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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
in the changeover from old to new which was still going on throughout Russia. Unlike most other Soviet films of the period, it was full of warmth and life, with beautifully observed details. Scores of small films celebrated Stakhanovism and the improvement in living-conditions announced by Stalin in his Now, comrades, life is better, life is brighter ' policy aftei the conclusion of the second FiveYear Plan re-introduced mass production of consumer goods. Typical of these was Alexandrov's Tanya, which described the prize trip to Moscow awarded a girl worker for exceeding her quota. The brassy glitter of the Moscow jollification was repugnant to those Western critics who shrunk from the vulgarity of the new collective life (while finding picturesque the primitive peasant life as shown in the old revolutionary films). But to anyone interested in what was happening to the peoples of the Soviet Union, this film and its humble fellows were more revelatory — and more enjoyable — than a score of historical epics enacted by Honored Artists of the Republic. Here was a changing Russia, a Russia changing itself, and going about it with a gusto' and vitality that signalled enjoyment of living. Such films as these provoked the comment that the Russian cinema was * Americanising ' itself. I should put it differently. The Soviet film at its beginnings shared with the American film that ' common touch ' which endeared both to the masses. The return of this sense of the doings and concerns of ordinary people was to be welcomed in the rearguard of the Soviet cinema.
A memorable film just prior to the war was Vladimir Legoshin's Lone White Sail (1937), a film about children ostensibly made for children, but with an understanding and warmth that made it almost isolated among Soviet films of the late thirties. Sensitively handled, superbly photographed and produced, it came nearer to telling us how the new generation lived and felt and thought than any other picture, except perhaps The New Teacher, of the decade. We should not forget, also, the Soviet fondness for fantasy and fairy-tale storying, which they
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