Close Up (Jul-Dec 1928)

CLOSE UP The Great Strike and its dramatic denouement is still a matter of wonder and admiration among all political thinkers on the Continent. But the greatness of the Moscow art productions that it was my unique privilege to see last month in Berlin, puts the question of the Russian film (I speak naturally only of these real art productions) on a plane transcending politics. These films do not say to the British or the American workman, go and do likewise. They say look, we are your brothers, and this is how we suffered. The whole authoritative teaching of Potemkin, of Mother, of The End of Saint Petersburg, or Ten Days That Shook the World, are historical and almost religiously autochthonous character. There is no outward influence ... no passing to and fro of foreign soldiers, in Russia for and about and through and with the Russians. It is putting Russia (real Russia) on the map, not handing out the saccharine opera bouffe stuff that Hollywood offers us, for instance, in Greta Garbo's Karenina, or in the yet unreleased Feodora of Pola Negri. I do not say that Karenina and Feodora have no place in the scheme of things. They are both barley water, pink lemonade through a straw to quench naif palates on a hot day at the fair. They are not wine red or white, they are not even poison or raw spirits, and that perhaps is one of their great dangers. They are pleasant, skilfully photographed, both of the actresses in these two cases are women of talent and undoubted personality. But Madame Baranowskaja standing before the onrushing feet of the great stallions of the Czarist*s imperial bodyguard is in another category altogether. She is a figure of tradition, historical, mythical. Biblical. 25