Lecture Notes

CTCS 200
10.4.10

I. Soviet Cinema: Historical Context

A. Russian Revolution, 1917
1. Leninʼs coup dʼetat overthrows provisional government
2. Not mass uprising
B. Civil wars 1917-1920s
C. Revolutionary films deployed to stabilize the instability in the aftermath of the
revolution and convince the populous of the righteousness of Lenin
D. Russia still primarily agrarian, behind Europe -- film effort to shift toward
industrial mode of production
II. Soviet Cinema: Cultural & Political Influences
A. Marxism
1. Communal themes (ie no main characters)
2. Connections between labor and community
3. Filmmakers are committed Marxists
B. Film as revolutionary tool, embraced as mass medium
C. Art: Suprematism and Constructivism
1. Suprematism: Malevich (1915-late 19-teens)
2. Limited to basic geometric forms
3. Constructivism -- much more enduring influence on Russian filmmakers
a.. 1914-1922
b. Rodchenko & Tatlin
c. Mechanical & technological form
D. Lev Kuleshov and the Kuleshov effect
1. Teacher/filmmaker
2. Kuleshov effect: primacy of editing
E. 1919: Lenin nationalized film industry, state film school established
III. Sergei Eisenstein
A. Synthetic conception of film
B. Montage of attractions
1. “Cine-fist”
2. Editing: montage
3. Dynamization
a. Within the frame: volume, tempo, vectors, lighting
b. Framing: high/low
c. Editing (montage): collision (vs. cohesion)
C. Strike (1925)
1. Historical re-enactment film that justifies the revolution
2. Instructs audiences to join the revolution, a lesson about how to put on
a strike
3. Action reproduced through the medium of film
D. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
1. Editing as collision
 2. Also used lighting, composition, etc. to intensify or draw out certain
sequeneces
IV. Dziga Vertov
A. Kino-eye (mechanical device more powerful than the eye) & Kino-Pravda
(newsreels in Russian civil wars)
B. The shot: untainted reality
1. Ontological purity
2. Direct reproduction of reality
3. Modernist in this sense, but opposed to abstraction, psychological
expressive forms
C. Editing: the arrangement of ʻpureʼ shots
D. Shots are the facts and editing is the argument
E. Review
1. Eisenstein & Vertov
a. Eisenstein: editing as collision to shock the spectator (within a
narrative)
b. Vertov: editing as a device to make connections (from
documentary footage)
2. Pudovkin
a. Editing as a tool of narrative
b. Guiding the spectator to clarify the narrative/drama
F. The Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
1. Encyclopedia of film technique
2. Communist propaganda
G. 1934 Congress on Socialist Realism
1. Joseph Stalin issues new decree on literary and artistic styles for official
Soviet art
2. Forbids formalist experimentation and abstraction
3. “Realistic” representation
4. Easily understood to proletarians -- to the soviet public