Inside Soviet Film Satire (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Inside Soviet Film Satire: Laughter with a Lash is a lively collection of sixteen original essays by Soviet and American...

Author: Andrew Horton

184 downloads 1592 Views 7MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Inside Soviet Film Satire: Laughter with a Lash is a lively collection of sixteen original essays by Soviet and American scholars and film commentators. It is the first in-depth examination of an important genre within the Soviet film tradition. From its origins, humor and satire have been closely linked in Soviet cinema. Nowhere in this tradition is there the pure comic genre typified in the West in films by Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton; by contrast, Soviet comedy can best be described as "laughter with a lash." Films made during the early years of the communist regime depicted characters and situations at a moment when the promise of socialism had yet to be realized. By the final years of totalitarian rule, filmmakers had found ways to create satiric films that powerfully indicted communism itself. Offering a general overview of the evolution of Soviet film satire during a seventy-year period, this volume also provides in-depth analyses of such classics as Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks; Volga, Volga, a popular musical of the Stalinist period; and the bitter and surrealistic Zero City, The Fountain, and Black Rose, Red Rose of the glasnost period. It also examines the effects of communism's collapse in 1991 on the tradition of satire and includes an interview with the renowned Soviet filmmaker Yuri Mamin.

INSIDE SOVIET FILM SATIRE

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FILM

GENERAL EDITORS

Henry Breitrose, Stanford University William Rothman, University of Miami ADVISORY BOARD Dudley Andrew, University of Iowa Anthony Smith, Magdalen College, Oxford Colin Young, National Film School OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES FiJm and Phenomenology, by Allan Casebier Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949, by Paul Clark The Gorgon's Gaze: German Cinema, Expressionism, and the Image of Horror, by Paul Coates Nonindi/ferent Nature: Film and the Structure of Things, by Sergei Eisenstein (trans. Herbert Marshall) Constructivism in Film: The Man with the Movie Camera, by Vlada Petric Renoir on Renoir: Interviews, Essays, and Remarks, by Jean Renoir (trans. Carol Volk) The Taste for Beauty, by Eric Rohmer (trans. Carol Volk) The "I" of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics, by William Rothman The British Documentary Film Movement, 1926-1946, by Paul Swann Metaphor and Film, by Trevor Whittock

INSIDE SOVIET FILM SATIRE Laughter with a Lash

Editor ANDREW HORTON Loyola University, New Orleans

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521430166 © Cambridge University Press 1993 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1993 This digitally printed first paperback version 2005 A catalogue recordfor this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Inside Soviet film satire : laughter with a lash / Andrew Horton, editor. (Cambridge studies in film) p. cm. Papers from the New Orleans Conference on the Spirit of Satire in Soviet Cinema held at Loyola University. Filmography: p. Includes index. ISBN 0-521-43016-X 1. Comedy films - Soviet Union - History and criticism - Congresses. 2. Satire, Soviet — History and criticism — Congresses. 3. Communism and satire - Congresses. I. Horton, Andrew. PN1995.9.C55I54 1993 791.43'617-dc20 92-32195 CIP ISBN-13 978-0-521-43016-6 hardback ISBN-10 0-521-43016-X hardback ISBN-13 978-0-521 -02107-4 paperback ISBN-10 0-521-02107-3 paperback

Foreword: If life itself is a satire . . . DR. KIRILL RAZLOGOV

page vn

Acknowledgments Editor's note

ix xi

Introduction: Carnival versus lashing laughter in Soviet cinema ANDREW HORTON

Part One The long view: Soviet satire in context I Soviet film satire yesterday and today

17

VALENTIN TOLSTYKH (TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY ANDREW ANDREYEV)

II

A Russian Munchausen: Aesopian translation

20

KEVIN MOSS

III

"We don't know what to laugh at": Comedy and satire in Soviet cinema (from The Miracle Worker to St. Jorgen's Feast Day)

36

DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD

IV An ambivalent NEP satire of bourgeois aspirations: The Kiss of Mary Pickford

48

PETER CHRISTENSEN

V

Closely watched drains: Notes by a dilettante on the Soviet absurdist film

58

MICHAEL BRASHINSKY

Part Two Middle-distance shots: The individual satire considered VI A subtextual reading of Kuleshov's satire The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) VLADA PETRIC

65

Contents

vi

VII

75

The strange case of the making of Volga, Volga MAYA TUROVSKAYA (TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY ANDREW ANDREYEV)

VIII Circus of 1936: Ideology and entertainment under the big top

83

MOIRA RATCHFORD

IX

Black humor in Soviet cinema

94

OLGA REIZEN

X

Laughter beyond the mirror: Humor and satire in the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

98

VIDA T. JOHNSON

XI

The films of Eldar Shengelaya: From subtle humor to biting satire

105

JULIE CHRISTENSEN

Part Three Close-ups: Glasnost and Soviet satire XII A forgotten flute and remembered popular tradition

117

GRETA N. SLOBIN

XIII Perestroika of kitsch: Sergei Soloviev's BJack Rose, Red Rose

125

SVETLANA BOYM

XIV Carnivals bright, dark, and grotesque in the gJasnost satires of Mamin, Mustafayev, and Shakhnazarov

138

ANDREW HORTON

XV

Quick takes on Yuri Mamin's Fountain from the perspective of a Romanian

149

ANDREI CODRESCU

XVI "One should begin with zero": A discussion with satiric filmmaker Yuri Mamin

154

ANDREW HORTON

FiJmography Contributors Index

157 165 167

FOREWORD

If life itself is a satire. . .

It's quite a thrill to open a book about Soviet film satire when the Soviet Union has disappeared, for satire has now become a fundamental characteristic of everyday life in the ex-USSR. It seems that the satiric verve along with Russia's cultural tradition is, unlike the Union, still alive. This fact makes the present retrospective even more interesting, in a way like a postmortem. Andrew Horton has succeeded where everybody else failed: In New Orleans (Loyola University), he gathered a group of Russian and American scholars with very different backgrounds, both academic and practical, and made them speak the unspeakable: about satire in a totalitarian state. And each speaker discovered and proved from his or her own perspective not only that satiric films did exist, but that they constituted the most subversive genre in the vast domain reigned over by Socialist Realism. In a way, the posttotalitarian seriousness we have experienced since the beginning of perestroika and glasnost, down to the farcical conclusion with the August Coup (1991), proves to be a backlash from the previous Aesopian power and satiric perspective cherished by many Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, and other filmmakers in the former Soviet Union. This book is as much testimony as it is an investigation into the unknown or, better, never-acknowledged territory of Soviet film satire. Not just Yuri Mamin - the only filmmaker present among the scholars - but every ex-Soviet writer relies on his or her own experience in shaping satire. As for the Americans within this collection, they bring an inter textual perspective in an easy, almost nonacademic style. And one is even tempted to try and satirize the American analysis of Russian feelings (or the "Slavic soul") about film and life as a kind of global satire. "Situation hopeless, but not serious" would thus also be a way to describe the present realities in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Kirill Razlogov Director Institute for Cultural Research Moscow

vii

Acknowledgments

I wish first of all to thank Beatrice Rehl, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for her unfailing support, helpful critical comments, and, yes, fine sense of humor in seeing this project to fruition. My thanks to all of the others not represented in this collection who made the New Orleans Conference on the Spirit of Satire in Soviet Cinema possible: to Anna Lawton, who was the coorganizer of the conference; and to Romana Bahry of York University; Daniel Goulding of Oberlin College; Sergei Lavrentiev, a leading Soviet film critic; and Peter Shepotinnik, an editor of the influential Moscow-based film journal Iskusstvo kino. I also extend a hearty thanks to Loyola University of New Orleans for providing many services and some of the funding for the conference together with the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities for a minigrant that made it possible to bring Yuri Mamin to New Orleans. All photos appear thanks to Sovexport Film and the Kinocenter of Moscow. Finally, hats off to all filmmakers in all of the republics and provinces that were the Soviet Union who are still able to see satire and humor in the darkest moments.

IX

In transliterating Russian terms and names into English, this volume adheres to the Library of Congress system (with the elimination of the apostrophe-designated soft sign in the text). Exceptions have been made in the case of Russian names that have become widely known under a different system of transliteration. Every attempt has been made to standardize terminology and documentary references in the chapters, but this does not exclude the possibility of exceptional usages in the style of individual authors. There is often considerable variation in the English translation of Russian film titles. We have tried to be consistent even where there are no "standard" English versions of titles.

xi

INTRODUCTION

Carnival versus lashing laughter in Soviet cinema

I adhere to the tradition of laughing while the lash swishes. Mine is a laughter of destruction. Sergei Eisenstein Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own. Jonathan Swift

Headed for the promised sky We never had a good civilization, but we always had a good culture. Viktor Yerofeyev (Shapiro, "Ablest Soviets Flee for Better Lives") It's a dark, snowy, cold Russian night, and a large group of the Moscow homeless have been surrounded by police and soldiers and commanded to leave their shantytown so that an American-Soviet joint venture hotel and condom factory can be built on the spot where the poor have been living. 'This is our land and we are not going to leave it," calls out the president, the leader of the homeless who acts like a not-so-distorted copy of Gorbachev and looks remarkably like Albert Einstein. But the official forces will not listen. They move in with tanks and riot troops, crushing all in their path. The poor gather on an old steam locomotive, which looks a lot like the old ''revolutionary" trains of seventy years ago, and to everyone's surprise, the locomotive starts up and heads on down the track with the military in hot pursuit. Then a miracle happens. As soldiers and tanks fire at the train, the locomotive takes off into the winter sky, headed for "the promised land" followed by a pack of wild homeless dogs howling after it. And though the tanks fire away, the train is heaven bound with the homeless and the president and his ex-wife and friends all aboard. A Soviet parody of Spielberg's E.T. or De Sica's farewell to neorealism, Miracle in Milan (1951), in which all the homeless of Milan take off through the Italian heavens? Both. And more. 1


"The president" of Moscow's homeless folk in Eldar Ryazanov's The Promised Sky (1991) balancing between hope and hopelessness, reality and fantasy, and tears and topical satiric laughter.

The scene described is the conclusion to Eldar Ryazanov's 1991 social comic satire, The Promised Sky (Nebesa obetovannyej, one of the very few popular Russian/ex-Soviet films of 1991. It is appropriate to begin our study of Soviet film satire with this recent film for several reasons. First, Ryazanov has been the undisputed master of Soviet comic satire for almost three decades, and as Greta Slobin's essay suggests, his Forgotten Melody for a Flute (Zabytaya melodiya diyafleity, 1987) was the first fullbodied gJasnost film. Thus, The Promised Sky brings us full circle: Clearly after the August ''revolution" of 1991, we have entered a postSoviet and, in a real sense, a post-perestroika phase. Our collection ends, therefore, at this borderline but traces back to the origins of Soviet satire


Yefim, the poor Jewish tinker (Roland Bykov), whose good humor and satiric wit help humanize the coldly Communist female commissar in Commissar (1967).

in Russian and world literature and culture. These essays bring us as far as the end of the Soviet Union: What happens next in the world of satire and culture is yet to be written and filmed. We should add that Ryazanov's fantasy triumph with its wink to the audience suggesting both Spielberg and De Sica suggests from the beginning a prime characteristic of satire: its double-edged ambiguity. Nothing is inherently funny, satiric, tragic, or absurd (Horton, Comedy/ Cinema/Theory, p. 1). Context and perspective are all. (E.g., think how much of British humor is lost on American audiences.) Commissar (1967), a serious film about Jews in the Soviet Union, has its moments of true humor and wit. Ryazanov's comic triumph is, therefore, as Eisenstein would say (and we shall explain), "laughter with a lash/* for it is only a triumph within the film narrative. Our laughter is coupled with the realization that, in real life, locomotives don't fly to heaven and the homeless do get shoved away to build hotels and factories. (It is a fascinating irony that at the same time that The Promised Sky was playing to large crowds in the


4

Soviet Union, Americans were lining up to see Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in The Fisher King, which tackles the same themes and same amount of "magic realism" using New York City as a landscape.) It is this territory between laughter, irony, ambiguity, reality, and comic triumph that we will explore as we focus on the intersection of satire and Soviet cinema up to and including 1991. This collection of original essays is dedicated to the fact that even during the darkest hours under Stalin, Soviets always laughed. If the comic can represent the purest form of laughter, then satire, our object of desire in this anthology, is by general consensus a form of purposeful laughter. Voltaire ends his satiric novel Zadig with the words "Yes, but. . . . " In a real sense, any satirist, Soviet or otherwise, works within such a double awareness of the need to suggest a "but," an alternative vision/perspective/reality. But as these essays testify, satire is perhaps the slipperiest of genres, the one most misunderstood, abused, and in danger of falling into something else, be it pathos, bathos, self-pity, farce, or pure propaganda. Most of these essays grew out of an international conference on Soviet film satire held at Loyola University, New Orleans, in October 1990. Besides the film critics and cinema scholars attending from the Soviet Union, Canada, and the United States, a special guest satiric filmmaker, Yuri Mamin, was present to delight and trouble us with his own particular form of purposeful laughter. (See Chapter XVI, "One Should Begin with Zero: A Discussion with Satiric Filmmaker Yuri Mamin.") The book is thus dedicated to Mamin and to all Soviet and, what we should now perhaps call "post-Soviet," satirists who, for various purposes, have made generations of viewers laugh and think; for as Mamin himself has said, "If satire becomes unnecessary, it would mean that all favorable processes in our society have come to a halt" (New Orleans, October 1990). And, we might add, as was noted at the time of the conference, New Orleans was not perhaps an accidental tourist to the spirit of satire, for the "city that care forgot," as New Orleans is often called, not only produced jazz (which itself is often a form of satire on more rigid forms of music), but also can claim to be the center of the carnivalesque in the United States, a spirit that definitely embraces satire and parody at its purest. The scope of this book is wide but not exhaustive, suggestive rather than complete. The collection divides into three sections, Part One of which addresses the specifics of the nature of satire combined with a broad view of the functioning of satire within Soviet culture. Part Two consists of essays on specific films (by Petric, Turovskaya, and Ratchford) and on cultural/political/satiric implications, plus three essays that expand our understanding of specific topics within Soviet satire: Vida Johnson's essay on satire in Tarkovsky's films, Julie Christensen's study of Georgian comic satire as reflected in the films of Eldar Shengelaya, and Olga Reizen's piece on black humor and Soviet culture/film. Finally, Part


5

Three considers the degree and kind of purposeful laughter that has emerged since the demise of the Communist/Socialist system in the Soviet Union and, indeed, since the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. The topography of Soviet satire Beginning with the present, we can note that the comic/satiric films emerging from the Soviet Union under glasnost call attention to a long and distinguished tradition of Russian laughter in literature (see Horton and Brashinsky, The Zero Hour). Much of that tradition has been influenced by Western models (Horace, commedia dell'arte, Shakespeare, Moliere, Addison, etc.), especially in the spirit of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment. More specifically, Russian writers of the past learned the techniques of satire of individuals (Plautus, Terence) and of a more universal kind, comedie de caractere as practiced by Ben Jonson, Moliere, and others in which it is the "humor" or vice itself, rather than the person, that comes under the focus of mockery. Thus, from Gogol to Chekhov or A. N. Ostrovsky, satire and humor have generally been aimed at a "serious" purpose. Eisenstein, as well shall see, also followed in this tradition as he states in the egigraph: "Mine is a laughter of destruction" [Notes of a Film Director, p. 108). A review of Soviet cinema suggests how important comic and satiric strategies have been, even if approached ambivalently, since the beginning of the Soviet state, as Denise Youngblood's clearly stated study of Soviet cinematic laughter of the 1920s demonstrates (see Chapter III). In fact, Boris Shumyatsky, writing during 1935 in his book A Cinema for the Millions [Kinematografiya miJJionov) just before the worst Stalinist years, defended the importance of laughter-provoking films under communism with these words: Tsarist and capitalist Russia were not acquainted with happy joyful laughter in their best works. The laughter in Gogol, Shchedrin and Chekhov is accusing laughter, laughter derived from bitterness and hatred. . . . We believe that, if Gogol, Shchedrin and Chekhov were alive today, their actual laughter would in the Soviet Union acquire joie de vivre, optimism and cheerfulness. (Taylor, The Film Factory, p. 368)

Shumyatsky was defending Alexandrov's film Happy Guys (VeseJye rebyata), from attacks of being the "apotheosis of vulgarity." His emphasis is on the sense of good clean fun that such films offered a Soviet society with a promising future under communism. Just how ludicrous a simple concept of joie de vivre turned out to be during Stalin's era is detailed by Maya Turovskaya in her revealing essay on the filmming of Alexandrov's smash hit Volga, Volga.


6

Viewed from today's perspective, however, as seen in a film such as A Forgotten Melody for a Flute, the Soviet realm of comedy and satire has tilted back to the "accusing laughter" of the Enlightenment in Europe and in Russian drama and literature as well. Glasnost has provided the opportunity to use a light touch (farcical) and heavy touch (black humor as Olga Reizen and Svetlana Boym point out) to point out the shortcomings, contradictions, and failures of more than seventy years of Soviet socialism. Let us consider five characteristics of satire in a Soviet context. First, irony and accusing laughter are, in fact, a potent form of survival, an alternative world view as well as a means of offense. Irina Ratushinskaya in her searing account of her years in a women's political prison for human rights activities under Brezhnev's term, Grey Is the Color of Hope, frequently suggests how often the darkest events - such as the planting of a KGB stooge within their zone - brought on deep laughter rather than pure anger. "It was all we could do not to collapse on the grass in helpless fits of laughter. On the whole, though, the situation might be far from funny" (p. 88), she writes, suggesting how intimately laughter becomes, under oppression, a way of distancing oneself from the oppressors and of celebrating one's own sense of self, values, dignity. These remarks suggest what we should acknowledge but what is beyond the scope of this book, a second observation on Soviet satire: that the satiric impulse as demonstrated in jokes, ironic comments, and such is a necessary ingredient of daily life for citizens within a totalitarian or authoritarian state if they are to maintain their own sense of worth, individuality, and self-esteem. Satire in such a context within a totalitarian framework thus is both offense - an attack on the system - and defense — survival itself, psychologically, spiritually, and even physically. Luis Bunuel used to say that his mission as a satiric/surrealist filmmaker was to make even the most comfortable member of the viewing audience feel that he or she was not living in the best of all possible worlds. As these essays proclaim, the best of the Soviet satires have held a similar position. A third observation is provided by the metahistorian Hay den White, building on the work of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, who suggests that the ironic/satiric stance forces the "normal" culture either to change or to formulate better its own perspective. According to White, the ironic/satiric/absurdist perspective forces us (and historians in particular) to ask: "On what grounds can we assert that the insane, the criminal, and the barbarian are wrong? . . . And why should critics criticize with words while those who possess real power criticize with weapons?" {Tropics of Discourse, p. 282). Our fourth distinction, which builds on the others and provides us with the title of our introduction, is that between carnivalesque satire and laughter, and lashing satire, has existed satire which served the State.


Satire and parody at its most carnivalesque in Alia Surikova's popular spoof on Westerns and everything else including cinema itself, The Man from Capuchins Boulevard (1987). Mikhail Bakhtin explains in his essay entitled "Epic and Novel" how the novel developed out of popular satiric traditions of laughter at the expense of the formalized genre codes of the epic. Carnivalesque satire and laughter is a popular, folk laughter of the people, by the people, for the people, and is, in the spirit of carnival, a sanctioned, liberating attack on all authority. As Bakhtin writes: "Laughter is a vital factor in laying down that prerequisite for fearlessness without which it would be impossible to approach the world realistically. . . . Familiarization of the world through laughter and popular speech is an extremely important and indispensable step in making possible free, scientifically knowable and artisically realistic creativity in European civilization" (The Dialogic Imagination, p. 23). Laughter serving the State, however, serves the opposite purpose: the control of behavior that might challenge authority, as we shall discuss. Finally, I would add that satire not only appears in the daily life of the people, but it shows up throughout many films that would not be judged "satires" per se. Little Vera, for instance, is permeated with satiric irony, often very funny, but more often dramatic and even tragic - there is "little


Sergei Soloviev's "hyper-eccentric realism" as viewed in Assa (1988). Stanislav Govorukhin (right), a director of such important films as We Cannot Live This Way [Tak zhiV neVzya, 1990), plays a Soviet Mafia figure in this collage rock and roll antinarrative.

hope" for little Vera in the industrial wasteland of her home city. Yet the film itself would not be called a "satire." Such would be the case with much of cinema made since the advent of gJasnost, particularly postmodernist works such as Rashid Nugmanov's The Needle (Igla, 1988), Valery Ogorodnikov's Prishvin's Paper Eyes (Bumazhnye gJaza Prishvina, 1989) and Sergei Soloviev's Assa (1988). We need to briefly review the development of Russian/Soviet satire, but it may be helpful first to suggest an international context from which to view our subject. The dominant form of comedy in the world is, of course, the Hollywood version, a genre that year after year dominates the box office in terms of popularity (Horton, "A Laughing Matter/' p. 30). In 1988, for instance, six of the top ten money-making films were comedies, led at the top by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. A definite contrast in styles and directions of comedy arises, therefore, between the predominant Soviet and


9

American laughter of the late 1980s. Much of American comedy has been steadily losing the "democratic" or populist flavor that characterized it in the past in favor of a "Reaganite" cynical neoconservatism that ignores many contemporary issues such as racial strife, drugs, women's rights, and AIDS. Such comedy ultimately endorses the status quo rather than offering any true critique of it. (It should also be pointed out that much of this comedy is xenophobic: In Ghostbusters II, the evil threat to New York comes from "Carpathia" in Eastern Europe and is spearheaded by a certain Janosz Pha, looking suspiciously like Sergei Eisenstein himself as interpreted by Peter MacNicol.) In contrast, much Soviet satire in literature, film, and music in recent years has become an important voice in the critical reevaluation of Soviet values. In this sense, even though much Soviet comedy has changed from the toothless laughter in the past to a brand with an accusing tone, that tone can be read as more optimistic than the smug cynicism of many recent American comedies; for in criticism there is the hope of awareness and thus of change. Dostoevsky claimed that Gogol's short story "The Overcoat" is the starting point of all Russian prose. But Gogol was following in the satiric Russian tradition of reforming humankind through laughter, "laughter through tears," as he defined his purpose in creating The Inspector General. To understand how Gogol's center of levity is anchored in a blend of realism and the supernatural (fantasy and the grotesque) alongside a kind of Christian sense of compassion for the insignificant and downtrodden (and to recognize how much this spirit runs throughout Russian and Soviet literature and cinema, as Valentin Tolstykh explains in Chapter I of this volume) is to see how radically different such satire is from the American "Reaganite comedy" of self-absorption and conservatism of the late 1980s. In Chapter II, Kevin Moss goes a long way toward explaining how "Aesopian" (thus, very clearly how purposeful) much of Soviet satire has become. In Chapter VIII, Moira Ratchford's study of Alexandrov's Circus explains the degree to which politically "correct" satire can have a backlash effect. But carnivalesque or joyful laughter in a satiric vein has existed as well. Looking to the 1920s, for instance, we see that farce, satire, what we would call "vaudeville," and commedia deJJ'arte, and American "silent comedies" - especially those of Chaplin, Keaton, and Harold Lloyd made a strong impression on the young Soviet pioneering filmmakers. One of Lev Kuleshov's earliest and most interesting films is the lighthearted spoof, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Neobychainye prildiucheniia mistera Vesta v strane bol'shevikov, 1924), with actor P. Podobed appearing as a Harold Lloyd lookalike, complete with the dark-rimmed glasses, in his characterization of the American, Mr. West, who is taken in by Soviet con men through


10

vrcmyo (blarney) and pokarukha (deception), two national sports that have not been dulled by seventy years of socialism. The satire of capitalism is definitely light and the humor joyful and thus in the spirit of and a tribute to that "anything goes" flavor of American silent comedy. Finally, Vlada Petric (Chapter VI), in his contribution on the film, has noted that the "film's subtext addresses the viewer's intimate world, touching upon ideas and judgments antithetical to the Bolshevik view of history and society." Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, 1929) owes much of its energy and high spirits to the large number of gags and visual jokes, employing a playful use of film language, subtle and obvious, that run throughout the film, many of them with underlying suggestions of a healthy sense of sexuality. Again, the emphasis is much more on joyful and playful laughter than on satire and biting dark humor, in the spirit of Shumyatsky's description of Happy Guys. Finally, Alexander Medvedkin best represents an early Soviet director who comes closest to embodying a sense of what Mikhail Bakhtin would call "carnival laughter." His Happiness (Schastye, 1935) is a surrealistic comic/satiric romp that spoofs farm life in both the tsarist and Soviet times. His innovative use of camera tricks, outrageous absurdity, and slapstick (a soldier rubbing a horse's rear end, a man sitting on the throne in an outhouse, a father and son hitting each other with spoons, etc.) still evoke uproarious laughter as evidenced by a special 1988 tribute to Medvedkin held to a full house in Dom Kino, the Filmmaker's Center, at which the eightyeight-year-old master of Soviet satire appeared in person. Laughter with a dangerous lash, Medvedkin's film is not. And Eisenstein himself writes in his autobiography, Immoral Memories (1946), that the figure he admires most is the clown. Also, in the essay "A Few Thoughts About Soviet Comedy" he goes further to describe Socialist laughter. American laughter is for the pure pleasure of laughter, he notes, and even Chaplin wins us over as a "grownup behaving like a child" [Notes of a Film Director, p. 110). For the Soviet Union, however, comedy must be satiric: "The time has not yet come for us to indulge in carefree laughter: socialism has not yet been built. So there is no call for light heartedness. Laughter is a new kind of weapon" [Notes of a Film Director, p. 111). None of his films is a comedy or pure satire per se, except for the short piece he shot as an insert for the well-known staged production of Even a Wise Man Stumbles. But traces of both are found particularly in his first feature, Strike [Stachka, 1924), which shows Meyerhold's strong comic/ improvisational influence in the surrealistic circuslike construction, cartoonlike caricature (especially of the fat, ugly capitalists), and heavily ironic use of montage in the film. Yet in Eisenstein's hands, the satire is more pointed, more accusing, and more dialectic than in the films previously mentioned. For all of the comic touches, Eisenstein's climax is


11

literally "deadly" serious and in the service of the State: In the now famous cut, he juxtaposes the shooting of workers on strike with the slaughter of a cow, ending with the message REMEMBER, PROLETARIANS! With such a didactic Marxist message, Eisenstein goes far beyond the confines of the more general and good-natured social satire of the popular playwright Alexander Ostrovsky (1823-86) in his Wiseman and other popular works. Between these twin poles of laughter - Eisenstein's highly accusatory/ moralistic perspective and Medvedkin's liberating/irreverent/satiric pleas u r e - t h e satiric and comic/satiric muse within Russia and the Soviet Union can be seen to have developed. Satire in close-up It is my hope that this collection represents more than simply a Soviet take on satire. I would like to think that using the Soviet film tradition, up to and including a cinema of gJasnost, helps us to further consider the slippery and difficult nature of satire in general. Harry Levin in an essay on satire quotes the old Soviet joke about the distinction between socialism and capitalism: " 'Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man and socialism is the reverse' " (Levin, 'The Urges of Satire/' p. 12). He notes that such a joke is clearly subversive - in fact, doubly so, for it makes fun of both political ideologies, but the end result of satire is that it has no effect. Clearly, Ryazanov's multitude of distinguished satires from Garage to Forgotten Melody for a Flute and The Promised Sky, for instance, did not single-handedly or directly lead to the August revolution of 1991 or the continuing sweeping changes throughout the various republics of the Soviet Union. But I would argue with Levin that it is part of the oftensurprising nature of satire that it does make a difference, often in ways one would not expect. In Greece during the dictatorship of 1967-74, for example, it was surprising to see that some of the works banned during the first year were those of Aristophanes. Furthermore, cultural historians of the period will have to note that when the dictators stepped down in 1974, it was not because of a bloody coup but, to a surprising degree, because they were laughed out of office. For the Greeks, political jokes, topical satire, are simply a way of life. Likewise for the Soviets, I would suggest that satire has made a difference both on a personal and cultural/sociopolitical level even if "satire" does not appear clearly delineated on surveys or scientific charts. The difficulty, as Levin points out, is in measuring this difference. We have described satire as purposeful, even when that purpose is the pure sense of liberation sanctioned by carnival. But besides being a form of pamphleteering, propaganda, and offense against a designated target


12

enemy, satire does also embody laughter as psychic release and thus as a survival tool for the individual rather than an instrument of social change. Levin does rightly say that this twin mode of an urge for liberal change and yet for conservative survival between which satire, like a radioactive particle, vibrates suggests that, ultimately, satire should be considered iconoclastic. That is, the satirist strives to shatter images: "The end of satire is reformation, affirmed Defoe. Reformation can look backward as well as forward. The satirist is an ipso facto moralist, promoting the good by excoriating the bad according to his lights" ("The Wages of Satire," p. 6). The image that led Eisenstein to say he needed a lash was the dream of an unrealized socialism. The image he wished to shatter was of the past, yet the irony has been, of course, that it is with the image of socialism as practiced that so many of the practitioners of satire under gJasnost have operated, with their newly gained freedom of expression. And yet several of our contributors, including Youngblood, Tolstykh, and Reizen, suggest that in a period of rapidly changing values - or the shattering of all values - reality itself becomes more absurd than a satirist can portray, and the pressures of mere survival make the distance that laughter requires difficult or impossible. On a final note, satire remains an often thankless (and too often, a dangerous) field of artistic discourse. As Canadian novelist Robertson Davies notes, "Countries that are not always sure of their own identity are understandably suspicious of satirists" (Levin, "The Wages of Satire," p. 1). Our hope is that critical awareness itself as represented in these essays is not necessarily divorced from carnival laughter. Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Eisenstein, Sergei. Immoral Memories. Trans. Herbert Marshall. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. Originally published 1946. Notes of a Film Director. New York: Dover, 1970. Horton, Andrew. Comedy/Cinema/Theory. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. "A Laughing Matter: American Comedy & Soviet Satire in the 1980's," Soviet Film (July 1990) pp. 30-31. Horton, Andrew, and Michael Brashinsky. The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Inside Soviet Film Satire grew out of my work on chap. 6 of The Zero Hour: "From Accusing to Joyful Laughter: Restructuring the Comic/Satiric Muse." Hunt, Lynn, ed. The New Cultural History. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989.


13

Levin, Harry, "The Wages of Satire," in Literature and Society. Ed. Edward W. Said. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. pp. 1-14. Pelton, Robert D. The Trickster in West Africa. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. Ratushinskaya, Irina, Grey Is the Color of Hope. New York: Knopf, 1988. Shapiro, Margaret, "Ablest Soviets Flee for Better Lives," Washington Post. November 23, 1991. Taylor, Richard (ed. & trans.) & Ian Christie (co-ed. & intro.). The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988. White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Also recommended are Anna Law ton's KinogJasnost: Soviet Cinema in our Time, Cambridge University Press, 1991; Nicholas Galichenko's Glasnost: Soviet Cinema Responds, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991; and, for an excellent study of Soviet silent film, Denise Youngblood's Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.

PART ONE

The long view: Soviet satire in context

CHAPTER I

Soviet film satire yesterday and today

One should begin by stating a fact: Every release of a satiric film has been a rare occurrence, almost an incidental occurrence in the history of Soviet film. There were periods when no satiric films appeared on the screen in years and, when having appeared, caused desolate irritation or open dislike on the part of the authorities and official critics. Filmmakers working in this genre were always scarce, and there are no critics and theoreticians who have really analyzed film satire on a systematic basis with the possible exception of Rostislov Turenev, the author of critical works on Soviet comedy. The situation is almost a paradox. Social reality, that is, literally speaking, overwhelmed and oversaturated everything else with tragic and satiric events with the result that nobody is seriously interested in the development of tragedy and satire as aesthetic genres. I combine these two genres intentionally. They are closely connected in their ability to tell the whole truth and by the unity and community of their substantial basis. They are two sides or poles of human existence: Something that is tragic on one level, on another becomes the object of exposure and ridicule. Satire is tragic and tragicomic in its essence, causing audiences not simply to laugh, but to laugh with despair, indignation, or anger: "laughter through tears," as Hegel said. In speaking of Yuri Mamin's Fountain and Vaghif Mustafayev's The Villain, Andrew Horton was right to note that the phenomena depicted in these films is not funny at all, but the audiences burst out in laughter all the time while watching these films (Soviet Screen, no. 5, 1990). Similar to tragedy, satire counts on the emotional shock in the cinema, on the state of aesthetic dismay and indignation, and on the enlightening catharsis that tragedy or the absurd creates in the long run. The problem is that the demand for such a shock appears to be an unfitting luxury under the conditions of totalitarian systems or existence in the "barracks." Satire and tragedy demand a certain level of selfreflection and self-awareness. They emerge from this feeling of disharmony, the "abnormality" of daily life, thinking, and being. And they are 17


18

inconceivable in a place where the spirit of social complacency and selfdeception claim the throne. During the period from 1960 to 1985, only five or six satiric films were released: Welcome (Klimov, 1964), Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours (Serov, 1976), Garage (Ryazanov, 1980) and a few, very few, others. And this was in spite of the growing crisis, the accumulation of social contradictions. The atmosphere of ideological intolerance and constant pressure on filmmakers excluded any possibility of openly conversing, of showing social shortcomings on screen, or of critically depicting reality that correspond with the nature of satiric view. That is why filmmakers had to use allegorical forms, "teasing" audiences, using Aesopian language, counting on the spectators catching the allusions, which undoubtedly diminished the force of exposure and ridicule. However, "the higher pressure is, the sharper satire becomes," states Shaftsbury. Thus, the situation has changed recently. There are no forbidden themes or censors anymore. Satiric films are being shown at the international film festivals and are being awarded, including those already mentioned: The Fountain and The ViJJain. Satiric motives and means are being broadly used in many films from different genres. We can remember Zero City (Shakhnazarov, 1989), Prishvin's Paper Eyes (Ogorodnikov, 1989), Black Rose Is the Emblem for Sadness, Red Rose Is the Emblem for Love (Soloviev, 1989), and others. Influential film critics maintain that satiric comedy has become a leading genre and an important trend in the cinema of glasnost and perestroika. They even say that too many satiric films are being produced now and that the viewers feel nostalgic about the old "comforting cinema." I consider these reservations to be groundless and talks about the "flourishing" of the satiric genre to be a huge exaggeration. True satire today remains as scarce as other products today. The reasons for this are different, however. What are they? Unfortunately, not everything that is called "satire" today belongs to the genre. It seems that filmmakers of many of these films are busy trying to deal with their human and creative complexes that have nothing to do with art. I don't see any special courage or artistic revelation or even any special need and reason in ridiculing and mocking our distant, and even our near, past as is "suddenly" being done by our filmmakers recently. I do not trust these many attempts to show in black colors all that was worshiped or treated with respect or was silently endured yesterday. Of course, it is possible to find pleasure in revenge and comfort in mischievousness. We can see all that on the screen in abundance. But there is no pain, shame, remorse: "tears that are not seen to the world," said Hegel. And there can be no true satire without these. But there is "eksposing" art, so named mockingly by Dostoevsky.

Soviet film satire yesterday and today

19

I don't know what others think, but I don't feel any delight when I see characters in films dancing on Brezhnev's portrait or a naked girl appearing next to Stalin's face. Real satire is always a cry of dismay and shame that can be levelled only by a sense of humor. Speaking of true satire, I want to stress that Yuri Mamin is a true satirist in the purely classical sense. I became even more convinced that this is true after seeing his new film Whiskers (1990). From my point of view, this film is a social and artistic event simultaneously. Outstripping all other genres, it is a satire that exposes not the past but the present contemporary Soviet reality perestroika - that gave birth, as we have come to learn, to its own myths, legends, fetishes. Mamin is very precise in showing phemonena, collisions, and characters who will soon occupy the whole scene of this historical drama, casting our long-suffering country in another social experiment, another "Big Leap" with unpredictable consequences. While journalists argue about the possibility of a military or some other kind of coup, and how it will happen and when, Whiskers vividly describes the circumstances and people who are clearing the way for this possible coup armed with enthusiasm and new ideas that sound like slogans or slogans that sound like ideas. There can be various explanations as to why satire is still so rare on the Soviet screen. In the perception of many filmmakers, this genre is not only dangerous but too "low" because of its ideological openness and inevitable onesidedness in depicting life and people. But another explanation seems to be more precise. There is no other art genre in which deficiency of character and ideals is felt so deeply. Satiric character cannot exist without an ideal or at least a longing for the ideal. Negation for the sake of negation is not able to give birth to satire. Sometimes, filmmakers use exaggeration, the grotesque, even fantasy and the absurd to hide their impotence, unable to grasp the essence of what is going on in reality. Thus, these new films are called "chernukha" (self-exposure) films that only point to the dark side of life. Meanwhile, satiric negation involves the light spread by the ideal, from truth and hope, that laughter itself carries. People in my country are tired from "hopeless" chernukha, from the feeling of desperation that is so generously spilled all over the screen. They want to know what they can hope for, parting with the past through laughter.

CHAPTER II


Tot samyj Mjunxgauzen (The Very Same Munchausen} was one of the most popular Soviet made-for-TV films of the late seventies. The tall tales of the eighteenth century German baron, which form the basis for the screenplay by Grigorij Gorin, are known and loved the world over. The prototype for the legend, Hieronymus Karl Friederich, Freiherr von Miinchhausen, fought in the Russian service against the Turks before retiring to his estate, where he hunted and entertained. The legendary Munchausen was born through the publication in 1785 of Baron Munchausen 's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, which made the real baron something of a tourist attraction in his own lifetime. The original text, written in English by the German refugee Rudolf Erich Raspe, was soon translated into German by Gottfried August Burger, and within two years it had gone through six English editions and been translated into French as well. New editions meant new additions to Raspe's original, and translators also felt free to embellish and edit as they saw fit. We have then a work in Russian about a German character originally documented in English. For the English reader, additional interest is provided by the exotic settings of some of the adventures: Russia, Turkey, the Indies. But these apparently did not interest Gorin: He did not set his play about the baron in Russia, strangely enough, but at the baron's home in Germany, and the film was shot in the GDR. The film is not a mere screen adaptation of the baron's famous adventures. In fact, there is very little of the original Munchausen left in Gorin's version: the setting, the character of the baron, some of his tall tales. Most of Gorin's plot is invented. What made Gorin's Munchausen so popular? His Soviet version of the Munchausen stories can be read as an Aesopian commentary on Soviet reality. In a sense, he translates the legend of Munchausen into Aesopian language, and the task of the audience is to translate that language into the practical language of criticism. Let us begin with a synopsis of Gorin's plot. Baron Karl Munchausen has been separated from his wife Jakobina and their son Theophilus for a 20


21

number of years. Now he wants to marry his beautiful mistress Marta, but this requires the permission of the authorities - the pastor and the Duke. The Baroness, who does not want a divorce, has her lover Ramkopf steal a page from the Baron's day book to prove to the authorities that Munchausen is insane. Among other things, the Baron has scheduled a war with Englend at 4:00 on that day. He is arrested for overstepping his authority, but released immediately when it transpires that the war will not take place, since England has freed the colonies, the condition set by the Baron for not declaring war. At the divorce proceedings, all goes well until the Baron declares his new discovery - an extra day in the year - and signs the papers with the date May 32. This is construed as contempt of court, the divorce is off, Marta is upset, and pressure is put on the Baron to renounce all of his inventions and tall tales. The Baron consents out of love for Marta, but he apparently goes insane and shoots himself. Part two picks up the story some years later. The once skeptical Jakobina, Ramkopf, and Theophilus now preside over a growing cult of Munchausen. They lead tours of his castle, describe his exploits, set up monuments, and publish his works. After his death, Munchausen has become a national hero. But the Baron is not, in fact, dead: He is living quietly with Marta incognito as the gardener Miiller. Bored of living as an ordinary man, he wants to come back to life, whereupon he is arrested as an impostor. All of the Baron's acquaintances testify that he is not himself. Since he will not renounce his identity, a public test is arranged to reenact one of the Baron's exploits, the flight to the moon from a cannon. The plan is to humiliate the Baron by shooting him a few feet: The cannon has been loaded with wet powder. But the Baron learns of this and replaces the wet powder with dry. At the last minute, the Duke determines to avert a catastrophe by declaring the Baron to be himself, not an impostor, and a decree is made to the effect that the flight to the moon has been completed successfully. The Baron, whose motto throughout has been that he always tells only the truth, refuses to accept this false decree. After a few words of wisdom, he begins to climb the rope ladder into the cannon. The film ends as Munchausen continues climbing the now endless ladder into the sky. Before we attempt to analyze Gorin's Munchausen as an Aesopian text, let us specify just what we mean by "Aesopian." In his On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature, Lev Loseff comments on the similarity between the Aesopian utterance and the folk riddle. 1 Jurij Levin defines the riddle as "a text whose referent is an object not overtly named in the text itself."2 'The pragmatic function of the text is to make the addressee name the object-referent."3 Similarly, the function of an Aesopian text is to make the reader name, at least to themselves, the Soviet reality to which the text does not overtly refer. While they do not name the riddle object directly, riddles can be


22

guessed because they contain an "incomplete and/or distorted (transformed, metaphoric) description of the riddle object."4 The same holds for Aesopian texts: While they do not refer to Soviet reality overtly, they could not function as Aesopian if they did not contain a transformed description of something that can be deciphered as a reference to Soviet realia. Both the riddle and the Aesopian text point to their referents at the same time they point away from them. Devices that function to conceal the referent Loseff calls "screens"; those that function to draw attention to the referent he calls "markers."5 Screens and markers are really functions that many devices and elements of the text can perform. In an article on Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, I used the term "masking device" to describe what Loseff means by screens.6 Bulgakov takes full advantage of the grammatical, syntactic, and lexical devices at his disposal to mask reference to the secret police. He uses, for example, the passive voice and the indefinite-personal form without mentioning the agent or logical subject involved. Levin refers to an incomplete, distorted, or metaphoric description of the riddle object; Bulgakov occasionally employs metonymy to avoid direct reference to the agents of the secret police. "Cars" come to pick people up and never return. 7 "The whole floor of a certain Moscow institution" was losing sleep over the case (p. 576). The clever reader knows how to decipher these references, filling in the gaps with the agents of the appropriate institution. Metonymic distortion of the referent functions simultaneously as a screen - since it does not name the referent itself - and as a marker since it names something contiguous to the referent. Markers are hardly needed in The Master and Margarita because the text is set in the Soviet Union in the Soviet period and the agents of the secret police play such an active role in the plot. Even so, Bulgakov's masking devices are often designed to call attention to themselves. For example, the indefinitepersonal form, which avoids reference to the agent of the action, is used with an excess of information about everything but the subject: "On the other side of the desk [they] raised [their] voices, hinted . . . " (p. 577). We know where they are and can deduce their emotional state, but Bulgakov conceals their identity. This oddity functions to draw attention to the masking device and therefore to its Aesopian function.8 If Gorin's Munchausen is in fact an Aesopian text, what devices function as screens, drawing attention away from the covert referent of the text, the Soviet Union? The most obvious device is the shift in setting. Gorin sets his tale not in the twentieth century and not on the territory of the Soviet Union: "The action takes place in one of the many German principalities in the 18th century."9 The setting is removed both historically and geographically from modern Russia. Loseff cites Kostylev's trilogy Ivan the Terrible (as well as Eisenstein's film) and Lenin's Impe-


