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THE FILM SINCE THEN
in any way important. The career of the canonised leader of the Bolsheviks was elaborately acted out in Romm's Lenin in October (1937), and Lenin in 1918 (1939) largely in terms of party politics and personalities somewhat obscure to the uninitiated. Baltic Deputy (1937) by Zharki and Heifitz, signalised the conversion of the intellectual to the new regime in the time of trouble; the rapturous reception accorded this film both within and without the Soviet Union, incidentally, was indicative of the extent to which the new method had taken root : it was principally applauded for the acting of a young man, Nikolai Cherkassov in the role of the septuagenarian protagonist.
So continued, and continue, these films of politicians, interspersed with rationalised interpretations of past Russian statesmen as the fathers of their people (Petrov's two films of Peter the First, 1937-38 and Kntuzov, 1944). From what reached America in the late thirties, the Russian studios at that date were almost wholly occupied with grandiose historical reconstructions ' humanised ' by theatrical acting, plentiful humour, and a political simplification of the facts. As costume films go, the Soviet renderings of history were among the best.1 They were skilful, they were seldom absurd — and that is an achievement in this genre. But, except for an occasional introductory sequence devoted to conjuring up the atmosphere of a period, they seldom attempted any deeper understanding of the human chronicle than could be found in a child's schoolbook. It was not so much that they were ' official ' interpretations of events, nor that they were directed at a semi-educated audience; they seemed to lack any real concern for what they said.
Comparatively few major films dealt with contemporary life. Of these quite the most interesting was Sergei Gerasimov's The New Teacher (1939), a thoughtful and at times passionate consideration of the problems involved
1 Strongly reminiscent of the German Fridericus Rex series of the twenties.
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