The film till now : a survey of the cinema (1930)

VI THE SOVIET FILM 1 here is always a tendency to exaggerate the discovery of a new invention, a fresh philosophy, or an original theory of painting; similarly, the significance of the Soviet film has been largely overrated by enthusiastic cineastes in this country. Perhaps the primary reason why the discovery of the Soviet cinema has been more momentous in England than on the continent is because, until comparatively recently, all productions from the U.S.S.R. have been withheld from public exhibition by the British Board of Film Censors. In consequence, fanned by eulogistic descriptions from abroad, there has risen a heated demand from the circle of film writers and experimentalists in England for the wholesale acceptance of Soviet films. Officially discountenanced, the forbidden productions have assumed gigantic importance as 'works of art' in the minds of the British intelligentsia. All Soviet films are hailed as the supreme examples of modern cinema; all Soviet directors as filmic geniuses; with the result that the cult for Soviet films (still in great part forbidden) has become slightly hysterical and more than a little tedious in its parrot-like cry. Actually, the product of the Soviet film industry is to be received with the strictest reservation. It is to be accorded the severest criticism, for it has been born of remarkable circumstances during a span of twelve eventful and restless years. Moreover, it should be remembered that the present state of the Soviet cinema has been made possible only by the social and political events that have taken place in Russia since the October revolution of 19 17. But this is not to assume, as is often done, that a similar progression of events would produce a cinema such as that of the Soviet in England. The Soviet cinema is immensely powerful. Its films carry social and political contents expressed so emotionally and with such a degree of technical perfection that the content may be swallowed in 146