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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
the common — even instructional — solutions of them. But Russian directors are too bound up — too aesthetically vain — in what they call their " play films " to contribute to Russia's instructional cinema.1 They have, indeed, suffered greatly from the freedom given to artists in the first uncritical moment of revolutionary enthusiasm, for they have tended to isolate themselves more and more in private impression and private performance. As much as any bourgeois counterpart, they had given themselves the airs and ribbons of art. This has been possible because the first FiveYear plan and the Second have been too busy with essential services to get round to the cinema. For the future, one may safely leave them to the consideration of the Central Committee. One's impression is that when some of the art and all of the Bohemian self-indulgence have been knocked out of them, the Russian cinema will fulfil its high promise of the late twenties. It is bound to, for only its present romantic perspective prevents it coming to grips with the swift and deeply detailed issues around it. The revolutionary will most certainly liquidate, as they put it, this romantic perspective.' 2
In terms of results, Grierson was optimistic, for ' the romantic perspective ' has persisted unaltered since these words were written in 1935, as for example in such a romantic picture as Gendelstein's Lermontov (1943). If it has continued to be the perspective of theatre as against intrinsic cinema, perhaps the choice meant nothing to the Central Committee. Perhaps it was a Hobson's choice? As between intellectualism and easy appeal to the masses, there could be no choice but the second, in a period when increasing external pressures made it essential to seize upon any device which made for unity, even patriotism, even nationalism. Yet there was a third alternative. The films of Ermler, Yutkevich, and Macharet in the early thirties (e.g. Counter plan, Men and Jobs) at least essayed that
1This is not true factually of Pudovkin and Dovjenko. — P.R. 2 Op. cit., p. 117.
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