We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE SOVIET FILM
cinema, numerous films were realised by various producing concerns in Moscow and Leningrad — by the Sevsapkino, the Kino-Sever (Kino-North), the Goskino, and the Mejrabpom-Russ companies. Few of these pictures, however, have been shown outside Soviet Russia, and the possibility that they will now be seen is remote. In any case, I do not believe that they were of great value save as a training ground for the directors of to-day, nearly all of whom were engaged in some minor capacity during this early period. Pantelev, Doronin, Viskovski, Kuleshov, Gardin, Protazanov, Razumni, Zheliabuzhski, and Barski were some of the principal directors of that time; such men as Otzep, Nathan Zarkhi (later scenarist to the Pudovkin films) and Yuri-Tarich being employed as scenarists. Pictures of some interest to be connected with this era were Palace and Fortress, a large-scale historical production, by Ivanovski ; The Adventures of an Octoberite, a political satire, by Kozintzev and Trauberg; The Executioners, a big production dealing with political events from 1905 to 1918, by Pantelev; The Death Ray, by Kuleshov, from a scenario by Pudovkin; The Adventures of Mr. West Among the Bolsheviki, a comedy of manners, also by Kuleshov; The Cigarette Merchant of Mosselprom, a comedy by Zheliabuzhski ; and The Tailor of Torjok, by Protazanov. During this transition stage several art-films, theatrical in technique, were also produced, some being shown in Britain at a later date.1 Of these may be mentioned The Postmaster, from the novel by Pushkin, scenario by Otzep and direction by Zheliabuzhski ; Morosko, a folklore film by the same director; Polikushka, from the Tolstoi novel ; and a macabre melodrama, The Marriage of the Bear, directed and played by Konstantin Eggert, from a script by Lunacharsky. These were produced by the Mejrabpom-Russ company and members of the first
1 Mr. F. A. Enders, of Messrs. Film Booking Offices, London, was responsible for the handling of The Postmaster and The Marriage of the Bear in Britain. He also held several other films from the U.S.S.R. at that time, including the celebrated Potemkin, and A'elita, but was unable to show them owing to censorship regulations.
227