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THE SOVIET FILM
the temporary admiration of the method. This has unfortunately been the case with the numerous over-young and over-enthusiastic cineastes, which is suggestive of their lack of balanced critical faculties. Because of its full use of the resources of the cinema, the Soviet film to-day is in the position to influence an attitude of mind and an outlook on life. It is, as a matter of fact, produced for that very purpose. On this account, therefore, acceptance of a film produced in the U.S.S.R. as an example of filmic exposition must be guided by rigorous and careful deliberation. In hasty admiration of perfect technique, it is easy to accept content, theme, and meaning without thought as to their full intention.
It will be recalled that among the proposals of the Soviet Government, when they assumed control in 1917, was the suggestion that all forms of expression to the public, such as the cinema, the theatre, the Press, and literature, should be under the guidance of the State. The aim was, of course, that the new ideas and concepts of the Government should be widely circulated in the outlying districts as well as in the industrial centres. The theatre essentially was to become a unified form of drama, arising out of the social necessities of the masses. This aim has to some extent been successful, having evolved, during the process of rebuilding, a technique such as exists nowhere outside Soviet Russia. Incorporated in this constructive policy for the theatre was a similar but wider aim for the cinema. Originally, I believe, only a few of the Soviet leaders realised the capabilities of the film as an instrument of propaganda, considering the theatre the more powerful. But they have since become aware of the vast superiority of the cinema over the stage, both for economic reasons and for its greater breadth of representation, until now it is the principal medium of expression for the Government. The initial aim of the Soviet film was to reflect and interpret a new social civilisation in the making, as conceived by Marx and realised by Lenin, which resulted in a form of cinema demanding an entirely new scale of values. Lenin intended the theatre to be a microcosm of the complete theory of Bolshevism, to be admired and copied by the masses. But it was Lenin also who declared that 'of all the arts the most important for Russia is, to my mind, that of the cinema.'
The nationalisation of the Soviet film did not take place until 1 91 9. But two years earlier, in December, a special Cinema Commission was held in Leningrad by the People's Commissariat of
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