The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

January, 1954 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN (in the film Village Doctor) for her Ivan Denisovich (why she fell in love with him is another matter)? Why do they so lightly turn away from one another and meet for a whole year "as mere acquaintances"? Or why (in the film For the Sake of Life) does Lena go and leave the man she loves at the most difficult moment of his life? Could she not explain to him that there would be time enough for her to study and that this was no time for them to part? After all, she would be doing this not merely for the sake of her love for him but also in the interests of the important work that he was now left to deal with entirely on his own. Why does Vasia (in the film Donets Miners), whose impatient love for Lida demands from her professions of love in every scene, suddenly part so easily with his beloved when she becomes a student of the Mining Institute and cannot follow him to distant parts? Just because Vasia is "ashamed" to go to school in the place where they happen to be living. " Now you must decide, Lida, whether we go or not," he says to the girl he loves. Lida does not refuse at once, she is only astonished : " But it is all so sudden. . . ." But Vasia makes up his mind at once : "All right ... I see how it is . . . Goodbye then, Lida." So lightly do the heroes of our films renounce their happiness! And how difficult their life together would probably be, if even before marriage, in friendship and love, they do not know how to respect one another, how to spare each other's feelings and help and educate one another. A DISTINGUISHING feature of the Soviet family ■£*■ is that love, which is the foundation of marriage, is necessarily accompanied by a feeling of great inner responsibility for the loved one. Otherwise, how would Tatiana Alexandrovna Dobrotvorskaya (in the film Tribunal of Honour) have acted when she learnt that her husband, professor Dobrotvorsky, had behaved unpatriotically against the interests of the State by divulging a State secret? Should she have left him, or, like Nina Ivanovna Loseva, sought to enlist the support of influential friends? No. She was bound to act as she did, according to her conscience, as every genuinely loving wife would have done. She opened her husband's eyes and helped him to realise that he was at fault and that it was right that he should be tried. This she did with great tact yet with all the force of her convictions : " Tonight, Alesha, is the most serious, the hardest night of our lives. I shall always be with you. After all, I know you better than anyone else does. Perhaps no one but me knows you as you are. Don't you realise that you are guilty and that it is right for them to try you?" " You, my wife, say this to me?" " Your loving wife." And it is no accident, but quite logical, that Dobrotvorsky should begin his speech at the tribunal of honour with his wife's words : "A tribunal of honour is something after which either a man is born anew or he becomes an outcast." It was his wife and no one else that helped the new man to be born in him. The loving wife, the best friend and comrade, becomes an active social force in the film. This is deeply true and lifelike. Light and spacious is the life of the Soviet people. Freed from the power of bourgeois property, love brings to the Soviet man much happiness and lifeasserting optimism, making him stronger and finer. Yet in our scenarios and films it is often dull and crude. On their way to happiness the heroes have to overcome so many external obstacles put up by the scenarist's generous hand that no room is left in the film for ordinary human happiness. Love does not ennoble the heroes, it does not inspire them, lend them wings; on the contrary, it tends to disintegrate and weaken their will-power. A theme which has been dropped by our art and has become positively bad form is that of unrequited, unhappy love. Yet life has not dropped it, and if it is no longer reflected in our films the responsibility lies with the artists. There are many who think it useless to try to sort out the feelings of a character when nothing can be done to help him and when there is no ready-made remedy to offer a man in his situation. Yet this is only a superficial impression. In real life things are much more serious. We cannot shut our eyes to what exists in real life, which to a greater or lesser degree inevitably affects the formation of a young man's character, bringing him pain and suffering. It is the task of the masters of Soviet cinematographic art to reflect the realities of life and the emotional experiences of human beings in all their fullness, their depth and their contradictory dramatic complexity. . . . Extracted from Sovetskoye Iskusstvo. Translated for Anglo-Soviet Journal by T. Shebunina. Owing to has been CINE INDEX Christmas Holidays held over until the the Cine Index February issue COLOUR PRINTING and PROCESSING Eastman Color Gevacolor Kodachrome 35 mm 16 mm 8 mm Blow-ups • Reduction • Effects %\M% GERrard wk\mmwvm §r* 8955 USB S T Colour (^dm^Jrintina 89/91, WARDOUR ST.. LONDON. W. I. (j The only Independent Laboratory undertaking exclusively Colour Processing