23

rialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism as examples of Aesopian works in which temporal and geographical shifts function as screens for the covert text.10 The parallels between Ivan the Terrible and Stalin were recognized by the latter dictator himself, and Lenin's work, while overtly describing the relations between Japan and Korea, is meant as a criticism of Russian and her colonies. The genre and intended audience of Munchausen also act as screens. Munchausen clearly belongs to the genre of tall tales, fantastic hunting and war stories that have no real basis in fact. They are meant to be taken lightly, as amusement or entertainment. In the original text, the tales are apparently told in an inn or a pub to amuse the narrator's fellow drinkers: "Since we have time, gentlemen, to crack another bottle of wine, I will tell you of a very strange adventure . . . " a i Traditionally, the Munchausen tales have become a part of children's literature the world over. The covert references are of course to a very real Soviet Russia, and the covert audience is adult. Another typical screening device Gorin employs is translation. As the title reassures us, Gorin's Munchausen is "the very same Munchausen" we know from the tradition. Perhaps the story is merely an adaptation for the stage or screen and a translation into Russian? There are several events and episodes that the reader will recall from the original Munchausen: the stag which grows a cherry tree between its antlers (opening scene in the film, 31-2 in the English Munchausen; henceforth the film will be designated F, the Soviet play P, and the English text E); the horse which is cut in two by a falling portcullis (F, P: 171, E: 58-62); the episode in which the Baron lifts himself out of a swamp by his pigtail (F, P: 169, E: 67); the episode in which the Baron kills a bear by holding its paws until it dies of hunger (F, P: 143-4, E: 212). These direct quotations from the tradition are meant to support the claim that Gorin's Munchausen is the "very same Munchausen" - in other words, not Gorin's and not Soviet at all. Translations and quasi-translations are a popular Aesopian screening device. Pushkin's "From Pindemonte," which purports to be a translation from the Italian, but is in fact an original appeal for freedom, and Okudzhava's "Prayer of Frangois Villon," which is also original, provide examples of how this screen works. It is interesting to note that the title often plays a role in establishing the text as one not originating with the author. Gorin's Munchausen is at best a quasi-translation, since it does have at least some points of contact with the original version, as detailed above. One of the central episodes, while not a perfect quotation from the original, is a conflation of several authentic Munchausen episodes: the Baron's journey to the moon. In the English original, the Baron makes two journeys to the moon, one by climbing a bean plant (E: 69), the other in a


24

ship overtaken by a storm (E: 181-2). In Gorin's version, he has made the journey by being shot out of a cannon (F, P: 189, 193). Gorin has conflated the journey to the moon with another episode in the original, in which the Baron is shot out of a cannon, but only to land in a large haystack (E: 166); in another he rides a cannonball to inspect an enemy town (E: 63). But these few parallels in episodes only help point up the fact that Gorin's Munchausen is in fact very different from the original in plot. Instead of a collection of short, more or less unrelated stories with a great variety of setting and character, we have a unified story set in one principality with a limited cast. And aside from the peripheral episodes mentioned above, there is only a little authentic fantasy to the Soviet plot. The Baron shoots through the chimney at a duck, which falls into a platter in the fireplace cooked and ready to serve (F, P: 147); when it is not needed, he throws it out the window and it flies away (F, P: 150). A number of the Baron's eccentricities in Gorin's version seem to be connected with time. In the original, the Baron owned and used the sling with which David killed Goliath, but only because he inherited it from a Biblical ancestor (E: 155). Likewise, another ancestor was familiar with Shakespeare and had him released from prison by Queen Elizabeth (E: 156). But the Baron himself was present in neither case: He travels widely geographically, but not chronologically. Gorin's Baron, however, lived in ancient Greece and has an autographed manuscript of Oedipus Rex from Sophocles and another of the Bible dedicated by Matthew (P: 146,175). He apparently controls the time of day by adding gunshots to the chimes of his clocks (P: 144, 150). And the stumbling block at the divorce proceedings is the Baron's signature with his newly discovered date, May 32 (P: 163). Against the background of the screening parallels, divergences from the original story act instead as markers, alerting the reader to the possibility that Gorin's work has an Aesopian reading. Perhaps Gorin's fascination with time serves to relativize the category of chronology, thus in a sense annulling the shift in time in the setting. Abuladze uses a similar device in the movie Repentance. The court scene is attended by knights in armor and judges in medieval robes, but the defendant and plaintiffs are in modern dress, and one of the judges plays with a Rubik's Cube: The setting is thus everywhere and nowhere (or rather at all times and at no time). But the audience is not allowed to relegate the action comfortably to a time fixed and closed off from the present. Other markers in Gorin's Munchausen function to direct attention not only away from the overt referent of the text, but to a specifically Russian context. When the Baron invites Jakobina, Ramkopf, and the Burgomaster to announce his decision to come back to life, he introduces his announcement with the following phrase: "Itak, gospoda, ja priglasil vas, chtoby soobshchit' preneprijatnoe izvestie" (So, gentlemen, I have invited you in order to inform you of a most unpleasant bit of news), and himself


25

comments that it would be an excellent phrase to begin a play (F, P: 181). In fact it is the Mayor's opening line in Gogol's Inspector General.12 The quotation is doubly humorous, since the hero of Gogol's play, Xlestakov, is himself an inveterate plagiarist, ascribing to his own authorship operas (The Marriage of Figaro, Robert Je Diable, Norma), the works of "Baron Brambeus" (O. I. Senkovskij), Zagoskin's Jurij MiJosJavskij, and even entire journals like Moskovskij telegraf.13 There are at least four allusions to Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. In the film, when the Baron renounces his exploits we see him in his office burning his manuscripts, a scene strongly reminiscent of the Master burning his novel in Bulgakov's work (and indirectly of Gogol's destruction of his work, 563). Here too it turns out that "manuscripts do not burn,"14 since the complete works of the Baron are published after his "death" (P: 172,182). When the Burgomaster refuses to call him Miller, Munchausen suggests that he add pokojnyj or usopshij (late) to his name (P: 179); in Bulgakov, Ivan Bezdomny puzzles over wording his statement about coming "to Patriarch's Ponds with the late (pokojnyj) Misha Berlioz yesterday evening."15 When the Baron is about to repeat his flight to the moon, the sergeant-major expresses his concern that the moon is invisible because of the clouds. Tomas responds that any fool can make it when it's visible, the Baron likes things to be more difficult (P: 192). This response is very close to Korov'ev's remark to Margarita about Azazello hitting a hidden card.16 Finally, in the play, but not in the film, the Baron and Marta make their exit along a moonbeam road (P: 196) just as Pilat, the Master, and Margarita do in Bulgakov's novel.17 Quotations from Russian writers like Gogol act as markers to direct the reader's attention to Russia, and allusions to Bulgakov's work about Stalinist Moscow direct their attention to Russia in the Soviet period. What other devices act as markers or can be interpreted as veiled allusions to Soviet reality? Some markers work on the level of the lexicon, in the area of what the Russians are now calling "Jingvostranovedenie." When he determines to renounce his exploits, Munchausen says that Baron Munchausen will cease to exist in five minutes, "mozhete pochtit' ego pamjat' vstavaniem" (P: 170) "You may honor his memory by standing." Rising for a minute of silence to respect the memory of the dead is recognizable as a Soviet ritual, and the very expression used to refer to it is ritually fixed in the language. Loseff discusses such stylistic markers as they are used by Shvarts in The Dragon: "in the context of a 'Grimm Brothers' tale a specifically Russian turn of phrase, a typically Soviet word, expression, plot situation, or a term linked to the mind-set of the twentieth century will be perceived as a linguistic or cultural malapropism, as a shift into another style."18 Later the Baroness refers to the Baron's "svetlaja pamjat' i vseobshchaja ljubov' sograzhdan" (P: 174) "shining memory and the general


26

love of his fellow-citizens" - another Soviet cliche. Such shifts in style to Sovietisms function as markers, directing the audience to place the entire work in a Soviet context. Other markers allude to situations that the audience should recognize as Soviet. When the pastor arrives at Munchausen's castle in the first scene, he attempts to ring the bell and the pull comes off in his hand. Shoddiness of material goods is associated by Russians not with Germany, but rather with their own country. That the episode is meant as a marker is substantiated by Tomas's reaction: he comes out, chides the miscreant pastor in a kind of peasant patter, replaces the pull, and goes back in, telling the visitor to try again more lightly. Perhaps it is not the case that the Soviet Union is the only place where one is regularly reprimanded by strangers, especially by those who guard doors, but the Soviet viewer would surely view this scene as one familiar from his or her own experience. These ubiquitous door guards make the experience of simply entering any Soviet building something one undertakes with anxiety. Yet another scene in the film involves the problem of entrance, this time to a theatrical performance: RAMKOPF.

Gospoda, gospoda, povtorjaju: zakrytyj sudebnyj eksperiment. Vxod

tol'ko po speciarnomu razresheniju. TOMAS. Gospodin Ramkopf! RAMKOPF. Net, net, net, nichego segodnja delat' ne mogu. V sledujushchij raz: nichego segodnja delat' ne mogu. RAMKOPF. Ladies and gentlemen, I repeat: it's a closed judicial experiment. Entry only by special permission. TOMAS. Mr. Ramkopf! RAMKOPF. NO, no, no,

anything for you today.

I can't do anything for you today. Next time. I can't do

Again, anyone who has attempted to go to a theater the day of a performance in the Soviet Union recognizes the scene. Anything worth seeing is invariably sold out, and those responsible are adamant that they can "do nothing" about it. Tipped off by these markers, the audience begins to look more closely at the whole plot as a potential Aesopian comment on Soviet life. In spite of the screening quotations from the original, this Munchausen turns out to be substantially new. Gorin emphasizes the conflict between Munchausen, the private citizen who wants to marry his beloved Marta, and the authorities, who refuse to divorce him from his wife. Munchausen always tells the truth, as he repeats again and again, while the authorities force him to subscribe to lies. The original Adventures of Baron Munchausen are narrated for the most part in first person by the Baron himself. True, he does present the stories as authentic: "It is not to be wondered at that readers and listeners


27

should be at times disposed to incredulity. But if, in the company that I have the honour of addressing, any one should be tempted to doubt the truth of the statements I make, I should be deeply pained by this want of confidence" (E: 78). The keeper of the museum at Amsterdam "tells my story to all strangers . . . he adds to it several details of his own invention, which do grievous harm to the truth and authenticity of the narrative" (E: 92). And in one of the later sections, where the narrative is in third person: "Now gentlemen, you know Baron Munchausen thoroughly, and I hope you can have no further doubts about his truthfulness" (E: 138). No matter how much the Baron protests his veracity, however, the reader is still at liberty to doubt the Baron's fantastic adventures. Not so in the film. The film opens at a campfire as the Baron tells his story of pulling himself out of the swamp by his pigtail to a small group of skeptical hunters. When he recounts the episode of the deer with the cherry tree between its antlers, one of the others says, Derevo? Skazhite luchshe vishnevyj sad! MJUNXGAUZEN. Esli by vyros sad, ja by skazal sad, a poskol'ku vyroslo derevo, zachem zhe mne vrat'? Ja vsegda govorju tol'ko pravdu. OXOTNIK. Pravdu? (vse smejutsja) A tree? You may as well say a cherry orchard! MUNCHAUSEN. If an orchard had grown up, I would have said orchard, but since it was a tree, why should I lie? I always tell the truth and only the truth. HUNTER. The truth? (all laugh)

At this point, the deer appears in the woods nearby with a small cherry tree growing between his antlers. This episode, which comes as a prologue before the titles, sets up the audience for the fantasy world of the film, a world in which the incredible adventures of the Baron must be taken as authentic, which means that anyone who impugns their veracity is wrong. Further episodes, such as the duck shot through the chimney that falls fully cooked and sauced into a platter and flies away when thrown out the window, confirm for the audience the Baron's claim that he always tells the truth. The medium of film allows Gorin and Zakharov to show the split between words and reality directly. Only occasionally are the Baron's words at odds with the reality we see on the screen, such as when he declares night during broad daylight. Most of the time the Baron's claims, fantastic as they may be, are substantiated, while those of his enemies are shown to be false. The turning point in the plot of the first part comes when the Baron is prevailed upon to lie: MJUNXGAUZEN. NO ja zhe skazal pravdu! BURGOMISTR. Da chert s nej, s pravdoj, inogda nuzhno i sovrat', ponimaj eto, sovrat'. Gospodi! Takie elementarnye veshchi mne prixoditsja ob"jasnjat' baronu Mjunxgauzenu! (P: 168)


28

MUNCHAUSEN. But I told the truth! BURGOMASTER. TO hell with the truth,

sometimes you have to lie, get it, to lie. God, to imagine I have to explain such simple things to Baron Munchausen!

He agrees that the date is not May 32, but June 1. In the film, he is made to stand like a schoolboy in front of the Duke to repent and recant his discovery. When the Baron is asked what day it is, the Burgomaster holds up one finger. 'The first of June." "Louder, please, for all," prompts the Duke. He repeats his statement. The Duke (the Burgomaster in the play, 169) consoles Munchausen that "even Galileo recanted," to which he replies, "That's why I always preferred Bruno." The weight of this comparison establishes the potential seriousness of the Baron's denial, and broadening the historical reference again raises the possibility that an eternal pattern is intended, one applicable even in the present. The pastor agrees to marry the Baron and Marta only if he renounces all his adventures as well. The Burgomaster suggests that in secret he can continue to believe, but the Baron objects, "Ja ne umeju vtajne. Ja mogu toFko otkryto" (film only). "I can't do it in secret, I can only be open." The split implied is not only between the individual and society or authority, which forces him to conform, but also within the individual himself if he betrays his individuality by giving in to pressure. Part II contains even more allusions to situations recognizably Soviet. According to the stage directions in the play, three years have passed (P: 171). The Baron has become a legend and a national hero. His castle is a museum, through which tourists from abroad are led, a statue of the horse cut in two by the portcullis is to be set up, Jakobina has published the complete edition of his adventures (P: 171-2). Even the Baron's new date, the May 32, is to be used at the trial (P: 193). What has happened? With the Baron safely dead, the state has found it useful to take advantage of his adventures for its own glorification. But this is safe only so long as the Baron is dead, which is why the authorities do everything they can to prevent him from returning to life. This situation is familiar to Soviet audiences from such figures as Pasternak, Nabokov, and Tarkovsky. Pasternak was several times officially chided and finally expelled from the Soviet Writers' Union in 1958 for the scandal over Doctor Zhivago. His relatives were evicted from the Peredelkino dacha in 1984. In early 1987, the 1958 expulsion was rescinded, and plans were announced to set up a Pasternak museum in the dacha and to publish Doctor Zhivago in 1988.19 Nabokov too, who was persona non grata as an emigre while he lived, can now be discussed and printed in Russia. Tarkovsky, whose films were never widely distributed or highly praised in the official press, was nearly forgotten after he failed to return from the West. But no sooner did he die than an obituary was published 20 and the authorities promised a retrospective of his films and even showings of the two films he made abroad.21 But none of the works


29

of living emigres were shown or published in their homeland until the late 1980s. When he attempts to come back to life, the Baron is arrested and tried as a pretender. Though the defendant seems to have acquired the Baron's gait, voice, and even his fingerprints, Ramkopf presents the following "facts" as proof that the Baron's claims are false: "the notice of the Baron's death, an extract from a church book, the receipt for the coffin" (P: 185). As I have argued elsewhere, it is characteristic of Soviet culture to take the document (the sign) as the primary test of truth. 22 While reality is taken as primary in the West, it is the word that is hierarchically more significant in the East. This is why Bulgakov can write "Raz net dokumenta, netu i cheloveka ("No document, no person!").23 The reverse also holds true - a document is even better than the reality it describes (the sign is more important than its referent or, as Lotman and Uspensky would have it, the expression is more important than the content24). Shvarts takes similar humorous advantage of the Soviet fascination with the document in The Dragon. Instead of a spear, the Burgomaster hands Lancelot a piece of paper: Eto udostoverenie daetsja vam v torn, chto kop'e dejstvitel'no naxoditsja v remonte, chto podpis'ju i prilozheniem pechati udostoverjaetsja. Vy pred"javite ego vo vremja boja gospodinu drakonu, i vse konchitsja otlichno.25 This certificate attests that the spear is really being repaired, which is certified by the signature and the seal affixed. Present it during the battle to Lord Dragon and everything will end splendidly.

The importance of the document is brought out again at the end of Munchausen, when the Baron is declared to have completed a trip to the moon: RAMKOPF. Pozdravljaju vas, baron! MJUNXGAUZEN. S chem? RAMKOPF. S uspeshnym vozvrashcheniem s limy. MJUNXGAUZEN. Ja ne byl na lune. RAMKOPF. Kak eto - ne byl, kogda est' reshenie, chto

byl? (P: 195)

RAMKOPF. Congratulations Baron! MUNCHAUSEN. For what? RAMKOPF. On your successful return from the moon. MUNCHAUSEN. I wasn't on the moon. RAMKOPF. What do you mean, you weren't there, when

you were?

there is a decision that

So long as there is a written document to that effect, whether or not the journey actually took place is immaterial. At the trial, no one is allowed to recognize the Baron as himself: He is now the gardener Miiller (Miller in the play). That this situation is unnatural is shown even by the reaction of those commanded to arrest the Baron:


30

FEL'DFEBEL'. Gospodi, da ved' eto . . . BURGOMISTR. KtO?! FEL'DFEBEL'. Da v e d ' eto

...

BURGOMISTR. KtO?! FEL'DFEBEL'. N e m o g u znat'! (P: 184) SERGEANT-MAJOR. M y god, but it's . . .

BURGOMASTER. W h o ? SERGEANT-MAJOR. But it's . . .

BURGOMASTER. W h o ?

SERGEANT-MAJOR. I have n o idea!

The split between the official version and reality is felt most strongly by the Burgomaster, who is the Baron's friend, and who therefore tries not to testify that he is not himself: BURGOMISTR. Gospodin sud'ja, ja staryj chelovek. Izbav'te menja ot etoj muki. . . U menja slabye glaza i sovershenno nenadezhnaja pamjat'. Ja mogu oshibit'sja . . . SUD'JA. NO vy uznaete v podsudimom barona ili net? BURGOMISTR. Ne znaju . . . Chestnoe slovo . . . Inogda mne kazhetsja, chto eto on, inogda - net. . . Mogu li ja polagat'sja na svoi lichnye oshchushchenija v takom vazhnom dele? . . . Polnost'ju doverjaju sudu. Kak reshite, tak i budet! (P: 188) BURGOMASTER. Your honor, I am an old man. Relieve me of this torment. . . I have weak eyes and a completely unreliable memory. I may make a mistake . . . JUDGE. But do you recognize the defendant as the Baron or not? BURGOMASTER. I don't know . . . Honestly . . . Sometimes it seems to me that it is him, sometimes not. . . Can I rely on my personal feelings in such an important case? . . . I trust the court completely. As you decide, so be it!

The language itself breaks down when Marta says she will tell the truth, that the Baron is himself: MARTA. Ja skazhu pravdu! RAMKOPF. Togda my i vas privlechem k otvetstvennosti kak lzhesvidetelja! BARONESSA. Uspokojsja, Genrix! Esli chelovek xochet skazat' pravdu, on imeet na eto pravo. Mne by tol'ko xotelos' znat', kakuju pravdu vy imeete v vidu? MARTA. Pravda odna. BARONESSA. Pravdy voobshche ne byvaet. Pravda - eto to, chto v dannyj moment schitaetsja pravdoj. (P: 189) MARTA. I will tell the truth! RAMKOPF. Then we will bring you to trial for perjury [literally as a false witness]! BARONESS. Calm down, Henrich! If a person wants to tell the truth, he has the right to. But I would just like to know what truth you have in mind? MARTA. There is one truth. BARONESS. There is no truth at all. Truth is what is considered truth at the moment.


31

A society which promotes such statements is surely morally bankrupt by most standards. The final scene in the film is depicted as a show trial, with the accent on the show. As the scene opens, the orchestra is tuning up. BURGOMISTR. Vse pojdet po planu: posle uvertjury, doprosy. Potom poslednee slovo podsudimogo, zalpy, obshchee vesel'e, tancy. RAMKOPF. Frau Marta, proshu vas, tochno po tekstu! BURGOMASTER. Everything follows the plan: after the overture comes the interrogation. Then the defendant's last words, a salute, general merriment, dancing. RAMKOPF. Frau Marta, please, follow the text exactly!

Not only is there a text to follow and an orchestra to accompany the proceedings, but there remain in the film some hints that Marta has been drugged to induce her to comply with the plan. All these details are meant to direct the audience to the show trials of the 1930s in the Soviet Union. So far we have dealt with general allusions to Soviet reality. There is also one character in the film who may be intended as a parody of a specific person. The character of the Duke appears only in the film, not in the play, and it stands to reason that the ruler of a world that covertly represents the Soviet Union should covertly represent its leader at the time Brezhnev. The film portrays the Duke as inept and disinterested in politics. He is more concerned with fashion: Indeed, he seems to be an amateur dressmaker. He describes all state problems in terms of what one should wear and judges people by their clothes. When he learns of the possible war with England, he goes to the globe and asks, "Where is it, where, I ask you." "Here." "And where are we?" "We are here." He then takes his tape measure to the globe and declares, "But it's so close!" The Duke in the film is both protected and controlled by those around him. When we are introduced to the Duke, his steward attempts to prevent entry to his rooms while he is indulging in his hobby: Ego vysochestvo zanjat vazhnejshimi gosudarstvennymi delami. On provodit ekstrennoe soveshchanie. Ego voobshche tarn net. His highness is busy with state affairs of the utmost importance. He is holding an emergency meeting. He's not there at all. In fact, he is there, in his office, which doubles as a dressmaking salon. The Burgomaster acts both as prompter and as translator for the inarticulate and inept Duke. Jakobina arrives to ask about the divorce decree: JAKOBINA. Vy podpisali proshenie barona GERCOG. Kto podpisal? Ja podpisal?

Mjunxgauzena o razvode?

(Burgomistr kivaet)

GERCOG. Da, ja podpisal. JAKOBINA. Znachit, on mozhet

zhenit'sja na Marte?


32

Pochemu zhenit'sja? (Burgomistr kivaet) GERCOG. Da, on mozhet zhenit'sja. GERCOG.

JAKOBINA. Did you DUKE. Who signed

(Burgomaster nods)

sign Baron Munchausen's request for a divorce? it? Did I sign it?

DUKE. Yes, I signed it. JAKOBINA. SO

he can marry Marta?

DUKE. Why marry?

(Burgomaster nods) DUKE. Yes, he can marry.

The Burgomaster's role as front man and interpreter for the Duke is even clearer in the last scene, where the Duke's inarticulate mutterings are translated into legalese: GERCOG. NU vot chto: navernoe my tut vse byli v chem-to nepravy BURGOMISTR. Gospoda! Resheniem gannoverskogo suda, v svjazi s

.. . uspeshnym

zaversheniem eksperimenta . . . GERCOG. Raz chto tak vse slozhilos', tak pust' vse idet, kak idet. BURGOMISTR. Prikazano, vysochajshim poveleniem prikazano schitat' podsudimogo baronom Mjunxgauzenom. DUKE. Well here, then: probably we've all been somehow wrong . . . BURGOMASTER. Ladies and gentlemen! By decision of the court of Hannover,

in connection with the successful completion of the experiment. . . DUKE. SO long as it's turned out that way, let things go as they're going. BURGOMASTER. YOU are commanded, commanded by the highest junction to consider the defendant Baron Munchausen.

This satire is biting enough if we can safely deduce that the ruler of a state that represents the Soviet Union in Aesopian translation represents Brezhnev. But is there any evidence for such a satiric version? Most of the anecdotes about Brezhnev in his last years dealt with his senility. He and other politburo members were portrayed playing with toy soldiers or putting on mismatched socks, then sending each other home only to find that "the pair there doesn't match either." But the most consistent theme of the Brezhnev anecdotes was prompting: The invariant motif was that Brezhnev could do nothing without a text. One anecdote has him addressing a foreign visitor: "Dear Indira Gandhi!" "Comrade Brezhnev, it's Margaret Thatcher!" "Dear Indira Gandhi!" "Comrade Brezhnev, it's Margaret Thatcher!" "Dear Indira Gandhi!" "Comrade Brezhnev, it's Margaret Thatcher!" "I know it's Margaret Thatcher, but here it says 'Dear Indira Gandhi!' "


33

It was joked that, at the opening of the Moscow Olympics, he five times reads "O" followed by stormy and lengthy applause. By the head gestures of the joke teller, the listener understands that he is reading the logo of the Olympics at the top of the page. In another anecdote, Suslov comes to the door three times and knocks. Each time Brezhnev gets up, puts on his glasses, and reads from a piece of paper "Who's there?" Suslov does not answer because he "forgot his glasses at home" or "forgot his note." All these anecdotes show a leader who is not in control, who relies on texts provided by others - precisely the image presented by the Duke in Gorin's Munchausen. There are no other specific details that refer to Brezhnev's anecdotal quirks: his eyebrows, his accent, his medals, his aspirations as a writer. But Zakharov may be taking advantage of his visual medium in casting Leonid Bronevoj as the count. Bronevoj's demeanor and expression of combined weltschmerz and indifference (or is it stupidity?) do seem to recall Brezhnev. In general, censorship varied in the Soviet Union according to the medium and the size of the audience. Among the dramatic media, theater was the freest, since it reached the smallest audience. Theatrical performances could also change from night to night, which made them harder to control: once a play was approved for production, subtle changes could still be introduced. It was because of this freedom that Ljubimov's productions at the Taganka Theater became so popular. But on a national scale, only the elite few ever saw a Taganka production. Not so film and television, both of which potentially reached millions of viewers. The Soviet State early on recognized the importance of film as a propaganda tool, and film became, alongside the socialist realist novel, the dominant genre in Soviet culture. With the advent of television, the new medium was enlisted in the struggle to engineer human souls. Television is potentially even more influential, and therefore more dangerous than film. A film could be tested in front of small audiences, then given closed runs, with the number of copies controlling the size of the audience. It could always be pulled from distribution if it was perceived as dangerous. A television program, however, reaches millions of viewers at once. This explains the notoriously tight security at Gosteleradio and the general lack (until late perestroika) of live broadcasts. The changes in Soviet television introduced by Gorbachev's glasnost campaign show only how important the medium was in Soviet propaganda. But Gorin's Munchausen was written, produced, and shown in the days before gJasnost. Perhaps this is why it enjoyed such popularity: At the time, it must have shown daring contrast to the usual television fare. For those who are able to translate the Aesopian language of Gorin's Munchausen, the story undergoes a remarkable transformation in crossing the border from England and Germany to the Soviet Union and from


34

fantastic tale to drama on stage and film. In the imaginary world of the film, the fantastic adventures of the Baron become reality. In the original adventures, the Baron's claims of authenticity are taken of a piece with the adventures themselves as fictional, while in the film they are shown to be true. The result is a reversal of the hierarchy of truth and fiction, in which those who question the Baron's veracity and urge him to recant his adventures appear not as spokesmen for reason, but as dictators who enforce conformity even when it means ignoring the truth. It is the authorities and Munchausen's opponents who, in the film, place more store in the power of language (the document) than in the reality they see before their eyes. As they cannot recognize the Baron, they cannot recognize the truth unless it is asserted in a document. Ironically, it is precisely this importance of the document in Soviet culture that leads to the role of censorship, which requires the author to translate his story about truth and fiction into Aesopian language. Munchausen says he cannot do it "in secret"; his author, however, is forced to do exactly that: But Aesopian language allows him to reveal his message to the initiates. Notes 1. Lev Loseff, On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Language in Modern Russian Literature (Miinchen: Verlag Otto Sagner, 1984), p. 29. 2. Ju. I. Levin, "Semanticheskaja struktura russkoj zagadki," Trudy po znakovym sistemam, 6, no. 308 (1973): 166-90, cited at p. 166. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. p. 167 5. Loseff, Beneficence of Censorship, p. 51. 6. Kevin Moss, "Bulgakov's Master and Margarita: Masking the Supernatural and the Secret Police," Russian Language Journal 38, nos. 129-30 (1984): 115-31. 7. M. A. Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, in Belaja gvardija, TeatraVnyj roman, Master i Margarita (Leningrad: Xudozhestvennaja literatura, 1973), pp. 423-812, cited at p. 492. Further references are to this edition. 8. Loseff's discussion of structuredness and oddity as a marker in the context of Levin's structuredness and unreality as features that create the internal point of the riddle is unconvincing. 9. Grigorij Gorin, "Tot samyj Mjunxgauzen .. . ," Komicheskie fantazii (Moskow: Sovetskij pisatel', 1986), pp. 139-96, cited at p. 141. 10. Loseff, Bene/icence of Censorship, pp. 63-5. 11. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (New York: Pantheon, 1944), p. 110. 12. N. V. Gogol', Revizor (Moskow: Detskaja literatura, 1974), p. 29. 13. Ibid., p. 64. 14. "Rukopisi ne gorjat," Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, pp. 703. 15. Ibid., p. 530. 16. "V tom-to i shutka, chto zakryty! V etom-to vsja i sol'! A v otkrytyj predmet mozhet popast' kazhdyj!" Ibid., p. 695. 17. Ibid., pp. 798, 811-12.


35

18. Loseff, Beneficence of Censorship, p. 135. 19. Literaturnaja gazeta, 19 Feb., 1987, p. 6. 20. Literaturnaja gazeta, Jan. 7, 1988, p. 8. 21. Literaturnaja gazeta, Apr. 8, 1988, p. 8. 22. Kevin Moss, "Bulgakov's Master and Margarita: Masking the Supernatural and the Secret Police," Russian Language Journal 38, nos. 129-30 (1984): 115-31. 23. Bulgakov, Master i Margarita, p. 706. 24. Yu. M. Lotman and B. A. Uspensky, "On the Semiotic Mechanism of Culture," New Literary History 11 no. 9 (Winter 1978): 211-32. 25. Evgenij Shvarts, "Drakon," in P'esy (Leningrad: Sovetskij pisatel', 1972), pp. 277-350, cited at p. 307.

CHAPTER III

"We don't know what to laugh at": Comedy and satire in Soviet cinema (from The Miracle Worker to St. Jorgen's Feast Day)

Without laugher, comedy is impossible. It's difficult to make a Soviet comedy because we don't know what to laugh at. Osip Brik1

Early Soviet cinema had many triumphs, but few comedies are typically counted among them.2 My purpose here is not, however, to recite a litany of failures, but rather to look at the few successes and to explore the reasons why the genre faced such formidable obstacles.3 While comedy was by no means the only troubled genre in Soviet silent cinema, an examination of the evolution of comedy has exceptional potential to illuminate issues important in understanding the transformation of Soviet society in the 1920s: the cultural and political elites' disdain of mass opinion, their puritanical bias against entertainment, and the incipient authoritarianism implicit in their efforts to turn a cinematic culture into a political culture.4 These tendencies, moreover, were quite apparent before the Cultural Revolution of 1928-32. By 1927, as Brik's words indicate, the USSR was a society where even humor had to be "managed." Before turning to a discussion of the scientific problems of film satire and comedy during the 1920s, we need to keep certain aspects of the cinematic context in mind. Although cinema had been nationalized in 1919 and placed under the control of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros), this control was actually nominal for most of the decade due to deep divisions within the commissariat about the function of cinema in a Socialist society. Narkompros's head, Anatoly Lunacharsky, was a cultural pluralist actively involved in cinema affairs and a vigorous proponent of entertainment films in deeds, if not always in words.5 The state film trust, called Sovkino from 1925 to 1929, was dominated by likeminded individuals, and Sovkino pursued a policy of financing bigbudget entertainment films and importing foreign, especially American, films in substantial quantities. The existence of the Mezhrabpom studio 36

"We don't know what to laugh at"

37

heavily capitalized, quasi-independent, and famed for its success at the box office - further complicated an already complex situation.6 But although money and power lay behind the entertainment film, there were formidable forces arrayed against it. Narkompros's Main Committee on Political Education (Glavpolitprosvet) led the opposition, Lunacharsky's views notwithstanding. Young directors also tended to oppose entertainment films as "bourgeois," promoting their own work by way of contrast as somehow truly "revolutionary."7 The press was controlled by critics who likewise believed that Soviet cinema had to distinguish itself from its commercial counterparts in the West. A few critics supported the efforts of avant-garde artists, interpreting cinema's "social charge" (sotsialnyi zakaz) as that of evaluating the masses, weaning them away from their unfortunate affinity for the decadent bourgeoistaste culture. 8 More often, however, critics believed that cinema needed to educate the audience in a more traditional fashion (even if indirectly), so films needed to be socially significant - or at the very least, not "bourgeois."9 Given this climate of opinion, it should not be surprising that most established cinematic genres presented daunting challenges to Soviet filmmakers throughout the first decade of Soviet movie production. Genre films were, after all, profoundly "bourgeois" products of commercial filmmaking - that is, there was nothing intrinsically Marxist or Soviet about them. Many 1920s Soviet filmmakers and critics who pondered this "problem" doubted that a truly Soviet cinema could be created merely by pouring new content into old forms. To make matters worse as far as the culture patrol dominating key positions in Glavpolitprosvet and the press was concerned, the mass audience exhibited marked preference for the "basest" of the bourgeois genres - melodrama, adventure, slapstick comedy.10 Clearly, much painful reeducation lay ahead for filmgoers, and for filmmakers of the old school. Yet for the time being, the "old specialists" who dominated popular cinema chose, consciously or unconsciously, to ignore these debates about art and enlightenment. Instead, they went briskly about their business, effortlessly turning out an array of "pseudo-Soviet genre films, focusing on comedy, melodrama, adventure, and historical (costume) drama.11 Some of these genres were easier to "Sovietize" than others. Soviet popular directors found it reasonably easy to Sovietize adventure by making civil war movies that emphasized adventure over politics.12 Others, albeit mainly those with prerevolutionary filmmaking experience, also did a credible job Sovietizing the historical film by selecting incidents from the nineteenth-century revolutionary movements for dramatization.13 That these were indeed popular with audiences can be demonstrated through audience studies and by looking at import figures.14


38

Comedy and melodrama were a rather different matter, proving much more difficult to Sovietize. Although melodramatic elements could be infused into other genres, the constraints of cultural politics (specifically, disdain for films that depicted the joys and sorrows of private life) meant that the pure melodrama was rare indeed in Soviet cinema.15 Most critics considered melodrama a shockingly bourgeois product directed at foreigners, NEP men, bourgeois specialists (spetsy), and unreconstructed elements of the petty bourgeoisie (meshchane). But the import figures tell us that audiences - workers included - responded quite warmly to such films.16 Yet despite the serious problems facing those who produced melodramas, there can be no doubt that comedy was the perennial sore spot of Soviet silent cinema. More was written about it than about any other genre, and though critics were constantly declaring comedy the most important genre of the most important art, they just as constantly carped about the results.17 Relatively few major directors (notable exceptions being Iakov Protazanov and Boris Barnet) were willing to risk being abused more than once for making the "wrong" kind of comedy.18 Why were comedies as a genre more heavily criticized and more difficult to make than melodramas? The answer is not immediately obvious. As was the case with melodrama, divergence between mass and elite opinion on film comedy was marked; comedies were extremely popular among audiences, especially among young people and children. As was also true of melodrama, imported comedies constitute a significant percentage of films on the screen. Taken separately, neither factor seems especially noteworthy, but in combination, the source of the "problem" becomes more obvious. In the 1920s, the Soviet cinema community feared the influence and competition of foreign films, a phenomenon that was dubbed the "inostranshchina" (from the Russian word for "foreign").19 This phobia was not undifferentiated: Greatest of all was the fear of American influence, the amerikanshchina (or "Americanitis," to borrow Ronald Levaco's witty translation of the pejorative).20 Since there were few "good" Soviet comedies, to the dismay of critics and filmmakers alike, American comedies (Hollywood's most formidable product on the international market) were firmly entrenched. From 1921-28, 43% percent of American imports were comedies; more importantly, the 324 American comedies imported were more than three times the number of Soviet comedies produced in the same period.21 These are staggering figures, especially when one considers that the audience supposedly being Americanized was the youth audience. But this is only part of the explanation. Soviet filmmakers, young and old alike, were fairly confident of their talents, and I suspect they would have been less reluctant to take on American comedies if only they had


39

known what they could safely laugh at, to paraphrase Brik. In the beginning, it seemed fairly easy. Early attempts at comedy like The Miracle Worker (Chudotvorets, Aleksandr Panteleev, 1922) and Commander Ivanov (Kombrig Ivanov, Aleksandr Razumnyi, 1922) satirized religion, a subject that even apolitical "old specialists" could be sure was acceptable to the new regime. The humor in The Miracle Worker, a tale of a charlatan priest unmasked by cunning peasants, is crude and physical, but the film earned its place in Soviet film history as "Lenin's favorite." Commander Ivanov was more daring, a sly little romantic comedy about a Red Army officer who breaks down the "bourgeois morality" of a priest's daughter to get her to "register" with him without a religious ceremony.22 But how many variations on this theme could there be? White Guardists and foreigners were other potentially interesting subjects for satire, because they seemed to offer safety and scope at the same time. It had nonetheless been clear to directors since The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (Neobychainye prikliucheniia mistera Vesta v strane bolshevikov, Lev Kuleshov, 1924) that foreign themes could be just as "dangerous" as foreign films. Even though Kuleshov's depiction of the naive fears of the ridiculous Mr. West and the belligerent posturing of his swaggering bodyguard, Cowboy Jeddy, seemed perfectly in keeping with the stereotypical view of Americans as self-centered and ignorant, Mr. West was poorly received by critics (though not by viewers).23 While a number of other comedies employed American or foreign characters for human interest, the only two major comedies based on foreign themes were The Case of the Three Million (Protsess o trekh millionakh, Iakov Protazanov, 1926) and Mr. Lloyd's Voyage (Reis mistera Lloida, Mikhail Verner, 1927). Both films were actually set abroad - The Case concerns a debonair Italian thief and a corrupt banker; Mr. Lloyd, a White Guardist conspiracy on a luxury liner. They both were heavily criticized as "bourgeois," the latter being quite literally anathemized when it appeared.24 By middecade, it was obvious even to the most reluctant of Soviet citizens that the Bolsheviks were there to stay. Encouraged by the relatively relaxed cultural politics of the early NEP, directors of popular films began tentative attempts to satirize Soviet society, ever so mildly. Yet two of the best such efforts, The Tailor from Torzhok (Zakroishchik iz Torzhka, Iakov Protazanov, 1925) and The Girl with the Hathox [Devushka s korobkoi, Boris Barnet, 1927), were nonetheless derided in the press as "bourgeois." The Tailor from Torzhok, a chaste variant of a bedroom farce starring the phenomenally popular Igor Ilinskii and Vera Maretskaia, was actually a commissioned film, intended to publicize the state lottery. Protazanov threw in some exploitative NEP men to make it even more "socially significant," but the critics were hard to satisfy and branded the movie apolitical.25 Barnet's The Girl with the Hatbox is quite a similar picture in


40

that it is gently satiric. Featuring another set of popular actors (Anna Sten, Ivan Koval-Samborskii, and Vladimir Fogel), The Girl with the Hatbox builds its plot around the state lottery, the Soviet housing shortage, and the need for a "fictitious" marriage (in order to get a Moscow residence permit). Critics found it even more offensive than The TaiJor, one lambasting it as a movie "straight from Paris" (which might have surprised Parisians).26 The real problem apparently was that both films erred in focusing to too great an extent on Soviet life (not that they were too "French"). Two other funny films - The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom and The Kiss of Mary Pickford - satirized Soviet movie mania and so were similarly lacking in the requisite ideological and social significance. These are both worth examining in more detail, not because they are better films than The Tailor and The Girl, but because of the nature of the criticisms directed against them. The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom {Papirosnitsa iz Mosselproma, Iurii Zheliabuzhskii, 1924) is a charming and stylish romantic comedy that is among the most polished and "Western" films of Soviet production. The cigarette girl Zina (Iuliia Solntseva) is wooed by a fumbling accountant (Igor Ilinsky), a dashing cinematographer (Nikolai Tsereteli), and a corpulent American businessman (M. Tsibulsky) who is bringing "high fashion" to the USSR. The film is also a cleverly executed spoof of movie mania as Zina is "discovered" by the film crew and becomes a somewhat inept "star." Critics panned the film in the niggardly fashion all too common in early Soviet film criticism.27 These criticisms are telling ones. While critics admitted the film was funny, they vigorously denied that it was a Soviet comedy. As an example, Ippolit Sokolov claimed the only thing "Soviet" about The Cigarette Girl was the citizenship of most of its characters.28 In a back-handed compliment to the film, critics Edgar Arnoldi and Vladimir Kirshon both used "cigarette girls" as a generic term for comedies made according to "capitalist standards."29 Yet despite the critical opprobrium, The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom came in fifth on a list of "most seen" films, with overwhelmingly positive viewer reactions recorded.30 Sergei Komarov's 1927 comedy The Kiss of Mary Pickford [Potselui Meri Pikford), like The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom, was a romantic comedy spoofing movie madness. 31 It also starred the popular comedian Igor Ilinsky - this time as Goga Palkin, an inept movie usher. After a series of bungling adventures, Goga bumps into Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as they are touring a Moscow film studio. To save face, he is introduced to them as a film star ("the Soviet Harry Piel") and receives Mary's gracious kiss. As a result, Goga becomes legitimized as a sex symbol, lionized not only by his skeptical girlfriend (A. Sudakevich), but by screaming, fainting hordes of female admirers.


