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The Russian Cinematograph before the Revolution. The cinematograph, as it existed in Russia prior to the October revolution, was, both in subject and form, nothing more nor less than the mirror of the tastes and characteristics of the bourgeoisie, and more particularly of the lower middle classes, of that time. The various forms of artistic decadence which had invaded the spirit of society at the beginning of the twentieth century reacted on the cinematograph as on all other forms of art.
It is true that at that date the cinematograph was but little developed from the technical standpoint and wTas therefore not in a position to create forms on a level wTith those created in other fields of artistic production. But even aesthetic symbolism had penetrated into the cinematographic domain, and in the scenes staged by M. Bauer we can trace the romantic tendencies of that period : we will not speak of all the modern sex problems which found in the film their most effective means of propaganda. All these subjects, presented in a suggestive and licentious form, calculated to awraken the lowest instincts, were dealt with in a CBreless manner, wThich not even the optimists of the old school can have approved.
The Soviet Cinema during the first years. — The revolution in Soviet cinematography began with a transformation in the choice of subject matter, in the form of the Soviet cinematographic chronicles and in artistic propaganda, right from the time of the civil war and the first years of the revolution. Soviet cinematography was unable, howrever, to discern at once a clear form and a precise choice of themes for its new material. In this regard it formed no exception to artistic activities in general ; literature, w'hich is the normal source of the cinematograph, was equally behindhand in social development. At the same time, no very deep study had been made either of the technique or of the canons of the cinematographic art, whether in Russia or elsewhere. At a certain period — or to be more precise, at the time of our civil wTar — cinematography, in its principal form, namely that of artistic and documentary propaganda (although it pursued certain concrete notions of form and a new technique in subject matter) did not display the creative spirit cf artists ready to sink their
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