The Cine Technician (1939)

Aug.-Sept., 1937 THE CINE-TECHNICIAN 97 AFTER THE REVOLUTION More than two years were to elapse after the October revolution of 1917 before conditions in the country eased sufficiently to allow of the serious pursuit of cinematography, and production at first was confined to newsreel work of a spasmodic nature. But in August, 1919, Lenin issued a decree, nationalising the entire photo and cinema trade and industry of the RSFSR, chief republic of the Union, under the control of the People's Commissariat of Education. This example was followed in later years in the other republics of the Soviet Union. In the Ukraine the industry was nationalised in the same year, and the two studios in Kiev were reopened. In 1922, the foreign interventionists having departed, the two studios at Yalta and the one at Odessa were re-opened. Co-operation among the republics began with Lunacharsky, RSFSR Commissar of Education, writing scenarios for the Ukrainian Cinema Committee. In the remoter parts of the Union the founding of the industry was delayed, for instance in Soviet Armenia until 1923, in White Russia until 1926, and among the Uzbeks, Tadjiks and Turcomans until the early 1930's. In one or two republics, production has not yet been established. The manufacture of film stock was not begun until 1931 , and for several years after the revolution the country's resources did not allow of the import of any appreciable amount of foreign stock. So that necessity forced ingenious minds not only to use up all the short ends of negative and positive that were lying about in studios and laboratories, but also to construct their new films with a view to intercutting shots from old pre-revolutionary negatives with a minimum of newly-exposed negatives. In particular, Kuleshov, a pupil of the film director Bauer mentioned above and since the revolution a newsreel cameraman, was successful in proving by experiments of this kind that changing the order of shots in a film could, in effect, change the meaning intended to be conveyed by the shots themselves, especially when the new meaning could be clarified, both by the pruning of the existing shots and by the introduction of new shots designed to tit in among the old in particular selected places. Thus necessity speedily evolved a definite principle, after which progressive minds in western Europe and America were separately groping, handicapped by commercial conservatism and, paradoxically, by more abundant material resources. This principle, already being exploited in America by D. YV. Griffith and in England by George Pearson, was carried towards its logical conclusion in Russia by force of famine and finally achieved international fame (under the much-abused term of montage) at the hands of Eisenstein in story films and Vertov in actuality and documentary films. These latter found it particularly applicable in expressing the violent conflicts of the revolution. The stimulus of the new ideals inspired these and other directors, among whom Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Kozintzev, Trauberg and Room may be mentioned, to create a series of masterpieces, unsurpassed in the history of the silent film. At the beginning of 1925 only 14",, of films shown in the country were of Soviet origin, but during that year production leaped ahead and 70 story (or "art") films and 70 documentaries were completed, with the result that in January, 1926, the percentage had risen to 50. THE SOUND FILM Silent film production continues to this day, but research into the recording of sound on Him wis in progress in 1926 under the direction of Tager, the young inventor of the Tagephon Sound System (variable density). The first sound was recorded on this system in August, 1929, for a newsreel, and the first Tagephon sound projector was in use at the end of the same year. .Meanwhile another inventor, Shorin, began working on variable area recording. Both systems were installed in the studios of Moscow and Leningrad in 1930, and in 1931 the first fulllength sound films were completed. Of these the most successful were Yertov's emotional documentary Enthusiasm, known in Russia as The Symphony of the Donbas ; P. G. TAGER, Inventor of the Tagephon (Variable Density), Sound System — Pioneer Recording System of the U.S.S.R. Professor GOLDOVSKY, Director of the Scientific Research Institute of the Cine and Photo Industry, Moscow. Kozintsev and Trauberg's silent film Alone, with full musical score composed and conducted by Shostakovich ; and, most celebrated of all, the first Russian talking picture The Road to Life, by Nikolai Ekk, a young director who had made only one film before. In the same year, 43 silent films were produced, and the first two Soviet film stock factories began operating, their output for the yeai being a little over 4,000,000 feet. In the following year, 1932, the output of film stock rose to over 80,000,000 feet, and by the end of 1935 the annual figure was about 270,000,000 feet. The plan to produce by 1938 an annual quantity of 1,000,000,000 feet of film stock will certainly not be fulfilled, but it is safe to say that by now the Soviet Union is able to produce sufficient stock for its own requirements. In general, the quality has not vet reached the highesl standards achieved abroad, and the leading Soviet cameramen are allowed to use European and American stocks, when the subjects chosen demand delicate or exacting pictorial effects. As soon as they had completed their silent picture commitments, the majority of the leading directors turned their attention to sound films. In 1932, Dovzhenko completed Ivan, a talking picture based on the building of the Unieproges power station. In 1933. Pudovkin completed The Deserter, recently shown publicly in London. Then for the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the