Film technique and film acting : the cinema writings of V. I. Pudovkin (1954)

INTRODUCTION ix Kuleshov, who had the reputation of being the most stimulating and inspiring teacher in his country — a reputation not unlike that of Professor Baker in this country who made his theatre workshop at Harvard so famous. Under Kuleshov, Pudovkin discovered the medium's true nature and its creative resources. Pudovkin learned that in every art there is a material and a mode of organizing that material in terms of the medium. Through experiment and practice he discovered what Melies, Porter and Griffith had instinctively fallen upon many years earlier: that the basic means of expression which is unique to motion pictures lies in the organization of the film strips — the shots — which in themselves contain the elements of the larger forms — the scenes and sequences — and which in relationship motivate the film's structural unity and effectiveness. Toward the end of 1925, he directed his first featurelength picture: Mechanics of the Brain. During a lull in its production he collaborated with Nikolai Shipkovsky in the direction of a comedy based on the International Chess Tournament then being held in Moscow: Chess Fever. This picture brought him critical attention and the admiration of other film makers. It also won for him the opportunity to direct a much more ambitious undertaking, Mother, based on the novel by Maxim Gorky, which was destined to bring him international acclaim and place him in the front row of directorial talents. The film itself was hailed as a "masterpiece" and ranks as one of the classics in film history. It is considered by many to be his greatest work.