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PROPAGANDA AND THE CINEMA 47
graphers whose theme or dramatic content is supplied to them, than by those directors who seek merely to provide ephemeral entertainment from literary stories.
In the American cinema, such notable films as The Big Parade and All Quiet on the Western Front, both marking definite progress from a technical point of view, were at heart propagandist in aim. It is well to recall also that Flaherty's first film Nanoo\ of the North was sponsored by a fur company as incidental propaganda. To instance a more familiar sphere of activity, it is common knowledge that the whole aesthetic and artistic merit of the Soviet cinema has been brought about solely by Russia's urgent need of propaganda for an education in Bolshevism.
Five or six years ago, a Russian called Lev Kuleshov arrived at the logical conclusion that what really mattered in making a film were the celluloid strips out of which a film was made. The actors, actresses and the scenery were of small value as compared with the scientific handling — the inter-juxtaposition — of the basic celluloid cut with scissors and joined with film cement. Even the story itself was of secondary importance. This method was, and still is, diametrically opposed to the American and British ideas of film production.
From this elementary conclusion which, with due deference to all film producers of to-day, should have been grasped years before the War from the early experiments of Griffith, there have been derived the constructive, scientific methods of technique which have made the Soviet cinema celebrated and are acknowledged as the foundation-principles of cinematography.