Documentary News Letter (1940)

10 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER SEPTEMBER 1940 DflinMEmiiy NEWS UTTER MONTHLY FOURPENCE NUMBER 9 SEPTEMBER 1940 DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER is issued only to private subscribers and continues the policy and purpose of World Film News by expressing the documentary idea towards everyday living. DOCUMENTARY NEWS LETTER is produced under the auspices of Film Centre, London, in association with American Film Center, New York. EDITORIAL BOARD Edgar Anstey Arthur Elton John Grierson Donald Taylor John Taylor Basil Wright Outside contributions will be welcomed but no fees will be paid. We are prepared to deliver from 3 — 50 copies in bulk to Schools, Film Societies and other organisations. Owned and published by FILM CENTRE LTD. 34 SOHO SQUARE LONDON W.l GERRARD 4253 TWENTY YEARS OF SOVIET FILM By IVOR MONTAGU. Abridged and reprinted by courtesy of The Anglo Soviet Journal Soviet I |KDta I Btti lie THE SOVIET cinema celebrated its twentieth anniversary at the beginning of this year. The decree nationalising the film industry was signed by Lenin at the end of August, 1919. Pre-revolutionary Russia had a small-scale film production, with one or two magnates and a few pretty stars. With the October Revolution these decamped to Berlin and Paris — with rare exceptions. In the hectic first months there was virtually no production, and cinemas were "municipalised", or subjected to a sort of syndicalised staff control system. Cinemas "made do" by running and re-running the features already in the country; new production was confined to newsreels and short agitational pieces consisting of news and titles. The newsreel cameraman was a figure on every front of the civil and interventionist wars. He not only had to photograph, he had — when need arose — to lay down his camera and shoot with rifle instead. Film stock was as rare as ammunition. Eduard Tisse, the brilliant cameraman of all the Eisenstein pictures, has described the anxiety of such an experience as having only 100 feet of film with which to record the first May Day demonstration in the Red Square, Lenin's speech and all included. It was indeed not until 1922-1923 that the first feature films could be, and were, produced. The first immediately successful one was called The Two Lillle Red Devils, and dealt with the adventures of two boys, befriended by a Negro in the French interventionist armies in South Russia during the period when the territory was constantly changing hands. To the material lack of these days Poudovkin has attributed the subsequent ingenuity of Soviet cinema : "While film people abroad were so busy earning their living that they went from film to film (when they could), sometimes even accepting a script they had not themselves prepared and leaving the previous film to stranger hands to cut, and had no time to reflect and experiment regarding the nature of film, the Soviet film technician, having no film stock and therefore unable to shoot, was able to sit down and think out the best methods of shooting when eventually he should get the chance." Thus runs the Poudovkin thesis. In the year or two immediately following 19221923 new films were imported from abroad. The Soviet spectator and technician became familiar with the work of Chaplin, D. W. Griflilh, Murnau, and Lubitsch. When, a year or so later, Fairbanks (senior) and Mary Pickford visited U.S.S.R. they found themselves as famous and popular as elsewhere in the world. Ihc film school G.I.K. (the State Institute of Cinema) was already in being, with its faculties for budding directors, camera men and women, actors and actresses, art directors, etc. Here teacher Kouleshov expounded the gospel of montage, to be inferred, so the lesson ran, from the works of the Americans, and particularly the master, Griffith. One of his most talented pupils was a chemical engineer named Poudovkin. German expressionism was the chief influence on the brilliant pair, still in their teens, Kozintsev and Trauberg (the elder Trauberg brother. Lev). Two new figures endeavoured from the start to find a style "cinematic", peculiar to cinema independent of the influences of other arts, and deriving not even from previous cinema achievements, but directly from the relation between real phenomena and the cinematographic apparatus. One was Dziga Vertov, with his theory — then stimulating but now seen as naive — of the "camera eye", viz., that nothing must be arranged, nothing staged ; the camera must simply be an eye selecting from, but not otherwise interfering with, the stream of reality. The second was a young architectural student, who had worked in cabaret and circus, Eisenstein, whose lust for realism led him to use "non-acting material" (viz., types selected for their visual correspondence to the external qualities of the desired character rather than for acting ability), into attempting his first film (Srrike) within the four walls of a real factory instead of building sets. By 1925 already two works had been produced, Poieinkiii by Eisenstein and Mother by Poudovkin, which were to stand out as classic landmarks in the history of the cinema. The finest leading films of the three years need only to be catalogued to stamp the period. Eisenstein turned out : October ( Ten Days that Shook the Workl), Old and New (The General Line): Poudovkin : The End oj St. Petersburg, The Heir of Jenf^hi:. Khan (Storm over Asia): Dovzhenko: Earth: Ko/intsev and Trauberg (turning away from German expressionism to French impressionism) : New Babylon; Trauberg (the younger brother, Ilya): Blue Express: Ermler: The Stump of an Empire: Turin: Ttirksib: Room: No. 3 Meshchanskaya Street (Bed and Sofa). These were films which proved so effective to any audience, speaking whatever language, that they were paid the ultimate tribute — forbidden, as too effective to be shown — in innumerable countries. They were films which also left an indelible impression on the whole body of world film production that was to come after. What was the principal technical factor in the style of the old Soviet silent classics which gave them their outstanding influence? This was (blessed word) "montage". Technically montage is simply the production mi m Itisc ippea if SOI