By 1920, the hardships caused by the civil war and the disorganization of the new government had created a severe famine in parts of the USSR. Faced with this crisis, Lenin formulated the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, which allowed a limited and temporary reintroduction of private ownership and capitalist-style dealings. As a result, hoarded raw stock reappeared, and film production by private firms and government groups increased.
In early 1922, Lenin made two statements that helped determine the course of Soviet filmmaking. First, he issued the so-called Lenin proportion, stating that film programs should balance entertainment and education— though not specifying how much of each type of film should be shown. He also declared (according to Lunacharsky), “Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.” Lenin probably meant that the cinema was the most powerful tool for propaganda and education among a largely illiterate population. In any event, his statement focused attention on the cinema and has been quoted innumerable times as an indication of the Bolshevik government’s reliance on the new medium for propaganda.
In late 1922, the government attempted to organize the feeble film industry by creating a central distribution monopoly called Goskino. All private and government production firms were to release their films through
Goskino, which would also control the import and export of films. The attempt failed, since several companies were powerful enough to compete with Goskino. In some cases, private importers bid against Goskino for the same films, driving prices higher.
This was no small matter. During the NEP, the Soviet film industry became reliant on imports. In the early years after the October Revolution, the USSR had been cut off from the rest of the world, partly by the civil war and partly by the refusal of most countries to deal with a communist government. In 1922, the Treaty of Rapallo opened the way for trade between Russia and Germany. The treaty was a breakthrough for the USSR in its relations with the West, and Berlin became the main conduit for films going into and out of the USSR during the 1920s. Eager to beat their competitors into the vast new Soviet market, German film firms sold on credit, and lighting equipment, raw stock, and new films flowed into the USSR. A 1923 investigation found that 99 percent of films in Soviet distribution were foreign. Since most of the film industry’s revenues came from distributing imported pictures, foreign trade played a crucial role in its recovery.
Although the industry faced an uphill struggle, the NEP period saw a slow growth. Production centers were gradually set up in the non-Russian republics of the USSR so that ethnic populations could see films reflecting their own cultures. With the acquisition of raw stock, production of fiction features increased. In 1923, there appeared the first Soviet film that was as popular with Soviet audiences as were imported films: a civil war drama called Red Imps. It was directed by Ivan Perestiani for the Georgian branch of Narkompros. The film concerns two teenagers, a brother obsessed with James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure books and a sister devoted to a novel about anarchism. When their father is killed by the Whites, the pair team up with a black street acrobat and set out to join the Red Army. As scouts, they live out the sorts of adventures they had previously read about (6.10).
6.11 In a sequence from Cigarette-Girl of Mosselprom, set in a movie studio, a director reading a script sits in front of a German film poster.
6.12 At the end, the heroine’s film premieres in what may have been a typical movie theater of the day.
6.13 As this shot of the hero and his mother indicates, Palace and Fortress used an old-fashioned style, with the camera facing the back wall straight on, the characters framed from a distance, and flat lighting coming from the front.
6.14,6.15 In one shot from The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, a Soviet official gives a speech, and in the next Mr. West seems to be watching through binoculars—though the shots were clearly made in different spaces and times.
The year 1924 saw a further increase in production. Yuri Zhelyabuzhsky, who had gotten his start directing agitki, made Cigarette-Girl of Mosselprom, a contemporary comedy in which a street cigarette seller becomes a movie star by accident. Several scenes reflect the Soviet film situation of the day (6.11, 6.12). Another popular film, Palace and Fortress, was made by the veteran prerevolutionary director, Alexander Ivanovsky. It centered on a revolutionary of the era of Tsar Alexander II who is imprisoned and eventually goes mad (6.13). Palace and Fortress became a favorite target of the Montage directors over the next few years as they advocated a new approach to filmmaking.
Members of the Kuleshov workshop of the State Film School also made their first feature in 1924. The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is a hilarious comedy about western misconceptions of the USSR. Mr. West, a naive American representative of the YMCA, reluctantly travels to Moscow, where thieves exploit his prejudices, pretending to defend him against “barbarous” Bolshevik thugs. Eventually he is rescued by real (and kindly) Bolsheviks. At the end, the film exploits the Kuleshov effect by combining newsreel and staged footage (6.14, 6.15). With its playful use of acting and editing, Mr. West can be counted as a marginal Montage film. It brought the Soviet cinema to the verge of a truly avant-garde movement, as a new generation of directors interested in more radical stylistic exploration began working.
World History
