The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

THE CINE-TECHNICIAN January, 1954 'SPEAK LOW IF YOU SPEAK LOVE' Advised our own Will Shakespeare. In 'People who would Rather Not Mention Love', M. Shmarova, student at Russia's State Institute of Cinematography, discusses the ways of lovers in some Soviet movies. TRUE to the best traditions of Russian classical and Soviet literature, Soviet cinematographic art has more than once posed and successfully dealt with the problem of love, family and marriage. . . In the post-war period, however, our cinematography has not merely made no progress as compared with the past, but has even lost much of its accumulated creative experience. In scenarios and films the theme of output is constantly substituted for that of love. Lovers more often than not talk only on subjects connected with output, and professions of love proceed more or less on the following lines : He: You must forgive us, comrade engineer, but we really are obliged to let you know that we are uneasy about you. She: What? He: You are single. As an engineer you are the head of the team, but as a woman you stand alone. It is not good, it is odd, and it should not be so in Soviet life. She: But am I the only one? Is it for ever? (And so on and so forth.) He is Alesha, she is Sasha, and the two are the principal characters in the film The Road to Glory. To make it clear to the audience that this is the long-awaited declaration of love, a " decorated mechanic " approaches him and asks : — Alesha ! — Ah? — Love, eh? Personal and public matters are of course closely linked, but in life the connection is far more complex. You cannot say to the man you love : " If you fulfil lOOc^ of your norm I will love you," or " If you become a Stakhanovite coal miner I will marry you; if not, find yourself another girl." To put such words into the mouth of the heroine of a play or a scenario is to adapt bourgeois conceptions of love and marriage to socialist conditions. Characteristically enough, in making their characters profess this kind of philosophy the authors there and then fall into contradictions. " How difficult it is, after all, to realise whether a man is good or bad," engineer Sasha says to her assistant Alesha in the same film. "And yet I do know! The true self is revealed in work. If you watch a man's attitude towards his job you can tell at once whether he is good or bad." Here, in company with the authors, she overlooks the fact that her first husband, Makagon, was a shock-worker and a Stakhanovite, but for all that an unattractive personality who gave her good reason for leaving him after less than a year of married life. Over-simplification arises when the authors merely skim over the surface of things and, fearing difficulties, avoid showing life in all its complexity and contradictions. That is why in such films love is infinitely duller, more colourless and more insignificant than the most prosaic love in real life. We do not mean to say, of course, that every film should give a full and broad picture of love and everyday life. What we do want is that when such subjects are treated it should be done with the greatest possible truth and vigour, with the greatest possible depth and inspiration. What other feeling than that of impatience with the authors can be aroused in the audience by the following " picture " of the finest and most complex relations between two people in love with one another: Frame 75 (Lieutenant-captain Orlov and the girl Lena are walking along the quay.) Orlov: Lenochka! Lena! Aren't you going to say anything more to me today? Lena: Today not ... I shall say nothing more. Orlov: Nothing? Frame 605 (Orlov and Lena on the veranda.) Orlov: Lenochka, aren't you going to tell me something today? Lena: Today? Today I shall tell you all! All! As you see, there was no danger of us boring the reader by quoting the whole story of the relations between the two main characters of the film In Time of Peace, for these two scenes, one in the beginning, the other at the end of the film, exhaust " love." Throughout the rest of the film the hero and heroine go about their respective business without meeting one another. One of the favourite literary heroes of our young people, the construction chief Batmanov in V. Azhaev's novel Far from Moscow, says in a conversation with Tania Vasilchenko : " I now begin to think more and more often about what is called private life. ... It seems to me that much depends upon how a man's life starts, on whether he begins life with a great, real love." It is this great, real love that has so far failed to become an accepted theme with our cinematographic art. The rising cultural standards of the Soviet man raise his attitude towards love to higher levels. Art is called upon to educate man, by force of example, in all his manifestations and consequently also in such an intimate, such a deeply personal, feeling as love. And yet what do many of our films try to teach us? To treasure love as the greatest happiness? Not to dissipate one's feelings by wasting them on trifles? To see what is great and important beneath the shell of incidentals? To avoid petty quarrels and to seek to shield one another from unnecessary hurts and suffering? Not at all! Most of our scenario writers and producers treat their characters in exactly the opposite way. They make lovers turn away from one another through mere misunderstandings, insult one another by mean suspicions and unfounded reproaches of infidelity. What, for instance, clouded the love of Kazakova