41

The Kiss of Mary Pickford was not intrinsically more "decadent" than The Cigarette Girl from MosseJprom, but its reception was considerably harsher. In order to understand why, we need to keep in mind that the strife in the film community had intensified considerably in the three years separating the two films, and that the film comedy had undergone severe scrutiny in this period. Despite the apparent difficulties in Sovietizing comedy (as evidenced by the way critics viewed the early comedies), cries for Soviet comedy became more insistent by 1926. This urgency probably reflects the growing popularity of American comedies as much as the perceived weaknesses in Soviet productions, although this was never articulated directly. Critics now encouraged filmmakers to "work" and "study" in order to develop a Soviet variation of the comedic genre, methods that seem alien to the aura of spontaneity good comedies exude (whether the "spontaneity" is contrived or not). In their franker moments, however, it is clear that critics understood the problems facing directors and scenarists very well. One (pseudonymous) critic noted, for example, that it was much more difficult to make a comedy "ideological" than it was to insert some ideology into a drama.32 Striking a chord similar to Brik's candid "we don't know what to laugh at," Ippolit Sokolov sagely wrote "at whom and how to laugh is the main thing" in comedy.33 Directives issued on what comedy should not be were as numerous and specific as those telling directors what it should be. Comedy should not, for example, feature an "idiot" hero like American comedies, nor should it be "physical."34 Rather, it needed to be infused with "ideology" and "social significance" (though no one speculated how this could be achieved without robbing comedy of its humor).35 So along came The Kiss of Mary Pickford, a satire with an idiot hero, plenty of physical humor, two American movie stars - and no ideology or social significance. The critics pounced. Vladimir Kirshon called it "completely alien"; Vladimir Nedobrovo, "vulgar" and "artless." 36 1 could find no concrete evidence of its popularity among spectators, but it is so delightful and was excoriated so often in the press as the exemplar of the "disastrous" state of Soviet film comedy that it is hard to believe the Soviet public did not in fact enjoy it.37 The press of the 1920s tended not to waste words on films that had died natural deaths at the box office. Small wonder, then, that the state film trust Sovkino had so much trouble fulfilling its own production plans for comedy and lamented the shortages year after year.38 But the times were changing, as Soviet society geared up, knowingly and unknowingly, for the great transformation known as the Cultural Revolution.39 Once again, as was the case during and immediately after the civil war, objects for satire were abundant and obvious. The campaign against "bureaucratism," for example, provided delicious opportunities to filmmakers, as Iakov Protazanov effectively


42

demonstrated in Don Diego and PeJageia (Don Diego i Pelageia, 1928). Arguably the best and most fully realized satire in Soviet silent cinema, Don Diego twits the bureaucratic mindset as it exposes the backwardness of village life. Don Diego (Anatolii Bykov), a foolish village station master who reads romantic novels, vigorously enforces the "letter of the law" and sends an elderly woman (played by the incomparable Maria Bliumental-Tamarina) to jail for crossing the railroad tracks against the sign. It matters not to Don Diego that Pelageia could not read the sign, and it takes the combined efforts of the Komsomol and the Party to rescue her. The film was hailed as a "great event" in the development of Soviet film comedy, but at the same time, concerns were expressed that the film might be misunderstood abroad.40 It did not take long for fear and uncertainty to cloud any of the humor that one could read into current campaigns. The only other antibureaucratic satire of this period to be even modestly well received was Two Friends, a Model and a Girlfriend [Dva druga, model i podruga, Aleksei Popov, 1928), a forgettable and technically very ordinary picture that followed the attempts of three young people to gain recognition for their invention, a box-making machine. Two Friends seems to have escaped the wrath of critics because it was so unassuming. The next year, My Grandmother (Moia babushka, K. Mikaberidze, 1929), a scathingly witty and aesthetically adventurous attack on the Georgian variant of the bureaucratic deviation known as "protectionism," dropped into the bottomless pit of forgotten films.41 The same fate befell an unflinching expose of shifting allegiances during the civil war, Nikolai Shpikovsky's A Familiar Face (Znakomoe litsot 1929). Though this picture was not nearly as interesting in formal terms as My Grandmother, its wit was as sharp, which probably explains why it was never released in the Russian Republic.42 So by 1929, foreigners and foreign life could not be satirized; they were "too bourgeois" to be shown to Soviet citizens, no matter the message of the picture. Soviet life certainly could not be satirized, because it could be misunderstood abroad or, even more seriously, at home. The flow of foreign comedies had essentially ended. All that remained for the beleaguered Soviet audience was the antireligious comedy. The campaign against religion proved to be the one "campaign" that endured from revolution to revolution,43 and the antireligious comedy was once again a safe haven for directors hoping to make films with some audience appeal. Iakov Protazanov, whose finely tuned sense of balance was perhaps his most amazing gift as a Soviet filmmaker, succeeded in making the transition to yet another stage of Soviet cinematic history with St. Jorgen's Feast Day (Prazdnik sviatogo Iorgena, 1930), the tale of two thieves on the lam who hoodwink a gullible crowd of pilgrims into believing a miracle has occurred. Protazanov and his stars, Anatolii Ktorov and Igor Ilinskii,


43

reprised their winning partnership in The Case of the Three Million in a number of respects. Both films were set abroad (indeed, based on foreign literary works) and featured a gentleman thief (Ktorov) and a buffoon as foil (Ilinskii). Both films were stylishly, if unimaginatively directed; both were indistinguishable from their Western counterparts. Yet The Case of the Three Million was attacked during the "liberal" NEP as "too Western," while St. Jorgen's Feast Day was termed "valuable and well-made" during the Cultural Revolution, a period in which everything "bourgeois" and "Western" was virulently attacked.44 How can this be explained? Although the Cultural Revolution is not considered to have ended until late 1931 (or early 1932), St. Jorgen's Feast Day represents the transition to the postrevolutionary comedies of Socialist Realism. It is a satire with a cotton-candy center-professionally made, but cinematically quite ordinary; realistic on the surface, but pure fantasy at its core. It is exactly the sort of film people needed in hard times - true popular entertainment. But we should not mistake this surprising denouement for a happy ending; the legacy of the 1920s is too complicated for simple solutions, as true in comedy as in all other aspects of Soviet cultural and social life. Soviet "film critics" (and I use this term to include those activists who wanted to use film for political or social goals, whether or not they wrote reviews) genuinely wanted to serve the people, but they mistrusted the people at the same time. They knew the "masses" liked comedy, so they wanted them to have comedy (in theory), but the "right" kind (in practice). Since artists - even popular artists - are fundamentally individualistic, filmmakers were at loggerheads with critics throughout the 1920s over what was funny and what was "acceptable." Except in a few rare cases - like Don Diego and PeJageia - humor and political rectitude were mutually exclusive. During the Cultural Revolution, artists were compelled to enter the service of the state, as the critics (and some directors) had wanted. But the critics were compelled to enter it too, and postrevolutionary culture (by which I mean Stalinist culture after the Cultural Revolution) took an unexpected shape. The diversity of NEP film comedy-of Commander Ivanovs, miracle workers, tailors, cigarette girls, Don Diegos, and Mr. Wests - was gone, replaced by the breezy good cheer of Alexandrov's The Happy Guys [Veselye rebiata, 1934), The Circus (Tsirk, 1936), Volga, Volga (1938), and The Shining Path [Svetlyi put, 1940).45 Notes The research for this article was supported in part by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the International Research &


44

Exchanges Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Vermont. I would like to express my thanks to Vlada Petric for his thought-provoking remarks on an earlier version. 1. Osip Brik, 'Na podstupakh v sovetskoi komedii,' Kino-front, no. 3 (1927): p. 14. Of course, Brik's words must be taken as ironic; he knew very well what was funny and what was not. 2. Since virtually all the films classified as "comedies" in Sovetskie khudozhestvennye filmy: Annotirovannyi katalog, vol. 1, Nemye filmy (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961) were also "satires," I shall use the terms interchangeably. 3. Studies of Soviet film comedy are fairly rare. R. N. Iurenev, Sovetskaia kinokomediia (Moscow: Nauka, 1964), is the standard history, but Vitali Poplovsky, "Waiting for Comedy: A Glance at the Development of Soviet Film Laughter," trans. Natasha Andreeva, New Orleans Review 17, 1 (Spring 1990): 88-93, provides a pithy and insightful overview. As far as I know, Richard Taylor, "A "Cinema for the Millions": Soviet Socialist Realism and the Problem of Film Comedy," Journal of Contemporary History 18, 3 (July 1983): 439-62, which centers on the 1930s, is the only scholarly analysis (aside from this essay) of the cultural politics of Soviet film comedy. 4. These issues may also be seen as an exaggerated version of the centuries-old high culture-low culture debate. 5. Lunacharsky was the author of a number of highly controversial film scripts and shamelessly promoted the acting career of his wife, Nataliia Rozenel. For a discussion of his activities on the cinema front, see Denise Youngblood, "Entertainment or Enlightenment? Popular Cinema in Soviet Society, 1921-1931," in New Directions in Soviet History, ed. Stephen White (Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 41-61. 6. Of the comedies discussed here, Mezhrabpom produced The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom, The Tailor from Torzhok, The Case of the Three Million, The Girl with a Hathox, The Kiss of Mary Pickford, Don Diego and Pelageia, and St. Jorgen 's Feast Day. 7. Obvious exceptions to this generalization are Boris Barnet, Fridrikh Ermler, and on occasion, Abram Room - all directors of popular films. 8. Examples of this sort of film criticism can be found in Kino-/ront, Zhizn iskusstva, Lef, and Novyi lef. 9. The chief press organ promoting cinema as a tool of cultural enlightenment was Sovetskoe kino, published by Narkompros's Glavpolitprosvet, but this viewpoint was also frequently expressed in Kino, Kino-front, and even in Sovetskii ekran, the mass circulation film magazine. 10. Tragedy and drama were at least "art." 11. Obviously, any attempt at categorization of an art form as complex and idiosyncratic as cinema will have its limitations and exceptions, and so does this one. 12. Examples are Little Red Devils (Krasnye diavoliata, Ivan Perestiani, 1923), The Tripol Tragedy (TripoJskaia tragediia, Aleksandr Anoshchenko, 1926), Wind (Veter, L. Sheffer, 1926), and The Forty-First (Sorok pervyi, Iakov Protazanov, 1927). 13. The Decembrists [Dekabristy, Aleksandr Ivanovskii, 1927) and The Poet and the Tsar [Poet i tsar, Vladimir Gardin and Evgenii Cherviakov, 1927) are the most


45

notorious examples; a discussion on this genre can be found in Denise Youngblood, " 'History' on Film: The Historical Melodrama in Early Soviet Cinema," Historical Journal of Film, Radio & Television 11, 2 (June 1991): 173-84. 14. Only 6% of the French films that entered the USSR, 1921-28, were adventures; only 4% of German imports of the same period fell into this category. Virtually no historical pictures were imported. These conclusions are based on my analysis of titles listed in Iu. Greiding, "Frantsuzskie nemye filmy v sovetskom prokate," Kino i vremia 4 (1965): 348-79, and N. Egorova, "Nemetskie nemye filmy v sovetskom prokate," ibid., pp. 380-476. Details of this analysis can be found in Denise Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge University Press, 1992). 15. Until Fridrikh Ermler began making his series of socially critical melodramas in 1926, the genre was invariably dubbed "salon melodrama" or "boulevard melodrama." 16. Of both French and German imports, 1921-8, 67% were melodramas, and when The Bear's Wedding, a Soviet melodrama up to "Western" standards, finally reached the screen, it was a runaway hit. These figures are based on analysis of Greiding, "Frantsuzskie nemye filmy" and Egorova, "Nemetskie nemye filmy." 17. See, e.g., A. Dubrovskii, "Opyty izucheniia zritelia (Anketa ARK)," Kinozhurnal ARK, no. 8, (1925): 9. 18. Several of Protazanov's pictures will be discussed here, along with Barnet's The Girl with the Hathox. Barnet's second satire of NEP life, The House on Trubnaia Square (Dom na Trubnoi, 1928), which is a pointed critique of the new bourgeoisie, also caused him difficulty. 19. This "protectionism" was not, of course, exclusive to the Soviet film industry. 20. See Lev Kuleshov, "Americanitis," in KuJeshov on Film, ed. and trans., Ronald Levaco (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 127-30. A history of American influences on Soviet cinema can be found in Denise Youngblood, " 'Americanitis': The Amerikanshchina in Soviet Cinema," Journal of Popular Film and Television, 19, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 148-56. 21. Based on analysis of E. Kartseva, "Amerikanskie nemye filmy v sovetskom prokate," Kino i vremia, no. 1 (1960): 193-325. 22. This picture eventually got into trouble when it was exported as The Beauty and the Bolshevik, a retitling which is quite apt. 23. See, e.g., Vladimir Erofeev, "Prikliucheniia mistera Vesta," Kino-gazeta, nos. 17-18 (1924): 2, and Viktor Shklovsky, "Mister Vest ne na svoemost," Kinonedelia, no. 21 (1924): 3. 24. For reviews, see, e.g., M. Zagorsky, "Tapioka - Ilinskii - teatr - kino," Sovetskii ekran, no. 38, (1926): 5 (on The Case of the Three Million) and Khrisanf Khersonsky, "Reis mistera Lloida," Kino, no. 39, (1927): 3. A more detailed discussion of The Case of the Three Million can be found in Denise Youngblood, "The Return of the Native: Yakov Protazanov and Soviet Cinema," in Inside the Film Factory, ed. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 116-17. 25. See, e.g., Khrisanf Khersonsky, "Komicheskaia i komedii," Kino-zhurnal ARK, nos. 11-12 (1925): 27-8. 26. Osip Beskin, "Neigrovaia filma," Sovetskoe kino, no. 7 (1927): 10. (In the 1920s, the Russian word for "film," now "film," was the feminine gender, "filma.")


46

27. See, e.g., la. M., "Papirosnitsa ot [sic] Mosselproma," Kino-nedelia, no. 44 (1924): 8. 28. See, e.g., A D[ubrov]sky, "Pokhozdeniia Oktiabriny," Kino-zhurnal ARK, no. 3 (1925): 34. (These comments were made in the context of a review about another "failed" comedy.); Ippolit Sokolov, Kino-stsenarii: Teoriia i tekhnika (Moscow: Teakinopechat, 1926), p. 55. 29. Edgar Arnoldi, Komicheskoe v kino (Moscow: Kinopechat, 1928), p. 4. (This book features an apologetic introduction by Vladimir Nedobrovo explaining why Arnoldi used so many American examples to illustrate his points.); Vladimir Kirshon, "Listki iz bloknota," Kino-front, nos. 13-14 1927: 10. 30. Dubrovskii, "Opyty izucheniia zritelia," p. 8. 31. Peter Christensen notes the film's similarity to the American comedy SherJock, Jr., which starred Buster Keaton. This film was shown in the USSR in 1925 (see Kartseva, "Amerikanskie nemye fil'my), so it is highly likely Komarov saw it. 32. See "Grustnoe v smeshnom," Sovetskii ekran, no. 32 (1927): 3; and Pochtar, "Smekh i ideologiia," Kino, no. 2 (1927): 4. 33. Ippolit Sokolov, "Kak sozdat sovetskuiu komediiu," Kino-front, no. 4 (1927): 14. 34. See Sokolov, "Kuda idet sovetskogo kino," Sovetskii ekran, no. 37 (1926): 3 Tsentralnyi gosudarstzennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (1926): 3; (TsGALI), f. 2496, op 1, ed. khr. 23, "Zakliochewie proektu orientirovochnogo stsevarnotematicheskogo plana Sovkino na 1927-1928 g.," pp. 36-41. 35. "Sovetskaia komicheskaia," Kino, no. 16 (1927): 2. 36. Vladimir Kirshon, Na kino-postu, Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1928. p. 10; V[ladimir] N[edobrovo], "Potselui Meri," Zhizn iskusstva, no. 48 (1927): 11. 37. See, e.g., M. Bystritskii, "Besprizornaia (Po povodu Potselui Meri)," Kino, no. 38 (1927): 3; R. Pikel, "Ideologiia i kommertsiia," ibid., no. 41, p. 2. 38. See Tematicheskii plan Sovkino na 1928/29 g., ([Moscow]: Teakinopechat, 1928), p. 6. 39. The literature on the Cultural Revolution is fairly substantial; see, e.g., Sheila Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978); Peter Kenez, "The Cultural Revolution in Cinema," Slavic Review 47, no. 3 (Fall 1988): 418-35; Denise Youngblood, "The Fate of Soviet Popular Cinema during the Stalin Revolution," Russian Review 50, no. 2 (April 1991): 148-62. 40. Don Diego and Pelageia was heavily promoted; see, e.g., A. Aravsky, "Don Diego i Pelageia," Kino-front, no. 2 (1928): 20-21, and M. Bystritskii, "Shag vpered (Don Diego i Pelageia), Kino, no. 3 (1928): 3. A revealing prerelease discussion of the film can be found in TsGALI, f. 2494, op. 1, ed.khr. 99, "Stenogramma sobranie chlenov ARK po obsuzhdeniiu kino-filme Don Diego i Pelageia Demina [sic], 1 dek. 1927." For more details, see Youngblood, "The Return of the Native," pp. 114-16. 41.1 do not know the Georgian title of this film, which received only one review and apparently had a limited distribution. The Pacific Film Archive has a copy. 42. This film was made for the Ukrainian studio VUFKU, but Sovetskie khudozhestvennye filmy gives a title in Russian only. The style is so similar to that wonderful satire of Soviet chess mania, Chess Fever [Shakhmataia goriachka,


47

Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovskii, 1925), that it would seem Chess Fever should be mainly attributed to Shpikovskii. Naum Kleiman has recently resurrected A Familiar Face, and it was shown at the Cleveland Cinematheque in 1989 under one of its alternate titles, The Scoundrel (Shkurnik). 43. The two revolutions alluded to are the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the Stalin Revolution of 1928. 44. See A. V, "Prazdnik sviatogo Iorgena," Kino, no. 51 (1930): 4. 45. Vitali Poplovsky also believes that the dominance of Alexsandrov (and Ivan Pyrev) in the 1930s epitomized the decline in cinema culture; see "Waiting for Comedy," New Orleans Review 17, no. 1 (Spring 1990), p. 89.

CHAPTER IV

An ambivalent NEP satire of bourgeois aspirations: The Kiss of Mary Pickford

The most celebrated Soviet films have not been comedies. From Pudovkin's Mother to Tarkovsky's Stalker to Abuladze's glasnost-era Repentance, most of the deserved critical praise has gone to the weightiest films. Relatively little attention has been given to humorous films both old and new, and it remains to be seen in our day of greater Russian access to the West if future Soviet comedies will bear any resemblance to NEP film satires concerned with the desire for Western products and bourgeois lifestyles. One of the lesser known (but most accessible for rental in the United States) of these NEP film comedies is The Kiss of Mary Pickford (PotseJui Meri Pikford) released by Mezhrabpom-Rus in September 1927. This genuinely amusing hour-long film directed by Sergei Komarov makes use of newsreel footage of the mobs of people who greeted the visit of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford to Moscow in July 1926, and it was popular with audiences when it was released. Komarov (at the time of our conference one of the senior members of the Soviet film community) was one of the graduates of Kuleshov's workshop, and by mixing newsreel and fictional footage, he followed the example of Pudovkin in the comic Chess Fever (1925). The original idea for the film is by Anatoly Lunacharsky, the People's Commissar for Enlightenment. This attribution, as Richard Taylor notes (1979: p. 168), is attested by the Sovietskie Khudozhestvennye fiVmy. Annotirovannyi katalog (vol. 1, p. 219), but the treatment for the scenario is not included in the selection of Lunacharsky's film writings published in Moscow in 1965. Perhaps for this reason, the film has failed to receive attention in current monographs on various aspects of Lunacharsky's career. Like Kuleshov's 1924 The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, The Kiss of Mary Pickford concerns the relationship of the Soviet Union and the United States, but from the reverse perspective. Whereas the earlier film mocks American perceptions of a stereotypically barbarous Bolshevik state, The Kiss of Mary Pickford satirizes Soviet wild admiration of American film stars and thus of American 48

An ambivalent NEP satire of bourgeois aspirations

49

bourgeois culture in general. However, on close inspection the film appears to be ambivalent toward American commercial cinema, and it partially legitimizes the adulation of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, Hollywood's own royalty. Lunacharsky, who had a particular interest in humorists such as Swift and Shaw, knew that comedy was hard to channel and that it could be counterproductive to the Soviet cause if not clearly aimed. Although Lunacharsky was no longer commissar after 1929 and the NEP period that had produced films such as The Kiss of Mary Pickford was over, his ideas on satire in his famous essay of 1931, "Cinematographic Comedy and Satire," can still be helpful in analyzing the film. Written as part of a debate on the films of Medvedkin in 1931, Lunacharsky opposed the position of Nusinov, who declared that humor was not compatible with the proletarian project. Part of the debate concerned the often recurring question of whether satiric comedy was socially constructive or ultimately destructive of social cohesiveness. And in back of this question stands another unstated one: Is comedy a defense of society against those individuals who are out of tune with it and thus slowing down progress, or does comedy celebrate a temporary revolt against social authority? This larger theoretical issue makes Lunacharsky's statement provocative even though it represents the last stage of his career, when he was not speaking as a public official. Not surprisingly, Lunacharsky takes a position that it is society or the collective that is comedy's standard of value. The individuals who are out of touch with society's needs are subject to being laughed at. Peasants clinging to the old way of life are cited as an example. Lunacharsky feels that humor is necessary for the proletariat if it wishes to rid itself of current internal defects in the Socialist system, namely, bourgeois mentality and decadence (p. 116). However, there is the possibility that humor will not be used appropriately, for unless the object of criticism is clearly labeled, it can unintentionally lend support to the adversaries of communism. Lunacharsky claims that Yuri Olesha's recent play The List of Benefits (the story of a Russian actress in Paris) has been used by capitalists in this very fashion. In general, for Soviet art, pure comedy is decidedly dangerous most of the time. It needs to be deepened by satire with a precise target. Lunacharsky criticizes Plekhanov, who believed that one cannot create a beautiful artwork with a false ideology. To Lunacharsky, this is demonstrably false, as any number of religious artworks of the past show. As for the present, what matters is that reality be considered dialectically, and this idea allows for the treatment of materials in a way that departs from photographic realism, or "kodakismo" as he calls it. Thus, a comedy such as Erdman's The Mandate is successful because it is makes good use of hyperbole while still being grounded in the realistic. Its object may be


50

fantastic, but it remains a realistic spectacle. He concludes that all expressive means are legitimate to the proletariat, although one should avoid humor as an end in itself, as represented by the gratuitous gag. Lunacharsky appears to be adopting the emphasis on social signification in comedy, as expressed by Henri Bergson, to the specifics of the Communist society. As Bergson says in "Laughter": To understand laughter, we must put it back in its natural environment, which is society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function, which is a social one. Such, let us say at once, will be the leading idea of all our investigations. Laughter must answer to certain requirements of life in common. It must have a social signification (p. 65). The theoretical problem that arises from Bergson's definition of comedy is examined by Morton Gurewitch: There is a certain knottiness in Bergson's idea of the social good. What society demands of its members, he says, is an "increasingly delicate adjustment of wills which will fit more perfectly into one another" (p. 72). Those who, through their unconscious, machine-like behavior (whether commonplace or nobly quixotic), frustrate this need for ever subtler harmony are by definition comic persons, punishable by laughter, yet Bergson's assumption that society can be depicted as an increasingly resilient entity is extremely dubious. How far can an ideal sociabili t y - " a n increasingly delicate adjustment of wills"-be carried in a world of inhibiting legal and administrative machinery?. .. The idea that societyas-organism can, ever more subtly, laughingly liquidate that part of itself which hardens into society-as-mechanism is a fantasy. (1975: pp. 31-2)

If we use Bergson's focus on "something mechanical encrusted upon the living" (p. 92), we can see that, in Lunacharsky's terms, it is bourgeois life that is something mechanical still encrusted on the vital Soviet state. As Commissar of Enlightenment, Lunacharsky had to continually face this issue of fine tuning the State through art. Gurewitch's theoretical question became a real one when satires such as The Crimson Island and The Suicide were not perceived as leading to the fine tuning of society and were closed or banned. As an NEP satire, The Kiss of Mary Pickford deserves to be compared with the plays of Bulgakov, Mayakovsky, Katayev, and Erdman, in this mode. (See Segel, 1979.) However, it is first neither an attack on the pursuit of money nor an expose of government bureaucracy, through such a problem as the housing crisis. Second, it is not structured around a contrast between any Communist and bourgeois characters. In fact, the Communist Party is not even mentioned. Third, it does not use acting as a starting point to investigate the nature of theatrical illusion, as does Bulgakov in The Crimson Island, which was written about the same time. The film is lighter in touch than these other works. Indeed, it was so light, that it received a good measure of hostile criticism, as Denise }.


51

Youngblood (1985: pp. 153-4) has pointed out. Most likely with the film in mind, the noted dramatist Sergei Tretyakov spoke out in New Lef in 1928 against the " 'Pickfordization' of the everyday worker's life" (1988: p. 266). The Kiss of Mary Pickford should be situated with reference to American silent comedy as well as NEP satire. It is quite possible that the film was influenced by Buster Keaton's great comedy Sherlock, Jr., released in the United States in 1924 and, according to E. Kartseva, imported to the USSR, in 1925. In this film, Keaton, who works as a cleanup person and projectionist at a movie theater, tries to win the love of his girlfriend by becoming a great detective like Sherlock Holmes. He falls asleep and "projects himself" as Sherlock, Jr. into a mystery film about a jewel theft. Back in real life, he does succeed in solving the mystery of the theft of a watch and in gaining the love of his girlfriend. Thus, in each film a bumbling movie theater employee is successful in winning a woman's love after he reinvents himself on the model of a popular culture hero. He succeeds because he creates a more dynamic self through the emulated model. The Kiss of Mary Pickford does not challenge Sherlock, Jr. on an artistic level, but it does attempt to capitalize on what Adrian Piotrovsky in 1927 saw as the hallmarks of American film comedy: the acrobatic stunt, the eccentric use of objects, and the buffoon mask-image of the comic hero (1981: p. 138). The Kiss of Mary Pickford, although it is not a masterpiece, nevertheless offers a more complex and ambiguous satire than Lunacharsky's comments would allow. I do not mean to claim that Lunacharsky was unable to follow his own principles, for I do not know to what extent, if at all, he took part in the actual filming. (His name is not given in the film credits of the print that I have seen.) Instead, the film departs from the positions he was to propound in 1931. It does indulge at times in the pure laughter that he finds potentially dangerous, and it ultimately rewards the bumbling hero, who gains the love of his girlfriend by acting out their bourgeois fantasies to the best of his abilities. The film can be divided into three parts. The first sequence introduces the plot in four scenes. At an audition, we learn that Dusya, an aspiring young actress, is being courted by Goga, who turns out to be an usher in a movie theater. Goga embarrasses her first at the movie theater, where he is unable to live up to Dusya's fantasies for a boyfriend like Douglas Fairbanks, currently starring in The Mark of Zorro. (As it is 1926, the Soviet Union is still overwhelmingly a net importer of films [Leyda, 1983: p. 205].) Later he pathetically crashes her birthday party, which he completely ruins with his ill-conceived attempts at derring-do. Goga goes to the Laboratory of Experimental Studies, where he is unexpectedly declared a cinema professional at the highest level. In the second sequence (six scenes), Goga gains access to a movie studio, where he is cleaning floors. He then has the luck to be hired as a


52

stuntman just about the time that Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks are arriving in the city. After succeeding accidentally at a few stunts, he is hailed as the new "Harry Piel." (Unfortunately, most prints of the film in the United States indicate Goga as the "Russian Doug" at this point.) When Mary comes to the studio for a talk and tea, she asks to do a love scene with Goga. During the scene, she kisses him on the cheek. In the final sequence (four scenes), Goga becomes the object of hysterical adulation by the star-struck film goers, for he bears the mark of Mary Pickford on his face. They are so wild that they pursue him and tear off some of his clothes. Dusya uses the current of an electric wire to keep them away from Goga. He deliberately gets rid of the imprint of Mary's lips, and resumes his old life as an usher. Now, however, he has the love and admiration of Dusya, not her scorn. Three aspects of the film are particularly important for their ideological implications: the tests at the Laboratory of Experimental Studies, the characterization of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and the fans' reaction to the kiss on Goga's face. The scene at the Laboratory of Experimental Studies is perhaps the most difficult to interpret. The laboratory is initially sinister with its three white-clad doctors and huge, lumbering orderly. Goga flees into the lab after we see a man first brutalized in silhouette in the office window then carried out unconscious to the end of the line of waiting applicants. In the first test, Goga is put under cold water and then under hot to see what his reactions are. He is told that he has scored very high, but he has done little else but react naturally to the different stimuli. The water ruins the photograph of Dusya that he has kissed for good luck. He comments that she has not passed the test as he has. The second test requires that Goga try to keep his balance on a flat wheel that is being turned round and round very swiftly. Eventually he disappears, and the scientists ask if he has been vaporized. Then they realize that he has been thrown off. Here he has at least shown some skill as a potential acrobat. The third test involves a sight gag. Goga is made to stand on his hands behind a screen. Presumably the length of time he can hold this position will be measured. After a while, the scientists look behind the screen to see that somehow Goga has squatted on his haunches and put his shoes on his hands extended above his head. For these three trials, Goga is awarded a diploma indicating that he is a cinema professional at the highest level. Even if we consider that this is really not the test for a movie star as Goga wished, but for an anonymous, effaceable stuntman, the result is still surprising, since Goga was so completely inept at the jumping stunt he had attempted at Dusya's party. On one level, the satire in this scene may be on the reflexology of Vladimir Mikhailovich Bechterev (1857-1927). In 1923, Bechterev gave a


53

lecture entitled 'The Personality of the Artist in the Light of Reflexology," and he added chapters on creativity to the third edition of his major written work General Principles of Human Reflexology in 1925. At his Psychoneurological Academy, he had a laboratory for the investigation of work and a vocational consulting bureau. In addition, the lab scene may be a satire of Meyerhold's interest in reflexology in his biomechanics method of teaching acting, and as satire, it gives a wildly exaggerated rather than a fair representation of this acting technique. As Mel Gordon points out in his article, ''Meyerhold's Biomechanics/' "drawing on the scientific methodologies that were then current in Soviet industry and culture (Taylorism) and in Soviet psychology and education (reflexology)," Meyerhold developed biomechanics (1974: p. 75). In biomechanics, writes Konstantin Rudnitsky (1988: p. 93), the "human body was perceived as a machine: man had to learn to control that machine." Two of the collaborators on the film, Vadim Shershenevich and Igor Ilyinsky, were from the world of the theater and were all acquainted with the work of Meyerhold. First, the film scenario was elaborated by Shershenevich along with the film's director Komarov. Shershenevich, a poet, translator, theorist, and dramatist, was at one time a codirector with Boris Ferdinandov of an experimental theater (Rudnitsky, 1988: pp. 254, 347). As Konstantin Rudnitsky (1981: p. 419) points out, Shershenevich and Lunacharsky had stood on different sides of the fence over Meyerhold's controversial production of Gogol's Inspector General in 1926. The former opposed it, and the latter supported it. Unfortunately, as Anna Lawton notes in her 1981 book on Shershenevich, his career after 1926 is not well documented. Second, the film starred Igor Ilyinsky, a former student of Fedor Kommisarzhevsky, who joined Meyerhold from 1920 to 1938, and who then went on to perform at the Stanislavsky-oriented Maly Theater for many years. Since 1924, he had already appeared in at least four films at Mezhrabpom-Rus: Aelita, The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom, The Three Million Case, and Miss Mend. He had a very successful career in films as a comic actor. In fact, according to Richard Taylor (1983: p. 452), Ilyinsky was "possibly the greatest box office draw in the Soviet cinema of the late twenties." In his memoirs, he has both unflattering and complimentary remarks about Meyerhold's directorial style: When I would try to stop, to argue or to ask him to explain, some scene that wasn't clear to me, he would say: "You're not getting it because you're nearsighted. Watch me carefully and repeat what I do. Then you'll get it right." I could not work that way. It was beneath my dignity as an actor. I was a young actor perhaps, but an actor all the same, and not a monkey. (Schmidt, 1980: p. 27) Ilyinsky saw a danger in the biomechanics approach to performance. He felt that there was a possibility that a "completely real stage world"


54

could be lost underneath a "conventionalized conglomeration" (Schmidt, 1980: p. 28): I had to find those roots and work them over within myself as an artist. Meyerhold came to value my ability to accomplish his ideas physically, and so always appreciated my work more than he would some dead, formalistic, but absolutely accurate copy of his sketch. Of course, I was never free from the form of the sketch, but I always tried to live onstage, to be a living person, and not to reproduce mechanically, according to biomechanical laws, some emasculated directorial outline, (p. 28) However, Ilyinsky does try to be fair to Meyerhold and resists the widespread tendency to caricaturize biomechanics. He reports that the essence of this method can be shown with respect to the demonstration of fear. The actor must not begin by growing scared and then running. First one must run by reflex and not grow scared until afterward, for then one sees oneself running. This means that one does not enact the emotion of fear but one expresses it on stage by a physical action (Meyerhold, 1963: p. 170). The significance of the lab scene can only be understood with respect to the depiction of the acting styles of Mary and Doug. The reflexology method is shown to be just as inadequate as overacting. Mary and Doug represent in the framework of the film a credible balance in acting styles. They neither overemote nor subject the human to the mechanical. The first action of the film is Dusya's dreadful audition for a film role. She overacts hysterically, and she is told by the sarcastic director to try it again with more feeling. In the movie theater, not only Dusya but everyone else including Goga is impressed by Fairbanks's performance in The Mark o/Zorro. However, Goga is also angry, for he realizes that he cannot compete for Dusya against Doug. When Mary performs her love scene with Goga (Ilyinsky dressed up as the Russian actor with whom she did play a scene in 1926), she gives another one of her ingenue performances that won her legions of fans. Pickford and Fairbanks seem slightly ridiculous, but as visitors not as actors. They appear, not surprisingly, a little bit out of place at tea in their traditional Russian accoutrements. Doug jumps over a bar to show his athletic prowess and takes a hammy bow, but nothing they do affects their status as performers. Once Doug and Mary have gone off, the crowd's hysterical pursuit of Goga leads to his romantic reconciliation with Dusya through the workings of mimetic desire. When Goga is kissed by Mary, mimetic desire appears in two forms. First, and most prominently, the obscure Goga becomes a celebrity not for what he is, but because he has the mark of Mary Pickford's grace. The people are not really interested in him at all. Second, the kiss indicates to Dusya that Goga must really be desirable af-


55

ter all, since Mary has picked him out of a crowd and chosen him for her romantic costar. The crowd surrounds him after Mary leaves, and they tear off half of his clothes. He travels in a flashy car for celebrities and is given new clothes. His fans buy tickets just to have a look at him eating in a private dining room. When a female fan tries to kiss Goga, Dusya jealously pulls an electric cord out of a lamp and sends the current into Goga to get rid of his admirer. Then she attaches the current to the door handle, starting a chain reaction in which many fans start to quiver uncontrollably. Finally, Goga and Dusya are exhausted from fleeing the hysterical people, so in public he washes off the kiss. We then see the fans collapse mechanically into a motionless heap on the stairs, for they cannot take the shock when the kiss is erased. In short, Dusya overcomes her anonymous rivals for Goga's attention. At the end of the film, we cut to a brief scene in which Goga is once again in his usher's uniform at the movie theater. Whereas before Dusya was unwilling to be escorted by him unless he changed out of his uniform, now she is willing to enter with him while he wears his occupational dress. However, the message of the film is not unequivocally that Dusya now loves Comrade Goga for being himself rather than a replica of a swashbuckling Western filmstar. She loves him because it is the closest she will ever get to loving Douglas Fairbanks. The comedy is ambivalent because Goga's ludicrous attempt to become a movie star is coextensive with his heroic pursuit of the woman he truly loves, and the film does not satirize the desire to find love and romance. The film also does not show Russian audiences to be infatuated by specifically American film stars. In the second scene of the film, after the showing of The Mark of Zorro, the movie crowd goes into raptures when two Russian stars, Rogozhin and Malinowska, pass by. Compared with the three scientists at the lab and the fans, Goga is multidimensional. The scientists, in so far as we see them, have bracketed out everything from life except the treatment of the human as a reflex mechanism. In counterpoint, the adoring fans act in the manner of Pavlov's dogs when the stimulus of a movie star is put into their environment. Compared with the scientists and fans, Goga is human and admirable. Goga's bourgeois aspirations to become a stunt actor make us laugh. However, this type of laughter, as Bergson points out, can be legitimizing. He writes: It has often been said that it is the trifling faults of our fellow-men that make us laugh. Evidently there is a considerable amount of truth in this opinion; still, it cannot be regarded as altogether correct. First, as regards faults, it is no easy matter to draw the line between the trifling and the serious; maybe it is not because a fault is trifling, that it makes us laugh, but rather because it makes us laugh that we regard it as trifling; for there is nothing that disarms us like laughter. But we may go even further, and maintain that there are faults at which we laugh,


56

even though fully aware that they are serious, Harpagon's avarice, for instance. And then, we may as well confess - though somewhat reluctantly - that we laugh not only at the faults of our fellow-men, but also at times, at their good qualities, (p. 149)

Whereas presumably Lunacharsky would have us laugh at a character like Goga because his fault of imitating the bourgeoisie is serious, the effect of the film will probably be quite different. Because we laugh at Goga's crashing of Dusya's birthday party, his actions during the ridiculous scientific tests, and his pursuit by the hysterical fans, we tend to find his bourgeois faults trifling. In addition, the sight gags during the lab test, his imitation of a mannequin to avoid his boss, his spilling a glass of water he has hidden in his suit jacket pocket, and the high-angle shot treatment of his eating his solitary celebrity dinner all associate him with the so-called pure comedy that Lunacharsky finds dangerous to the effectiveness of Soviet satire. Wylie Sypher, commenting on the ambivalence in the nature of comedy in his analysis of Bergson, suggests that Freud can help us to understand the side of comedy that Bergson, with his stress on social utility, does not fully investigate: Comedy is a momentary and publically useful resistance to authority and an escape from its pressures, and its mechanism is a free discharge of repressed psychic energy or resentment through laughter. . . . The ambivalence of comedy reappears in its social meanings, for comedy is both hatred and revel, rebellion and defense, attack and escape. It is revolutionary and conservative. Socially, it is both sympathy and persecution. (1956: pp. 241-2)

The Kiss of Mary Pickford is "both attack and escape." It takes on the topical issue of the validity of acting styles as well as Soviet imitation of the bourgeoisie, thus engaging the audience in a complex way. The film offers an escape for the demands of the antibourgeois campaigns of the 1920s by allowing the triumph of the hero with one hand while attacking Soviet consumption of Hollywood films with the other. The example of The Kiss of Mary Pickford can be instructive when we turn to current Soviet comedies, for our evaluation of specific films will depend on our initial premises, particularly whether we feel that laughter labels something as relatively trifling or serious, and whether we see comedy as a support of or a temporary revolt against society. Bibliography Bechterev, Vladimir Michailovitch. General Principles of Reflexology: An Introduction to the Objective Study of Personality. 4th ed. Trans. Emma Murphy and William Murphy. New York: Arno, 1973. Bergson, Henri, "Laughter." In Comedy. Ed. Wylie Sypher. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956.


57

Gordon, Mel. "Meyerhold's Biomechanics." Drama Review 18, 3 (Sept. 1974): 73-88. Gurewitch, Morton. Comedy: The Irrational Vision. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975. Hoover, Marjorie. Meyerhold: The Art of Conscious Theater. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974. Kartseva, E. "Amerikanskie nemye filmy v sovetskom prokate." Kino i Vremia 1 (1960): 193-325. Law ton, Anna. Vadim Shershenevich: From Futurism to Imaginism. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981. Lunacharsky, Anatoly. "La Commedia cinematografica e la Satira," Bianco e Nero 34 (Jan.-Feb. 1973): 115-21. O kino: StaVi. Vyskazyvaniia. Stsenarii, Dokumenty. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965. Leyda, Jay. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. 3d ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983. Meyerhold, Vsevolod. Le Theatre theatral. Paris: Gallimard, 1963. Piotrovsky, Adrian. 'Towards a Theory of Film Genres." In Russian Formalist Film Theory. Ed. and trans. Herbert Eagle. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. Rudnitsky, Konstantin. Meyerhold the Director. Trans. George Petrov. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1981. Russian and Soviet Theater, 1905-1932. Trans. Roxane Permar. Ed. Lesley Milne. New York: Abrams, 1988. Schmidt, Paul. Meyerhold at Work. Trans. Paul Schmidt, Ilya Levin, and Vern McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980. Segel, Harold. B. Twentieth-Century Russian Drama: From Gorky to the Present. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. Sypher, Wylie, ed. Comedy. Garden City: Doubleday, 1956. Taylor, Richard. "A 'Cinema for the Millions': Soviet Socialist Realism and the Problem of Film Comedy." Journal of Contemporary History 18, 3 (July 1983): 439-62. The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917-1929. Cambridge University Press, 1979. Tretyakov, Sergei. "Happy New Year! Happy New LefVf Russian Futurism through Its Manifestoes, 1912-1928. Ed. and trans. Anna Lawton and Herbert Eagle. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988. Youngblood, Denise J. Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1985.

CHAPTER V

Closely watched drains: Notes by a dilettante on the Soviet absurdist film

1. While sitting in the bathroom, a man realizes that life stinks. No way out. No meaning. No sense. The first time I read Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus was in high school. This is what I remember: the image of a man in the bathroom, facing a choice, to sink or to float. I also know what he chose. 2. While sitting in the bathroom, a man realizes that he will never get hot water again, not to mention new water pipes. Apparently our old man existentialist was right: Life is absurd. Only, the man in the bathroom does not know it. He has never read Camus. He does not care. All he cares about is the crooked water and sewerage system. This is a scene (or it could be a scene) from Fountain, a Soviet film of the era of glasnost. 3. The absurd is eternal, but absurdism is not. Specifically, it was born in pain and deceased in peace some time between The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and Fountain (1988). Unlike the absurd, which belongs to nature, absurdism was produced by culture. As with any artistic "-ism/' it had its own time. 4. Albert Camus, since he was crazy enough to declare that "Sisyphus must be regarded as happy," is often regarded as a prophet of absurdism. Shakespeare was another candidate, nominated by Jan Kott in his celebrated Shakespeare Our Contemporary. However, in the history of drama there was a figure much closer to what will become absurdism than the bard of Avon: Anton Chekhov, a Russian. Camus's theory of the absurd perfectly matches Chekhovian existentialism. Chekhov's Three Sisters, written in 1900, ends with the words (spoken by one of the sisters) that Camus could have used as an epigraph: "It will be clear to us. What seems now to be punishment will be revealed. It will. And the meaning of suffering. Until then, what do we have but work? I will work" (quoted from David Mamet's adaptation, American Theater, July-Aug. 1991). Sonya, Uncle Vanya's niece, echoes: "We shall live. We shall live . . . ." 58

Closely watched drains

59

These are the ends of the painful middle. There, in the nonclimactic middle, in the very heart of Chekhov's drama, people lunch and eat tea, while their lives are being ruined. They talk to each other and don't listen. Those who listen don't hear. Those who hear are deaf. Words are dead and entangle people with their lifeless fetters. Conflicts are unsolvable and endless. To end them means to die. To live means to make a choice. Sound familiar? Camus, Ionesco, Beckett. So, was there absurdism in Russia? There could have been, but there wasn't. 5. Soviets came to power seventeen years after Chekhov's Three Sisters and thirteen years after his death. They loved putting -isms in their lexicon, but these were mostly political -isms. The only -ism allowed in culture was "Socialist Realism," which was just as obscure, demanding, and ruthless. All other cultural -isms, behind a dreadful mask of "modernism," were ostracized and executed as "alien to the consciousness of the proletariat." When the time for absurdism had arrived in the West (and it had not arrived until this century made its dreadful discoveries and singed its bifurcated soul in the gas cameras), Russia was in the heat of another -ism, this time named after Stalin. So was Russian culture. And so was film, the vanguard of the culture, its "most important art." Wonderland, created on the Soviet screen at the time, was flooded with light; clouds appeared only to vanish under the sun, and night came as nothing but a prelude to dawn. Wonderland was inhabited by happy guys and gals who were generously endowed with flesh but were completely devoid of substance; a singing people with blank memory, free of any complexes, and more soulful than R&B. In that Wonderland, a lullaby performed the function of Valium and a march served better than Vivarin. People made love, using just their vocal chords, through song, but friendships were valued higher. Evil was not challenged; it was mocked and punished. The country was run according to the yet-to-be-written transcripts of the Party congresses. All this might be very well absurd, but here again we encounter a noncoincidence of the absurd and absurdism. When fresh air was let into the incubator of Soviet culture in the mid1980s, it became clear that it was not so easy to be a seventy-year-old baby. Making its first steps in all the -isms that the West had passed long ago, Soviet arts had to "rediscover a bicycle." 6. Regarding absurdism, there was another obstacle for the Soviets' "back to the future" gambit. It should be rather difficult to speculate on the absurdity of being when you do not expect your water pipes to ever get wet again. The alternative had been found almost twenty-five years ago in a bordering East European country. The Czech New Wave, among all other


60

innovations it has brought to the screen, has created a new artistic body, with the guts of absurdism and a face reflecting all the twists of the Communist being. In analogy to Socialist Realism, it could be called Socialist absurdism. As represented by Milos Forman [Black Peter, A Blonde in Love, The Firemen's Ball), Vera Chytilova (Something Different, Daisies), Jiri Menzel [Closely Watched Trains, Larks on a String), and others, Socialist absurdism dealt with the absurd caused by the Communist regime, not by God, or even a social structure. The generic absurdist techniques were not what Socialist absurdists were flattered with. Their action and dialogue did actually make sense, which would not, in turn, flatter maitres Ionesco and Beckett. They spoke of the absurd in a cool tone, appropriate for a docudrama. That is what made Socialist absurdist films so scarily funny and so hilariously frightening. 7. The first attempt to penetrate the arena of Socialist absurdism in Soviet film was made under Brezhnev, in 1980, by Eldar Ryazanov in Garage. Being a direct, although timidly inferior, response to Fellini's A Prova D3Orchestra [Orchestra Rehearsal), released a year before, Garage materializes all oppositions between Western and Eastern, existentialist and Socialist perspectives. In Fellini's chamber masterpiece, a microuniverse of musicians, who rehearse a new symphony in an ancient church, develops from an apathetic society of estranged individuals into a destructive horde. They produce chaos and death in their mutiny against the conductor. In Ryazanov's reflection of this structure, a group of people is confined to a break room of their environmental institute, full of greenery but lacking oxygen for the spirit. The interest, holding them together and provoking apocalyptic visions, close to Fellini's images of ultimate destruction, is the number of private garages provided by the state. Simply, there are more candidates than garages, which causes trouble. In the genesis of Ryazanov's universe, God and music of the prototype are replaced by the regime and its values. In the genesis of Socialist absurdism, the incongruity of Communist cause and existentialist effect plays the role of a conductor's baton. 8. Under new political circumstances, the comedic exploration of the field went further. The characters of Yuri Mamin's Formanesque short, Neptune's Feast, are thrown by the local Party authorities in freezing-cold water to please the visiting Swedes with the * 'traditional demonstration of Russian spirit" - "walrus swimming." After the last attempt to fake the performance - by using pipes with hot water to warm up the ice-covered lake - fails, the whole village, with "what-the-hell" recklessness, ends up swimming, under the victorious sound of Prokofief's "Battle on Ice" from Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky. Only, the Swedes have left.

Closely watched drains

61

The "composer" in Yuri Mamin's Fountain (1988) who "flies away" with his home-constructed wings, escaping the confines of his apartment building for a few seconds before crashing to the ground.

In Mamin's next feature, Fountain, the Party banners are being used to support the roof of a collapsing apartment building. When the banners no longer help, the drunk construction workers are brought in to hold the roof for a sip of vodka. Eventually, the building collapses, burying, among everything else, one of the tenants' dreams to grow flowers for the local market in the tropical climate of his bathroom. In Karen Shakhnazarov's Zero City, a flip-flop paraphrase of The Inspector General, a Soviet yuppie inspector comes to a remote Russian town only to find himself part of a ludicrous puzzle without a clue, a labyrinth with no way out. The secretary of the plant office that he has been sent to inspect appears in full nude before him. In a restaurant, he is served a cake in the shape of his own head for dessert. A psychic boy tells him that he will never escape. 9. Socialist absurdism, like existentialist absurdism, operates with models. Unlike existentialist absurdism, it creates models of the oppressed society, not of the universe. The firemen's club, the garage coop meeting, the


62

"walrus" village, the collapsing apartment building, and Zero City are all models of the same prototype. A society that has locked itself inside and lost the key. A society whose only vital force is self-destruction. The end, however, is almost happy. Apocalyptic optimism is the last clue to bring Socialist absurdism back to its forefathers, Camus and Co. The bottom line is always faith in the human being. In the coda, there is a lonely man in a boat, floating, despite the psychic boy's prediction, away from the labyrinths of Zero City. The boat, like a fallen leaf in a pond, is still and fragile. The dawn mist is moist and thick. 10. Back to the ill-fated firemen. They should not remain alone on the Socialist screen. They should be joined by cops who have arrested each other. And secret agents who have framed their own boss. And Party members who have banned their own party. And immigration officials who asked for political asylum. And farmers who burnt their harvest only to buy bread from Canada. Truly, Russia is the land of opportunity, at least, for an absurdist mind.

PART TWO

Middle-distance shots: The individual satire considered

CHAPTER VI

A subtextual reading of Kuleshov's satire The Extraordin ary A dven tures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924)

All of us made movies - Kuleshov created the Soviet cinema. Vs. Pudovkin

While Dziga Vertov is considered the founder of the Soviet revolutionary newsreel and the unstaged cinema (neigrovoi fil'm), Kuleshov is acknowledged as the one who radically changed Russian staged cinema [igrovoi fil'm), by introducing a completely new approach to the film narrative and the actors' performance. While Vertov came to cinema with a technological background, after experimenting with sound recording (the "Laboratory of Hearing'*), Kuleshov began his career as a set designer for Evgeni Bauer, the most prominent Russian film director of the tsarist period. As a result of their different backgrounds, Vertov dedicated his entire life to advancing Soviet cinema toward a "truly international and ultimate language of cinema, absolutely separated from the language of theater and literature," while Kuleshov invested his energies in proving that movies can function both as an entertainment and a "genuine cinematic art with its specific language of expression." Between these two in many ways antithetical - attitudes belong the work and theory of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Ermler, Kozinsev, and Trauberg. Consequently, a critical examination of these filmmakers could not be fully understood without taking into consideration the practices and concepts promoted by Vertov or Kuleshov. In his productive unit (produktivnoe ob'edinenie), Vertov instructed his "kinoks" (kinokij1 how to capture everyday events "unawares" (vrasplokh), by avoiding to shoot "substitutes of life" (surrogaty zhizni), while juxtaposing the shots according to the montage method, which he labeled "film-eye" (kinoglaz). In his workshop (masterskaya), Kuleshov and the members of his collective (chleny koJJektiva) exercised physical improvisations (fizicheskie improvizatsii), designed to improve the performer's expressive means and master the art of mise-en-scene. What Vertov sought to extract from naked reality, Kuleshov tried to produce in the 65


66

laboratory; both aimed at penetrating beneath the perfunctory appearance of reality or the physical aspect of human conflicts. Even though concerned with different potentials of the medium, Vertov's and Kuleshov's ultimate goals were to develop unique ways of presenting events on the screen-be they spontaneous or performed. Vertov coined the term "life as it is" (zhizn' kak ona esV) to explicate his directorial principle "film truth" (kinopravda); Kuleshov wrote essays about the movement conceived by the director (rezhisserom zadanoe /izicheskoe dvizhenie) to elaborate on the method employed in his film factory [kinofabrika). Like Vertov in his early theoretical writings, Kuleshov proclaimed that artificiality, as such, is alien to the film medium, especially painted decor, makeup, and theatrical acting. "Cinema," he pronounced, "needs realistic] material." Yet it is important to make a distinction between Vertov's and Kuleshov's ideas of the "real material" as the basis for constructing a film: For Vertov, it meant recorded life facts (zhiznenye fakty), while for Kuleshov it implied the performer's liberation from theatrical cliches (teatral'nye stereotipy). Once the actor decides to adhere to such stereotypes, Kuleshov insists that he or she must comment on them through parody-which is reminiscent of Vertov's claim that the cinematographer should "lay bare" his or her intervention whenever rearranging the actual event before the camera. Together with Eisenstein and Pudovkin, Vertov and Kuleshov were the first Soviet revolutionary "theorizing filmmakers" who insisted on the full interrelation between theory and practice. At the outset of the new Soviet film production, Kuleshov wrote: "By its artistic nature and structure, film - as an autonomous art — does not have anything in common with a staged play. .. . Above all, film should be reduced to the level of the recorded theater, let alone function as its shadowy imitation. Cinema should be viewed as a separate, independent art. . . . The impact of a film must be — cinematic." 2 Evidently, Kuleshov's struggle for the specifics of cinema [spetsifika kino), along with his search for the appropriate filmic means of transposing various genres established in theater and literature into the cinematic structure, places him - together with Vertov and Eisenstein - among the veterans who encouraged generations of Soviet film directors to create works of extraordinary cinematic values. The basic members of the Kuleshov collective were Vsevolod Pudovkin, Boris Barnet, and Sergei Komarov, while in a short period of time, several actors became the leading Soviet film actors, such as Vladimir Fogel, Peter Galadzhev, Alexandra Khokhlova, and the youngest member of the workshop, Irina Vsevolodnaya (Meyerkhold's daughter). Inspired by American silent slapstick, the detective genre, Griffith's editing technique, and the use of light practiced by the German expressionist filmmakers, Kuleshov developed his own theory of the medium, summarized as follows:

A subtextual reading of Kuleshov's Mr. West

67

The essence of cinema lies in the composition and juxtaposition of the shots. To achieve a cinematic impact on the screen, it is not important what is filmed in a shot, but how one shot replaces the other, and in which way they are structured.3

One can imagine the official reaction to such a "formalist" concept of art, which subsequently forced Kuleshov (like so many other outspoken Soviet artists) to devise a strategy of hiding his views. But as the Stalinist control over arts intensified, the possibility of such a strategy was reduced; in 1937, Eisenstein admitted "serious political mistakes" in conceiving his (aborted) film Bezhin Meadow, while Kuleshov was constantly criticized; and after the 1935 Congress of Film Workers, he was forced to confess to his "formalistic" errors. For those familiar with the style of his major films, it may seem paradoxical that Kuleshov exhibited such an antagonism toward the histrionic expression in cinema, persistently demanding that the theater actors be "forever expelled from the film studio." In 1920, he declared, "Film does not need professional actors, but only 'naturshchiks,' i.e., people who by themselves (as made by their 'papa' and 'mama') represent material for cinematic expression" (italics added). In the same article, he poses the question "What is naturshchik?" followed by a definition: "It is a man with a prominent appearance and well-trained body, capable of performing in front of the camera any kind of physical movement or facial expression of inner emotions, always faithfully following the director's suggestions."4 Following this attitude, Eisenstein later developed his concept of typage (tipazh), as exemplified in Strike (Stachka, 1925), particularly in the director's casting of the "negative" characters (policemen, factory owners, informers, anarchists, provokers, and lumpen-proletariat). As one may assume, Kuleshov's idea of acting in front of the camera derives from the tradition of Meyerhold's "biomechanics," which places a great emphasis on actors' physical behavior as well as symbolic mise-enscene. During my doctoral research at VGIK (the All-State Institute of Cinematography) in 1965, I often attended film acting classes led by Kuleshov's wife, Alexandra Khokhlova: As a guideline, she used the "method" developed by the famous French theatrologist FrancoisAlexander Delsarte (1811-1871), widely known for his systematic elaboration of "expressive mime" (Je mime expressif), and physical movement (Je mouvement physique) as the essence of scenic art [Vessence d'art scenique). She reconfirmed to me that it was the Delsarte type of acting that the Kuleshov collective (kollectiv Kuleshova) employed from the earliest days of its existence. I also discussed with her the importance of examining the relationship and reciprocal influence between the Kuleshov method of acting and the FEKS school (Factory of the Eccentric Actor), as conceived by Kozintsev's and Trauberg's manifest "eccentrism"


68

(ekstsentrizm), fostering dynamism of the music hall in mise-en-scene and cherishing the actor's physical movement. The Kuleshov method (method KuJeshova) was incompatible with Stanislavsky's method, (sistema StanisJavskogo), which demanded that the actors be utterly realistic, and wholly identify themselves with the characters, while subordinating expressive means to their "inner emotional life." Contrary to this, Kuleshov (like Meyerkhold) insisted that the actors begin to create their parts by building up "the rich, flexible, and subtle mechanism of exterior expression" [bogatyi, gibkyi i tonkyi apparat vneshnei vyrazitel'nosti). For Stanislavsky, the emotion was the sole source and control of the actor's each and every reaction; for Kuleshov, the exterior expression was both the goal and the means of the actor's performance. Especially in Mr. West, the interpreters' expressive means prove to be highly stylized, thus making it easier for the actors to alienate themselves from the characters, which confirms the association of the Kuleshov method with Brechtian "Verfremdungseffekt" (the alienation effect). Intentionally distanced from the interpreters, Kuleshov transformed his mise-en-scene into mise-en-shot by means of a rhythmic interaction among the actors' movement, alternation of shots, and the function of light. The interpreter's body and face, farcical gestures and burlesque mime, are the director's main vehicles of controlling not only what occurs on the screen, but also what he or she thinks about the characters and their interaction. Through such a distancing directorial procedure, the satiric power of the film is brought to the fore in the most dynamic sequences, some of which are brilliant examples of the silent film comedy and which helped the Soviet viewer to read the subtextual meaning of the image, hence to understand the real target of the satire. Mr. West demonstrates, in the clearest manner, all the aspects/characteristics of Kuleshov's directorial style. The collective's first full feature, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, (working title: How This Will End? [Chem eto konchitsya?]) was advertised as "the pamphlet on the capitalists' lies about the Soviet Society and an American citizen who believes in such propaganda: conceived and executed in the style of the most popular genre of the bourgeois cinema the detective film (kinodetektiv)."5 The reviews testify that the Soviet viewers were entertained by the burlesque "adventures" of the American senator Mr. West, who childishly believes that a group of street hooligans (who kidnapped him upon his arrival to Moscow) are genuine Bolsheviks. But it is also possible that the same audience saw the film as a parody on the Soviet system as well, a system in which such adventures could not take place - even in a fictional world. With little comparative deliberation, one could realize that the underground "network" of the hoodlums is inconceivable in a totalitarian police state like the USSR. As a consequence, the film's plot could


69

Alexandra Khokhlova, who laughs it up in Lev Kuleshov's double-edged comedy that is both a spoof of America and a celebration of American silent film comedy, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924).

be read both as a satire on the American propaganda against the Communist society, and as a humorous - and quiescent - critique of the existing autocratic political order in the Soviet Union. It seems plausible therefore that the Soviet audience, while laughing at the "absurd" situations of Mr. West (who by his looks and behavior resembles Harold Lloyd), intimately related the kidnappers' "atrocities" to the methods used by the GPU (Stalinist secret police) behind the closed doors of their monstrous enterprise. The Soviet audience probably laughed at Mr. West's crazy exploits, while discreetly chuckling at the presentation of an environment that was a parody of what they knew was the practice common to the Bolshevik establishment. Mr. West is structured in a way that affects the viewer on both narrative (diegetic) and psychological (subliminal) levels: The naivete of the plot (dramatic conflicts) and the stylistic exaggeration of the action (mise-enscene) invests Kuleshov's satire with numerous subtextual implications. No doubt, from today's perspective it is easier - and more appropriate to recognize the film's subtext as a parody of both capitalist and Bolshevik social orders; however, one should not dismiss the possibility of the


70

film's "subversive" impact on the consciousness of the contemporary Soviet audience. At least the sophisticated viewers were capable of accepting the formal/stylistic execution of the film as a means of associating the parodized world with the conditions that initiated, even requested, such a parody. Absurdity of dramatic conflicts and oddity of mise-en-sc&ne are carried to the extreme that generates a distrust in the film's primary signification. As a result, the manifest message becomes transparent, henceforth turning against the filmic text, in the process of which the film's form dissociates itself from the plot, fostering its own import that subverts the intentionality of the narrative. For example, the caricature of the baronness (Khokhlova), particularly her fancy dresses - in spite of her pompous conduct (intended at mocking the vamp as seen in the American silent movies) - could readily affect the viewer's nostalgia for such clothing (condemned as "alien" to the Socialist society), perhaps even nurture a discontent in those spectators who were dispossessed (by force) of their bourgeois belongings. One should keep in mind that Soviet actresses like Khokhlova were privileged to purchase (abroad, or in the special stores inaccessible to the ordinary people) luxurious outfits and wear them in public, without being denounced as bourgeois. In Protazanov's science fiction parody Aelita (1924), for example, the Moscow bourgeoisie attend the clandestine ball: Dressed in worn-out garments, under which they wear a luxurious wardrobe, they dance and drink champagne while remembering "the old beautiful times," before they wrap themselves again in shoddy rags to return to their Soviet reality! Another twofold signification of Kuleshov's satire is Mr. West's trial, which, in many respects, reflects the Bolshevik's own legal system: The death penalty (smertnyi prigovor), reached without any deliberation by two "cojurors" who constantly nod while looking at the "people's judge," could be seen as a mockery of autocratic justice. The most transparent scene is that in which a "positive" character (the party official and/or representative of the GPU) appears deus-ex-machina at the door of the room in which Mr. West is incarcerated by his kidnappers. Patronizing in attitude, wearing a leather jacket (associated with the Soviet secret police), he points his pistol toward the crooks. To dramatize the situation, Kuleshov first shows a leather-gloved hand slowly appearing through a slightly open door, then the pistol in close up, and finally the "liberator's" head covered with a leather cap, all of which stimulates the viewer's associations outside the narrative context. The very casting of a typage for the part of the Bolshevik (lacking any personal, let alone emotional, expression) also contributes to the audience's "second thoughts" about the character. Near the end of the film, when the same Bolshevik guides Mr. West through the Moscow streets, bringing him to Red Square, the face of the


71

"liberator" remains equally impersonal-a bureaucratic executioner of the Party's order to make sure that the foreigners' impressions of the Soviet Union correspond to Lenin's claim that it is "the most advanced society in the history of mankind." Along the same line of propaganda, an intertitle (after Mr. West had realized that his kidnappers were not true Bolsheviks) irresistibly ridicules common official slogans stating that the Bolshevik society is superior to the capitalist one. Personally, I recall how, immediately after the war in Eastern Europe, people discreetly laughed at a popular song whose "libretto" claimed that "America as well as England / Soon will be proletarian lands!" A similar ideological anticipation is contained in the intertitle that announces Mr. West's telegram to his wife in America: DEAR MADGE, I SEND YOU GREETINGS FROM THE SOVIET RUSSIA. BURN THOSE NEW YORK MAGAZINES, AND HANG A PORTRAIT OF LENIN IN MY OFFICE. LONG LIVE THE BOLSHEVIKS! YOUR JOHN.

The wording of this radiogram is typical of the Bolshevik dictums launched during the campaign against capitalism, denounced as the greatest evil of humankind. Conceived as a personal message, the intertitle turns into a derision of Party rhetoric, especially its unrealistic attitude toward social values. Even the use of the famous "Kuleshov effect," which creates the impression that Mr. West himself inspects the military parade in Red Square, sharing company with well-known Party dignitaries (including President Kalinin) has an ironic overtone: Such an extraordinary treatment, especially of an outsider, has been considered inconceivable, if not ludicrous. Again, the audience has been tempted to respond with laughter both to the coup de cinema achieved by the juxtaposition of the authentic archival footage (marching soldiers, Party bosses) and the staged shots involving dramatic personae: This cinematic fantasy, evidently, was possible only in the movies! Ideologically, the most dubious shot is the final close-up of Mr. West looking directly into the camera with an expression of enormous relaxation. The viewer naturally wants to know the actual source of the protagonist's pleasure. Does it emerge from his realization that the Bolsheviks are not so bad as the Americans think, or from the fact that he has finally been liberated from the type of torture imposed on him in the guise of the Bolshevik common practice? But what actually was Mr. West's experience in the "true" land of the Bolsheviks, on the basis of which he sent a laudatory cable to his wife? On the diegetic level, it was merely a brief stroll through Moscow streets, followed by an unexpected


72

observation of the military parade, supervised by the Party guide! In addition, just before the finale, a short montage sequence of the factory machines and workers (edited in the style of Vertov's "film truth" newsreel) has been attached to Mr. West's "adventures/' lacking any image of his own. Obviously, this was the director's concession to political censorship (apparently, the insert was not anticipated in the original script), which makes Mr. West's conclusive excitement even more ambiguous in regard to his capacity of distinguishing between the reality and the fantasy about the land of the Bolsheviks. In contrast to Mr. West's obliviousness, the "experienced" Soviet viewer couldn't be unaware of this distinction, though unable to express it publicly. The Communist vision of the future has always been self-serving, totally divorced from natural historical development, albeit based on the Marxist concept of history. With this contradiction in mind, it would be interesting to find out how Mr. West was seen by those Russian intellectuals who were acquainted with the American Utopian novel Looking Backward: [2000-1887), written in 1887 by Edward Bellamy and widely popular in Russia both before and after the October Revolution. In 1917, 85,000 copies were reprinted; in 1918, 200,000; and in 1919 and 1922 new reprints were made. 6 The protagonist of Bellamy's novel, the American citizen Mr. West, returns to the year 1887 from the year 2000, when the Utopian scheme of industrial organization allows an equal share allotted to all persons in the products of the nation. Kuleshov's protagonist, Mr. West, after visiting the first Socialist country at the outset of the twentieth century, returns to the United States, where the "outdated" social system continues to exist. Within such historical context, Kuleshov's film gains a particular significance for modern Soviet viewers who currently witness a reversed socioeconomic "development" at odds with the predictions of Marxist historians. It was Mr. Gorbachev who, after visiting America, initiated a transformation [^perestroika") of Communist society into what is labeled "market [read: capitalist] economy." The present reality in the former Soviet Union may inspire a new "Kuleshov" to produce "The Extraordinary Adventures of Comrade Gorby in the Land of the Capitalists" (with Woody Allen as the protagonist)! Structurally, Kuleshov's film does not use Aesopian language to convey its latent message in a metaphoric/satiric manner; instead, the film's subtext addresses the viewer's intimate world, touching ideas and judgments antithetical to the Bolshevik view of history and society. It is the film's subtext that encourages the audience to assume a critical attitude toward the primary level of filmic diegesis, while constantly questioning the validity of what is criticized in the film and what were the subliminal intentions of the critic (author). In this dual process of understanding the filmic structure, all manifest messages undergo a deconstruction, thus be-


73

coming "funny" not only for what they reveal on the thematic/narrative level, but also for how they are constructed. Just as Kuleshov stated in 1924, in cinema, the form (structure) is more important than the content (narrative) of the shot(s). Based on an original script by Nikolai Aseyev, used merely as a pretext (povod) for an improvisational collaboration with the members of the Kuleshov workshop, Mr. West exhibits many features of the Kuleshov method, including the famous "Kuleshov effect." Without analyzing them closely, it might be useful to pinpoint some of the film's most evident expressive means: 1. "Biomechanical" style of "gestural" acting, (often turned into acrobatics), particularly during the physical conflicts and characters' emotional forays. 2. Intensification of the facial expressions (pantomime) especially in close ups. 3. Acting without makeup ("igra bez grima"), in the style of the Russian cabaret and American music hall. 4. Eccentric design of the costumes, "embellished" by symbolic details (fivepointed star, hammer and sickle). 5. Expressionistic use of light and chiaroscuro shot composition to achieve a "mysterious" atmosphere (*7ug's light effects"). 6. Geometric blocking of the actors' movement and their interaction - mise-enscene - designed in the manner of the circus numbers, particularly during the fights and "shootouts." 7. Use of the iris/mask to focus on details or to alter the screen's format, thus increasing the tension of the scene. 8. Enforcement of the action's pace through rapid cutting and parallel editing, particularly in the chase sequences. 9. Distinct shooting angle as a means of emphasizing someone's point of view or dramatizing the situation. 10. "Last-minute rescue" as a variation of Griffith montage convention. 11. Accelerated motion for comic purposes, used during chases and burlesque mise-en-scene. 12. The "Kuleshov effect" (in the closing sequence) showing Mr. West "participating" as a dignitary, at the military parade, at Red Square in Moscow. 13. "Special effect" imagery to indicate the character's inner frustration, nightmare, or fantasy ("Everything begins to spin before Mr. West's eyes"). 14. Dynamic camera movement, as the most effective means of creating the cinematic "mise-en-shot," in the chase sequences. 15. Parodic function of the titles conveying the political "message," while containing humorous implications about the characters and the environment in which they live. Through an appropriate interaction of all these expressive means, Kuleshov succeeds in turning a rather simplistic and often trivial plot into a dynamic comic structure with a broader ideological signification and impressive cinematic impact. Accompanied by an imaginative combination of the popular Russian (Soviet) and American (music-hall type) score


74

performed on the piano (as Kuleshov suggested), Mr. West attracts even today's audience on both thematic and formal levels. Notes 1. "Kinoks" is the English translation of Vertov's term kinoki (plural) implying people involved with and enthusiastic about cinema (kino), i.e., Verov's followers. 2. Lev Kuleshov, "Iskusstvo svetotvorchestva," Kino, Moscow, no. 12 (1918); pp. 1-2. 3. Lev Kuleshov, "Amerikanshchina," Kino-fot, Moscow, no. 1 (1922); pp. 14-15. 4. Lev Kuleshov, Iskusstvo kino, Tea-kinopechaV', Moscow (1929), pp. 3-4. 5. See Nikolai Lebedev, Ocherk istorii kino SSSR, Moscow, "Iskusstvo" (1965), p. 219. 6. See Sylvia Bowman, Edward Bellamy Abroad (New York: Twayne, 1962), p. 11.

CHAPTER VII

The strange case of the making of Volga, Volga

Once upon a time, the KGB came to Aesop and got him by the ass. The meaning of this fable is clear; we don't need such fables!

The musical comedy Volga, Volga holds a special place in the history of Soviet film. According to official histories, it is one of the best film comedies, having been awarded Stalin's Award of the First Degree. When reviewing the history of Soviet film, we see that this picture exemplifies the type of Stalinist propaganda film that illustrates the slogan "Life became better, life became more joyful." And though Volga, Volga does not arouse as much passionate controversy as the notorious Cossacks of the Kuban (1950) directed by Ivan Alexandrovich Pyriev, it comes very close. In the case of Volga, Volga, there are two absolutely aggravating circumstances. First there is, apparently, Stalin's personal order, about which G. Alexandrov, with his usual naivete (or something much worse) reported to a correspondent of the evening newspaper Vercherajaya Moskva, "After our films Happy Guys and Circus our task was to create a film comedy without any romantic and melodramatic distractions." If we take into account that the work on the film started in 1936, that it was distributed in 1938, and that Stalin's award was given in 1941, the meaning of Stalin's order becomes clear. In the second place, it was Stalin's favorite picture and he watched it many times. But to analyze this film in light of Stalin's attitude toward it, as, for example, has been done with Mikhail Bulgakov's play The Days of the Turbins (1926), would mean to continue dancing to the leader's tune even today. I think the incubation period is over, and now a film historian can look at this film dialectical ly, both from the sociopsychological content of those times and objectively without any ideological point of view. In this way it will turn out, at least as I see it, that Volga, Volga is one of the most absurd pictures in the history of Soviet cinema, a point that I assume Alexandrov did not suspect in the least. And the history of the making of the film appears even more absurd than the film itself. 75


76

I see my essay as proceeding by hypothesis since I must piece together the whole story with only the available fragments and discover directions through indirections. Too much information is still missing. Nevertheless, I will try to do my best without pretending to offer a full analysis of the film, an act that would require a more rigorous and sophisticated plan to be able to separate the concept from the final result. In general, today's "presumption of guilt" against the film is based on the fact that this film does not match up with the reality of life at that time. But because Volga, Volga was made between 1936 and 1938, it may qualify as the most distorted work in Soviet cinema second only to Cossacks of the Kuban. The notion of genre in this case is not taken into consideration at all. Fortunately, our conference as a whole treats the question of genre. But I do not wish to limit myself to satire only, though Volga, Volga presents an officially acclaimed, truly classically satiric figure in the bureaucrat, Byvalov, played by Igor Ilinsky. Rather I wish to broaden the theme of our discussion to speak of parody, the grotesque, and the absurd, for these things may become more effective than satire. And then it will turn out that it is impossible to think of a situation more absurd than the one that occurred during the shooting of this most "thoughtless" slapstick comedy. There exist several announcements of Volga, Volga and documents that accompanied the release of this film. Any film art historian would have been at his wit's end had he discovered these. The announcements for the picture printed in Czechoslovakia reads, "Script by A. Erdman, M. Volpin, G. Alexandrov, and director of photography, V. Petrov." In the Democratic Republic of Germany, however, we find the following: "Directed by G. Alexandrov and cameraman, V. Pereslavtsev." The Italian announcement is even further afield: "Written and directed by G. Alexandrov and cameraman, V. Pekov." If we look at the original certificate of the film's registration, we discover that the scriptwriter and director is G. Alexandrov and that the cameramen are V. Petrov and V. Pereslavtsev. But in the detailed catalogue of 1961, we find again that the script was written by M. Volpin, N. Erdman, and G. Alexandrov and that the director of photography was V. Petrov. At the same time in many press accounts of the shooting, we look in vain for Petrov or Pereslavtsev but find instead that direction is by G. Alexandrov and that V. Nilsen was his codirector and director of photography. Furthermore, this report was not published at the beginning of the shooting but after three months work along the Moscow River, as well as the Oka, Volga, Kama, and Chusovaya rivers. Even before shooting began, Alexandrov and Nilsen took a trip throughout the Urals. So the picture became totally confused.


77

Lyubov Orlova, the striking star in Alexandrov's Volga, Volga (1938).

But everything becomes clear if one remembers that the film was produced in the 1930s. Reprisals among filmmakers, as well as among representatives of other arts in general, were relatively few. Volga, Volga, however, was an exception. With the few references available, a researcher can imagine the following scenario for the film's creation. G. Alexandrov directed Happy Guys from the script written by N. Erdman and V. Mass, and V. Nilsen was the cameraman. By that time, N. Erdman had already become the author of the famous play Mandate that was staged in Meyerhold's theater where his previous play, Suicide, had already been forbidden. It happened after the preview by a government commission headed by L. Kagamovitch. Meyerhold's intercession as well as Stanislavsky's, who also wanted to stage the play in his own theater,


78

failed to help. And when the filmmakers were on location during the shooting of Happy Guys, V. Katchalov being a little high, recited one of Erdman's fables in Stalin's presence. (These fables are sometimes attributed to V. Mass.) As a result, both authors were arrested on location and exiled to the Siberian town of Emiseysk. The verdict was relatively mild because the 1930s had only just begun. After his release, Erdman was deprived of some rights, such as the freedom to live in Moscow, and he had to move to the town of Kalimin situated a hundred kilometers from Moscow together with M. Volpin, who was also just released from labor camps. Apparently G. Alexandrov invited them to work on Volga, Volga at this same time. Was this being faithless to a friend? Was it courage? Or was he being light-minded or spoiled? Thus, Alexandrov's coauthors were knowingly disgraced and could only return to Moscow illegally. The director of photography and codirector, V. Nilsen, who was, on the other hand, a very respected follower of orders, was generously awarded by Stalin on the eve of the Ail-Union Conference. But when the shooting of Volga, Volga was nearly over, V. Nilsen was arrested. There was a halt to production, and a director of photography was not immediately appointed, hence the discrepancy in the various credits. Yet this was not all. According to the evidence given by a remarkable actress, M. V. Mironova, whose part was already reduced during the editing so as not to compete with the performance by Alexandrov's actress wife, Orlova, the production manager, Zahak Darvetsky, was also arrested. The political editor at the time concluded: "The artistic level of this film is not high enough. It is too drawn out. There are many trite comic situations, scenes at the Olympiad at the end of the film are absolutely false."1 He then made the following recommendation: "To cut out the whole eleventh reel (the end of the film). To cut out the episodes depicting turmoil during the Olympiad - the scene in which the captain pulls Strelka's pants down, the whole scene of love being declared between Strelka and Alosha that takes place under the table, the table collapsing, the chairman running around with the prize." We should, however, be fair to the director, who did not sacrifice either the falling pants or the episode under the table. But he had to give up something. V. Smekhov, the actor from the famous Taganka Theater, recalls the episode that N. Erdman told him: Yes, when the film was ready and only the credits were lacking, it was shown to Stalin, and Grisha (Alexandrov) came to Kalinin where I was serving my exile and he told me, "You see, Kolya, our film has become the leader's favorite comedy. And of course you understand that it will be a lot better for you if your name does not appear in the credits. Do you understand?" And I said, "I understand."2


79

That this episode refers to Volga, Volga is confirmed by N. Mandebschtam, who was in exile in Kalinin with her husband at the same time as N. Erdman. So we arrive at the "presumed guilty" status: It is impossible to imagine a more absurd history than that of this joyful comedy's production. But what was the degree of N. Erdman's participation in making the carefree Volga, Volga? And were the scenes of Byvalov written in fact with the "satirical pen" of the "mandate" author as K. Mintz remembers?3 And were there others? Was it true that he referred to the film as a total mess? Visuals - the image, picture - are primary in cinema, and Erdman was a man of letters. Was N. Mandelstain's suggestion that "Erdman doomed himself to silence if only to just keep alive" correct?4 In particular, she remembers him telling of a plot of a play, built on the dealings of an ordinary citizen and bureaucracy as a "farewell fable" about the GPU (Political State Administration, the predecessor of the KGB). Was this the last thing Erdman talked about? Were the verses written in 1921 a prophecy? Time's colorless river pulls me impulsively or gently. Do what you want, but don't doom me, a criminal for misery. Nobody today will be able to answer these questions completely and finally. But in reading his interludes written to some other authors' plays or even his fleeting everyday jokes (when in NKVD's musical ensemble, where he was taken along with Volpin during World War II and was given a trenchcoat, he said, "You know, Misha [Volpin], it seems as if they came to arrest me"), you understand that in his heart, Erdman never changed. Someone — K. Mintz perhaps — notes that the young Erdman wrote couplets and sketches before he wrote Mandate, which were just as important as his serious plays. But it is just in the Russian tradition that cabaret even political cabaret — and other lesser arts are not held in the same respect they command in Germany and France. In light of everything just mentioned, I'd like to put forward an hypothesis that I am unable to substantiate. Getting back to Volga, Volga, I repeat that I find it to be one of the most absurd films in Soviet cinema, a selfparody of the genre, though I suspect that Alexandrov, though well meaning enough, was not shrewd enough. What goes for Erdman in Volga, Volga is perhaps his creative heritage. As stated in the film's initial synopsis, it is traditionally considered that Volga, Volga deals with the "richness and prosperity of the people's talents in our country. Within the limits of this theme, the film depicts bureaucracy, sluggishness and careerism in a satirical way." In fact the town of Melkoretchensk, which is shown in the first half of the picture, is one of the most amazing parodies in the film. During the


80

twentieth year of Soviet power (the film was being prepared to commemorate the jubilee), what do we find in Melkoretchensk? There is a general flourishing of people's talents and a universal idiocy. I don't know whether a contemporary satiric writer could invent such a dreary spot while depicting the era of five-year plans. The telegraph was practically unknown in this town. Let's recall how the joyful Strelka delivers a telegram to Byvalv that announces a parade of folk talent. The fastest means of information comes across the slowest means of transport, which is the ferry boat that is stuck in the middle of the river, and the telegram has to be delivered by means of song as in past days: Civilization stumbles on the town of Melkoretchensk. The telegram is being taken to Byvalov, the official object for satirical exposure, by a water carrier who is unthreatened by unemployment, for in this town they have not only no telegraph, but no water pipes as well. The only telephone in town that night connects Byvalov sitting in his office on one floor with someone on the next floor, but even this is shown not to be working. The whole town is busy doing only one thing: singing and dancing. If we turn to the genre of fable we remember a well-known tale by Krylov, "The Dragonfly and the Ant": "You were singing all the time. It's a serious business, so we can go and dance now." In Volga, Volga, not a single institution in town minds its business: They don't feed you in the local diner. A janitor doesn't look after the building or clean the yards or streets because everybody is singing and dancing under the leadership of the indefatigable Strelka, the letter carrier (though letters are apparently secondary to telegrams to her). Musical fusions of classics and balalaika, also representing a high degree of parody, are brilliantly realized by J. Dumaevsky. If we return for a minute to Erdman's works, we shall find in them a comparison with his satirical plays Mandate and Suicide in which the main characters (i.e., the intelligentsia), were in one way or another late to accept Soviet power. The object of parody in Volga, Volga is for the first time that "sacred beast" which was always something called "the people." One can suggest that the images of Melkoretchensk were inspired by forced acquaintance of the authors with small towns where civilization hadn't dropped in despite the fact that this was the twentieth year of Soviet power. This is true even more so of Melkoretchensk's means of transportation. The town has only one ship, which is a paddle boat built in the last century and not in Russia. (It was a gift from America.) With huge paddles it nevertheless moves very slowly as Melkoretchensk's amateur singers and dance ensemble set sail for Moscow where the Olympiad is going to take place. Their rival competitors use even more ancient rafts and vessels. These were medieval Viking-like vessels, built for the film


81

Stenka Razin (1937), that Alexandrov for the fun of it decided to use in Volga, Volga. Furthermore these boats have the kind of pilots and captains who stand by the steering wheel and manage not to miss a single sandbar. At one point, one of them stamps his foot and falls through all of the ship's decks. Luckily enough, the "Great Helmsman" (one of Stalin's names) himself did not pay attention to this parody even though many people were being killed for saying much less. Melkoretchensk's Russia turns quite unexpectedly into some sort of industrial super power. Squadrons of planes, white steamboats, and other signs of the new Socialist era are all over the place, and the absurdism of the sudden change leaves no doubts whatsoever as to the sense of parody enthusiastically embraced by the director. The cloudless festivity of Alexandrov's screen kitsch together with the film's structure make the film quite offensive to my point of view. But Alexandrov's cinema is the subject for deeper research, which I cannot go into here. In conclusion to my hypothesis suggested earlier, I'd like to quote M. V. Minonova, the remarkable actress, friend to Mass and Erdman, and one of the last living members of the Volga, Volga cast. She says, "Volodja Nilsen was exiled: He was the director of photography, and Zahar Dosetsky was exiled as well during the shooting: He was one of the best production managers. People kept disappearing. And sometimes it happened just like that: You would be sitting with your friends, three of you, and one of them told a joke. Your other friend laughed and you didn't. The next day the friend who told the joke was missing. Which of us informed on him? Maybe some of the rooms were bugged. My husband always had a briefcase ready in our hall with a toothbrush and so forth. "So people were gradually disappearing from our film. When we finished shooting, the cameraman was gone. Alexandrov was not too brave a man, as you know. And if he only understood what had happened. By the way, I thought about it then too. If he understood, maybe he wouldn't have made the picture at all. This crazy ensemble was too much of a parody. Then all of the ships and steamboats. "My part ceased to exist. Alexandrov cut it out. It was a love story with Jutyshkin, a parallel romantic story, but it was impossible, of course. "Zahar Daretsky disappeared as early as during preproduction. He was a famous production manager. I have no doubts that the script was written as a parody. But if Grigory Vasilevitch understood that, he wouldn't have directed the picture. And we talked about it with Mass and Vladimir Zaharovitch, who would later say, 'Alexandrov was not so brave to direct it knowing what he was doing.' "


82

Notes 1. Protocol N. 538/38 (Soviet Film Archives, Moscow), dated April 11, 1938. 2. N. Erdman, Plays, Letters, Documents: Contemporary Remembrances (Moscow: Iskusstvo Publishers, 1990). 3. Ibid., p. 401. 4. Ibid., p. 443.

CHAPTER VIII

Circus of 1936: Ideology and entertainment under the big top

Stalin clearly understood the value of film as a means of implanting official myths among the masses. He focused particularly on the most popular genres — such as the musical comedy - as an innocuous and willing vessel for ideological edification through entertainment. One of the most widely seen musical comedies in the Soviet Union, Circus (1936), is a classic example of Stalin's use of film as an expression of his ideological world view. It is also the first conscious attempt to produce a musical comedy according to the model of Socialist Realism. Movies for the millions: Combining ideology and entertainment Circus was the second in a spate of musical screen hits by director Grigory Alexandrov between 1934 and 1940, marking the golden era of the musical comedy in Soviet cinema. His other major films during this period were Happy Guys (1934), Volga, Volga (1938) and The Radiant Road (1940), all massive successes. It is no accident that the height of the musical comedy coincided with the darkest hours of the Stalinist terror. As Soviet reality became ever more twisted, Stalin raised the volume on propaganda by recruiting all mass media to the task of maintaining the mythical illusion that life had indeed become brighter and happier. Focusing on cinema's ability to reach the entire Soviet nation, both rural and urban, literate and illiterate, Stalin used film to legitimize and consolidate his position in the Kremlin palace. In a country where the intelligentsia was but an island in a sea of peasants, the popularization of an official myth through film was much more effective than the use of rational arguments in achieving a particular political aim. As Stalin once said, "Cinema is the greatest means of mass agitation. Our task is to make good use of it."1 Boris Shumiatsky, the head of Soviet cinema at the time, responded to this challenge by ordering film directors to combine ideology with mass entertainment. In a 1935 decree entitled "Movies for the Millions," Shumiatsky asserted that the Soviet public needed such genres as drama, 83


84

comedy, and fairytale because of their "energizing emotions, cheerfulness, . . . joie-de-vivre and . . . laughter. The victorious class wants to laugh with joy. That is its right, and Soviet cinema must provide the audience with this joyful Soviet laughter."2 These seemingly innocent productions would become one of the main vehicles for conveying the legitimizing myths of Stalin's rule on the Soviet screen in the 1930s. From Happy Guys to Circus: The politicization of cinema The first musical comedy that truly epitomized Shumiatsky's prescribed fusion of ideology and entertainment was Circus, released in 1936. It represented a marked contrast to Alexandrov's 1934 comedy, Happy Guys. The differences between the two films reflect a key shift in the government's cultural policy and the general political pathos between 1934 and 1936. In Happy Guys, Alexandrov strove to "de-ideologize" the script, claiming that "Soviet comedy had become too problematic and had ceased being funny."3 He defended laughter for laughter's sake and produced an eccentric, slapstick jazz review with only a hint of ideology compared to his subsequent productions. Two years later, with the release of the heavily politicized Circus, Alexandrov was singing a different tune. Instead of relieving the script of its "ideologically loaded moments," as he had done with the Happy Guys,4 he took the original work of Kataev, Ilf, and Petrov and imparted such a strong ideological slant to it that the authors withdrew their names from the film credits in protest.5 Defending his political rehashing of the script, Alexandrov later claimed, "We feared that the genre of light eccentric comedy [used in Happy Guys] would be unsuitable for conveying significant social substance, and so we turned it into a melodrama."6 Ironically, two years earlier, Alexandrov had defended the legitimacy of his "light eccentric comedy" against conservative critics attacking its lack of social substance. By adopting the format of a melodrama in Circus, Alexandrov also disassociated himself from Eisenstein's "montage of attractions," which he had adopted in Happy Guys. He turned instead to the more conventional plot development promoted by Shumiatsky and the burgeoning Stalinist school of filmmakers. In addition, while the lyrical stars of Happy Guys basically sang, danced, romanced, and just goofed around, by 1936 Alexandrov demanded a stronger sense of social purpose in his characters. He asserted that the heroes of Soviet movies should not just sing, but also "create, struggle and conquer."7 These images were the hallmark of what Katerina Clark calls "the heroic age," when "the new Soviet man" portrayed in art, literature, film, and theater surpassed all human limitations to achieve unprecedented feats.8 If these new Stalinist heroes were to sing at all, their songs were to convey a highly principled, patriotic love of one's

Circus of 1936: Ideology and entertainment

85

homeland, not merely a romantic love between a man and a woman, as in Happy Guys. In short, these heroes were meant to be larger-than-life models for the masses. They were to be the personification of genuine socialist values, meant to teach the Soviet nation the true path to socialism. Numerous factors contributed to the marked differences between Happy Guys and Circus. The official imposition of Socialist Realism at the 1934 Congress of the Union of Writers, just as Happy Guys was being released, imposed heavy-handed ideological strictures affecting all subsequent films. Shumiatsky's 1935 decree entitled "Movies for the Millions" further specified the impact of Socialist Realism on film, demanding clearly constructed plots, understandable characters, and conventional montage. At the Ail-Union Creative Conference of Soviet Cinema Workers held in 1935, the new Stalinist school of filmmakers denounced the abstract, intellectual experimentalism of the revolutionary school of filmmakers (Eisenstein, Vertov, etc.) and instead promoted the creed of Socialist Realism that aimed to make cinema accessible to the masses.9 As a former apprentice of Eisenstein, Alexandrov may have felt under particular pressure after this conference to distance himself from the censured director. In the meantime, Stalin himself was gaining an increasingly powerful grip on Soviet cinema by centralizing film production in the hands of a single state agency - the GUKF - and by closely inspecting almost every film before its release.10 Thus, between 1934 and 1936, the last sparks of spontaneity in Soviet cinema died out, as experimentalism gave way to an officially established code. Circus as a cinematic ode to the Constitution of 1936: The historical context Circus was the first musical comedy to reflect these far-reaching changes in the film industry. Modeled on the formula of Socialist Realism, it was exactly what Shumiatsky had prescribed, an ideal fusion of ideology and entertainment that served to convey legitimizing myths to an unsuspecting audience. The principle myth that Circus embodied was the Stalinist Constitution of 1936. The production of Circus unfolded simultaneously with the writing of the Constitution, which was accompanied by great fanfare, panegyrics, and a huge campaign to "encourage" public participation in what was proclaimed to be a "historic democratic process." Stalin used all means of influence at his disposal to convince the Soviet public and the world at large of the authenticity of these claims, and the cinema was a key element in this media barrage. Liubov Orlova, the star of Circus, wrote in her memoirs that every time she heard a radio report on the preparation of the Constitution, she would notify songwriter Lebedev-Kumach, who would then compose his own "musical declaration" of the Constitution to


86

include in the movie's score.11 The theme song, "Song of the Motherland," clearly reflects the spirit of the Constitution. Its verses proclaimed, "We write the international Stalinist law in golden letters, words whose grandeur and glory will never fade with time" 12 and echoed the document's central tenet that "every person has the right to study, play and work." The refrain reinforced the sense of well-being and security advanced by the Constitution, asserting, "I know of no other country where one can breathe so freely."13 Like the movie Circus, this internationally touted Constitution was in and of itself a spectacular "trompe l'oeil" that created a largely convincing facade of prosperity, democracy, and equal rights throughout the Soviet land. It is surprising in retrospect how many major figures worldwide seemed to have believed that this document represented actual fact. According to historian Nicholas Timasheff, when the 1936 Constitution became public, "the general impression abroad was that dictatorship would be curtailed, democracy introduced and political freedom established."14 Its central assertion was that the USSR had finally achieved true socialism. In the Socialist economy, there was no unemployment, no poverty, no economic crises, and no class exploitation. All antagonistic classes kulaks, speculators, merchants, and capitalists - had been liquidated. There remained only the peasants, the workers, and the intelligentsia. As a result, the USSR had become a great family of nationalities in which all minorities were equal before the law and racism was spurned. This glowing scenario had enormous political benefits for Stalin. Internationally, by presenting an image of internal unity and strength, Stalin undoubtedly hoped to deter Nazi Germany from carrying out its expressed plans to "liberate the Ukraine from the Moscow yoke" and dismember the empire.15 In addition, he hoped to gain the confidence of the Western powers, whose cooperation in countering the growing wave of fascism was becoming a matter of increasing concern to him. By portraying the USSR as a prosperous constitutional democracy, Stalin tried to shed his image of dictatorial pariah and secure acceptable relations with the West. Domestically, the mythical veneer provided a convenient subterfuge for Stalin's ruthless drive to attain absolute power through mass terror and repression. It created the impression that life had indeed become happier and more prosperous under Stalin and that there was truly no other country where people enjoyed such freedom and collective wealth. Stalin encouraged a xenophobic sense of security by contrasting this socialist "Garden of Eden" with the projected misery and terror of fascist and bourgeois countries. The plot of Circus skillfully weaves four themes from the constitution into its melodramatic base: the antagonism between socialism and fascism, the superiority of the USSR over the United States, the genuine egalitarianism of the Soviet system, and the image of the USSR as the ideal


87

refuge for victims of fascism and capitalism worldwide. In brief, the plot sketches a symbolic "love triangle" between a victimized American, a villainous Nazi, and an exemplary Soviet hero. The film begins as stunning American circus performer Marion Dixon flees the United States to escape being lynched because of her mulatto child, the result of a past affair with a black man. She ends up in a circus troupe in the USSR, where her manager, an abusive Nazi figure named Kneishitz, tries to possess her by blackmail, threatening to cause her public disgrace by revealing the "terrible secret" of her child. Marion, however, develops a romance with Soviet circus performer Martynov, who teaches her the superiority and grandeur of socialism through his principled actions and successful attempt at a circus feat that surpasses anything in the American troupe's own repertoire. When Kneishitz finally plays his last card and parades Marion's child around the circus ring to defame the young woman and repel Martynov, the Soviet audience instead embraces the boy in true internationalist spirit and sings him a lullaby. Kneishitz's scheme is foiled and Marion joins her true love, the unruffled Martynov, in her new and permanent homeland. Martynov versus Kneishitz: The battle between socialism and fascism The innate antagonism between socialism and fascism - as played out between Martynov and Kneishitz - is a guiding force in Circus. Alexandrov conveyed this theme as a black and white struggle between good and evil, ensuring its accessibility to even the most unsophisticated audience. Alexandrov also leaves no doubt as to the depth of this antagonism: In one scene, the two stare angrily at each other through a window, and the panes quickly freeze over from the chill of their mutual hatred. According to Alexandrov's biographer, Ivan Frolov, the "Russian [Martynov] and the German [Kneischitz] are representatives of different systems - the world of imperialism and its cult of quick money and dirty business on the one hand and the world of socialism, preaching high moral and humanitarian principles on the other."16 Each "system" attempts to win the heart of the American, and the guiding values of each are revealed by their different methods of achieving victory. Kneishitz's tactics are ruthless and uncivilized. He tries to woo Marion by seducing her with expensive furs, blackmailing her, and threatening physical harm to her love interest, Martynov. In the last case, he tempts Martynov's trapeze partner, Raika, into eating too many sweets, knowing that she will gain weight and throw off the delicate balance of the duo's aerial stunts. As a result, Martynov is injured, though not fatally (he is after all the good guy), and Kneischitz's plot inevitably fails. Another of Kneishitz's despicable schemes is to reroute a love letter that Marion had intended for Martynov so that it falls into the wrong hands and nearly


88

causes the heartbroken American to leave the USSR in despair. But none of these blows are fatal. Instead, they only strengthen Martynov's resolve to defeat the evil forces of fascism. In contrast to Kneishitz, our Soviet hero is a strong paternal figure, gently leading Marion to the "correct" path by serving as a living example of good Socialist values and decency. In one episode, he uses the civilized medium of music to win her over, singing the praises of socialism in "Song of the Motherland" and teaching her to sing in tune with him and with true conviction. According to conservative film critic Rostislav Iurenev, Martynov exercises patience and compassion in inspiring in Marion "a keen awareness of that great, strong, and kind country where people live joyfully and freely."17 In this way, Alexandrov effectively contrasts the amoral and treacherous methods of fascism with the lofty principles of socialism. Alexandrov's use of caricatures is also effective in magnifying the battle between good and evil. As the "face of fascism," Kneishitz is a truly despicable and villainous creature, with a thin black moustache; piercing, ratlike eyes; and a sinister cape. He exudes a false prowess by puffing himself up artificially with an inflatable muscle suit that enlarges his chest. When Kneishitz's comical apparatus accidentally deflates at one point, the audience sees "fascism unmasked" in all its treachery and cowardice. The fascist German is not as formidable as he seems and is merely bloated up with lies and deception. This episode clearly reflects the political pathos of the time, when the "razobJachenie," or unmasking, of fascist villains became a daily headline in the news and a key element to Stalinist mass political ritual. The image of the villain in disguise was originally a key component of the Russian fairytale that Stalin adopted for his own purposes and exploited to its most grotesque extreme in the infamous show trials of 1937-38. In stark contrast to Kneishitz, Martynov represents Alexandrov's vision of the new Soviet man. He is classically handsome and clean cut with a strong jaw, broad shoulders, a dazzling white smile, and cutting blue eyes. Guided by unyielding principles rather than capricious emotions, he valiantly defends the dignity of his motherland against fascism's aggressive tendencies and capitalism's claim to superiority. However, he comes off as a very wooden and one-sided character, resembling one of the many faceless workers on billboards throughout the Soviet Union. Perhaps Alexandrov was trying too hard to make amends for his "errors" in Happy Guys, in which he cast jazzman Leonid Utesov as an eccentric, lovesick shepherd, obviously not the epitome of the positive hero that would later become a required element in all films. With the government's growing intolerance for political mistakes in art, Alexandrov could not afford to take any risks.


89

The superpower "race for space" Another central theme in Circus is the superiority of socialism over capitalism, and consequently, of the USSR over the United States. One attribute of socialism's superiority is the fact that whereas Marion recoils from Kneishitz in terror, the Soviets are not intimidated by the fascist's threats. When Raika discovers Kneishitz's wicked schemes, for instance, she does not flee but instead boldly pursues him. The American belle, however, seems to need the moral support of the Soviet Martynov behind her before she feels strong enough to defy Kneishitz. Martynov strives to demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet system by showing that he himself - as a typical Soviet man - can surpass even the most impressive American. He promises to take Marion to unprecedented heights, literally. After watching the American circus troupe's trapeze and cannon act called "Flight to the Moon," he resolves to perform an even more difficult feat, calling it "Flight to the Universe." Reflecting the cult of the aviation hero that became popularized by Stalin in the 1930s, Martynov enters the arena accompanied by winged motorcycles and dressed in a Flash Gordon—style outfit, complete with cosmic helmet and elaborate wings. He catapults into the air and actually begins flying around under the big top defying all laws of gravity and proving the superiority of the Soviet system. This image of the superhuman powers of the new Soviet man exemplified the soaring spirit of the 1930s, which Clark has called an era of "idealism verging on mysticism."18 It was a time of Stakhanovites and arctic explorers, death-defying superachievers that Stalin promoted as "the paragons of the new master race."19 Martynov's aerial acrobatics showed viewers that, under the conditions of socialism, human beings could surpass all physical limitations and leap from prosaic reality to a superior plane in a single bound. Ironically, however, this scene glorifying the superiority of the Soviet man actually could be taken right out of a Busby Berkeley musical. Martynov's stunt is followed by a grand spectacle of formation dancing as slim, sequined women bearing hundreds of tiny torches and ribbons create a human wedding cake in motion, its various layers rotating in opposite directions. The amazing strength and prowess exhibited by Martynov in his "Flight to the Universe" clearly produces the desired impression on Marion, who resolves to stay with him in this land of fairytales come true. Thus, while Circus leaves no doubt about the superiority of the USSR over the United States, it implies that certain Americans may be "converted" to the cause of socialism and even adopt the USSR as their second homeland. Marion's conversion takes on the character of a religious revelation with erotic overtones. She is drawn to the pure goodness of


90

socialism and rejects the glamorous evils of capitalism, falling in love with Martynov and all that he represents. In Iurenev's words, "Marion feels love and at first a confused, then a powerful sense of that large, strong, and kind country where people live joyfully and freely."20 Here Martynov takes on the role of a politically mature mentor who helps the heroine develop a true Socialist consciousness, thus playing out a classic theme in the Socialist Realist novel of the 1930s.21 Reflecting the conservative social values promoted by Stalin at the time that reinforced the traditional roles of men and women, Martynov adopts a strong paternal attitude towards Marion, who sees in him a virile husband and father for her child. When Martynov strikes up a tune - in this case "Song of the Motherland" — she follows. "Marion repeats him in an increasingly loud and confident voice," Iurenev notes. "Her eyes sparkle with happiness. Her voice blends with the strong, pure voice of her beloved."22 Marion's new homeland: The great family of Soviet nationalities The culmination of Marion's conversion to socialism takes place in the film's dramatic climax, as Kneishitz parades her mulatto child around the big top, expecting to disgrace the young American in the eyes of Martynov and the entire Soviet public. Instead of reacting with horror, however, the Soviet audience begins laughing at Kneishitz's pathetic scheme, then jeering at him with malicious sneers characteristic of the officially promoted attitude toward unmasked "enemies of the people" at the time. Drowning Kneishitz's foul-smelling racism in a medley of voices united as one, the multinational Soviet crowd begins crooning a lullaby to the frightened little boy. Alexandrov effectively pans across an ethnically diverse audience of Ukrainians, Tatars, Georgians, Jews, and Negroes, who sing separate verses in their own native tongue, then join together to sing the refrain in a perfectly harmonious Russian. As Alexandrov wrote, "The Soviet Union is portrayed as the only country in which the national question is resolved, in which genuine internationalism exists in actual fact."23 Soviet viewers absorb this message through the gentle and imperceptible medium of the lullaby as its lyrics reassure listeners of all origins that "a hundred paths, a hundred roads are open to you." The Soviet circus director ends this touching scene on a comical but ideologically orthodox note by announcing to the crowd: "This means that in our country we love all children. Have as many black, white, red, even blue, even pinkstriped, even dappled gray babies as you'd like."24 Following on the heels of the lullaby scene, the carefully staged finale of Circus portrays the Soviet family of nationalities marching in unison across Red Square, all dressed in the same dazzling white turtlenecks. The leading role of the Russians is symbolized by Martynov's place at the


91

head of the parade. Strong, confident, and possessed of exceptionally Aryan features, Martynov brandishes the banner of socialism on high and sets the pace for the rest of the nation. Frolov compared Martynov to the classic hero of Russian "byliny," describing him as "a stately blonde . . . bearing the Russian name Ivan and resembling a 'bogatyr' of ancient chronicles."25 This scene draws unmistakable parallels with the parade of Hitler youth in Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. It reveals the evolution of Soviet cinema toward a totalitarian model as it began to assimilate many of the film formulas used by Hitler and Mussolini to achieve the desired propaganda aims. While Nazi directors contrasted the "brilliant virtues" of the Aryans with the "negative influences" of the Jews, however, Alexandrov contrasted the idyllic image of Soviet internationalism with the racism of capitalist and fascist countries, particularly the United States. In his book Epokha i kino, he wrote: "Singing the praises of Soviet laws and the internationalism of Soviet society was all the more convincing when contrasted with the barbaric, hateful, racist laws of fascism. I encountered fascists, and offensive incidences of racism more than once in the U.S.A. I gathered the materials for the prologue [of Circus] from eyewitness accounts."26 As Circus opens, the viewer does indeed experience racism's ugly underbelly by viewing Marion's desperate escape from the mob of American rednecks seeking to lynch her. Iurenev gives a particularly melodramatic account of this scene, clearly conveying his utter disgust and indignation: "For only a moment we see the sweaty faces, flabby stomachs, porkpie hats and striped suspenders of the American merchants, for only a moment we hear their belabored breathing, their beastly yelps: 'Get her!' But we remember [these images] for a long time." 27 Alexandrov's use of such powerful melodramatic episodes aimed to impress the desired ideological values onto the hearts and minds of Soviet audiences. Among all the cinematic genres, melodrama possesses a unique ability to engage the deepest emotions of the viewer and thus to appeal to passion rather than reason, to the irrational rather than the rational. This was one of Stalin's most effective methods of conveying to the masses the legitimizing myths that reinforced his rule. As Alexandrov wrote in 1937, "We tried in this film to mobilize all the strength and power of the genre to convey the main, political message mercilessly mocking and unmasking the fascist policy of racism."28 By vicariously experiencing Marion's terrifying encounter with a mob of racists, the Soviet viewer undoubtedly felt a far deeper and more lasting sense of distress and disgust at American racists than by simply reading a newspaper article about the Ku Klux Klan, particularly since many older Soviets at that time were still illiterate and relied largely on films for information about the world outside their small villages.


92

Whether or not Circus achieved the desired ideological impact can so far only be deduced, since empirical research on this subject is in its early stages and has not yet produced any concrete results. 29 However, it is known that Circus was immensely popular, drawing an audience of 4 million in Leningrad and Moscow during the first month after its release.30 The majority of Soviets who lived through the thirties remembers this movie and particularly its theme song, "Song of the Motherland." For some Soviets, these memories inspire a nostalgic yearning for a time of great idealism and collective fervor. For others, they are only a bitter reminder of the yawning gap between fact and fiction during the years of the terror. In either case, however, Circus was clearly a milestone in the history of Soviet cinema comedies. It signaled a transition from "razvlechenie" to "razoblachenie," from entertainment to unmasking, from laughter for laughter's sake to the subordination of comedy to political aims. It was the political candy apple that secured Alexandrov's position as a master director in the eyes of the "Great Teacher." From that point on, the musical comedy took on an increasingly propagandists role in Soviet cinema, acting as a brilliant facade of laughter and gaiety while, behind the scenes, millions suffered unspeakable tragedy. Notes 1. A. Latyshev: "Vziaf eto delo v svoi ruki," Sovetskii Ekran, no. 22 (1988):

32-5. 2. Richard Taylor, The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896-1939 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 369. 3. Ivan Frolov, Grigorii Aleksandrov (Moskow: Izd-vo "Iskusstvo," 1976), p. 23. 4. Ibid., p. 62. 5. Ibid., p. 61. 6. Ibid., p. 62. 7. Ibid., p. 67. 8. Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). 9. Luda Schnitzer and Jean Schnitzer, Histoire du cinema sovietique, 1919-1940 (Paris: Pygmalion/Gerard Watelet, 1979), pp. 336-46, and Taylor, The Film Factory, p. 348. 10. Viktor Matizen, "Dalekaia iunost' sovetskogo ekrana," Sovetskii Ekran, 18 (1988): 61-4. 11. Frolov, Grigorii Aleksandrov, p. 64. 12. These lines also recall the grandiose slogans of Hitler's "Thousand-Year Reich." 13. Vasillii Lebedev-Kumach, Stikhotvorenii i Pesni (Leningrad: Sovetskii Pisatel', 1950). 14. Nicholas S. Timasheff, The Great Retreat (New York: Arno, 1972), p. 94.


93

15. P. P. Postyshev, Pod znamenem Stalinskoi Konstitutsii (Partizdat TsK VKP (b) 1936), p. 65. 16. Frolov, Grigorii AJeksandrov, p. 76. 17. Rostislav Iurenev, Kratkaia istoriia sovetskogo kino (Moscow: Biuro propagandy sovetskogo kinoiskusstva, 1984), p. 232. 18. Clark, The Soviet Novel, p. 137. 19. Ibid. 20. Iurenev, Kratkaia istoriia, p. 233. 21. Clark, The Soviet Novel 22. Iuvenev, Kratkaia istoriia, p. 234. 23. Frolov, Grigorii Aleksandrov, p. 64. 24. Iurenev, Kratkaia istoriia, p. 237. 25. Frolov, Grigorii Aleksandrov, p. 64. 26. Grigorii Aleksandrov, Epokha i kino (Moscow: Izd-vo "politicheskaia literatura," 1976), p. 190. 27. Iurenev, Kratkaia istoriia, p. 230. 28. Ibid. 29. Soviet film critic Maya Turovskaya is currently conducting research on Soviet audience preferences of the 1930s that will shed greater light on the social impact of such films as Circus. 30. Frolov, Grigorii AJeksandrov, p. 73.

CHAPTER IX


It is quite well known that the more rotten something is in any nation, the blacker is its humor. Thus, black humor appears during the crucial moments of the "rotten nation" of history, either during wars, stagnation periods, or revolutions. Black humor does not appear during perestroikas - especially those imposed from above - but that is another story. Of course, black humor does not appeal to every nation. It has to have certain cultural roots. For example, even at the most depressing moments of German history, black humor never really took root. Whereas in Spain, it happened to become one of the most popular instruments for preserving a sense of sanity in society. In Russian culture, the tradition of black humor goes back to skomorokhi (itinerant minstrels) entertaining people at fairs, Jubochnaya Jiteraturea ("chap" literature - popular illustrated booklets and prints from the seventeenth century to the 1917 revolution) and through the masterpieces of Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Dostoevsky, and others down to our days. It is here that the discrepancies between national traditions and between life-styles comes into focus; because what a foreigner sees as "black" and absurd, may for a Soviet citizen happen to be his or her everyday life. For example, in Eldar Shengelaya's Blue Mountains (1984) we come across a certain office that looks like a microcosm of destruction: Within this office occur earthquakes, floods, disorder, distress, corruption - try to name a misfortune that does not take place there. And sure enough, the average foreign viewer considers this cinematic situation as a metaphor, while no Soviet citizen would ever look at the film metaphorically. Why should we? It is our everyday life, maybe a little bit far fetched but still depicted in a realistic manner. Take the Institute of Film Art in Moscow at which I work as another example. It looks exactly like the building in Blue Mountains. For more then five years now, it has been under reconstruction, with holes in the roof and floor, hot water flowing from the pipes that never work even on the coldest winter days. But we carry on somehow, have become accustomed to everything, and even do 94


95

Varlam (Avtandil Markharadze), the dictator who, once dead, never seems to stay buried in Repentance (1984), Tengiz Abuladze's allegorical "comic tragedy" that stunned audiences with its satiric attack on Stalinism and totalitarianism in general on the eve of glasnost

not pay attention to our discomfort. To a large degree, therefore, black humor is a matter of perspective and distance. Our socialism has created a real superman - Homo sapiens who can consider as quite normal libraries that are closed or ruined, churches used as stores, and personal dignity looked on as some irrelevant factor at all levels. The rhetorical question in the final scene of Tengiz Abuladze's film Repentance (1984) - "Which road leads to the Church?"-has one and only one answer: "No road, or maybe there is one way o u t - n o t through a direction but through style, that is, through laughter"; because at least this Homo sovieticus superman can laugh. The ability to laugh at oneself is either a sign of high culture or of great despair, or both. In any case, the color of such laughter is black. Black humor in Soviet cinema points in two directions. One is in creating the image of our everyday life in more or less realistic forms, through which the crippled and unnatural existence of our lives speaks for itself. This way is the most widespread one, as witness Blue Mountains, Zero City (1989), and many earlier films of the stagnation period. The second "direction" is more rare since it is more like the Spanish version. The situation and characters here seem incredible or grotesque,


96

in the manner of Goya's later work, for example. Here authors do whatever they choose with their subjects as if they are made of chewing gum. In the experimental atmosphere of film, nobody pays attention to the mixture of times and places, to the fact that some characters appear in medieval costumes in modern circumstances, and those already dead stand in one line with the living. An extraordinary example of such a charade in which real historical characters mix freely with imaginary ones, in which one could take an imaginary figure for a historical one and vice versa, is Repentance. It is also an example of the naive Soviet mentality in perceiving cinema: Once I overheard a conversation in the course of which a simple elderly woman persuaded a friend to go and see Repentance. "It is a very good picture," she insisted. "It deals with Lavrenty Beriya." "Is he in the movie himself?" asked her friend. "But of course!" was the immediate answer. One could hardly believe that she didn't even notice that the main character of the film was called Varlaam, that he was an imaginary figure, that his fate has little in common with the history of Stalin's KGB chief, that Beriya has been dead for quite a while by then, and that Varlaam is played by a Georgian actor. That Repentance is metaphoric and has nothing to do with realism meant that this woman, and also many other Soviet viewers accustomed for generations to believe that screen reality was actual truth, were led astray. It might be due to this nearly religious fate of Soviet cinematic art that black humor as a satiric language form so popular in the arts of other totalitarian regimes was not widespread in the Soviet Union. Black humor just was not understood, though one could expect the public to be prepared for metaphoric thinking by the great works of Russian literature. Unfortunately, very few of the Soviet masses read Gogol, Dostoevsky, or Saltykov-Shchedrin. But at least one metaphor persistently appeared in Soviet black humor comedies: that is the image of illness and death as representing the real state of society. And here one could notice how the change of the times is reflected in this theme. If the unfortunate hero of Leonid Gaidai's comedy A Fiancee from the Other World (1957) was not able to get married because, according to a special certificate, he was accidentally considered dead, Varlaam, the truly dead protagonist of Repentance in 1984, couldn't lay in peace as his enemies constantly dug him up. Gaidai's figure, alive though considered dead, was a victim of the bureaucrats, a human being against the system; Varlaam, however, represents the system himself: He is its child and victim, and at the same time, he can never be buried because history and memory never die. There is yet another theme that wanders among black humor treatments of death and illness. One could identify it as a dentist theme. Such films as 33 by Georgy Danelia or The Adventures of a Dentist by E. Klimov


97

are especially notorious. After all, a toothache as Klimov presents it contains a dual meaning: It is painful but funny. It is as if a toothache were created to combine tragedy and farce, to become a representative of black humor in everyday life, and to turn into a great metaphor the Soviet ability to cry through laughter. I am reminded of a well-known tale about the great Tamerlane's men collecting taxes in a little village. People were crying but he still asked for more until they stopped crying and started laughing. "Now they have nothing left" was the dictator's verdict. And right he was: People laugh when they try to defend themselves. In which case it is always for the better to let sleeping dogs lie. But here and now in our Russian present reality, if somebody would wake us up would we . . . laugh?

CHAPTER X

Laughter beyond the mirror: Humor and satire in the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

The very title of this presentation ought to produce at least a chuckle, if not hearty laughter, from readers. But to recognize that the very idea of analyzing Tarkovsky's films for their humorous content is in itself funny and perhaps even preposterous, one needs (a) to know the films themselves (they are generally seen as complex, weighty, serious, philosophical and metaphysical ruminations on the human condition, tending more to tragedy than comedy) and (b) to understand the myth created around Tarkovsky's persona over the span of an almost-thirty-year career, both in the Soviet Union and in the West. Inseparably linked to his highly autobiographical films, Tarkovsky was a "martyr," persecuted by an uncaring Soviet cinema bureaucracy, and, like his fellow countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a "prophet" who railed against the materialism and loss of spirituality in contemporary societies, whether in the East or the West. Thus, I am not only trying to offer an original interpretation of Tarkovsky's work, but, hopefully, with the full complicity of my audience, attempting to undercut what has become a highly pompous rhetoric on Tarkovsky. Even in my title, then, one is immediately faced with the dialogic nature of comedy and the conspiratorial relationship between author and reader in producing laughter. I hope you will join me in the discovery of a "new" Tarkovsky, whom Susan Fleetwood, the English actress who played the lead in his last film, The Sacrifice (Offret, 1986), described in the following manner: "When I hear people say in solemn tones, 'Oh, you worked with Andrei Tarkovsky/ I remember this cheeky little chappie who was doing the most outrageous things, pulling faces and gamboling around" (interview, 1988). In the recently published Comedy/Cinema/Theory, Andrew Horton eloquently summarizes in his introduction how the comic functions: "Like language and 'texts' in general, the comic is plural, unfinalized, disseminative, dependent on context and the intertextuality of creator, text, and contemplator."1 How often have teachers of Russian literature, culture, and film had to explain to American students what is "funny" in the text they have been contemplating? Or conversely, how often have they 98

Humor and satire in the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

99

laughed in what would be considered "the wrong place"? A case in point from Tarkovsky's own films: Several of his heroes trip and fall, usually to their knees or flat on their faces. At this point in the films, I personally observed hesitant laughter in American audiences. Despite sensing that somehow this is not meant to be comic, the audience - brought up on physical slapstick humor such as the career-making pratfalls of Chevy Chase - reacts automatically nevertheless. The Russian audiences do not laugh at all, perhaps intuiting that the fall, which occurs at a crucial moment in each film (e.g., right before Boriska, the young bell caster will discover the "right" clay in Andrei RoubJev [Andrei Rublyov, 1966, released 1971], or before the Writer sets out on his soul-searching journey into the Zone in Stalker [Stalker, 1979], or before Alexander torches his house in The Sacrifice), is a physical gesture that humbles the hero in preparation for a fateful spiritual awakening or creative endeavor. Although perhaps not meant to be funny, these awkward falls may in fact also have been used by Tarkovsky to underscore his heroes' frail mortality — as the comic so often does - and thus to make our identification with them all the stronger. Tarkovsky's humor, whether gently poignant or sharply satiric, is only modestly funny, as there are no happy endings, no freewheeling or cathartic laughter. Just as comedies have not as a genre been deemed worthy of the highest artistic award, the Oscar in American cinema, the tradition of the "difficult" and "serious" film as the only worthy carrier of aesthetic and ideational import has excluded the comedy from the cinematic pantheon of Soviet films unless its function was to satirize social and political ills. The two contemporary masters of Soviet comedy, Georgy Danelia and Eldar Ryazanov, have both tended to make "sad" comedies (as Danelia subtitled his Autumn Marathon [Osenny mara/on] 1980), which are just as likely to leave the viewer teary-eyed as laughing. Comedy, whether in literature or film, has throughout Russian and Soviet history always had a "higher" purpose than just producing joyous laughter. When the greatest of all Russian comedic writers, Nikolai Gogol, identified his style as "laughter through tears," his formulation was to determine not only the future writing of comedies, but to shape the critic's view of comedy as a viable literary and, in the twentieth century, cinematic genre. For Gogol, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Saltikov-Shchedrin, Ostrovsky, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, Ilf and Petrov, Bulgakov, Voinovich, Iskander, and countless other writers, laughter always had an underlying "serious" purpose, to satirize all aspects of life, to say what could not be said openly, but also to do so by appealing often to our sentiment. Much of the humor in Russian satiric literature was produced by the author's manipulation of the so-called skaz narrator, whose rich colloquial, but often substandard speech was funny in and of itself, but which also allowed the author or implied author to distance him- or herself from the character's


100

actions, expressions, and worldview. The difficulty of reproducing the equivalent of this kind of subjective first-person narration in cinema (successful usually only in the child's perspective/voice-over in films such as Elem Klimov's Welcome [Dobro pozhalovat'], 1966) has made good screen adaptations of comedies rare indeed. Recently in Yuri Kara's Balthazar's Feast ([Pir BaJ/azara], 1990), very little humor is left from the original story Sandro of Chegem by Fazil Iskander, one of the best contemporary Soviet satirists. While constantly striving to imitate the satiric literary tradition (often through screen adaptations), the best Soviet comedies (beginning with, of course, silent films) have fully exploited the visual possibilities for humorous antics and gestures, thus combining verbal and visual humor. Tarkovsky's modest endeavors to use comic elements in his films on first glance seem to fall squarely in the tradition of satiric humor with a "serious" purpose. As we shall see, however, his transition from a reliance on words to a more complex, grotesque visual imagery in his last films raises, as does so much of his work, fundamental questions about the boundaries between the comic and the tragic, and thus about the very essence of being human. The only humorous moment in Tarkovsky's first feature film, Ivan's Childhood (Ivanogo detstvo, 1962), is characteristically both funny and sad, as the twelve-year-old hero, a war scout with a lifetime of experience, upbraids an older officer. This reversal of the traditional parent-child roles serves as a poignant commentary on the madness of war. Two films, The Mirror (Zerkalo, 1974) and Stalker, offer bitterly sarcastic and arguably humorous (I find it so, while some of my Soviet colleagues do not!) verbal jousting between characters, which - in a very traditional manner - serves to expose both the characters' and the society's shortcomings. The endless circuitous arguments between the unseen narrator of The Mirror and his tired wife, as she cooly studies herself in a real mirror, are interspersed with the narrator's pointed, mocking, and unfortunately funny comments: When his wife tells him that she is in love with an unpublished writer, he quips, "Is his name perchance Dostoyevsky?" Or when she bemoans the absence of present-day miracles and wonders aloud who it was that the burning bush appeared to, he cannot remember, then adds, not to their son, Ignat - seen burning branches in the yard whom the father clearly considers a dunce. In Stalker, Tarkovsky uses the sarcastic sparring of two characters, the Writer and the Professor, to expose this supposedly Western country of the future as none other than the Soviet Union itself. The embittered Writer, who is searching for faith and inspiration, speaks in typically Soviet cliches. As he, the Professor and their guide, the Stalker, meet in a bar to begin their journey into the Zone (the mysterious forbidden area created reputedly by a meteor from outer space), the Writer comments, "Al-


101

coholism is the scourge of the people, so let's have beer instead." The original script had "coffee" instead of "beer," and Tarkovsky's change is again both funny and a sad reflection on a very serious Soviet problem. As the Stalker keeps trying to wean the Writer from the bottle he is carrying, the Writer again proffers that he is simply having a drink like half the population, as it is the other half that really gets drunk. His most memorable statement evokes a particularly graphic visual image, as he compares the profession of writing to the act of extruding hemorrhoids. When they are finally close to their goal in the Zone - the room in which all wishes come true - a telephone rings in the outer room where the three men have paused. When again the Writer answers, saying "No, this is not the polyclinic," there is no doubt left about where all this is taking place: The perennial wrong numbers reached on the telephone in the Soviet Union are legion, and there are many comic stories built on this situation. One could argue that this humor is too obvious and cheap, and while there are critics who despise the whole script of Stalker while admiring the film's visual beauty, one must admit that such pointed commentary functions as a shorthand means of building a "conspiratorial" understanding between filmmaker and viewer. After all, here Tarkovsky is following the well-trodden path of writers and filmmakers in using verbal humor for satiric purpose. Soviet critics may be disappointed because they have learned to expect more than conventional forms from Tarkovsky, which he, in fact delivers in several key scenes, one from the early film Andrei RoubJev and two others from the very end of his last films, Nostalgia [Nostalghia, 1983) and The Sacrifice. All three scenes involve a kind of "fool." In an early scene from the medieval epic Andrei RoubJev, three monks come upon a local jester entertaining an audience of simple villagers. The buffoon's scatological, bawdy song and lewd antics ending with the dropping of his pants (combining verbal and visual comic elements) is at first glance innocent and primitive humor meant to relieve momentarily the hardships of life in a hungry, barren country. The scene, however, ominously ends with the brutal beating of the performer by the prince's men, who, we will discover only much later, were called in by one of the monks. The buffoon is only the first in a series of persecuted artists who experience the brutality and oppression of power. But Tarkovsky may also choose a buffoon to call attention not only to the plight of the artist throughout history (as the scene has usually been interpreted and the parallel to the Soviet Union made), but also to show that laughter, here in the carnivalesque form espoused by Bakhtin, is in itself subversive and thus a threat to the established order. Typically for Tarkovsky, it is produced by an artist — a simple man of the people - as art is open to anyone who dares to create and dares the consequences of that original and profoundly subversive act.


102

Tarkovsky was drawn in Andrei RoubJev and in his last two films to the traditional Russian figure of the yurodivy, the "fool in Christ," or "holy fool." From medieval times, such figures wandered the countryside, halfmad, half-holy, their incomprehensible, often comic antics and pronouncements revered by the populace. They lived outside of social conventions and spurned the temporal powers of the rulers. In their chapter on Soviet satire in The Zero Hour: GJasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, Andrew Horton and Michael Brashinsky identify the importance of this figure in Russian culture, particularly in defining the comic in both the literary and cinematic traditions.2 Two modern-day "holy fools" in Tarkovsky are of course his last two "heroes," played significantly by the same actor, Erland Josephson. In Nostalgia, the local madman Domenico, who locked his family up for forty years, and who preaches the coming of the Apocalypse, in a terrifying final gesture pours gasoline over himself and burns himself alive before an unbelieving and uncomprehending audience. As he writhes on the ground, his "double," apparently another madman, copies his every gesture, as the broken record of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" blasts over the large Roman square populated by immobile onlookers. The only "human" emotion is exhibited by Domenico's chained dog who howls for his master. While no viewer will laugh at this grotesque scene, the series of awkward, purely physical gestures are almost slapstick in quality. Tarkovsky's final film also ends with a burning scene. The hero, Alexander — an ex-actor, writer, and philosopher - destroys his own house in order to fulfill a vow he has made to God. Like Domenico, fearing that the Apocalypse is at hand, that the final nuclear war has started - and everything in the film seems to point to that — Alexander takes a vow of silence and promises to destroy all that is dear to him. But the scene of the inept house burning is full of comic elements, starting with Alexander's tripping as he carefully goes about piling up the furniture and, after several attempts, getting the pyre to begin to burn. When his family returns from the walk he has sent them on, a single long take shows Alexander running back and forth in front of the now impressively burning house, totally consumed in flames, as everyone chases him, with different characters falling in the puddles that surround the house. Alexander's disjointed running back and forth as everyone tries to get him into the ambulance — whose sudden appearance is never explained - his attempts both to speak and to be silent, and his alternately foolish or mad facial expressions make this unsettling scene particularly excruciating to watch. The long take — at six minutes usually misidentified as the longest in the film, when, in fact, the longest is the opening scene at nine and a half minutes - seems even longer because the viewer is caught up in this repetition of what begins to make a potentially tragic situation ludicrous and funny. When asked about the burning scene, Josephson himself simply


103

observed that, in life, the boundary between the comic and the tragic can be very fine (interview, 1988). Tarkovsky here uses the traditional Russian figure of the yurodivy, slapstick, and grotesque visual elements to explore the complexity of human existence where that boundary is elusive indeed. As Russians would say, it is "not accidental" (ne sJuchayno) that Tarkovsky became so popular in the transitional glasnost period, being hailed as both martyr and prophet, as his films seemed to reflect the deep spiritual angst of artists, critics, and viewers alike. Although always perceived as the most serious of filmmakers, I would argue that it is precisely his ambiguous presentation of human existence and human beings as both comic and tragic that has tapped into the needs of an audience that had lost all moral, social, economic, and political bearings. In these years, comedy somehow would just not do. We should remember that throughout Russian and Soviet history, comedy - whether in film or literature — thrived under a political system that did not permit open criticism, and satires used an "Aesopian" language to comment critically on all aspects of social and even political life. Thus, it is not surprising that when all political controls were removed and all restrictions lifted with the coming of glasnost, comedy and laughter - always standing in opposition to something - seemed to have died. The recent slew of "dark" films (chernukha), of hard-hitting often humorless exposes of Soviet reality, have left Soviet audiences desperate for a simple hearty laugh! Even the broad use of farce, slapstick, and the grotesque in such films as Sergei Soloviev's Black Rose is the Emblem for Sadness, Red Rose is the Emblem for Love (Chernaya roza-emblema pechali, krasnaya roza-emblema lyubvi, 1989) or in Karen Shakhnazarov's Zero City (Gorod zero, 1989) have provided only momentary relief from obsessively "dark" films. Most Soviet films playing in Moscow in 1989—91 belonged to the "melodrama" and "moral" category, and a "comedy" was rare indeed.3 Even the most talented comic filmmaker of a younger generation, Yuri Mamin, whose early film Neptune's Feast (Prazdnik Neptuna, 1986) was riotously funny, increasingly lost his sense of humor through his next two films, made in this unsettling period. A critical scene in his next film, Fountain (Fontan, 1988), switches at one point from the zany shenanigans of the motley inhabitants of a building about to collapse (read the Soviet Union) to the sobbing plea of one of the characters addressing the audience directly — with no irony implied or felt - asking how could one possibly live in these desperate times. The film manages to recapture its comic trajectory, however, which Mamin's last film Whiskers (Bakenbardy, 1990) fails to do. Occasionally funny scenes (a sculptor molding a clay head of Lenin into one of Pushkin) cannot rescue a very bitter and unsubtle diatribe against the rise of antisemitism and dangerous right-wing political movements in present-day Russia. As the prominent


104

Russian critic Maya Turovskaya noted at the 1990 conference on Soviet film satire, the "laughter" seemed to have disappeared from Gogol's formulation, and only the "tears" are left. While the title of the conference could perhaps have been, "Where is the Humor in Soviet Film," a satisfying postscript can now be added. It survives! When both Danelia and Ryazanov came out with new comedies in 1991 - The Passport [Pasport] and The Promised Sky (Nebesa obetovannye) respectively - critics, artists, and audiences heaved a great big sigh of relief that comedy was not dead. Notes 1. Andrew Horton, ed., Comedy/Cinema/Theory (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), p. 9. 2. Andrew Horton and Michael Brashinsky, The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 188. 3. In the film listings for metropolitan Moscow to be found in the weekly newspaper Dosug (Leisure), films are categorized along broad classifications such as comedy, sci-fi, war, melodrama, historical, political, and those "which raise moral questions."

CHAPTER XI

The films of Eldar Shengelaya: From subtle humor to biting satire

A recognized master of Soviet Georgian cinematic comedy, Eldar Shengelaya is best known in the USSR for the mixture of humor and sadness, fantasy and reality, that characterizes his most famous films, An Unusual Exhibition (1968) and Screwballs (1973). Blue Mountains (1983), Shengelaya 's lastest film, departs from his earlier work, bombarding the viewer with cutting satire and an uncompromising, driving impatience typical of the late stagnation period (the administrations of Brezhnev and Chernenko). The present paper looks at the comedies and satires of Eldar Shengelaya as an increasingly reflective and self-contained ouvre, less and less concerned with the multinational Soviet State and more and more concerned with the Georgian national self. Like Georgian cinema in general, Shengelaya's films reveal a never-ending struggle for national revival that ranges from light comedy filled with subtle political innuendo in times of oppression to sharp, self-critical satire in times of openness and hope for independence and self-definition. An Unusual Exhibition: The early thaw Shengelaya's first feature-length comedy, An Unusual Exhibition (1968), reveals the director's debt to classic Georgian comedy of the 1930s and his original vision. Described as "a mixture of conventional realism and poetic paradox, drama and comedy, the grotesque and the lyrical," An Unusual Exhibition is often labeled "tragi-farce," in which "funny moments are contrasted with unhappiness, and poetry is born at the meeting point of farce and tragedy."1 As the film opens, Aguli Eristavi, a young sculptor, returns from the war to his old Tbilisi home with its traditional balconies, courtyard, and noisy children, to his father (comic and ridiculous, a vintage 1930s gentleman with pretensions toward aristocracy), and to his past, which centers around his dream to create a world masterpiece from a piece of white marble inherited from his art teacher. He marries a pretty, robust young Russian girl, has many children, and begins sculpting busts for cemetery 105


106

monuments in order to support his family. After many comic, grotesque, and touching moments, Aguli and his wife stumble into the cemetery on their way home from a class reunion and find themselves surrounded by the statues and busts that constitute his life work. In the end, he bequeathes the white marble to his son, who is also an artist. Like all Georgian films of the post-Stalinist period, An Unusual Exhibition works on several levels and combines elements of the past with a modern voice. Beholden to Georgian comedies of the 1930s, such as David Rondeli's Forgotten Paradise (1937), are the character types, family relationships, daily misadventures of the hero and his father, and the tone of the film, with its blend of national or regional humor, merriment and sadness, nostalgia for a lost age, lofty sentiments, and wit. New is the subtlety of psychological portrait, the ambiguity or noncommital tone of the hero (and the film director), and that particular irony toward life and art that one could call "post-Stalinist." Together with other comedies of the 1960s, such as Tengiz Abuladze's My Grandmother, Uiko, IJJarion and Myself (1962), An Unusual Exhibition moves into the new era by merging national humor with psychological and political intransigence and national pathos. The central metaphor of the film (creating art for the graveyard) unites all levels of the film. One laughs and chuckles at the slightly ridiculous, pompous, and provincial individuals who, in national costume, pose for Aguli Eristavi's "eternal memorials," but when all of those memorials surround the artist and his wife at the close of the film, the significance of the human lives (no matter how ridiculous) remembered in this one spot (no matter how ridiculously), moves to the level of national pathos. Because of the deliberately ambiguous voice of the director, Aguli's "exhibit" implies, but does not insist on, distortion of image and method and the death of an entire way of life. At the same time, the graveyard, which is introduced immediately after the nearly surreal sequence of the class reunion, in which Aguli and his classmates come face to face with the unfulfilled dreams of their past, suggests survival and the preservation of national memory. In the Georgian perspective, which spans centuries and generations, the fact that one particular artist does not manage to create his great work of art does not negate the hope that his son will. Tradition, memory, and humor pass from generation to generation, and the single human being is often less than his intentions. As a political statement, An Unusual Exhibition is typical of Soviet films of the early 1960s. Zooming in on basic human values, desires, loves, and hopes, the film evoked life beyond the dialectic and outside of Socialist Realism, suggesting ever so subtly the very revolutionary notion that the greatest force in history might not be, in truth, the class struggle, but man's (Everyman's) individual and collective struggle for

Eldar Shengelaya's subtle humor and biting satire

107

art, beauty, and immortality. While the sweet love story between a Georgian and a Russian in the film seemed to offer a new spirit of internationalism based on ancient concepts of family and tradition, the revival of national types and local humor worked with other films of the postStalinist sixties to remind Georgians of their own national traditions, therein posing a subtle, but resilient challenge to the beliefs and values of the Communist state. The seventies Regional humor, parable, and the storming of Socialist Realism Screwballs (1973), Shengelaya's second feature-length comedy, marks a return to the spirit of his diploma works at VGIK (the Ail-Union State Institution of Cinematography) and his initial interest in the meeting point of fantasy and reality. A parablelike love story, called "grand and eternal/' "humorous, poetic, theatrical, phantasmagoric, and vaudeville-like," Screwballs was initially praised for "using fantasy to portray reality in a sharp and unexpected way." As critics explained, "By alienating the characters, events and plot, the young director included the audience in a sort of game, forcing them to look at the world in a new way."2 More important here, however, Screwballs used the film genre of the parable or phantasmagoria to political ends. Disguised as fantasy or parable, Shengelaya's Screwballs used Georgians' well-known love for local humor to challenge the basic philosophical and political foundation of Socialist Realism. In the small country of Georgia (the size of the state of Maine), individuals identify with and take pride in their own even smaller regions and receive great aesthetic pleasure in telling humorous stories and jokes about everyone else. In the countryside, the target of the joke moves from Kakhelebi to Gurulebi, from Gurulebi to Imerelebi, from Imerelebi to Rachvelebi, Migrelebi, Karlelebi, Svanebi, Khevsurebi, Mokheveibe, Tushebi, and so on, while in the city, it makes its rounds coursing through elements of the urban population of Georgians, Armenians, Tatars, Muslims, Jews, Greeks, Russians, and country bumpkins. In cinema, Georgians recognize humor by region or type. Films based on rural humor are Irakli Kvirikadze's The Wine Jug (Kvevri, 1972) Nana Mchelize's First Swallow (1975), Abuladze's My Grandmother, Uiko, Illarion and Myself (1962), and Nana Jorjadze's recent Robinsoniada or My English Grandfather (1987). City humor, especially popular at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century in literature and theater, is most obvious in Rezo Esadze's Love at First Sight (1977). In classical Georgian humor and, by extension, in classic Georgian


108

film, regional and local anecdotes give the cognoscenti a chuckle of aesthetic satisfaction and a sense of belonging, for everything is an inside joke, including serious stabs at the Soviet State. The plot of Screwballs is a mixture of fairy tale and parable. The young hero's father "passes away,. . . kicks the bucket,. . . gives up the ghost,. . . that is, dies, . . . " as a neighbor explains to the boy, leaving him with many debts. Creditors arrive, accompanied by the village priest, who intones, "Debts pass from father to son generation to generation, shvilishvili-shvilebi." The priest forgives the young man three candles he owes the church, then begins his recitation of debts: a bottle of wine, two fried chickens, three songs, . . . The son divides all of his worldly possessions among his creditors, then accepts the gift of a jar of honey from a neighbor, which he takes to town to trade for a chicken and make his fortune. He falls in love, into adventure, and into the dungeon, whence he escapes in a fantastic fashion to repay his father's debts. From the opening shot, Screwballs announces its genre as fairy tale, legend, or parable. A magic tree, a colorful folk carpet, folk music, and dance introduce the dramatic action, but the camera quickly sweeps from the dramatis personae (the dancing father and his son) back to the tree and finally to the heavens as the old man dies. A wide-angle shot fades to scenes resembling folk paintings accompanied by folk music on the sound track. Motifs from folklore and popular wisdom, including the Georgian folksong "Gaprindeba" ("Flying") (on which the narration is constructed), are intertwined with lofty feelings and wondrous miracles. Margarita, the buxom beauty desired by all men, hides lovers in her fireplace and a tiny Cupid in her bosom, and is paired, in the plot, with an elevated, sublime romantic heroine named Tamuna (after the famous Queen Tamara of the Georgian Golden Age), who, separated from her true love, cries out, before drowning herself, "Why aren't we birds, to just fly away from this earth?" Fairy tale and parable mix with the lyric and the romantic: Young love joins eternal love; youthful passion joins aged wisdom. The young hero's dungeon mate, an old romantic gentleman determined to fly over the grave of his beautiful Tamuna, finds in the young hero two elements missing from his calculations scribbled on the walls of his dungeon: earthly passion ("the burning lofty") and the aerodynamics of his chicken. Together, the two men escape their dungeon, build their flying machine, and soar over the grave of the beloved Tamuna to the home of the beautiful Margarita, then on to the village with the song, and finally to the ethereal regions of the high Caucasus. As in An Unusual Exhibition, Shengelaya uses modest human emotions to support the "lofty theme" of his work: All that man does he does for love, for immortality, and for flying, according to the following formula:


109

height (adoration) length (thrust or worship) width (unforgettable recollections) "the burning lofty" the lack of knowledge ("We can't fly with such a lack of knowledge," the old man castigates the young hero.) = flight.

+ + + —

Love is the greatest value, the impetus for great feats, the ideal. Love is vertical and orbital (the camera repeats the upward motion of death and the song), and the sound track moves from silence to comic music, from the ridiculous to the romantic to the nostalgic, to the folksong, from the earthly to the sublime. Comedy or slapstick movements (Shengelaya time and again admits his great admiration of Charlie Chaplin) are linked with innocent romance and passion (pushing the lover into the fireplace, rolling him in a rug) and local humor (the villagers and their bookkeeping). But little by little they move on, to the comic grotesque and then to political satire. Screwballs ridicules the soldiers guarding the dungeon, who chase and shoot at one another in an absurd fashion, and the doctor, who writes down every word spoken by the "madmen in their mad experiment" in the pretentious hope of extolling the motherland and showing Europe how good Georgians are. As the flying machine leaves these lower creatures and all earthly desires behind, including the beautiful Margarita, the challenge is bold and clear. The individual, with the quest for eternity, has spread his or her wings and flown from authority, and art and ancient tradition have escaped to soar above scientific materialism and the modern Soviet State. The Georgians state the intent of the film boldly: "The chief asset of the film is the bold juxtaposition of versatile techniques common to the genres of real-life comedy, fairy tale, buffoonery, grotesque, and comic melodrama. . . . The film passionately asserts man's right to great ambitions and his own individuality."3 Blasphemous and sacrilegious toward Soviet authority, Screwballs was attacked in the late 1970s by a series of articles published in the Soviet theoretical film journal Cinema Art. Led by the film critic Bogomolov, Cinema Art accused the Georgian film studio of "departure from Socialist Realism, allegory, parable, and phantasmagory," in which "romantics take their revenge by soaring above everyday, prosaic, mundane life." In round-table discussions, Georgian cinema was labeled "elitist," where "aestheticism becomes a model for existence" and leads to "egocentrism" and "idealism."4 The Georgian response varied from nervous defensiveness to defiance. The defensive claim was that "all Georgian films [are] not 'parables' but


110

rather a balanced and diverse mixture of various types of realism including psychological, critical, historical, and poetic realism." Eldar Shengelaya's response was defiant. Like his film, his comments cut at the heart of Socialist Realism: If you insist that only real events filmed in a realist manner can be reality or a reflection of reality, art will be extraordinarily narrow. Actually, all art is a reflection of reality, in my opinion, because an artist exists in reality and all of his sensations come out of reality, at least from himself, and he exists, and his inner world exists, and that is already a kind of reality, isn't it? And the spiritual world is also reality, even if it is profoundly subjective, as it so often is, thank God,. . . What we did in Screwballs in that "unreal" film, or parable, or exaggerated fairy tale, or whatever the critics call it - whatever we did, we did because we wanted to do it, and since we did it, it is certainly a reflection of reality.5

Comic revival and a new national thrust Shengelaya's next film, Samanishvili's Mother-in-Law (1977), presented a new version of the nineteenth-century drama classic of the same title by David Kldiashvili. In the story, which Shengelaya calls "the reflection of a people," the nobleman Samanishvili suffers ridicule and personal humiliation in a series of comic adventures during his frenzied search for a new, barren wife for his widowed father, whose desire to remarry threatens new heirs to the already impoverished family estate. Performed in theaters throughout the revolutionary period, Kldiashvili's play was first adapted for cinema in the late twenties by the masterful Georgian theater and film director, Kote Marjanishvili. Marjanishvili's stark black and white version, typical of the "progressive trends of Georgian postreform theatre and cinema," put sharp wit and biting satire into service as social criticism typical of the formal masterpieces of Soviet silent classics of the revolutionary period. Shengelaya's gentler version, typical of the seventies, uses soft color, a natural background, and fluid cutting to combine touchingly humorous images of the arrogant, impoverished small-landed gentry of the prerevolutionary period with overlapping comic situations and episodes that endear them to the viewer. Closer to thirties' comedy, Shengelaya's version of Kldiashvili's classic story looks back at life in prerevolutionary Georgia to encourage a comparison between national and spiritual values of the past and present. As Shengelaya explained, what interested him in Kldiashvili's play was "a certain strata of nobility which had developed ethic norms considered 'noble' — an elevated understanding of human individuality," and "the destruction of that nobility,. . . the victory of egoism over a certain broadness of human character" brought about by "certain material conditions" that "forced man to lose the nobility inherent in him by nature."6


111

Like other Georgian films of the 1970s and 1980s, Shengelaya used prerevolutionary images as models for the reconstruction of national identity, which, in the poetic view, seemed "impoverished," perhaps a little ridiculous, but "noble" and, in any case, a clear alternative to scientific materialism. The mood conveyed by the film was one of growing desire for national unity and self-determination. The early eighties — the high stagnation period: Biting national satire, self-criticism, and the independent vision Shengelaya's latest feature film, Blue Mountains (1983), moves from the historical or mythic past to contemporary Soviet Georgian reality. In its biting satire, the film is reminiscent of early Georgian revolutionary classics such as Mikhail Chiaureli's Saba (1921) and Kharbarda (1931), and Kote Mikaberidze's My Grandmother (1929, banned, revived 1976), films known for their irony, subtle social characterization, fresh technique and ingenuity, satirical pathos, and bold, grotesque strokes in the depiction of antiheroes. The film structure (a fourfold repetition of the same shots of nonevents season by season) sets the scene and conveys the meaninglessness as well as social, ethic, and aesthetic inertia of the stagnation period in the USSR in general and in Georgia in particular. The same musical motif, the same panning shot, from the same apartment window opening onto the same view, greets the viewer fall, winter, spring, and summer. Thereupon follows, time and again, the same sequence of scenes at the publishing house, where the hero brings eight copies of his novel, "Blue Mountains or Tien Shien": an oil painting of icebergs in Greenland that threatens to fall throughout the film, protocols, commissions, signatures, chess games, fat men looking for a certain fictitious Givi, an elevator continually stuck between floors, secretaries out to lunch, manuscripts lost, the same questions and statements ad infinitum: "Why two titles?" "You need to be more persistent" and "Kudi" (your cap). Grating and annoying, BJue Mountains reveals little trace of the gentle sympathy and local humor that characterized Shengelaya's previous work. Instead, the film challenges precisely that which had been protected in the past. If Shengelaya's earlier films had implicated Soviet bureaucracy or the multinational Soviet State for Georgia's ills and captured subtly moving shots of those eternal and national historical values that would survive and ostensibly conquer, BJue Mountains implicates Soviet bureaucracy or the Soviet State as an accessory to the crime, but aims a merciless eye at contemporary Georgian reality. Holy Georgian symbols and traditions, used so often in the past as witness to or hope for national survival, are exposed in their contemporary triviality. Singing, music, celebration, art, culture, and social conventions - all have become petty and


112

empty pretense. Respect for language descends to German lessons for small children, conversational French for the middle-aged, and elevated phrases of proper etiquette in the director's native Georgian. Gone is the flight into poetry and inspiration of Shengelaya's earlier films, and love poetry plays a satiric role, appearing out of nowhere as a volume of verses penned by the chairman of the motorcycle soccer association. Banquets, so important for Georgian cultural tradition, give administrators heartburn, and the overflowing bounty of the Georgian table is replaced by the director's refrigerator cum mineral water and the single egg that another editor, Irodin, fusses over and hides in his otherwise empty safe. In Blue Mountains, feigned respect and warmth for other individual human beings is not translated into deeds. All is show, pretense, and superficiality, the cosmetic surface of a cracking, crumbling foundation that no one but the older generation notices. Only the final crash of Greenland and the literal collapse of the building in which the nonaction takes place move the plot along, but stability and routine are soon reestablished in a new building of modern, international design.7 While repetition of Georgian themes and motifs in Shengelaya's films of the 1960s and 1970s signaled national survival and revival (portraying a world of ancient vintage in which man inherited dreams, goals, songs, traditions, stone for carving, and debts, and where life was a cycle of generations), the repetition of film motif in Blue Mountains is used to illustrate a world beyond history, where the seasons turn and nothing changes, where nothing is accomplished, where joy and hope have vanished. Uncompromising in its rhythm, Shengelaya's latest film returns to the harsh satire of the 1920s and implies a new political and revolutionary struggle in an age marked first by frustration, then by the faint scent of change and impatience. A similar movement, from light regional humor with a subtle political subtext to cutting satire aimed at the national self, is typical of the older generation of filmmakers, including the well-known films of Tengiz Abuladze: Magdana's Little Donkey (poetic documentary/national revival), My Grandmother, Iliko, IJJarion, and Myself (local humor and regional comedy with an eye to national survival), The Prayer (art and the artist, national poetry as an alternative to Socialist Realism, resistance to the commune), Tree of Desire (local, regional humor and growing historical tragedy, the allegorical destruction of the nation), and Repentance (cruel satire, surrealism, and a stern challenge to the individual). 8 Among young Georgian directors, satire is largely self-critical, and cinema repetition is a common device, implying stagnation and inertia and calling for change, as in Alexander Rekhviashvili's Step (1986) and Irakli Kotetishvili's Anemia (1987).9 Responding to his own call, Eldar Shengelaya now puts most of his energy into political work and credits the younger generation at the Georgia


113

Film Studio with "a new naturalism, stark depiction of reality, and explicitness." While he initially praised Gorbachev for "his surprisingly unRussian desire to bring about change without spilling a single drop of blood/' that praise was undercut by the events of April 9, 1989 in Tbilisi, and it is telling that Eldar Shengelaya's last editing job was a film documentary of those events, which closes in the morgue. As for gJasnost, Shengelaya's view has never wavered: The film industry, or, rather, individual films and individual directors are, in my opinion, the precursors of glasnost As early as the fifties, after the death of Stalin, individual directors in individual studios began to make films which demonstrated a search for artistic truth, for the integrity of the individual person, for the creative personality. Films sought to look at reality realistically. When Gorbachev began to speak of glasnost, it meant, merely, that the goals of many Soviet directors for the past twenty-five years had been introduced as the new Party Program.10 Notes 1. Galina Dolmatovskaya and Irina Shilova, Who's Who in the Soviet Cinema: Seventy Different Portraits (Moscow: Progress, 1979), pp. 262-7. 2. Ibid., pp. 262-5. 3. Kartuli sabchota kinematografi (Georgian Soviet Cinema) (Tbilisi: Georgian SSR State Cinema, 1979), p. 53. 4. See Iurii Bogomolov, "Gruzinskoe kino: otnoshenie k deistvitel'nosti," Iskusstvo kino, no. 11 (1978): 39-56, and Julie Christensen, "Georgian Cinema: A Subtle Voice of Nationalism," Nimrod 28, no. 2 (Spring-Summer, 1985): 25-38. 5. Eldar Shengelaya, personal interview, Tbilisi, 1984. Quoted from Christensen, "Georgian Cinema," p. 31. 6. Ibid., p. 33. 7. One cannot ignore the possible influence of Blue Mountains on Yuri Mamin's Fountain (1989). 8. See Julie Christensen, "Tengiz Abuladze's Repentance and the Georgian National Cause," Slavic Review 50, 1 (1991): 163-75. 9. See Julie Christensen, "Fathers and Sons at the Georgian Film Studio," Wide Angle 12, no. 4 (October 1990): 48-61. 10. Shengelaya, Public lecture, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va., 1988.

PART THREE

Close-ups: Glasnost and Soviet satire

CHAPTER XII

A forgotten flute and remembered popular tradition

Everyone remembers the episode in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita when, in the bedeviled Variety Theater, the chorus cannot stop singing the patriotic "Lake Baikal." The chorus, by then an established institution of official popular culture, represents the height of Stalinism with its heroic tunes and a powerful collective voice. Constantly transmitted over the radio through my childhood in the fifties, it gave me an allergy to choral sound for years to come. But the female choir featured in Eldar Ryazanov's 1987 film, Forgotten Melody for a Flute, definitely sings a different tune. How the choir's tune and the "forgotten melody'' of the solo flute represent the changing times will be the focus of my analysis of the use of official and unofficial popular culture in this early film of perestroika.1 As we can see from the title, memory is important in this film, where the transition from the old to the new is in its nascent stages, confusing for everyone. The recovery of historical and cultural memory became a central concern of literature and art in the early period of glasnost, when the long years of repression gave way to revelation. As the "forgotten melody" (nezabyvaemaia melodiia) for a flute is remembered in Ryazanov's comedy, what does it or can it tell? While the central story of the film is that of adultery and romance, the stock plot is a vehicle for pointing out the ills plaguing Soviet society - the play of power, problems of gender and class in a country supposedly free of both, and the depth of corruption in the sphere of cultural politics. The private and the public sphere are shown to be fundamentally interconnected. This is played out through the juxtaposition of two melodies: the long "forgotten," but now remembered lyrical popular tune played on the flute by the main protagonist in search of himself; and the tune performed by an all-woman choir that one would like to forget but cannot as its banal melody insinuates itself through repetition, haunting the viewer's consciousness like the return of the repressed. In this first popular comedy of perestroika we see Soviet society on the brink of fundamental changes represented through conflicting social 117


118

forces: (a) official popular culture, now in disarray, is shown here as it loses control over "leisure activities/* a process we will observe as we follow the narrative of the disintegration of a choir, the traditional symbol of the Soviet state; (b) various forms of unofficial popular culture represented here - the satiric political pop songs and the romans art song (the forgotten melody itself), as well as the Izmailovsky market, the privatization of popular art, its independence from official censorship (the age of bulldozers has passed, as one bureaucrat notes with regret), replaced by free enterprise on a small scale; (c) official high culture, that is, classical music and its mythology; (d) the disastrous state of social morale seen in the hypocrisy at the Leisure Time Agency, and in the confusion and dishonesty of private life as depicted in this cliched tale of adultery but with new repercussions. The hero, Leonid, works for the Leisure Time Agency (Upravlenie svobodnogo vremeni), a part of the Brezhnev bureaucracy that is on its way from being superfluous to becoming obsolete. Leonid is a typical Brezhnev bureaucrat, representative of the rule of his powerful namesake - corrupt, cowardly, privileged. Thanks to a powerful father-in-law, a major Party boss, he holds his present position as well as the chance for promotion. His wife is a modern, self-assured, independent career woman, an intellectual, definitely from the new upper class. The corruption of social fabric is displayed in the familiar cliche of the love affair —a powerful man seduces a younger, vulnerable woman, a nurse by profession, first by feigning weakness (he needs shots for his heart condition) and then by plying her with gastronomic delicacies that only the privileged have access to, such as smoked fish and caviar. The gender/class problem of Socialist society surfaces in the scene where his co-workers arrive to visit him and find Lida, the nurse, washing dishes. To cover his embarrassment, Leonid tells them that she has agreed to do some housekeeping for him on the side for pay. Lida is angry and refuses to see him again but then forgives him. The embarrassing situation is repeated next time she makes a house call and the wife appears on the scene, unexpectedly. Once again, Leonid attempts to make feeble excuses for Lida's housekeeping duties. Again, although Lida shows some independence of spirit and does fight for her dignity (when the wife sarcastically proposes that she continue to do housekeeping for them, the nurse responds that she'll hire her to do the dishes after she, the wife, finishes her Ph.D. thesis), she eventually gives in to Leonid again. He courts her in the old-fashioned way, appearing at the door with red roses or waiting to give her a ride in his car, and she can't resist that. They both attempt to struggle for some authenticity of feeling in the relationship but, like everything else, it is doomed in a society where power, hypocrisy, and privilege deny the possibility of "real" identity and emotion.


119

There is a melodramatic moment at the end of the film when Lida, who is leaving her job after Leonid had gone back to his wife, hears sirens and runs back to the office where he is lying on the floor, unconscious, with a heart attack, being tended by the emergency medical team who cannot do much. Lida manages to resuscitate him and when she knows he'll pull through, she melodramatically leaves the scene and the lover who'll never know. Here, the woman, though she belongs to a younger generation, plays her role of a sacrificing nurturer to the end - that this expression of true love is taken for granted is one of the factors that render the film dated, as does most of what happens in the affair. In his capacity as a culture boss of the agency, Leonid reviews performances of amateur groups that come to audition for him and his commission. When the first group presents scenes from a modern version of Gogol's "Inspector General," the play's satire of the corrupt tsarist bureaucrats is extended to the present. This is not lost on Leonid and his assistant who pans the scene as a "mockery of the classics" in which the town policeman rides a "Chaika" (the standard car of Soviet officials). In an aside to Leonid, the assistant comments that, in the old days, he would forbid the show, but now the times are different and everything is allowed. This episode sets the tone for Ryazanov's own satire of the Brezhnev legacy. On the same afternoon, Leonid hears an audition of the Tambov women's choir, which will become the central image of the satire as it appears four times at key points of the action and brings much needed comic relief into this otherwise very sentimental comedy. Let me chart the narrative of these appearances. First, they are invited to a dancing competition at the Leisure Time Agency by mistake. After some arguments and hassle, they perform their newly composed song in street clothes as they arrived straight from the train station. In the song, the lover is asked to think of the beloved at all the seasons of the year, with the refrain that likens this to a reverie on a long, cool sheet: "Think of me on a spring night" (vesennei noch'iu dumai obo mne), which rhymes with "on a long, cool sheet" (na dlinnoi i prokhladnoi prostyne), "on your back" (na spine), and "on a soft, slow wave" (miagkoi, medlennoi volne). The comical effect produced by the text with its suggestive rhyme reminds one of a similar rhyme in a parodied version of one of the official state songs: "Great is my land / It has many forests, fields, and rivers" (Shiroka strana moia rodnaia / mnogo v nei lesov, polei i rek). The unofficial version substituted its own suggestive rhyme, similar to the choir's: "Great is my land / it has many pillows and sheets" (Shiroka strana moia rodnaia / mnogo v nei podushek, prostynei). The unofficial popular tradition from the fifties is alive and resurfaces via a text that actually comes from a poem by Evgeny Yevtushenko.


120

Although written in the previous thaw, the text remains a threat well into the eighties for the bureaucrats that managed to survive it.2 But will they survive perestroika? Although the agency decides to send the choir on a national tour, Leonid thinks their song is too sexy and strongly advises them to "propagandize something else" (propagandirovali by chto-to drugoe) and to change the words to "something less explicitly sexual" (koe-chto ne stol' seksuaFnoe). In typical bureaucratese, he adds that it isn't that he forbids the lines but only suggests the change. On the very afternoon that Leonid makes his moral point, or censors the chorus, he notices the pretty nurse Lida, who performed in the previous scene from "The Inspector General" and with whom he will begin the affair that will dominate the plot. In the second episode, the choir is transformed into a recognizable entity as the women don folk dress to perform their original song (minus the explicit lines) to a scattered gathering on the beach of a picturesque Crimean town. The juxtaposition of the official choir and the sea with a romantic castle on a hill as a backdrop presents an incongruous image. But as soon as the obligatory formality of the performance is over, the women hurriedly shed the folk dress and their serious demeanor, and run to the sea in their bathing suits (a carnivalesque moment); background shots of two young lovers and a lone fisherman set the mood of this real, rather than official, scene of seaside leisure. Third, the choir moves to another seaside location, but this time they perform for the navy on an aircraft carrier, a most convincing image of State power. The sailors await as the female chorus appears, literally rising from the belly of the State onto the deck of the carrier. This classic scene of entertainment for the troops, with folklore produced for the consumption of organized masses, is one instance in which the choir is performing its traditional role. However, the overall effect can be seen in the sexual impact of the song that is communicated even without the original explicit refrain (hence, censorship no longer works) as the now beguiling, smiling women perform to an obviously receptive all-male audience. The impact of the performance is reflected in the wistful, longing expresssions of the men, one of whom holds up binoculars to better fix the gaze. Fourth, the women go on to perform somewhere in the steppes of Central Asia in a nomad camp, complete with yurts and horses tended by Orientals who take note of the choir in a vague sort of way. This time, instead of the pretty faces framed by folk headgear, the camera scans the girls' feet, shod in motley footwear - worn sneakers and sandals. The burlesque effect (emphasis on the lower sphere of the vertical body) is pushed further as they whisper between phrases of the by now tired tune, how they are worn out and homesick, how they fear they'll be sent to Kamchatka, and how one of them thinks she's pregnant. This image of the no longer effective, demoralized choir in colonial territory suggests the beginnings of


121

\ Leonid Filimonov (Leonid Filatov) remembers a forgotten tune in Eldar Ryazanov's Forgotten Melody for a Flute as his wife listens.

the disintegration of the empire. There is a distant shot of an astronomer looking through a telescope here, perhaps trying to read the future in the stars. The last we hear of the choir is at the end of the film when the news comes to the agency that the chorus got as far as in Krasnodar and is now selling its costumes to make money for tickets home. The Tambov choir is a parody of the Russian chorus that for decades displayed Soviet national pride and might in performances of official folklore. The obviously sexy refrain "think of me" (dumai obo mne) is a take-off on the line that, in Stalin's Russia, would have referred to the leader or to the land. The chorus - a microcollective - appears to be in disarray beneath the thin guise of official folk dress. And, as we have seen, its message carries a rather down-to-earth appeal despite Leonid's earlier protestation. However, the repeated refrain of an easy, popular melody is soon worn out and no less "tired" than the old patriotic songs that had become so through mere repetition, ubiquitous presence, and dominance of the airwaves. The new, more liberal, but almost anarchic choir appears as a holdover from the old order that is now coming apart. The narrative of choral appearances presents an allegory of the changes taking place in the country. It is clear that the bureaucrats, though still in power, are


122

losing their grip - their loss of control over official popular culture and entertainment as it was dominated by the institution of the Soviet chorus over several decades is indicative of the situation at large.3 The two other vocal musical numbers framing the film are a variation on this theme and confirm the Party's shaky position. In the film's opening sequence, we hear a contemporary satiric song by a young group that clearly makes fun of authority, of Soviet bureaucrats. We don't plow, we don't sow, we don't build, we are proud of the social order, we are important paper people, as we have been and will be. My ne pashem, ne seem, ne stroim My gordimsia obshchestvennym stroem my bumazhnye, vazhnye liudi my i byli i byt' imi budem. But the refrain further undercuts the self-important bureaucrats whose authority is now on the wane: There's nothing more solid than a paper structure nor more frightening than the winds of perestroika. Net prochnee bumazhnoi postroiki net strashnee vetra perestroiki The song is about the nomenklatura, the privileged class that has little to do with material production of goods, but everything with control and power. They have the most to lose in the changing political climate. Toward the end of the film, the ruling elites' anxiety of a loss of power and privilege is realized in one of the hero's dream sequences. A colleague of Leonid, a comfortable bureaucrat who exudes well-being and confidence, hence a perfect potential victim of perestroika, sings in a train carriage begging for alms for the new superfluous Soviet man. As in the song just cited, symbols of a bureaucrat's comfort and power, such as the sunny office, hallway carpet, and mahogany chair, are now the symbols of nostalgia for the past to which the singer must bid farewell: If there's an orphan in the world it's a citizen without an office. Kto i est'ne svete sirota eto grazhdanin bez kabineta. He presents himself as "a casualty of acceleration" (pered vami zhertva uskoren'ia). The unofficial popular genre of satiric song with accordion accompaniment that the bureaucrat adopts here serves to assure him of an audience that is sympathetic to his plight. The director, Eldar Ryazanov, made the following comment at the premiere: 'The film is a kind of a parable in which the flute is a symbol. Fil-


123

imonov used to be a musician, but he betrayed his art. The forgotten melody, or melodies, are the forgotten feelings, the values like honesty, and respect - the things for which a person is born. But this man did not live his own life. He lived someone else's. He climbed the bureaucratic ladder. He could have lived and loved. He sold out to the highest bidder."4 This is, then, the premise of the film, but is it what we actually see on the screen? The director employs several possible ways to suggest authenticity in contrast to the corruption and hypocrisy that rule the life of Ryazanov's hero and his world. One way is through interjected sequences of fantasies and dream visions that reveal the underside of the repressed hero's actions or what he would really like to do but doesn't, that is, tell his wife the truth and face up to his duplicity. Music is another, for as Leonid slowly and carefully retrieves his flute to play for Lida, he admits he has not played it for years. He tells her a romantic tale of an unfulfilled talent - he was a conservatory student, that is, he studied the classical tradition and was even invited to play in an orchestra after graduation. The tune Leonid finally plays for Lida is not at all classical but one of an oldfashioned sentimental "romance." Lida responds accordingly and dreamily remembers all the dances she went to when she was younger as she moves to the tune's gentle rhythm. Although intended as a symbol of honesty and true feelings, the flute appears ambiguous in this scene with the clearly expressed nostalgia for high culture that is undercut by a popular tune that Leonid actually plays. The flute is an intimate instrument that can be played solo (in contrast to the collective choir), and it is meant to suggest an authenticity of sorts, a potential that the young Leonid supposedly once had but later exchanged for status and privilege. He fears losing these at the same time as he attempts to recover his youth. His anxiety of the loss of privilege, shared with his colleagues, is expressed in a vision where he appears as a street musician. This scene looks like a hippie vision of a street musician who chose marginality instead of conformity through compromise, performing to passersby while the solicitous Lida brings him hot food. But although Leonid does not look unhappy, he is wearing a sign, "Give to an ex-boss of the agency." The sequence makes his actual official job of overseeing leisure activities appear even more parasitic and corrupt. The story of Leonid's musical past fails to elicit sympathy because it borders on the banal, saddled as it is by a cluster of possible clich6d meanings. For example, it proffers a common romantic belief in the integrity of the artist, since "art" has a high status in Socialist society. At the same time, however, it is a story of official "high culture" that represents "higher" aspirations. In his book The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism, Miklos Haraszti points out the irony of the Party's role as the protector of "high" culture, the role it can fulfill on the condition of


124

the cooperation of its workers or those who represent that culture in socialist society. In return for their cooperation, they occupy an ambivalent position of privileged, though often critical, professionals.5 Galichenko writes that Eldar Ryazanov "can be considered a senior citizen of contemporary cinema," since his first film was made the year of Stalin's death. Perhaps this explains the particular kind of old-fashioned Soviet sentimentality that pervades this film. While it satirizes the passing post-Stalinist culture, it still employs its cliches and appears bound by them much as the Soviet culture whose outmoded Socialist trappings are satirized here. The film remains mired in ambivalence, so that sometimes it is hard to tell whether the banality is intended (i.e., ironic) or unselfconscious. When Leonid does retrieve his flute and begins to play, the popular tune, though delicate and soulful, does not give an inkling of his artistic talent nor of his inner being. It is hard to believe the melodramatic story of this not very believable character, as it is hard to believe the sincerity of his intentions and declarations to Lida, red roses and all. The underlying assumption of the comedy is that music and love represent the traditional symbols of human authenticity. Their prominence in the film serves to reveal the hypocrisy of Soviet society that they are meant to counteract but fail to do. Instead, at the end of the Forgotten Melody for a Flute everything appears tainted and uncertain, except Lida's unselfish old-fashioned devotion to the man who does not deserve it, but that strikes the viewer as silly rather than moving. There is no clear sign of the possibility of real change in Ryazanov's comedy as yet, but rather a sense of nostalgia for real values mixed with regret and disappointment it is too late for the established middle-aged bureaucrats, but it also seems too late for a bright, young, lively and very capable woman who succumbs to the not so discreet charms of the Moscow bourgeoisie. Notes 1. This paper was presented at the panel on "Film and Popular Culture" at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies convention in Miami, November 1991. 2. I would like to thank Kevin Moss for the reference to this song by E. Yevtushenko, arranged and sung by Jerry Silverman. "Russian Songs," Folkways Records, no. FW 8780, c. 1967. 3. In his essay on Eldar Ryazanov, N. Galichenko suggests that the theme song "Think of Me" is the cry of common people to insensitive officialdom but I don't think that is the case here. See his book Glasnost - Soviet Cinema Responds, ed. Robert Allington (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991), p. 116. 4. Ibid. 5. M. Haraszti, The Velvet Prison; Artists Under State Socialism (New York: Basic, 1987). See especially chap. 7, "The Culture of Censorship."

CHAPTER XIII

Perestroika of kitsch: Sergei Soloviev's Black Rose, Red Rose

The hero of Assa (dir. Sergei Soloviev, 1988) makes a paradoxical statement that can be interpreted as a comment both on the new aesthetics of the Soviet cinema and on glasnost in general: "kitschy but original" (Poshlo, no originaPno). How can "kitsch," often understood as "pseudoart" or "vicarious experience" (the Russian word "poshlost," suggesting something that has been recycled many times and turned into a weary cliche) coincide with originality in the context of contemporary Soviet culture? In what way does a comic reconsideration of the notions of "vulgarity," "kitsch," and poshlost offer a serious cultural critique? (Is there a conflict between irony and poshlost, or between the uses of kitsch and the uses of absurd?) What are the limits of irony and satire in Soviet cinema? What cannot be treated ironically? Can poshlost and kitsch be funny? If so, then from whose point of view - and who gets the last laugh? Nabokov asserted that poshlost is a moral category.1 The examination of what in any specific culture is considered kitsch and poshlost besides providing a valuable comic relief from the high seriousness of the scholarly enterprise - gives us a rare insight into operation of the culture. The discussion of kitsch does not allow us to separate ethics and aesthetics, artistic and everyday spheres, and in the Russian and Soviet context it is located on the crossroads of art, politics and byt - the quotidian existence. Sergey Soloviev proclaimed with a peculiar ironic seriousness that his films belong to the genre of "romantic cretinism" (marasm), which nevertheless captures the very chemistry of contemporary Soviet life.2 This connection between cretinism and romanticism - between selfconscious Romantic irony and nostalgia for romance in the muchcelebrated high spirituality of Russian culture - will be explored in my analysis. I will focus on Black Rose, fled Rose (full title Black Rose Is the Emblem for Sadness, Red Rose Is the Emblem for Love [Chernaya roza, emblema pechali, krasnaya roza, emblema lyubvi]), which can be called an "encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet kitsch" to paraphrase the words Belinsky said about Pushkin's "Evgenij Onegin" - "encyclopedia of Russian life." Nabokov stressed that poshlost is an "unobvious sham" 125


126

that carefully disguises itself under the mask of universal values and sets up invisible traps for the observer. Central to my essay will be the tension between self-conscious and involuntary uses of kitsch in recent Soviet cinema. I will examine the difference between merely satirizing the poshlost and tackiness of Soviet life, and attempting to reconsider cultural hierarchies of taste and morality that could place the satirist in an uncomfortable position. Moreover, I will explore why the film refrains from a direct social satire and moves more in the direction of a playful cultural collage.3 Before I move to the analysis of the film that will serve as an encyclopedia of poshlost and kitsch, I will make a brief digression into the etymology of poshlost, and the history of discourses on poshlost and kitsch. The etymology of poshlost gives a special insight into the construction of Russian and Soviet cultural myths and their perestroika in recent Soviet cinema. Kitsch is an international phenomenon that can be analyzed both from a sociological and a historical perspective (with regard to its relation to modernization, industrialization, commercialism) and from a moral and aesthetic perspective that considers kitsch a "false aesthetic conscience," a "vicarious experience/' 4 In Russian, two words are employed to designate marginalized cultural sensibility and bad, "philistine" taste "poshlost" and "kitsch." If, in Western criticism, the critique of kitsch reaches its peak in the 1920s, as an avant-garde reaction against commercialization of art and later against totalitarian fascist art, in the Russian context, kitsch is opposed to the avant-garde art, and the conceptualization of poshlost and its critique dates back to the nineteenth century. The use of the word kitsch in Russian is very recent and refers exclusively to the pseudoartistic phenomenon and the products of Western mass culture. The contemporary Soviet dictionary records the following usages of poshlost: 1. Lacking in spiritual qualities, ordinary, insignificant, worthless, paltry. 2. Not original, worn-off, banal. 3. Indecent, obscene, tasteless, vulgar.5

Since in Russian culture the process of secularization begins much later than in Western Europe, the word poshJost marks not only artistic triteness, but also a lack of "spirituality" and sexual-moral decency. The separation of sexual, spiritual, and artistic spheres, or of the ethics of behavior, metaphysics, religion, and aesthetics, did not manifest in Russia in the same way that it did in the West. The autonomy of art did not develop there to the same extent as in western Europe, nor were there a variety of secular discourses on love, eroticism, and sexuality. Interestingly, poshJost might refer both to sentimentality construed as tasteless (to excessive expression of feeling) and to obscenity, which often refers to any explicit expression of sexuality. In Gogol and Dostoevsky, poshlost is

Perestroika of kitsch

127

linked to the figure of the devil, a modern Russian devil, trivial and paltry. (Nabokov - not without a good deal of national pride - claims that only Russians among all European nations could have come up with such a brilliant term because of "the cult of simplicity and good taste in old Russia." This is one of Nabokov's most unironic sentences, which - to say the least — is bordering on the banal.) Poshlost comes from poshlo, meaning something that has happened. In Dai's dictionary, the meaning of the word marked "old" means in fact, "old, traditional, ancient, ancestral" (davnij, starodavnij, cto isstari vedetsja, drevnij).6 One of the usages is "poshJyj kupec" - a merchant who belongs to the community "sotnya." The connection between poshJost and the supposed tastes of the merchant class is crucial for understanding the cultural degradation of the word. Initially, poshJost is not morally valorized, but gradually the term of description turns into a term of discrimination. (The history of the word poshJy is similar to the history of the French word "banaJ," which in the Middle Ages refers simply to the property shared in the feudal jurisdiction to the shared or common property. These histories reflect a crisis of the "commonplace," the crisis of conventions and cultural consensus that occurs in the epoch of Romanticism and early modernization.) Thus, at the core of the problem of poshJost is the problem of triteness and of tradition, of shared experience and cliche, or the unresolvable problem of the Russian byt (daily grind) that is both sustaining and stifling. The relationship between poshJost and what is perceived as its antidote will be central to my discussion. Nabokov claimed that poshJost is "beautifully timeless" (parodying kitschy claims to timeless beauty). Instead of exploring the timeless beauty of poshlost and kitsch I would like to look at its history and attempt a timely revaluation of different kinds of kitsch in the Gorbachev era. I do not seek to discern the universal structure of kitsch but to trace its etymology, its rhetoric, and its elusive functioning in the society and within the artwork. Although there have been attempts to examine the "structure of the bad taste" (Umberto Eco), ultimately such attempts fail not only because of the parasitic relationship of kitsch with art, but also because kitsch and poshJost are primarily syntactic phenomena that depend on usage, framing, angle of vision, and context. It is the context that makes certain elements of style, objects, and behavior into kitsch, and it is the context again that helps to estrange, parody, and satirize both the conventions of the old and the revolutionary anticonventionality, and to foreground some of their political and cultural implications. "Kitsch," once defined by Adorno as a parody of catharsis can reveal those cultural mythographies mystiques, and demystifications that are in process now. Soloviev's film is an example of the new eclecticism and the selfconscious uses of kitsch. Together with such films as Zero City (Gorod zero), Prishvin's Paper Eyes (Bumazhnye gJaza Prishvina), and others, it


128

forms a part of absurdist New Wave in the Soviet cinema, which can be compared in spirit with the Czech and Hungarian New Wave of the 1960s. The production and distribution of the film reflects the changing functioning of cultural institutions during perestroika. The film was made right after the decentering of Mosfilm, by the studio Circle, and the director himself takes care of the film distribution. Obviously, the history of cinema is linked to the history of kitsch and marks its high point. Black Rose, Red Rose, besides being an encyclopedia of poshlost, also presents many intertextual - or interfilmic - references to different periods of cinema. The debates around film from the 1920s to the 1980s - film as art versus film as popular entertainment, as a commercial, or as a government-sponsored media - which are essential to my study of the etymology of poshJost, are staged by Soloviev's film, its production, and its distribution. Black Rose, Red Rose is the second part of a new trilogy, "Three Songs about the Motherland." (Soloviev commented that his earlier films make a "trilogy of radical stagnation [krutoj stagnacii] and focus on individual survival. This new trilogy [the trilogy of merry perestroika - trilogija zabojnoj perestroiki] is an investigation of the spiritual and moral [dukhovno] picture of the whole society.) The film presents an eclectic collage of narratives, images, and cultural references. Although there is a lot of playful use of what can be called "antiideological montage" of the intertitles, dream sequences, and funny and impertinent addresses to the audience, the film puts major emphasis on narrative coherence. This becomes clear particularly in the second version of the film done specially for distribution in the West. Central to the film is a kind of love triangle: a beautiful, playful, and irresponsible woman-child (played by Tatyana Drubich), a daughter of an elite Party official and a ballerina who has a playful and subversive affair with a married fashion model who makes her pregnant. Alexandra is saved by a noble and pure orphan teenage boy, a descendant of the artistocratic Russian Lobanov family, which included a Decembrist ancestor and a rich grandfather in Cannes who happens to die and leave the boy a few million dollars. In the end, Mitja inherits the family money, receives a baptism, and has un uplifting vision of Alexandra with a child looking like a Christmas Virgin Mary. The setting of the film is primarily a claustrophobic communal apartment that serves as a theatrical stage for the carnivalesque happenings. The only escape is the roof of the apartment with the view on a huge billboard advertisement for Pan Am (as if borrowed from Wim Wenders's Paris, Texas, but instead of Paris, Texas, it is Moscow-New York.) The communal apartment, located in a largely destroyed part of old Moscow, is cohabited by the aristocratic Mitja and the limitchik Tolik. (A "Jimitchik" is someone who comes to Moscow from the provinces and lives


129

Perestroika meets kitsch in Sergei Soloviev's The Black Rose Is the Emblem for Sadness, the Red Rose Is the Emblem for Love (1989).

on a limited ascription.) Tolik, perestroika's blessed fool, wakes up with a scene of the revolutionary cruiser Aurora and with the taped recording of the announcement of Stalin's death and its detailed physiological description. Till Tolik's death, which is perceived at first as yet another of his carnivalesque tricks, it is unclear whether he is "mad or just pretends to be" - indeed, the distinction between the two being often difficult to draw in Soviet society. Tolik is a cross between Chaadaev, a "philosopher in the gown," and Gogol's madman transplanted into the Soviet communal apartment. The other characters include a lonely general and his drinking partner, a Soviet-sponsored resistance leader of a developing country, both made obsolete by perestroika. The film is interspersed with anecdotes about Stalin's constipation, Tolik's dreams of changing the letters on Lenin's mausoleum from LENIN to TOLIK, and absurdist incidents that literally illustrate Russian proverbs as well as intertitles and even a few fleeting appearances by Jesus Christ. The humor in the film is mostly verbal; it results primarily from literary puns and jokes. However, occasionally there is an interesting clash between the image and the verbal text, such as in the final scene of the


130

baptism, which does not allow us to draw clear boundaries between Russian spirituality and Russian kitsch in its self-conscious and unselfconscious forms. The very title of the film offers an example of selfconscious usage of kitsch. Soloviev tells a story of how everyone at Mosfilm commented that it sounds like a title for an Indian film, and how he confessed that he was not ashamed of that: "At least Indian directors appeal to a broad audience and make people laugh and cry."7 He selfconsciously employs elements of melodrama and explicitly refers to Dostoevsky and "Dostoevskishchina," a foregounding of the already-present elements of kitsch in Dostoevsky's writings, which resulted from a complex relationship between metaphysical aspirations and readings of yellow-press novels. In Russian culture, there is a higher tolerance of what in the West would be considered a sentimental excess; there is a greater threshold of cultural acceptance of the overwhelming expression of emotions and feelings; in general elements of melodrama are much more present in what is considered "high culture." (We can observe this in watching recent Soviet films that often appear excessively melodramatic to the foreign viewer.) Soloviev proposes to use melodrama selfconsciously, not masking it by false moderation of official hypocrisy, the official caricature on culturalism and good taste that dominated Brezhnev's years. Soloviev observed that one of the criticisms of his earlier film Assa is that it is a commercial or in Russian "konjucturny" film that consciously plays for the taste of the masses and flirts with youth culture. The same can be said about his new film. Indeed, BJack Rose, Red Rose has turned out to be something of a teenage cult movie. According to Soloviev, it is important to reconsider the very notion of konjuctura, or art made "in conjunction with" a specific social demand — in this case, of course, not an ideological demand but a desire to appeal to the tastes of the audience and thus disturb the old Russian intelligentsia's belief in the uncompromising nature of art. (Soloviev goes so far as to say that Sakharov can be seen as a konjunkturshchik when he insists that in the circumstances of 1989, it is important to support Gorbachev and the policy of perestroika.)8 The director points at the necessity to reconsider cultural hierarchies which resulted not so much in "high or spiritual and moral culture" but in culturalism and false piety. Furthermore, the very notion of "commercialism" is complicated in the Soviet context. Commercial culture has been strictly prohibited since after the revolution. The surviving elements of "popular" urban culture and vernacular culture - beyond the official Soviet folk (as one of the characters in the film observes, the music is folk, the words by MVD) — were denounced as "petit bourgeois kitsch." Thus, at the very beginning of Gorbachev's time, "commercial" culture was perceived as subversive. Now there is more discussion about commercialization of culture and a need to draw boundaries between a purely imitative


131

commercial culture and a self-conscious attempt to use elements of new vernacular culture of the Homo sovieticus. The former follows in the steps of the official Soviet popular culture of Brezhnev's time spiced with a few porno scenes, a few obligatory drug addicts, and a few Stalin jokes, while the latter presents an attempt to upset and shift cultural preconception and disturb the hypocritical reverance of the official culture. But how are we to distinguish between good and bad repetition, between "good" bad taste and "bad" bad taste, satiric and involuntary uses of kitsch? Black Rose, Red Rose is densely packed with various references to "popular" and "high" culture, literary quotations, and cultural cliches that are interwoven throughout the fragmentary and explosive structure of the film. The history of what was considered kitsch and poshlost in Russian and Soviet culture is perfectly cinematically illustrated in the film. Soviet history appears in the film as a montage of kitsch signs - cultural signposts that have to be marked in order to accomplish demystification. The title song, a leitmotif of the young heroine, is an example of what has been conceived as "petit bourgeois poshJost." It is an urban romance {gorodskoj romans) that reminds one of gypsy imitations and old gramophone records of the turn of the century. It is a part of the sentimental "feminine culture" that here is treated with a mixture of parody and endearment. (Interestingly, Alexandra's lover, Vladimir, echoes her song with his ironic performance of the Soviet singer-superstar and queen of popular culture Alia Pugacheva: "a million, million, million red roses . . . " Thus, the red roses seem to bridge fin de si&cle "feminine cultures") The song is performed playfully and somewhat exaggeratedly by the young heroine of the film. Symptomatically, she plays it right after a funny sex scene between her and her fasion-model lover (who resists her and keeps repeating, "We are like children, we are just like children"). The title song uses two meanings of the word poshlost — the way it refers to sentimentality as well as to bad taste and sexuality is played out with ironic self-consciousness. Alexandra's black laces and military attributes as well as her S&M relationship with her father (which is aestheticized in the film almost a la David Lynch) make Sovloviev a pioneer of the "camp" attitude in the Soviet cinema. (She comments that he is a dictator, and her home is like Chile — parodying Soviet newspaper jargon.) The film offers many examples of the totaliatarian kitsch of the Stalin period - the cruiser Aurora and Stalin's images. There is also an example of Western kitsch in the ad for Pan Am, which in the context of the film signifies not only commercialism, but also a new openness - or a new seduction by the West - and an element of Western postmodern culture. Gorbachev kitsch is represented by the programmatic new glasnost "speech" from the magazine Ogonek, and gJasnost T-shirts bought in the West. The direct social criticism and social satire offered by Tolik in his


132

moment of political inspiration is treated by the other characters in the film as a glasnost cliche, a programmatic kitschy glasnost-speech: "You must have read too much Ogonek," says Vladimir, referring to the former conservative magazine of the Brezhnev times turned into a loudspeaker of perestroika. Tolik is ironically called "dissident." Thus, the discourse of satire itself is perceived as ideological kitsch, a sign of the times when glasnost is promoted officially from above, as silence, indirection, and Aesopian language was promoted in Brezhnev's times. Thus, Soloviev's film illuminates the specificity of the Russian etymology of poshlost. What differentiates it from the history of kitsch in the West are first the synthetic nineteenth-century definitions of poshlost that join together the issues of spirituality, morality, sexual and aesthetic behavior, an insistence on a certain spiritual aristocratism and asceticism that was inherited from the Rusian intelligentsia by the Russian avantgarde. Also, it is marked by a different institutional history of popular or commercial culture. Jeffrey Brooks convincingly analyzes particularly hostile attitudes toward "popular literature" on the part of the State, the church, and the intelligentsia in the nineteenth century - attitudes that are later carried on by the Bolsheviks.9 This led to a postrevolutionary abolition of non-State-sponsored commercial culture in Russia. The 1920s witnessed a revolutionary struggle against "counterrevolutionary daily grind," petit bourgeois characterization of "Marx in a little crimson frame," canaries, and love boats parodied and eternalized by Mayakovsky. In fact, everything private or domestic is constructed as "petit bourgeois poshlost" and dismissed together with the art of the belle epoque and aestheticism; in the 1930s, commercial culture is prohibited, and the eclectic poshlost of the belle epoque and NEP is replaced by official Stalinist academism, which however remained impure and could not completely eradicate the sentimentality and folkloric structures of good old poshlost. In the 1960s, the intelligentsia of the "thaw generation" rebelled against the "bad taste of the 1950s" that smacked of Stalinism and philistinism, and rediscovered in a somewhat distorted form the heritage of the revolutionary modernism. During the Brezhnev period, artistic stagnation and cynicism were accompanied by a growing awareness of Western culture, as well as by the development of an acute historical and stylistic conscience at least among the new post-Stalinist generation of the Soviet intelligentsia. These often subdued cultural mutations that occurred during the 1970s prepared the ground for a new subversive eclecticism of perestroika. In the age of Gorbachev, "totalitarian kitsch" of the "high Stalinism" of the 1930s and the old poshlost of the time of NEP, 1950s middlebrow art, and neomodernist euphoria of the 1960s all appear as different aesthetic and political styles, occasions for nostalgia and explosive laughter.


133

Hence, Soloviev's film does not merely use kitsch satirically or ironically. Poshlost is not automatically placed under the sign of evil; rather, the film makes us reconsider poshJost and its uses as an umbrella term for everything "ideologically incorrect" in a given period. The title song reenacts both seriously and ironically the main melodramatic conflict of the film — "The black rose is the emblem of sadness; the red rose is the emblem of love, the demons strummed to us about the black rose, the nightingales sang us about the red." Thus, in its own kitschy way the song's refrain is about the duel opposition between good and evil, between demons and nightingales, sadness and love. The song is in the same genre as the film itself - "the genre of tragic and comic cretinism." It is a cliche, but a cliche that here is both parodied and reestablished. Kitsch and poshlost - or rather the stylistic elements that, if taken out of the context, would be regarded as kitsch and poshlost — are not entirely on the side of the demons. The division between demons and nightingales does not coincide with the division between good taste, as it is accepted by the Soviet intelligentsia, and bad taste. Where then does it pass? Is it that true spiritedness can be hidden behind tacky exteriors? Can the director escape the trap of poshJost, its double bind of tradition and triteness - a wisdom of the past (often constructed as an ideal, universal wisdom) and a worn-down banality? The director self-consciously attempts to give us antidotes for poshlost within the film, both on the level of the characters who embody "the wandering of the ideal in the real" and in the comic or carnavalesque and subversive elements of the film's structure. The two main "anti-poshJost" characters are young Lobanov and Alexandra, a teenage couple. (The grown-ups seem to have lost the capacity to resist poshlost.) The film would be a perfect example of the crisis of parenthood and conventional family, which can hardly be represented other than satirically. We know that the search for a positive hero is one of the most tragically frustrated and yet never abandoned aspirations of Russian and Soviet literature from Gogol's good landlord in the burnt second volume of The Dead SouJs, to Chenyshevsky's good raznochinets - revolutionaries to Socialist Realist heroes. The easy way out was always to represent an ideal selfsacrificial female character, a model of "terrible perfection" who is a living reproach to frustrated males who are forever searching for an ideal. Alexandra falls to some extent into this trap. For the director, she embodies "the wandering of the ideal in the real." (Every Soviet intellectual has to be an amateur metaphysician - this is one feature that has not yet been sufficiently satirized.10) At the beginning, she is presented as playful and unpredictable in her mischief (although she reminds one too much of a typical idealized femme-en/ant). Throughout the film, Alexandra's character develops further and further toward the cliche. Pregnant Alexandra


134

in glasses is a cross between a pregnant Lolita (who changes her playful heart glasses for the more mature and heavy black ones in Kubrik's film) and Tolstoj's Natasha Rostova in a perestroika T-shirt. At the end she is further idealized and trivialized, transformed into a Virgin Mary. The treatment of religion is one of the most ambiguous and revealing parts of the film. How are we to take the slide projection scene that illustrates the New Testament before Lobanov's baptism? The gospel story is presented through a series of images that appear like turn-of-the-century popular postcards painted in a very realistic manner, but which also possess a pinkish tint, that rose colored glasses of kitsch, not the color of spiritualism but of a kitschy idealization. In the sequence of the Gospel slide show, we are dealing with a complex case of cinematic irony. Potential irony resides in the very quality of the image that undermines the solemnity of the priest's voice. The scene of baptism is not deprived of some elements of humor: The baby winks, the provincial girlfriend of Mitja's uncle from Ljubertsy gets undressed showing her black-market black lingerie-but this is neither black humor nor satire but rather a goodhumored attitude that does not undermine but softens the romantic intensity of the scene. Religious kitsch is widely recognized and has been often satirically depicted in the West, for instance, in Fellini's films, which are cinematic gospel for most of the directors of Soloviev's generation. In fact, the religious industry can be said to have pioneered kitsch in the Soviet Union, due not so much however to the so-called traditional role of religion. It is due to the history of its suppression after the revolution and the much celebrated "spirituality of Russian culture" that it is still impossible to self-consciously depict religious kitsch, or point to the fact that the discussion of spirituality can converge with poshlost. (In fact, religious kitsch is one of the oldest kinds of kitsch. The issue of representation is at the very core of many Christian theological debates - starting from iconoclasts and iconophiles to the quarrels between Catholics and Protestants, and between more aristocratic and more popular forms of religion.) Thus, even in Soloviev's eclectic and carnivalesque universe it is still a mauvais ton — to use a French expression popular in nineteenth-century Russia - meaning to laugh at certain spiritual practices and at certain old Russian aristocratic values. This would be bad bad taste. The ending of the film is a limit point of Soloviev's satire and irony: The last sequence is a montage of the baptism scene shot from Mitja's lyrical perspective followed by a dream episode in which Mitja becomes a noble and patriotic sailor on a legendary ship - a cross between the cruiser Aurora and the romantic dream ship of the civic-minded Russian aristocrats. In the reverie of young Lobanov, the aristocratic White Russian images mix with Socialist realist paintings of the Stalinist epoque and with the images of Nakhimov naval academy of the Brezhnev period. The paradox of


135

poshJost is in its omnipotence and contagious powers that upset the directorial intentions and reveal many unintentional ironies, which become even more visible when we transpose the film into a different cultural context. To my mind, the film's powerful antidote to Soviet poshlost occurs not when the film attempts to present romanticized traditional Russian images of a noble young man and woman, but in the elements of absurdity. In this respect, Tolik's dreams are much more interesting than those of Mitja. One of them presents a cinematic transposition of a nonsensical children's saying: "Ty kto? — kon' v pal'to?" (Who are you? A fish in the shoe?) In Tolik's dream, this mysterious stranger - the horse in the coat or a fish in the shoe - turns into a full-fleshed "ten grader," a mythical image in Soviet folklore. Tolik's dream not only plays with the official hypocrisy and moralism of Soviet society, but above all it undermines the very attempt to "overread," that is, to read everything through cultural references and imbue everything with inevitable political and ideological significance. The laughter in the audience is provoked here not by a direct satire but by a subversive embarrassment of cultural forms by nonsense. However, in the version of the film made for foreign distribution, many absurd interpolated episodes, including the episode of Stalin's constipation, have been cut in order to preserve a more coherent narrative. This is unfortunate because the film, which, despite the futile cuts, still does not fit into the conventions of Hollywood narrative, and would hardly make a box-office hit in the United States, loses some of its charm. The childhood playfulness that does not "unmask" but embarrasses the moralistic high seriousness of official Soviet culture does not have to be presented in the teenage heroes Lobanov and Alexandra; it is embodied much better in the childish pranks of the film itself. The film suggests that the language of direct social satire or of a publicistic discourse that dominated the first years of perestroika is in itself to be playfully subverted. If in Clement Greenberg's definition "kitsch" imitates the effects of art, here we see art meditating on history and effects of kitsch. Interestingly, in a recent interview while discussing his latest film, Soloviev in fact mentions David Lynch as one of his inspirations. The framing of kitsch in this film can be compared to pop art appropriation of Americana, but with one significant difference: In the Soviet art, kitsch elements do not come from the commercial culture, but rather from political slogans and old high school manuals. The common Soviet cultural text is much less televisual than the American cultural text. Besides, there are profound differences in the the very understanding of commercialism and authorial narrative. The ironic references within David Lynch films contain multiple allusions to TV shows and all-American movie classics that embody American mythology. (Lynch's irony is not a vertiginous challenge to representation that is characteristic for the European avant-garde


136

tradition; rather, his cinematic irony is a "safe" irony that never interferes with profits.) In his last film, The House Under the Starry Sky (Dom pod otkrytym nebom), the third part of the trilogy that comprises Assa and Black Rose, Red Rose, Soloviev moves away from exclusively Soviet references; he places some Felliniesque characters on the New York subway and on the whole attempts to create a kind of post-perestroika Road Warrior. (The original one, if I remember correctly was postnuclear holocaust.) The House Under the Starry Sky is a reduction to absurdity not only of the Soviet history that turns into a sheer enumeration of names, but even of the history of kitsch. Yet in spite of the references to Lynch and Greenaway made by the director, the film hardly resembles its Western counterparts. It participates in many cinematic genres and cliches but lacks that recognizable archetypal genre structure characteristic of David Lynch —that of a "boy-next-door, coming-of-age" adventure in BJue Velvet and the classical road movie in Wild at Heart. Recent Soviet cinema flirts with the Hollywood cinematic genre system, but the results of that appear to be much less interesting than the native Soviet hybrids. Stylistically, Soloviev's films possess many elements of postmodernism - the superimposition of cliches, mixing genres, and cultures, cultivating something of a "campy" sensibility. However, I would like to suspend the tautology of "postmodernism is postmodernism is postmodernism . . . " o r "kitsch is kitsch is kitsch is kitsch. . . . " and foreground some uncommon features of commonplaces in different cultures. Soloviev's film offers us an eclectic Russian bouquet with some withered aristocratic flowers, some subversive "flowers of evil," and many sharp thorns of black humor on the red rose of poshlost. Notes 1. Vladimir Nabokov, "Philistines and Philistinism," in Lectures on Russian Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), pp. 309-21. 2. From Sergei Soloviev's introduction to his film during its Boston premiere at Coolidge Corner Theater, 1989. 3. For the purpose of this essay, I will provisionally distinguish between "satire," "irony" and "absurd." Satire is a passionate genre of an engaged writer or artist that ridicules or exposes the ridiculous in art and life without necessarily exposing the satirist himself or herself. On the contrary, it asserts the satirist's distance and mastery over the satirized object. Irony, specifically the unstable or so-called Romantic irony, engages both the speaking subject and the subject matter, the ironist and the material used for irony as a whirlpool of vertiginous dislocations. Humor and comedy are very broad categories that could incorporate "satire," irony and black humor. To examine it, however, would recquire a history of definitions of comedy that cannot be undertaken here. Black humor and absurd imply not simply the movement of irony and self-irony, but a movement toward nonsense,


137

where cultural and linguistic codes can no longer be preserved. It is often difficult to draw the boundaries between "stable" and unstable irony, as well as between satire and irony. Both can border on or fight against the absurd. The gray areas between black humor, satire, and irony, and their potential power of political subversion will be explored in this paper. 4. Clement Greenberg, "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," On Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon Press), 1965, p. 10. Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans, by C. Lenharardt (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), p. 340. Hermann Broch, "Notes on the Problem of Kitsch" in Kitsch: The Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista, 1969), pp. 49-67. For a comprehensive bibliography on the problem of kitsch see Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity (Durham: Duke University Press, 1987), pp. 225-65. 5. Akademicheskii Slovar' Russkogo lazyka (Moscow: 1957), p. 476. 6. Vladimir Dal, Tolkovyi Slovar' Zhivago Velikorusskogo iazyka (St. Petersburg: Volf Editorial), 1982, pp. 10-12, 374. 7. See interview with Sergei Soloviev in Sovetskiy Ekran, no. 17 (1989): pp. 8 12. 8. Ibid., p. 11. 9. Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985). 10. See Kitsch: The Anthology of Bad Taste. In Iskusstvo Kino 6 (1990): pp. 69-70, there is an open debate on "elite and mass culture" in which Tatyana Tolstaya in fact talks about the [kitshification of] religion turned into kitsch, and the director Andrey Konchalovsky says that the most popular hero of mass culture is Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XIV

Carnivals bright, dark, and grotesque in the glasnost satires of Mamin, Must a faye v, and Shakhnazarov

I wish to focus on three filmmakers who represent something of the spectrum of film satire in the former Soviet Union under gJasnost. And from the bright satire of Yuri Mamin's Neptune's Feast (Prazdnik Neptuna, 1986) to his darker film Fountain (Fontan, 1988) and on to Azerbaidjan director Vaghif Mustafayev's bright and bleak film The Villain (Merzavets, 1989) and finally to Karen Shakhnazarov's darkly grotesque Zero City (Gorod zero, 1989), I wish to conduct this critical journey through the framework of carnival laughter, be it bright, dark, or grotesque. Mikhail Bakhtin reminds us of the power of carnival laughter in his discussion of the formation of the novel at the expense of the epic: "It is (popular) laughter that destroys the epic, and in general destroys any hierarchical (distancing and valorized) distance" (The Dialogic Imagination, p. 23). Satire is, like an unstable electron particle, always in danger of breaking down, becoming something else. In this brief discussion of three directors, therefore, I wish to suggest the transitional phase that we have witnessed in what was the Soviet Union in the period between 1986 and 1989, from a liberating joyful carnivalesque form of satire to a darkly troubling formula in which both the carnivalesque and satiric laughter completely break down. Feast and Mamin: Carnivals bright and dark Yuri Mamin has emerged as one of the most important satirists in the former Soviet Union during the late 1980s and into the 1990s. Clearly, he learned much from Eldar Ryazanov, his professor and mentor, and from the Soviet and Russian tradition of satire in general. In describing his award-winning film Fountain, he classified the genre as a combination of all genres, "so that one flows into another: It begins as a comedy of situations and ends as grotesque" ("Interview," p. 16). But this younger director who graduated from the Higher Courses for Screenwriters and Directors in 1982 has emerged with his own comic satiric vision and 138

Carnivals bright, dark, and grotesque

139

voice. His early glasnost short film, Neptune's Feast, is a near perfect, warm-hearted satire of bureaucracy and village mentality today. The action revolves around a frozen northern Russian village that tries to stage a spectacular outdoor winter show, "Neptune's Feast," to impress a delegation of visiting Swedes. The problem is, however, that no one in the village is actually a "walrus," that legendary breed of tough Russians who plunge into winter waters wearing only bathing suits. Rather than Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, Mamin's film refers to the whole "Potemkin Villages" deception. With what seem like definite influences from films such as Milos Forman's Firemen's Ball as well as an upbeat version of Gogol's Inspector General, Neptune's Feast manages to engage its audience with its array of foolish villagers incompetently struggling to impress "the foreigners" while simultaneously distancing us with the absurdity of the situation caused by the "system" which is, ultimately, the source of the incompetence and confusion. In this sixty-minute romp, Mamin avoids Ryazanov's trap in Forgotten Melody for a Flute of trying to overload the film with too many agendas at once. Rather, Mamin never loses an almost giddy light-hearted sense of comedy and satire perfectly blended as in For man's early work. In this village named Little Heels (Malye Piatki), we are treated to a district Party office where no one is allowed to drink vodka (as in Andropov's and the post Brezhnev antialcohol campaign as well as Gorbachev's more strenuous yet unsuccessful similar campaign) and where no one wishes to take on the responsibility of mounting the Neptune show. The planned festivity is itself absurd, for they decide to carry out the whole show outdoors at thirty below zero and to do so as a "water show" with the one hundred "actors" swimming in icy water to show the Swedes that the Russians are still tough, superhuman "walruses." No one, of course, wants to strip down and swim in such frigid waters. Thus, another level of absurdity is added: The Party members decide to run hoses of warm water into the stage area to heat the water, an absurd gesture doomed to failure. Mamin, working with coscreenwriter Vladimir Vardunas, casts the film with a wonderful group of peasant faces that the camera captures in comic detail. And Mamin orchestrates and paces this minor masterpiece with a sure sense of timing. Detail after detail delights and feeds into the escalating buildup for this bizarre presentation. A farmer is chosen as Neptune and, protesting that "we do everything for foreigners and nothing for ourselves," attempts to commit suicide. Preparations are finally more or less complete, including a hot house nearby for participants to keep warm before plunging into the freezing water. The climax of the film, the arrival of the Swedes and the show itself, is set to the score Prokofiev wrote for


140

Eisenstein's "The Battle of the Ice" scene in Alexander Nevsky, another level of playfulness that was not lost on Soviet audiences. At film's end the Swedes have left before the show reaches its grand moments. But nobody seems to care. The scene is much like the dance sequence in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life in which everyone at the dance who sees Jimmy Stewart and date fall into the swimming pool under the dance floor decides to jump in themselves. Similarly, Mamin's initially reluctant villagers finally charge into the water for the hell of it, having the time of their lives. "Stop!" shouts an official. "The Swedes have left." It doesn't matter. Ultimately, they are enjoying themselves. Once again, what is pure farce in Capra's film becomes gentle satire in its Soviet variation: Mamin laughs both at the Party officials and the notorious Russian "bottomless spirit," which, when provoked, can never stop. There is no question but that Mamin deserves the awards this film has gained, including the Grand Prix at the Comedy Film Festival in Bulgaria, 1987. The triumphant "what the hell" celebration by the villagers who finally have fun for themselves rather than for the Party or the foreigners makes Neptune's Feast perhaps the single most "carnivalesque" satiric comedy yet under glasnost. As Mikhail Bakhtin suggests, in such a "feast of becoming," the people triumph over all obstacles . . . for that moment, that instant of pure carnival. Yet even under early glasnost, this seemingly generalized satire had great difficulty passing the watchful eye of cinema officials and only had a limited theatrical release, a form of censorship familiar to the Hollywood system. Fountain, Mamin's first feature, builds on the talents seen in Neptune's Feast to create a finely controlled extended satire that was completely in tune with the times when shot in 1988. Working again with scriptwriter Vladimir Vardunas, Mamin has grounded his narrative in the closely observed reality of apartment building life in Leningrad. But this reality becomes a center from which absurdity multiplies and surrealism develops. A "story in seven parts," as an early title announces, Fountain is framed in metaphor. The opening shot is of a figure we will come to know as the composer: He stands atop the apartment building in a Leonardo Da Vinci-like "winged man" outfit, playing a violin. We then cut from this image of Soviet man as poised ready to "fly" against a grim background while playing classical music to a desert as a title card announces the first segment of the film, "The Source." We view a fountain in the rocks that is just a trickle of water. An old Kazakh herdsman patiently holds a small container to the trickle. Suddenly a Russian military truck drives up and soldiers jump out to fill up large water canteens. Discouraged with the slow speed of the fountain, they run dynamite to the fountain and push the plunger. The rocks explode and water gushes up into the air only to die out completely as a soldier attempts without success to fill his can-


141

teen. When the soldiers see that there is now no water where once there had been a fountain, they jump into the truck and drive off. The old Kazakh herdsman looks at the dry rocks, and in what becomes the credit sequence, we watch him gather up his family and animals and head into the distance, in search of another source of water. Like much of Chaplin's work, the scene evokes laughter tinged with emotion. As the herdsman, again like Chaplin in the closing shots of his films, walks off into the distance having failed at what he wanted to accomplish, we are left with something of a knowing sadness to the satire that has gone before. The rest of the film takes place in a Leningrad apartment building that is the center of the narrative, but this metaphoric opening forces the audience to see in Aesopian style that in the dialectic of tradition and change, custom and "progress" both are often the losers. The old herdsman, we swiftly learn, is the grandfather of Maya, the wife of our main protagonist, Peter. The old Kazakh becomes something of a super plumber for the apartment building when he arrives to stay with the family. The "frame" of the film is completed in the end when the elevator in the building suddenly goes haywire and ejects the grandfather through the roof, out over the city, into space, and, yes, ultimately back home in his beloved steppe where he and we began. As in Neptune's Feast, such an ending places the simple character back in his environment, transcending the "system." In Fountain, there is also a carnivalesque celebration and triumph. After all of the disasters that have happened to the apartment house, the inhabitants carry out their own "carnival" of dancing and drinking. And there is finally a ceremony of warming the frozen pipes of the building with candles. Again we sense a group spirit that bonds diverse individuals together in a common cause beyond the realm of the Party and bureaucracy that are portrayed as having failed the people. Yet the joy of Neptune's Feast's conclusion ends in Fountain in a wry awareness that we are back where we began, in a place where the "source" has been destroyed. As in Forgotten Melody for a Flute, Mamin's film does evoke a number of genres. But Mamin succeeds with far more clarity of purpose in focusing his film and painting a canvas with an array of characters who are, as in his early work, well orchestrated to create a "group" protagonist. In this sense, Mamin follows the approach of Blue Mountains (see Julie Christensen, Chapter XI, this volume) in making all of the inhabitants of the apartment house the main protagonist. But in Mamin's hands, the satire and comedy are pushed to further extremes than the pre-glasnost Georgian film. There is the couple who have turned their apartment into an illegal greenhouse where they play music to soothe the flowers and where they prepare their daughter's costume to be a "snow maiden" in a local pageant. There is the World War II vet, the father of the greenhouse operator,


142

who has no interest in the present other than to plan a reunion of vets. In another apartment, an old widow of a poet listens to ethnographic records of tribal chants, while the composer seen in the opening shot, Shestapalov, lives in the attic apartment surrounded by various instruments, his handmade wings, and his synthesizer-piano: From time to time we see him "fly" off the top of the building on a wire, across the winter landscape, crashing to the ground each time. And at the center of all is the family of Peter, a Russian in charge of maintenance, and his Kazakh wife, Maya, whom the grandfather from the steppes visits. Within this household, many of the scenes deal with cultural confusion and the clash of traditions as the grandfather insists on facing East to pray to Mecca before eating, while the couple's son feels the old man is praying to the fridge. The old man is upset with much he sees, including aerobics shown on television, and in part as a reaction against such intrusions ("Women should not be dressed in such scanty clothing") he pulls out his old one-stringed instrument and begins to chant tribal songs. Against such a backdrop, the story involves the collapse of the building. (Again, we sense echoes of an influence from Blue Mountains.) Using Gerald Mast's comic plot classifications, we could label such a plot reducto ad absurdum, as the whole point is simply to watch everything escalate to one huge disaster (Mast, p. 6), while in this case, satirizing the "system" that has made such incompetence possible. The residents of the building literally cannot stop the building from collapsing around them. All of their efforts to get bureaucratic support, Party support, official help, fail. In one scene as the roof is caving in, for instance, men agree to hold the roof on their own shoulders propped up in part by old Communist signs bearing Party slogans in yet another visual satiric metaphor. (Their payoff is to be "fed" vodka each hour for their efforts.) Nothing works, however. And with the excellent increasing pace of this orchestrated chaos, as seen in Neptune's Feast, Mamin drives his situational comedy toward the absurd and ultimately, as he stated, the grotesque. Mamin has, like the Czech directors, an eye for the small details of absurdity that make up life under socialism: people sorting onions, thus crying, while singing a Communist song entitled "Our Native Land"; a plaque to the dead poet being dedicated only to fall off later; television news crews trying to capture the event and suddenly becoming a medium for theatrics as one of the women in the building who wishes to be an actress breaks into tears causing others to do likewise. At no point, however, does this final absurdist-grotesque satire fall into the confusing pretentiousness of the ending of Forgotten Melody for a Flute. Mamin's world is the one of everyday life simply pushed and nudged further until it becomes what the Yugoslav director Srdjan Karanovic calls "documentary fairytale."


143

About his brand of satire, Mamin says: Some people might be shocked by the raw mixture of images. A lot of people still think that a truly aesthetic picture is one that has leisurely and elegant landscapes. But why should it always be so? After all, there is such a thing as the aesthetics of the ugly. Life is not all about beauty. Vulgarity, chaos, and paradox are all part of our social life, and they prompt the visual solution. ("Interview," p. 17) But Mamin only partially describes the focus and effect of his films by discussing "the aesthetics of the ugly/* There is the carnivalesque perspective also, as noted. Furthermore, we clearly see the seriousness of purpose behind the satire that, once again, matches Eisenstein's call for comedy to be a weapon in the hands of the revolution. In this sense, Fountain, like many films made under glasnost, is a tool in the hands of those who see the aesthetics of the ugly caused by the Party and the revolution that did not deliver. The framing sequences in the steppes alone force the audience to participate in a game of reading the narrative as a parable without a verbally stated punchline (though the visuals are obvious), an Aesopian fable about the Party. As Kevin Moss has pointed out in his study of the popular pre-gJasnost satiric television film The Very Same Munchausen [Tot samyj Myuhgauzen), such Soviet allegories with missing "moral lessons," " . . . make the reader name, at least to himself, the Soviet reality to which the text does not overtly refer*' (Kevin Moss, Chapter II, this volume). The pleasure, therefore, for Soviet audiences is to fill in the blanks, read between the lines, enjoy the boldness with which contemporary "ugliness" is depicted. Munchausen is an example of such a work, especially because it appeared during the stagnation period. Fountain, coming under glasnost, is much more open and thus less "between the lines," a fact that is not necessarily completely positive for audiences used to enjoying the subversive pleasure of figuring out allusions and cleverly worked-out references. But Mamin is not totally direct. He describes his own work as presenting the everyday "situation" rather than a frontal attack on the system. But in a nation where the population is finely attuned to subtle nuance and to getting the point that could not, in the past, be stated directly, most understand that it is the system that has created the situation. Be that as it may, Fountain, for all of its awards, including winner of the 1988 Grand Prize at the first Festival of Genre Films held in Odessa, failed to find a large popular audience. With 4 million viewers in its first year, Mamin's work must thus be seen as on a par with Woody Allen's comic art: much admired by the critics and by a devoted educated audience, but relatively ignored by the general public when compared to the huge audiences found for other comedies and satires such as Ghostbusters II and Batman. Soviets interviewed on this point about Mamin's film suggested to us that perhaps the film is too close to real life, that Mamin has


144

succeeded too well in capturing the hardships of daily life. Therefore his "aesthetics of the ugly" is something they receive enough of in the papers, in conversation, in the effort to get through each day. Again, for audiences used to Aesopian satire, Mamin's film may appear far too real. As anthropologist Rene Girard has written, the fundamental purpose of carnival is "to set the stage for a sacrificial act that marks at once the climax and the termination of the festivities" (p. 119). But when a society loses its sense of ritual and sanctioned times of release-as is the case in the former Soviet Union with the collapse of the Communist/Socialist system—ritualized violence becomes "carnival gone wrong" and spreads randomly throughout the culture. Laughter breaks down at this point as does carnival itself, and satire becomes impossible. Mamin's apartment inhabitants singing around a fire in the snow suggests the attempt of the people to survive, but the sense of laughter, which, as Bakhtin reminds us, "demolishes fear and piety" (p. 23), is gone. Carnival gone wrong in Azerbaidjan The sense of carnival gone wrong as previously discussed is even more sharply apparent in the Azerbaidjani satire from Vaghif Mustafayev, The Villain (1989). Starring the engaging Georgian actor Mamuka Kikaleishvili as Khattam, a simple good man who becomes corrupted by the times, The Villain is a finely worked out comic social satire that clearly blames the system for the transformation of a good man into a villain. Through humor gentle at times and razor sharp at others, Mustafayev's film holds up the fun house mirror of satire to the theme of the new mafias and underground economies that have sprung up around the nation during recent years. Even more so than Fountain, The Villain is a satire whose mere existence is possible only under perestroika. The very admission that mafias exist before the development of Gorbachev's glasnost would have been rare if not impossible. But the times allow for such an open examination of reality. As director Mustafayev notes, "It's not difficult to become a villain. It's enough to make only one step" [The Villain, Sovexport Film Catalogue 1989, p. 101). Khattam works in a lemonade factory testing the quality of the product, a job that is humorously made to appear totally superfluous. Yet Khattam loses his job and finally turns to crime when he is set up by others to test the limits of perestroika. Substituting urine for lemonade, the usually mundane tests suddenly come out as "dangerous." As Khattam alerts his boss that the plant must shut down and investigate, thus causing great expense and loss of time, the Boss is forced to say publicly to Khattam that he is something of a hero "of the times" for so openly (gJasnost) expressing the need for change (perestroika). But in a sharply etched moment, we


145

Vaghif Mustafayev's Azerbaidjani satire, The Villain (1989), featuring a sympathetic lemonade factory inspector (Mamuka Kikaleishvili), who, under glasnost, becomes a dictator before finally dying on a subway.

see the Boss's true adaptation to the times. As soon as Khattam leaves the office feeling proud of himself, the Boss calls the local Party office to have Khattam fired behind his back. A minor character who underlines the major theme of this Azerbaidjan film is an old timer who is a kind of aged Chapaev, a grandfather wandering around in his civil war uniform asking, "Where is your revolutionary spirit?" He is both absurd and touching. What would a Chapaev do in Gorbachev's dissolving Soviet disunion? It is the times that are absurd from his perspective. Nevertheless, the times are the people's reality, and such an "aesthetics of the ugly" is what Khattam must negotiate as a naive good soul or Soviet Candide. Mustafayev has packed the film with telling details, sharper and harder than the more universal satire of Mamin's film. We see a factory foreman who steals equipment from his own factory by night. Why? Because he has nine children and must feed them. In a marketplace where a fight breaks out between police and others, someone suddenly reaches over and puts


146

a hat over the camera lens! Censorship under glasnost. Ant, the lemonade Boss, finally shouts, "I swear, I'm fed up with this democracy!" Apartment houses remain unfinished and grim; kids deal in black-market Marlboros; and the Mafia boss bears a clearly intentional resemblance to Gorbachev. Before Khattam becomes a Mafia boss himself, he encounters the old civil war vet once more. The aged man asks again, "Where is your revolutionary spirit?" Khattam pauses. "I have no revolutionary spirit," he responds. It is an electrifying moment. Khattam is in effect not only a good soul but a wise fool. His honest admission of his condition brings into the open the secret admission of millions. And in Mustafayev's hands, satire goes open with no need for the Aesopian tradition of secrecy and cat-andmouse expectations of it viewers. The satire, as in Hollywood's Being There, for instance, is direct. From the moment Khattam descends into being a villain, however, the film veers toward the grotesque and the surreal, as dreams intersperse with reality and ultimately transform into a Kafkaesque trial and nightmare. Once again, Mustafayev's razor laughter cuts much deeper than Mamin's Swiftian pin pricks. Humor itself finally breaks down as we witness the complete degradation of our protagonist and as his love for Natasha, the woman of his dreams, turns into an ugly rape. As he attempts to hang himself, disgusted with the Party and Mafia boss he has become, he suddenly sees himself on television speaking about perestroika. His words ring hollow, unconvincing, and so he hangs himself. What follows is a dream trial as the grandfather figure as judge accuses him of crimes against the revolution. We learn, however, that his hanging is unsuccessful as a neighbor bursts into his apartment stating, "Voice of America announced that you hanged yourself!" In the final shot we see Khattam on the subway apparently sleeping. But it becomes clear he is dead of a heart attack. Many glasnost films such as Zero City begin in satire and humor and branch into the allegorical grotesque. But it is worth observing that The Villain had almost no theatrical audience. The reading of such a fact is still inconclusive, however. On the one hand, there is the control at the national level of how many prints of a film are struck and which films will be pushed for foreign festivals. This power alone accounts for much of the success or failure of a film, even under perestroika, at the box office. On the other hand, many interviewed were honest about stating that the film was doomed to limited distribution despite its quality because it is shot in the Azerbaidjan language, not Russian, and therefore would have less appeal than, for instance, Rashid Nugmanov's Kazakh film The Needle, which is, nevertheless, shot in Russian. Finally, some interviewed went as far as to say that, for Russians in particular, "there would be no interest in seeing an Azerbaidjan film, no matter how fine it was."


147

As mentioned elsewhere, we once more run into another paradox of perestroika: There is freedom to speak openly on film, but the mechanisms of prejudice works against the distribution and popularity of such a work. Laughter absurd and grotesque: Zero City The ending of The Villain pushes satire into a much darker realm where tragedy and the grotesque meet. Such a mixture of genres is prefigured in Forgotten Melody for a Flute. But it is a sign of the times that an increasing number of "director's films," as opposed to more purely genre movies such as Kings of Crime and Intergirl, have opted for satire that turns serious, allegorical, ominous. In films such as Karen Shakhnazarov's Zero City (1989), Sergei Ovcharov's It (Ono, 1989), and Valery Ogorodnikov's Prishvin's Paper Eyes (Bumazhnye glaza Prishvina, 1989), the alleged bright hope of glasnost is such an open Pandora's box of death, destruction, confusion, betrayal, failure, futility. We should take note of Shakhnazarov's uses of dark satire in Zero City, especially since the film stars Leonid Filatov, the protagonist of Forgotten Melody for a Flute. Shakhnazarov proved in his earlier efforts such as Jazzman (1983) and The Messenger Boy (1987) that he could tell a simple tale directly, economically, and with dry as well as broad humor. Zero City, in contrast, once again coscripted with Alexander Borodyansky, belongs much more closely to the mixed and packed absurd/grotesque/satiric melodramatic works of Bulgakov up through Ryazanov's Forgotten Melody for a Flute. In fact, one senses a jarring conjunction in Shakhnazarov's glasnost film of Bunuel, Kafka, Gogol, and, yes, Elvis. Zero City picks up where Forgotten Melody for a Flute leaves off. If Ryazanov's film follows a bureaucrat through bizarre events in a familiar Moscow, Shakhnazarov sends Varakin (Leonid Filatov) into a provincial town that appears simultaneously ordinary and a grotesque, surrealistic world. Varakin is a middle-management bureaucrat on assignment to check on a factory in an undesignated town. All seems mundanely normal until he realizes that the factory manager's secretary is completely naked yet, otherwise, a typical secretary, seemingly unaware of the inappropriateness of her appearance. Varakin falls into a wonderland that, in exaggerated form, mirrors the contradictions of Soviet life in the 1980s, though no specific time is identified. (We can assume it is in that now popular "Brezhnevian period.") Plot is not the point in this inventive dark allegory without a punchline. It is enough to know that Varakin is both the hero and victim of various narrative strands as he is served, in one scene, a tart shaped like his own head, and in the major scene of the film, he is led through a bizarre museum of living "waxworks" that depict all of Soviet history up through


148

and including Brezhnev's period of stagnation. Such a scene strongly suggests that Russian/Soviet history is indeed a "carnival gone wrong," a mishmash of images, statues, heroes real and fabricated or both with seemingly no connection between them. In this Zero City, what we experience is not the liberating laughter characteristic of carnival, but a distanced amusement, smirk, and awareness of the absurd and the grotesque. Bakhtin states that "as a distanced image a subject cannot be comical; to be made comical, it must be brought close" (p. 23). Shakhnazarov does not draw us close to his Zero City. Thus the sense of the absurd and the grotesque. Zero does finally, however, become One and thus a suggestion of a way out of the maze. Varakin leaves the museum and the city behind, and standing alone in a rowboat adrift on a misty lake at dawn, he floats toward the horizon. His future is uncertain. But in the calming peace of nature, we sense he has at least left the absurd and the grotesque behind, at least temporarily. We are ironically reminded here of the Mark Twain's ending for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as Huck takes off alone, in the end lighting out for the "wilderness." Huck and Varakin will not eventually wind up living alone. But the wilderness and the early morning lake at least provide a buffer zone between a carnival gone wrong and the possibility in the future of a carnival that again finds its roots and its liberating laughter, both joyful and satiric. Bibliography This essay grew out of my discussion of comedy and satire in my book written with Michael Brashinsky, The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992. Bakhtin, M. M. The Dialogic Imagination. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Girard, Rene*. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977. Horton, Andrew, ed. Comedy/Cinema/Theory. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Mamin, Yuri. "Interview: 39 Degrees C," Soviet Film, no. 11 (1990): 14-17. Mast, Gerald. The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies. 2d. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Sovexport Film Catalogue: 1989. Moscow, 1989.

CHAPTER XV

Quick takes on Yuri Mamin's Fountain from the perspective of a Romanian

Romanian reality was a clone of Soviet reality for four decades. We lived in the same apartment building, spoke the same artificial pseudolanguages, and were seized by the same profound sense of the absurd. We all lived in Mamin's building, and are all going down in it and with it. In that sense, Mamin's metaphor of a communal apartment house in Moscow is big enough to accommodate all of us now grubbing in the ruins of the "Grand Experiment." Fountain is a communal metaphor about community in several of its guises: precommunity (the nomad tribe), faux community (several of these, corresponding to Soviet leaders), and finally, postcommunity (which resembles Marx's "primitive Communism," from whence a supposedly rational Communism was going to arise — and did: into faux community.) Of all of these, only the nomad community makes any sense because its life is based on ecological necessity, that is, water. There was a pure spring tended by an Orthodox monk at a hermitage in the mountain woods of Transylvania when I went there in July 1990. The monk looked a thousand years old, and he'd written in old-fashioned script on a yellowing piece of cardboard tacked over the spring: God's water. Drink and Be Blessed. The one who took me there was an old high school buddy of mine who was secretly paying to have the fountain restored - secretly, because he was the regional Communist Party secretary. His secret was his way of saving his soul. In his official capacity, he would have had to order the fountain shut. In Yuri Mamin's film, the stupid truck drivers who destroy the entire ecology of the desert community by blowing up its water are not ideologues. They are just in a hurry and they are greedy. By the time they show up (in the waning hours of bolshevism), the ideological source of their greed and carelessness has been completely obscured. They have no souls, let alone a plan for saving them. Nobody orders them to do anything. Each is the perfect embodiment of the "new Soviet man," a creature without tribal memory, without respect, short sighted, and shallow. All trouble begins with shutting down the fountain of one's beginnings. The ecology of survival is based on the wise management of memory and 149


150

necessity. Without the fountain, the old man loses his raison d'etre. He still has his values, however, and when he inserts them into the communal apartment building of the big city where he gets control of the community's water, he acts accordingly. In the end, he does recreate a tribe through his management of water, but it's a sad and ridiculous tribe of urban dwellers who know very little about tribal living. In the end also, Yuri Mamin's parable seems to sadly conclude that only a strong, authoritarian stupidity taken to its most extreme logical denouement can make a community out of people decommunized by Communists. All the right-wingers have whiskers. These are Stalin's whiskers, and there is an essay somewhere on the hair of communism. (Now, I'm told there is a film.) From Stalin's downward-pointing yet somehow oddly comforting mustache to the sideburns and mops of early Bolsheviks to Gorbachev's smooth bald surfaces, there is a gradual loss of hair. As communism begins to wane, the heroic hair of the early years is replaced by baldness (boldness by baldness) until we arrive in the defoliated present of glasnost — Gorbachev is the cleanest shaven man in Russian history. He's like the earth around industrial sites where all the grass is gone, burnt out by five-year plan after five-year plan. This wasteland teems with bankrupt word slingers, from the small Party fry with their shopworn slogans to the poets waxing grandly under the toxic moon. (Mamin does to poets in Fountain what Milan Kundera does to them in his novel Life is Elsewhere — holds them responsible for romanticizing terror while ridiculing them.) Shouting in mutually incomprehensible tongues at each other, these people have had even the most basic communal tool removed: verbal communication. I remember looking at the front page of Scinteia — the Romanian Pravda-and falling asleep. It was pure narcolepsy. All those recurring meaningless words held us hypnotized for years. But in the mid-1960s, we believed that the words of the poets might wake us. No such palliative exists in Mamin's world. The Party official who complains about the lack of a wall gazette and fresh slogans seems quaintly old fashioned, a throwback to the Brezhnev Utopia: Communism is correct slogans! Quaint too is the veteran who goes to turn his family in all decked out in medals. No one is listening any longer. The old man praying to Mecca in front of the refrigerator (because it toward the East) makes as much sense as the theater director spouting forth on how "the theatre is a fascist place." All the buzz words, "Mecca," "fascism," and so on, have lost meaning. In their stead arises a kind of buzz, an ur-paste (white noise) of language. One of the film's major metaphors, translation, is exquisitely layered. From the woman translating to the old man and to her family, to the Hemingway on the wall as the elder wails away on his banjo, to the mutually incomprehensible yet perfectly comprehensible and ultimately incomprehensible speeches and slogans, we are witnessing a spectacular failure

Yuri Mamin's Fountain from the perspective of a Romanian

151

of communication, a Babel beyond Babel. As the roof, the attic, and the basement are collapsing, the humans within are mirroring the collapse in language. The last reality seems to be unreality. "You'll never see yourself on TV because you're such an idiot," is one of the film's grand lines, and it epitomizes and probably prophesies the future in that the last place of certainty left is television, the screen of pure illusion. Yuri Mamin pays an ironic and back-handed self-conscious homage to his own medium here. Neither is there is salvation in this parable and fairy tale, he tells us. Enivrez-vous. The voting scene shuts the last door left, the possibility that people used to mind-numbing conformism can learn how to be free. Not a chance. I remember endless Pioneer and Komsomol meetings where we voted just like that. Mamin's vision is unsparing. The sad Icarus with his violin is a figure of ridicule and pathos, not redeemed even by talent. He is an urban angel, the attempt of a discredited, romantic, sentimental imagination to escape with cardboard wings from the nightmare without end of the communal apartment house. I lived in one of those when I was a kid. One day my mother and I came back to our one-room apartment with private kitchen and bathroom and found a large family of twelve peasants in our kitchen. Their clothes hung drying from clotheslines strung all over our stove, and our tiny icebox was stuffed with indescribable lumps of lard. They had broken down the door with an axe and moved in armed with a paper from the local secretariat. I was attacked by one of their kids, and I started swearing at him in my best city-kid slick manner. His father took out his belt and tried to whip me. My mother screamed. When the old man in The Fountain whips the city kid, he does so in all innocence. Our peasant was shocked that my mother objected to his whipping: He thought that she should be grateful. In fact, the old man and his values are not idealized by Mamin: His tribal customs are seen with the same unsentimental, unsparing eye as the rest of the sorry crew. The feeble attempts made to conform to his whims - which call for men and women to eat in separate rooms, for instance — are met with well-deserved derision. The black water in the tub is almost too painful opposite the clean spring of the beginning, but here I see something of Mamin's fluency with the language of fairy-tale metaphor and, perhaps, some of his facility. Nonetheless, the gritty reality of that black water is so familiar that it transcends metaphor. We too had a bathtub in which the water was always blood red when it wasn't brown. No amount of complaining or fiddling with the pipes ever pointed out the reason. For fifteen years or so, my mother and I washed in bloody mud. We got used to it. The apartment house is, of course, a microcosm of the glasnost Soviet Union, and it is very thorough. The worshippers of the ancient poet gathered about the dried-flower shrine of his verses are familiar to me as well. The nostalgic keepers of the Russian Orthodox flame have an equivalent


152

in my hometown's nationalist poetry society, whose meetings I occasionally attended. They were worshipping Octavian Goga, a fiery and facile Transylvanian who was a minister of state under two right-wing regimes. They read his poetry in a cold-water flat, were driven to rapture reciting his verses, and ended up singing nationalist songs fueled by tzuica - our vodka - until they passed out. I used to steal books from the apartment because they were not available elsewhere. Today the Romanian national sentimentalists are having a huge revival just like Pamyat in the USSR. In Fountain, the irony of the poet worshippers defending the rotten wallpaper where the poet once scribbled is accurate: These remnants of the old are worshippers of wallpaper; only the forms have remained. There is nothing here but the general rot of the apartment and society's walls under the poetic paper. (At the same time, one should never underestimate the force of sentiment: Fascism is stupid and mostly sentimental!) The new capitalists aren't spared by Yuri Mamin either. The flowergrowing squatter is trying to create a market economy all by himself, but he is dependent on the water controlled by the insane old man. What's more, he's trying to grow flowers, the most pathetically tender product imaginable; dependent on vagaries of so many kinds, it is a doomed enterprise no matter how much luck he has. Again, the metaphor is flawless. You can no more grow flowers in a waterless cold apartment building than you can fly off the building into sublimely bad music. All of these people are cursed by what they have collectively made, and they cannot pull away individually from the shithouse. Either they all go down together or they go down together. There is no exit - and this movie is probably late communism's master existentialist critique. Interestingly enough, Mamin thinks like a social determinist; he is clearly educated by Marxism. The collectivity communism sought to create is a collectivity, but it is hell. Utopia turns out to be hell and it is a collective hell. In that sense, there is a kind of endearing familiarity, affection almost, for this world that is the only one Mamin says these people will ever know. We have made our bed and now we lie in it. Careful viewers of this film will find themselves in a garden of interpretive delights. The language of the film is fluent, metaphorically rich, and relentless. I am only noting here things that echo for me personally. Romania, a similarly mad apartment building, was not as decayed in 1965 when I left the country. Mr. Mamin brings me up to date on how deeply the shabby edifice has rotted since then. The new tribalism of glasnost society is the very opposite of materialism. All materials have disappeared. The material world has thinned out completely; resources have been squandered; any semblance of ecological balance between people and environment is gone. In the end, even the guys holding up the roof cannot be fooled into helping what's obviously doomed. They are bribed with alcohol to do so, and in terms of currency

Yuri Mamin's Fountain from the perspective of a Romanian

153

vodka has replaced slogans. The slogans themselves, in one of the most touching motifs in the movie, have been retired and aren't even good for patching holes. In fact, every hopeful illusion-or even hopeful language - in Mamin's world is utterly false. We are in the presence of a new and intensified radical doubt.

CHAPTER XVI

'One should begin with ero": A discussion with satiric filmmaker Yuri Mamin

The following is an edited version of the conference discussion (moderated by Andrew Horton) with Yuri Mamin of his work. Horton: Yuri, you are a satirist, but as Whiskers suggests, your films are becoming darker. Is there a danger that you will wind up with no audience, especially given Valentin Tolstykh's remarks that the Soviet people are fed up with chernukha films? Mamin: It would be a failure, of course, if people don't go to see my films since they were made for audiences. But the problem is what kind of laughter is needed now. When I see angry people in the audience ready to tear each other apart for their ideological beliefs, I become frightened. I thus made Whiskers on a different level than my previous work. This film was made under the influence of my own anger. I want my audience to laugh and think and come out of the cinema, not fighting, but rather patting each other on the back. I want to promote through laughter the virtues of tolerance and kindness. Horton: We have just looked at the closing scene from Zero City as the main character floats alone in a boat on a lake after his many strange encounters with . . . Zero City. What is your reaction to this dark satire? Mamin: I wouldn't consider Zero City as a satire. It's an ironic film, and irony is itself a genre with its own traditions in our country. How much can such films influence life today in the Soviet Union? Right now our situation is very complex and unclear. It is very hard to make any kind of prediction except, as in Zero City, a pessimistic one. What themes should a filmmaker choose today? One should begin with zero, but which zero? Sergei Lavrentiev: We should add to this that our Soviet life cannot be handled in the style of, let's say, Fellini's satirical viewpoint. Soviet life is quite different. 154

A discussion with satiric filmmaker Yuri Mamin

155

Horton: Are several of the speakers correct-the Soviet audiences do not really want satire, but rather straight entertainment to forget their problems? Lavrentiev: Soviet audiences don't want to see Soviet life on the screen. They want to see another life, another time, another place, another feeling. It's a very hard time for our filmmakers. The audiences want comedies, not satire. Valentin Tolstykh: But they also need films with a sense of values. Mamin: Yes. Satire must have a moral basis. In the past month we have had a rough time of it. Nobody knows the right way to go. I am taking a new look at my plans, scripts, projects. One possibility is to turn to human values themselves. My next film will be about the problem of staying or leaving the Soviet Union. I feel that leaving it because of the current troubles is a tragedy. Peter Shepotinnik: Satire is close to the spirit of the divine, to that of a god. We see only the ruins now, thus we have a tragic viewpoint. We have no faith, no beliefs. For the everyday common person, there is only faith in the soul. We can not generalize from Mamin's perspective alone. Each person is different. Vlada Petric: I think we have quite unrealistic hopes for satire in the aesthetic sense, which is the only sense that I concern myself with. If we have one true satire in a decade, that is enough. Who do we look to in American cinema after Chaplin and Keaton? Maybe Woody Allen. But there are few great satirists anywhere, any time. Great satire happens rarely by definition. Horton: Yuri, I wish to focus more specifically on your own satirical spirit. I sense a strong sense of the carnivalesque in your work. What is your feeling about/for carnival? Mamin: Fellini was mentioned earlier and his films definitely have carnival in them and I admire them. And like Fellini, I wish my sense of carnival to be shown in all of its richness, with its own Soviet history and spirit. Horton: Satire is a difficult art as has been pointed out, and few people would actually call themselves "satirists" or "satiric filmmakers." Do you mind being called a "satiric filmmaker"? Mamin: I didn't choose the path of comedy and satire. There are simply those who see things differently than the majority. That's the way I am:


156

Material that might give some people heart attacks, might be very funny to me. Horton: You have said previously that you wish to show the Russian character that can, finally, put up with anything. Certainly this is true of Fountain. Would you call Fountain a kind of dark carnival? Mamin: It is a kind of sadomasochist film that is also a kind of carnival. Daily life becomes more like a dark carnival. Every day as I walk around, I'm amazed by the diversity of our life. Garbage piled up and orchestras playing . . . all mixed together. It is my duty to show people this rich diversity, to show people how things are.

Rental/purchase information Alas, it is still very difficult to obtain copies of Soviet cinema either on film or on video, especially with subtitles. At the moment, for most recent films and even for other titles of the 1940s through the present, one should still contact: Sovexport Film Kalashny pereulok 14 Moscow 103869 Russia Phone 290 5009 (Telex 411143 SEF SU) The following films mentioned in this collection are available on video tape with subtitles from Facets Multimedia, Inc., 1517 West Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60614 (312/281-9075, also 800/331-6197): The Cigarette Girl from MosseJprom, The Girl with the Hatbox, Happiness, The Kiss of Mary Pickford, The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, Little Vera. It is helpful also to contact the International Film Exchange at 201 West 52nd St., New York, NY 10019 (phone 212/582-4318) for a list of its Soviet film holdings on video tape and film. Note that the University of Wisconsin has a collection of Soviet "stagnation" films of the 1970s on 35mm film without subtitles. For information, contact Dr. Vance Kepley Jr., Department of Communication Arts, 6112 Vilas Hall, 821 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706. Finally, Loyola University in New Orleans has a Soviet and East European video collection that I have established, focusing particularly on gJasnost cinema. Most of these tapes do not have subtitles and are not for reproduction but can be used at Loyola for research purposes. In terms of satire, the collection includes Zero City, The Promised Sky, Fountain, Whiskers, Neptune's Holiday, Blue Mountains, and others. Contact Sister 157

Filmography

158

Anne M. Ramagos, Director, Media Center, Loyola University, New Orleans, LA 70118 (504/865-2541). Local video stores/chains such as Blockbuster carry Repentance, Little Vera, and Forgotten Melody for a Flute, The following is a listing of the major films discussed in this volume (as well as a few that are not) together with a brief description of their narratives. Denise Youngblood's comments are taken from her book, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. Julie Christensen's comments on Georgian films are identified with her name. The Adventures of a Dentist (Phozhdeniya Zubnogo Vracha, 1965), dir. Elem Klimov Light satiric comedy about a dentist with magical powers who becomes famous but gives it all up to be "normal." Andrei Roublev (Andrei RubJyov, 1966, released in 1971), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Tarkovsky's vivid black and white film about the famed Russian icon portraitist is more a meditation on the role of the artist within a repressive culture than a biographical film. Anemia (1987), dir. Irakli Kotetishvili A young Georgian teacher is sent from Tbilisi to teach in a boarding school in a secluded mountain village where he hopes to discover solid, traditional values. What he discovers instead is a "Stalinist" closed society, suffering from moral anemia. Assa (1988), dir. Sergei Soloviev Soloviev brought Soviet rock culture, rock music, and rock stars (especially Sergei Bugayev) to the screen in this "collage" film that mixes a loose satiric narrative involving a Mafia figure and a young couple in Yalta during Brezhnev's time intercut with scenes from the downfall of Tsar Paul in 1801. One detects influences here of Chaplin, Jean Luc Godard, Fellini, Bunuel, and Fassbinder as well as the Russian tradition of satire in film and literature. Autumn Marathon (Osenny maraphon, 1980), dir. Georgy Danelia A sympathetic satire made before gJasnost about a Leningrad professor of English in the "autumn" of his life, trying to juggle his career, marriage, and mistress. Balthazar's Feast (Pir Balfazam, 1990), dir. Yuri Kara Adapted from part of the novel Sandro of Chegem by famed author Fazil Iskander. The narrative concerns a party at Stalin's headquarters. Black Rose Is the Emblem for Sadness, Red Rose Is the Emblem for Love [Chernaya roza, emblema pechaJi, krasnaya roza, emblema Jyubvi, 1989), dir. Sergei Soloviev Soloviev goes even further than in Assa to create a "nonnarrative" collage film, part coming-of-age story of a young teenage boy, Mita, part deconstruction of Stalin and the whole Communist ethos, and all dark-humored satire, parody, absurdity, kitsch.

Filmography

159

Blue Mountains {Tsisperi mtebi anu daudzherebeli ambavi; Golubye gory, Hi neobyknovennaya istoriya, 1983), dir. Eldar Shengelaya An eve of glasnost Georgian satire about a publishing house that seems not to publish and that, as a young man tries to get his manuscript read, finally collapses. The Case of the Three Million (Protsess o trekh miJlionakh, 1926), dir. Iakov Protazanov A popular comedy based on the Italian writer Notali's story, "The Three Thieves": One is a a common thief, the second a gentleman, and the third a banker. Chess Fever (Shakhmatnaia goriachka, 1925), dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin "A charming short comedy. Chess Fever cleverly incorporated actual footage of an international chess tournament making it appear as though the grand master were part of the movie." Denise Youngblood The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom [Papirosnitsa \z Mosselproma, 1924), dir. Iurii Zheliabuzhskii "A genuinely funny film which satirizes NEP life and the making of movies. The cigarette girl is 'discovered' by a film crew; the plot revolves around the competition of her various admirers for her attention." Denise Youngblood Circus [Tsirkf 1936), dir. Grigori Alexandrov Alexandrov's upbeat musical about an American circus entertainer who seeks and finds happiness in the Moscow circus when she leaves America because of the hatred toward her for having a half-black child. Commander Ivanov (Kombrig Ivanov, 1922), dir. Aleksandr Razumnyi "The tale of how a Bolshevik commissar manages to overcome the pettybourgeois resistance of a priests's daughter to 'living in sin.'" Denise Youngblood Commissar (1967), dir. Alexander Askoldov This most famous of the "shelved" films (released in 1987) is far from being labeled a satire. Nevertheless, on a deep structural level, the humor and satiric wit of Yefim (played by the versitle Rolan Bykov), the poor Jewish tinker, whose family accepts the shamed pregnant "Commissar" while she has her child, is life affirming and helps to "humanize" this overindoctrinated Communist woman. Cossacks of the Kuban (Cubanskiya kazaki, 1950), dir. Ivan Alexandrovich Pyriev Stalinist musical comedy. Don Diego and Pelageia (Don Diego i Pelageia, 1928), dir. Iakov Protazanov "A marvelous satire on Soviet bureaucratism. 'Don Diego' is a village station master, a silly fop who dreams of himself as the hero of a romantic Spanish novel." Denise Youngblood The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks [Neobychainyie prikliucheniia mistera Vesta v strane boJ'shevikov, 1924), dir. Lev Kuleshov Kuleshov's freewheeling satirical comedy in the mode of American silent comedy with a huge influence of Harold Lloyd apparent.

Filmography

160

First Swallow [Pirveli mertskhali; Pervaia lastochka, 1975), dir. Nana Mchelize "The great soccer match between a local Georgian team and British sailors anchored off the shore of Poti on the Black Sea." Julie Christensen Forgotten Melody for a Flute [Zabytaya melodiya diya fleity, 1987), dir. Eldar Ryazanov One of the first and still one of the most important films of the glasnost period. Ryazanov's sentimental romantic/satiric/comic drama about a bureaucrat trying to rise in rank during the end of the Brezhnev era and carry out an affair at the same time. A carnivalesque collage film working satirically on a number of levels but which is both ambitious and at times pretentious and unfocused. Fountain (Fontan, 1988), dir. Yuri Mamin Prime satire from the gJasnost period as an apartment building and its inhabitants becomes a microcosm for all Soviet life in the 1980s as the building, like the sociopolitical order, literally crumbles. Garage (Garaj 1980), dir. Eldar Ryazanov Vintage Ryazanov. The building of illegal garages (a true-to-life situation as all Soviets know) becomes the center for this finely etched satire of late 1970s Soviet culture. The Girl with the Hat Box [Devushka s korobkoi, 1927), dir. Boris Barnet "A slight but charming comedy of the annoyances of NEP life. After a series of silly adventures, The Girl ends happily with the young couple in love and the winners of 25,000 rubles to insure that love will last." Denise Youngblood Happiness (Schastye, 1935), dir. Alexander Medvedkin A truly surrealistic comicsatiric spoof of farm life in both the tsarist and Soviet periods. Camera tricks and inventive slapstick blend in a liberating "fresh" take that comes close to being joyful rather than lashing satire. Happy Guys [Veselye rebyata, 1934), dir. Grigori Alexandrov Another Alexandrov musical comedy, this time concerning a shepherd (Leonid Vtesov) who falls in love with beautiful Liubov Orlova and finally becomes a famous musician. Ivan's Childhood (Ivanogo detstvof 1962), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Tarkovsky's poetic film about the loss of innocence of a boy growing up during World War II. It (Ono, 1989), dir. Sergei Ovcharov A satiric adaptation of the nineteenth-century satire, The Story of a Town, by M. Saltykov-Schedrin. "It" is life and Russian/Soviet history itself which flows in ever increasing surrealistic and dark strands through one town clearly meant to represent the whole nation. One of the most innovative films of glasnost. Kharbarda (1931), dir. Mikhail Chiaureli "An executive committee of the Komsomol decides to rebuild an old quarter of the ancienct Georgian capital, Tiflis. The satire here falls on the conservative intelligentsia, including the Mensheviks." Julie Christensen The Kiss of Mary Pickford (Postselui Meri Pikford, 1927), dir. Sergei Komarov The film is about the epidemic of movie madness that struck the USSR in the midtwenties. Documentary footage of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks's

Filmography

161

visit to Moscow are intercut with a Soviet romance. As Denise Youngblood notes, the film "is another demonstration of the powers of editing." Kvevri {The Wine Jug; Kuvshin, 1972), dir. Irakli Kvirikadze "Based on a revision of a Pirandello work by the famous Georgian script writer, Rezo Gabriadze. A wine grower from Kakheti buys a large wine jug which is accidently broken. He hires a master to fix it. The master is caught inside the jug. The owner refuses to break the jug, offering him bribes, calling the local militia, doing everything he can to get the man out." Julie Christensen Little Vera (MaJenkaya Vera, 1988), dir. Vasily Pichul While not usually thought of as a satire, Little Vera is marked by its overall ironic/satiric/mocking tone and full of darkly satiric thrusts as it depicts the depressing "no-win" situation of a young woman in a small industrial city in a "neorealistic" approach to filmmaking. Love at First Sight (Erti nakhvit shekhvareba; Liubov's pervogo vzgljada, 1977), dir. Rezo Esadze "A slice of life in a noisy, colorful courtyard in the multinational city of Tbilisi. Banned for several years." Julie Christensen Magdana's Little Donkey (Revaz Chkeidze; Magdanas lurja, 1956), dir. Tengiz Abuladze "Often called the first film of the 'thaw' at the Georgian Film Studio, this modest film follows the life of a simple village woman who takes yogurt to the city to sell. Combining documentary with poetry, this film owes much to Georgian silent film and Italian Neorealism." Julie Christensen The Man from Capuchins Boulevard [Chelovek s buJVara Kaputsinov, 1987), dir. Alia Surikova A hilarious spoof on American Westerns that moves as far away from lashing laughter as Soviet films have managed to move. Inventive and purely funny with only a minor effort to create a "message." Definitely carnivalesque. Man with a Movie Camera (CheJovek s kinoapparatom, 1929), dir. Dziga Vertov Vertov's kino eye was in large part a satiric/ironic one, as evidenced by the playful approach to "reality" presented here where his montages and camera tricks often create ironic/satiric effects in the viewers' minds. The Miracle Worker [Chudotvorets, 1922), dir. Aleksandr Panteleev Lenin's favorite movie. An antireligious vulgar comedy about a phony miracle. "The peasants play jokes on their cruel mistress." Denise Youngblood The Mirror (Zerkalo, 1974), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Tarkovsky's highly poetic-autobiographical film. Mr. Lloyd's Voyage [Reis mistera Lloida, 1927), dir. Mikhail Verner "The plot concerns a voyage to Russia and the triangle among the master of the vessel, Mr. Lloyd, Ivan Kozyr, a White Guardist secretly returning home, and Tatiana a maid who had been living abroad with her employers." Denise Youngblood My Grandmother (Chemi bebia; Moia babushka, 1929), dir. K. Mikaberidze "A harsh satire on beaucracy in which everyone needs a 'granny' in order to find a job or get ahead. Stylistically innovative using impressionism, futurism, cubism. Banned until 1976." Julie Christensen

Filmography

162

My Grandmother, Iliko, Marion and Myself (Me, Bebia, iliko da ilarioni; la, babushka, Iliko i Marion, 1962), dir. Tengiz Abuladze "From a novella by the famous Georgian writer Nodar Dumadze. The story of a country boy's life with his granny and two old men of his village during the War, when all the able-bodied men were off at the front." Julie Christensen Neptune's Feast (Prazdnik Neptuna, 1986), dir. Yuri Mamin In every sense, a carnivalesque work that turns a false "carnival" into a true celebration of the people, by the people, for the people. Nostalgia (Nostalghia, 1983), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky Tarkovsky's film set in Italy and dealing with nostalgia on all levels: for Russia, for the past, for a life that never was. Paradise Lost (Dakarguli samotkhe; Poteriannyj rai, 1937), dir. Davit Rondeli "One of the best Georgian comedies. Two impoverished brothers try first to marry a wealthy neighbor, then scheme with the local priest to feign death (and sainthood) in a sure bid for neighborly donations." Julie Christensen The Prayer (Vedreba; Mol'ba, 1968), dir. Tengiz Abuladze "A stark black and white allegorical film treating the theme of the individual verses the tribe based on poems by the famous Georgian mountain poet Vazha Pshavela." Julie Christensen Prishvin's Paper Eyes (Bumazhnye glaza Prishvina, 1989), dir. Valery Ogorodnikov One of the most "difficult" glasnost-period films that ambitiously takes on the Stalinist period through the dark humor of the first years of Soviet television (thus the title: the fake eyes that allowed commentators to read on TV). The Promised Sky [Nebesa obetovannye, 1991), dir. Eldar Ryazanov A sympathetic satire that both lashes out against the confusion of the times as represented through the homeless and, in the tradition of Italian neo realism, paints humanistic portraits of a suffering culture. Magic realism blends with a carnivalesque sense of ensemble acting/performance. Repentance (Monanieba; Pokayaniya, 1984), dir. Tengiz Abuladze The film that should stand at the beginning of any discussion of glasnost cinema even though it was made just before. Abuladze creates a darkly humorous satire of all totalitarian systems (Hitler, Stalin, etc.) in this transhistorical allegory of Varlam, a dead dictator whose body refuses to stay buried. Robinsoniada or My English Grandfather [Robinzonada anu cemi ingliseli papa; RobinzoniJada Hi moj anglisjsklij dedushka, 1987), dir. Nana Jorjadze "An Englishman in Georgia is laying telegraph lines from London to Dehli when the Revolution strikes. He stakes out the private property of King George (3 meters around each telegraph pole), where he sets up house with the sister of the chairman of the local commune. Both are killed by the same assassin. A Georgia favorite." Julie Christensen Saba (1921), dir. Mikhail Chiaureli "Georgian. This beautifully filmed story of an alcoholic child abuser became a drama of the disintegration of a family and the degradation of a man." Denise Youngblood

Filmography

163

SamanishviWs Stepmother {Samanishvilis dedinatsvali; Machekha Samanishvili, 1927), dir. Kote Marjanishvili "Directed by Marjanishvili, the Stanislavsky of Georgian theater. A light comedy based on the original play by David Kldiashvili (1897) about an impoverished nobleman and his race to find a barren wife for his widowed father before another heir to the family estate destroys him economically. Marjanishvili uses grotesque and harsh satire to expose social evil in a class sense." Julie Christensen Screwballs [Sherikileba; Chudaki, 1973), dir. Eldar Shengelaya St. Jorgen's Feast Day (Prazdnik sviatogo Iorgena, 1930), dir. Iakov Protazanov "Two escaped convicts in an unnamed Western country disguise themselves as nuns and make their way to a place of pilgrimage." Denise Youngblood Step (Sapekhuri; Stupen'; 1986); dir. Alexander Rekhviashvili A young biologist seeking work gets his own flat in Tbilisi where his friends and acquaintances go about their daily lives and prosperous personal affairs. A loner, the young hero leaves the beautiful life of the city for a village where his old mentor lived and worked." Julie Christensen The Tailor from Torzhok [Zakroishchik iz Torzhka, 1925), dir. Iakov Protazanov "An unsophisticated but popular comedy about the state lottery starring the Soviet favorite, Igor Ilinskii, a rather limited comedian of the slapstick school." Denise Youngblood Tree of Desire [Natvris khe; Drevo zhelaniia, 1975), dir. Tengiz Abuladze "The film presents life in the countryside at the turn of the century, with colorful national types, dreamers, lovers, eccentrics, anarchists, lecherous priests, and the tragic story of the town beauty. Based on a volume of memoirs in poetic prose by the Georgian poet Georgi Leonidze." Julie Christensen Two Friends, a Model and a Girlfriend [Dva druga, model i podruga, 1928), dir. Aleksei Popov "Two boys invent a box-making machine which they, along with the 'girlfriend' take to town to patent. The youths build a makeshift boat to carry them down the river to town where after several adventures, a la Huckleberry Finn, they of course meet with success." Denise Youngblood An Unusual Exhibition (Neobyknovennaya vystavka, 1968), dir. Eldar Shengelaya The Very Same Munchausen (Tot samyj Mjunxgauzen, 1978-80), Television series. Dir. and script Grigorij Gorin See Kevin Moss's essay (Chapter II, this volume) about this extremely popular "Aesopian" retelling of the Munchausen legend. The Villain (Merzavets, 1989), dir. Vaghif Mustafayev A gJasnost satire from Azerbaidjan that follows a sympathetic lemonade factory worker who becomes a new tyrant under glasnost, thus losing his soul and his "revolutionary spirit." Volga, Volga (1938), dir. Grigori Alexandrov See Maya Turovskaya's essay (Chapter VII, this volume) about this most extreme of all Stalinist musicals in which well-fed happy peasants sing, dance, and share praises for the good life that they have found under socialism.

Filmography

164

Welcome [Dobro pozhalovat', 1966), dir. Elem Klimov Sharp social satire set in a children's summer camp run by an autocratic (read: dictatorial) camp director. Whiskers {Bakenbardy, 1990), dir. Yuri Mamin A brave satire of right-wing nationalist groups throughout the Soviet Union that, even as Mamin himself admits, is so strident in its antifascist attitude that it lashes out much more than it uses satire to evoke laughter. The film was never widely distributed in the Soviet Union for this reason. Zero City [Gorod zero, 1989), dir. Karen Shakhnazarov An absurdist satire that takes a spoof of the times to abstract and allegorical levels including an inventive living waxwork museum of Russian/Soviet history. A dark carnivalesque vision that finally loses its humor.

Svetlana Boym is a critic, playwright, and filmmaker teaching comparative literature at Harvard University. Her works include Death in Quotation Marks: Cultural Myths of the Modern Poets (Harvard University Press, 1991), the play The Woman Who Shot Lenin, and the short film (screenwriter and codirector) Flirting with Liberty. Michael Brashinsky is a Soviet film critic currently living in New York and teaching at Brooklyn College. He is coauthor of The Zero Hour: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition (Princeton University Press, 1992) with Andrew Horton. Julie Christensen is Assistant Professor of Foreign Languages at George Mason University. She has written, lectured, and advised frequently on Georgian film. Peter Christensen teaches English at Marquette University. He has published articles on Eisenstein, Tarkovsky, Paradjanov, and Abuladze. Andrei Codrescu is Professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, a regular satiric commentator on American culture for National Public Radio, and the poet/author/editor of numerous books, including his moving account of his return to his native Romania, The Hole in the Flag (New York: Avon, 1991). Andrew Horton is Professor of Film and Literature at Loyola University, New Orleans, and the author/editor of numerous books including Comedy/Cinema/Theory (University of California Press, 1991) and The Zero Hour: GJasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition (Princeton University Press, 1992), cowritten with Michael Brashinsky. Vida T. Johnson is Associate Professor of Russian Literature, Language and Film at Tufts University. Among her various publications, she has re165

Contributors

166

cently co-written with Graham Petrie A Visual Fugue: The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky (forthcoming). Kevin Moss teaches Russian literature and language at Middlebury College. Vlada Petric teaches film at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, where he is Curator of the Film Archive. He has written and spoken widely on early American and Soviet silent cinema, especially on Vertov and Griffith. Moira Ratchford is head of Cultural Programs for the American Committee on US—Soviet Relations, Washington D.C. Her efforts have made it possible for numerous Soviet filmmakers and their films to visit the United States. Olga Reizen is an American cinema expert at the Film Arts Institute in Moscow. She has just completed a book on postmodernism and Soviet cinema. Greta N. Slobin is Associate Professor of Russian Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her publications include essays in the Slavic and East European Journal, Canadian Slavonic Journal, and others and in several books including Remizov's Fictions: 1920—1921 (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991). Valentin Tolstykh is an internationally respected philosopher who has published and lectured widely on cinema and popular culture and who has organized numerous important conferences on cinema while serving as Secretary of Cultural Activities at the Union of Soviet Filmmakers. Maya Turovskaya is one of Russia's most respected film scholars currently working at the Film Arts Institute. She has written and lectured widely on Soviet cinema and American drama. Denise J. Youngblood, a historian at the University of Vermont, is the author of Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918—1935 (University of Texas Press, 1991) and Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

absurd, the, 58-62, 94 Abuladze, Tengiz, 24, 48, 95, 106-7, 112 Addison, Richard, 5 Adorno, Theodor, 127 Adventures of a Dentist, The, 96 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The, 148 AeJita, 53, 70 Aesopian language, 9, 18, 20-35, 72, 103,141 Alexander Nevsky, 60 Alexandrov, Grigori, 5, 9, 43, 75-93 American film comedy, 9, 38, 41 American musical halls, 73 American silent comedy, 10, 66, 70 Anemia, 112 Andrei Roublev, 99-101 Apocalyptic optimism, 62 Aristophanes, 11 Arnoldi, Edgar, 40 Aseyev, Nikolai, 73 Assa, 8, 125, 130 August, Burger Gottfried, 20 August Coup of 1991, vii Autumn Marathon, 99 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 7, 9-10, 101, 138, 140, 148 Balthazar's Feast, 100 Barnet, Boris, 38-9, 66 Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, 20 Batman, 142 Battleship Potemkin, 139 Bauer, Evgeni, 65 Bechterev, Vladimir Mikhailovich, 52 Beckett, Samuel, 59 Being There, 146

167

Bellamy, Edward, 72 Bezhin Meadow, 67 Beriya, Lavrenty, 96 Berson, Henri, 50, 55-6 Bible, 24 Black Rose Stands for Sorrow, Red Rose Stands for Love, 18, 103, 125-37 BJue Mountains, 94, 105, 111-12, 141 Blue Velvet, 136 Bogomolov, Yuri, 109 Bolshevik, 69-71 Brashinsky, Michael, 102 Brecht, Bertolt, 68 Brezhnev, Leonid, 6, 19, 33, 60, 119, 132, 134,147 Bridges, Jeff, 4 Brik, Osip, 36, 41 Bulgakov, 22, 25, 29, 75, 99, 117 Bunuel, Luis, 6 Bykov, Anatoli, 42 Byvalov, 79 Camus, Albert, 58-9, 62 Capra, Frank, 140 caricatures, 88 carnival gone wrong, 144 carnivalesque, the, 4, 7, 134, 138-48, 155-6 Case of the Three Million, The, 34, 43 Chapaev, 145 Chaplin, Charlie, 9-10, 109, 141 Chekhov, Antonin, 5, 58-9, 99 Chenyshevsky, 133 Chernukha films, 19 Chess Fever, 48 Chiaureli, Mikhail, 111 Christ, Jesus, 129 Chytilova, Vera, 60

Index Cigarette Girl from MosseJprom, The, 40-1, 53 Cinema Art, 109 Cinema for the Millions, A, 5 Circus, 9, 43, 83-93 Clark, Katerina, 84, 89 Comedy/Cinema/Theory, 2, 58 commedia dell'arte, 5 Commissar, 3 Cossacks of the Kuban, 75-6 Crimson Island, The, 50 cultural revolution, 43 Czech new wave, 59 Danelia, Georgy, 96, 99, 104 Darvetsky, Zahak, 78 Davies, Robertson, 12 Days of the Turbins, The, 75 Dead SouJs, 133 Defoe, Daniel, 12 Delsarte, Alexander, 67 Derrida, Jacques, 6 De Sica, Vitorio, 1, 3 Doctor Zhivago, 28 Don Diego and PeJageia, 42 Dosetsky, Zahar, 81 Dostoevsky, Feodor, 8-9, 94, 96, 126, 129 Dovzhenko, Alexander, 65 Dribich, Tatyana, 128 Dumaevsky, J., 80 Eco, Umberto, 127 Eisenstein, Sergei, 10, 22, 60, 65-7, 84,139 Erdman, A., 49, 77-80 Ermler, Friedrich Markovich, 65 Esadze, Rezo, 107 E.T., 1 Even a Wise Man Stumbles, 10 Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks, The, 9, 39, 48, 65-74 Factory of the Eccentric Actor The (FEKS), 67 Fairbanks, Douglas, 40, 48-57 FamiJiar Face, A, 42 Fellini, Federico, 60, 155 Fianc6 from the Other World, A, 96 Filatov, Leonid, 121, 147 Fireman's Ball, 139 Fleetwood, Susan, 98 Fogel, Vladimir, 66

168 Forgotten Melody for a Flute, 2, 6, 11, 117-24, 139, 141, 147 Forgotten Paradise, 106 Forman, Milos, 60, 139 Fouchault, Michel, 6 Fountain, 58, 61, 103, 117-8, 141, 149-53 Freud, Sigmund, 56 Frolov, Ivan, 87 Gaidai, Leonid, 96 Galadzhev, Peter, 66 Galichenko, N., 124 Garage, 18, 60 General Principles of Human Reflexology, 53 Georgian film comedy and satire, 5, 105-13 Georgian humor, 107 German expressionism, 66 Ghostbusters II, 99, 142 Girard, Rene, 144 Girl with the Hatbox, The, 39-40 Glavpolitprosvet, 34 Gogol, Nikolai, 5, 9, 25, 53, 94, 96, 99, 126, 129, 133,139 Goldberg, Whoopi, 17-8 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 1, 33, 130-2, 139, 144 Gordon, Flash, 88 Gorin, Grigori, 20, 23-4, 33 Gosteleradio, 33 Govorukhin, Stanislov, 8 Goya, 96, 152 GPU (Stalinist secret police), 69-70, 79 Greece, 11 Greenberg, Clement, 135 Grey Is the Color of Hope, 40 Griffith, D. W., 66, 73 grotesque, the, 138 Gurowitch, Martin, 50 Happiness, 10 Happy Guys, 5, 10, 43, 77-8, 83-4, 88 Haraszti, Miklos, 123 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 17-8 Hitler, Adolf, 91 Hollywood, 38, 49, 135 Homo sovieticus, 95 Horton, Andrew, 17, 98 House Under the Starry Sky, The, 136 I was a Teenage Werewolf, 71 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, 61 Ilinskii, Igor, 39, 42, 53-4, 76

Index Inspector General, The, 19, 25, 53, 60, 120, 139 Ionesco, 59 Iskander, Fazil, 100 It, 147 It's a Wonderful Life, 40 Ivan's Childhood, 100 Ivan the Terrible, 22 Jonson, Ben, 5 Jorjadze, Nana, 107 Josephson, Erland, 102 Kafkaesque, 146 Kagamovitch, L., 77 Kara, Yuri, 100 Karanovic, Srdjan, 142 Keaton, Buster, 9, 51 Kharbarda, 111 Khokhlova, Alexandra, 66-70 Kikaleishvili, Mamuka, 145 kinoks, 65 Kinopravda, 66 Kirshov, Vladimir, 40 Kiss of Mary Pickford, The, 40-1, 48-57 kitsch, 125-37 Kldiashvili, David, 110 Klimov, Elem, 18, 100 Komarov, Sergei, 40, 48, 53, 66 Konjvoturny film, 130 Kostylev, 22 Kotetishvili, Irakli, 112 Kott, Jan, 58 Ktorov, Anatolii, 42 Ku Klux Klan, 91 Kuleshov, Lev, 9, 39, 48, 64-8, 72 Kundera, Milan, 150 Kuzinsev, 65 Kvirikadze, Irakli, 107 Lavrentiev, Sergei, 154 Lebedev-Kumach, 85 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, 22-3, 103, 129 Levaco, Ronald, 38 Levin, Harry, 11-12 Levn, Jurij, 21-2 Life and Extraordinary Aventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, The, 116 Life Is Elsewhere, 150 List of Benefits, The, 49 Little Vera, 2 Lloyd, Harold, 9 Looking Backward, 72

169 Loseff, Lev, 21-2, 25 Love at First Sight, 107 Loyola University (New Orleans), vii, 4 Lubochnaya literaturea, 94 Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 33, 48-51, 56 Lynch, David, 131, 135-6 MacNicol, Peter, 9 Magdana's Little Donkey, 112 Mamet, David, 58 Mamin, Yuri, 4, 7,18,60-1,138-44,149-56 Man with a movie camera, 10 Mandate, The, 49, 77 Mandebschtam, N., 79 Maretskaia, Vera, 39 Marjanishvili, Kote, 110 Mark of Zorro, The, 51, 55 Markharadze, Avtandil, 95 Marx, Karl, 149 Mast, Gerald, 142 Master and Margarita, The, 22, 25, 117 Medvedkin, Alexander, 10, 49 melodrama, 38 Menzel, Jiri, 60 Messenger Boy, The, 147 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 10, 54, 67-8, 77 Mezhrabpom studio, 33, 48 Mikaberidze, K., 42 Mintz, K., 79 Minonova, M. V, 81 Miracle in Milan, 1 Miracle Worker, The, 39 Mirror, The, 100 Moliere, 5 Moss, Kevin, 124, 143 Mother, 48 Mr. Lloyd's Vogage, 39 Mustafayev, Vaghif, 17, 138, 144 My English Grand/other, 107 My Grandmother, 42, 111 Myth of Sisyphus, The, 158 My Grandmother, Iliko, Illarion, and Myself, 112 Nabakov, Vladimir, 28, 125, 127 Narkompros, 33 Nedobrovo, Vladimir, 41 Needle, The, 8 NEP film comedy, 43, 48, 50 Neptune's Feast, 60, 103, 139 New Testament, The, 134 Nilsen, V, 76-8, 81 Nugmanov, Rashid, 8

Index Oedipus Rex, 24 Ogonek, 131-2 Ogorodnikov, Valery, 8 Olesha, Yuri, 49 Olympiad, 79, 80 Orchestra Rehearsal, 60 Orlova, Lyubov, 77, 88 Ostrovsky, Alexander, 5, 11 "Overcoat, The," 9 Palkin, Goya, 40 Pan Am, 128 Panteleev, Aleksandr, 39 Paris, Texas, 75 Parody, 31 Passport, The, 104 Pasternak, Boris, 28 Pavlov, Ivan Petrovich, 55 Radiant Road, The, 83 Ratushinskaya, Irina, 6 Razumnyi, Aleksandr, 39 Reagan, Ronald, 9 Rekhviashuili, Alexander, 112 Repentance, 24, 48, 95-6, 112 Riefenstahl, Leni, 71 Robinsoniada, 107 Romania, 149-53 Rondeli, David, 106 Rudnitsky, Konstantin, 53 Russian cabaret, 73 Ryazanov, Eldar, 2-4, 11, 18, 60, 99, 104, 117-24, 138 Saba, 111 Sacrifice, The, 98-100 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Mikhail, 94, 96, 99 Samanishuli's Mother-in-Law, 110 Sandro of Chegem, 100 Scinteia, 150 Screwballs, 105, 107-8 Shaftsbury, Earl of, 18 Shakespeare, William, 5 Shakespeare Our Contemporary, 81 Shakhnazarov, Karen, 60, 147 Shaw, George Bernard, 49 Shengelaya, Eldar, 5, 94, 104-13 Shepotinnik, Peter, 155 Sherlock, Jr., 51 Shershenevich, Vadim, 53 Shpikovskii, Nikolai, 42 Shumyatsky, Boris, 5, 10, 83-4 skomorokhi (minstrel), 94

170 Smekhov, V, 78 Socialist Realism, 59-60, 84, 106 Sokolov, Ippolit, 40 Solntseva, Iuliia, 40 Soloviev, Sergei, 8, 103, 125-36 Sophocles, 24 Soviet circus, The, 90 Soviet Writers' Union, The, 28 Sovkino, 33 Spielberg, Steven, 1, 3 St. Jorgen's Feast Day, 43-3 Stalin, Joseph, 4, 5, 23, 59, 75, 81, 83, 84, 88, 96, 129, 131-2, 150 Stalker, 94, 100 Stanislavsky, Constantin, 68 Stenka Razin, 81 Strike, 10, 67 Sudakevich, A., 40 Suicide, The, 50, 77 Swift, Jonathan, 1, 49 Sypher, Wylie, 56 Taganka theater, 33, 78 Tailor from Torzhok, The, 39, 40 Tamerlane, 97 Tarkovsky, Andrei, 4, 28, 48, 98-104 Taylor, Richard, 48, 53 television (Soviet), 33 Terence, 5 Three Million Case, The, 53 Three Sisters, 58-9 Timasheff, Nicholas, 86 Tolstoi, Leo, 134 Tolstykh, Valentin, 155 tragedy, 17 Trauberg, Leonid, 65 T>ee of Desire, 112

Triumph of Will, 91 Tsereteli, Nikolai, 40 Tsibulsky, M., 40 Turenev, Rostislov, 17 Two Friends, a Model and a Girlfriend, 42 typage (as developed by Eisenstein), 10, 67, 70 Unusual Exhibition, An, 105-6, 108 Utesov, Leonid, 88 vaudeville, 9 Velvet Prison, The: Artists Under State Socialism, 123 Verner, Mikhail, 39 Vertov, Dziga, 10, 65-6, 84

Index

171

Very Same Munchausen, The, 20, 35 Villain, The, 17-8, 138, 144 VGIK (The All Union Soviet Film Academy), 67, 107 Virgin Mary, 134 Volga, Volga, 5, 43, 17-83 Volpin, M., 76 Voltaire, 4

Williams, Robin, 4 Wild at Heart, 85 Wine Jug, The, 107 Wiseman, 111

We Cannot Live Like This, 8 WeJcome, 18, 100 Wenders, Wim, 128 Whiskers, 19, 103, 155 White Guardists, 39 White, Hayden, 6 Who Framed Roger Rabbit, 8

Zadig, 4 Zaharovitch, Vladimir, 81 Zero Hour, The: Glasnost and Soviet Cinema in Transition, 60, 95, 103, 127, 146-7 Zheliabuzhskii, Iurii, 40 Zoshchenko, M. M., 94

Yerofeyev, Viktor, 1 Yevtushenko, Evgeny, 119 Youngblood, Denise J., 51

Inside Soviet Film Satire (Cambridge Studies in Film)

John Huston's Filmmaking (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Film

Film

Film Studies (Teach Yourself)

Cinepaternity: fathers and sons in Soviet and post-Soviet film

The 'I' of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Classics in Film and Fiction (Film Fiction)

Classics in Film and Fiction (Film Fiction)

When Opera Meets Film (Cambridge Studies in Opera)

Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir

Film and Phenomenology: Towards a Realist Theory of Cinematic Representation (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge Studies in Film)

British Film (National Film Traditions)

Film Studies (Pocket Essential series)

Studies in South Asian Film and Media

Film copyright in EU

Authorship in Film Adaptation

Animals in Film (Locations)

Film in Contemporary China

Film Cultures

On Film

Film Remakes

On Film

Przerwany film

Film Remakes

Studying film

Studying Film

Der Film

Film Marketing

Inside Soviet Film Satire (Cambridge Studies in Film)

John Huston's Filmmaking (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Film

Film

Film Studies (Teach Yourself)

Cinepaternity: fathers and sons in Soviet and post-Soviet film

The 'I' of the Camera: Essays in Film Criticism, History, and Aesthetics (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Classics in Film and Fiction (Film Fiction)

Classics in Film and Fiction (Film Fiction)

When Opera Meets Film (Cambridge Studies in Opera)

Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir

Film and Phenomenology: Towards a Realist Theory of Cinematic Representation (Cambridge Studies in Film)

Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge Studies in Film)

British Film (National Film Traditions)

Film Studies (Pocket Essential series)

Studies in South Asian Film and Media

Film copyright in EU

Authorship in Film Adaptation

Animals in Film (Locations)

Film in Contemporary China

Film Cultures

On Film

Film Remakes

On Film

Przerwany film

Film Remakes

Studying film

Studying Film

Der Film

Film Marketing

Recommend Documents