Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

PROPAGANDA AND THE CINEMA 49 Russians developed in this way through the aim of expressing a policy, and the same may be said of some American productions. Both Eisenstein and Pudovkin were sufficiently interested in the technical side of their work to allow the content of their films to be supplied to them. Thus it happened that two such highly-trained, scientific minds came to be at the disposal of the Soviet Government for disseminating Bolshevik propaganda. For this same reason, we find that their later films lack a direct urgency of purpose and are more inclined to be exercises in technique than vital expressions of propaganda. The antiBritish theme of Storm Over Asia was too childish to be efficacious because Pudovkin was not in the least concerned with that aspect of the picture. The General Line was admirable only as an exploitation of various experiments in technique which temporarily amused its director. Its flippancy was quite certainly disliked by its Communist sponsors. Similarly, Dovjenko's Earth was considered too bourgeois to be good propaganda. An architect or an engineer employs his technical knowledge in the creation of a work of practical value. Contemporary functional architecture is not the expression of an individual. Personal expression in painting ceased to exist many years ago and is only to be found in the Royal Academy and kindred institutions. There is more art to-day in a six-wheeled omnibus or a Schneider Trophy seaplane than in all the contemporary art galleries of London. And the qualities of a film director are not unlike those of an architect or an engineer, save that his work does not achieve its D