancement of social status through other men and suffers a failed marriage to a drunkard sportsman. The happy ending reclaims patriarchal rule and surrenders emancipation in this modern Cinderella story.
8 – Cinema in the Putin Era (2001-8)
p.251 – Maybe the single most important of Sokurov’s films is Russian Arc (2002), which explores Russia’s national identity. The film is a unique technical feat: it is a single tracking shot lasting ninety-six minutes, filmed with a Steadicam held by the director of photography Tilman Buettner, whose excellent camerawork can be seen in Run Lola Run (1998). The film was recorded directly in high-density digital format on to hard disk, with only the sound mastered in post-production. The filming took place on 23 December 2001, the shortest day of the year, in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, leaving just four hours of daylight for filming after two days of preparation in the museum. The film creates the impression that the uninterrupted journey through 300 years of history and thirty-three rooms of the Hermitage takes just one log breath. The sensation of floating through history is achieved by a sheer technical feat.
June 15, 2023
super interesting! i read it for a russian film class. i did have to skip some paragraphs, however, because a lot of it spoiled movies. overall a good read and i recommend if you’re interested in film.
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December 5, 2015It is a major spoiler of every movie's ending, although a great overview of the historical and cultural backgrounds of the different eras underlying the development of film in the former Soviet Union and modern Russia.
January 10, 2011
I read a few of the chapters. Pretty straightforward description of the times and the films. I preferred it to Gillespie.
May 4, 2013
Very informative!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews