Genre cinema and cinema Sui Generis: Adrian Piotrovsky and cinema taxonomy

ABSTRACT

Although ‘Towards a Theory of Cine-Genres’ announces his interest in connecting film genre to the formal properties of the medium, Adrian Piotrovsky’s thinking as a whole is marked by a fundamental ambivalence to genre. Placing this better-known essay within the overall development of his thinking on cinema reveals how Piotrovsky grappled with taxonomizing cinema and refined a vision for a Soviet filmmaking that moved beyond the limitations of genre.

KEYWORDS:

• Adrian Piotrovsky
• film genre
• Russian Formalism
• Soviet cinema

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See Piotrovsky’s report on the festival: Adr. Piotrovskii, ‘Mezhdunarodnyi smotr kinematografii: K itogam kino-festivalia v Moskve,’ Rabochii i teatr 3, 1935, pp. 4–6.

2. Lunacharsky’s phrasing directly echoes that of Rousseau’s program for public celebrations in his famous Letter to M. D’Alembert Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D’Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allen Bloom (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968) pp. 125-126 (translation adjusted).Lunacharsky’s phrasing directly echoes that of Rousseau’s program for public celebrations in his famous Letter to M. D’Alembert Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D’Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allen Bloom (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1968) pp. 125-126 (translation adjusted).

3. On the Soviet mass festivals and, specifically, Piotrovsky’s role in them, see: von Geldern (1993); Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of the Revolution (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1995) pp. 122–142.

4. See also Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution, pp. 147–148.

5. Piotrovsky’s arguments for the cinefication of other mediums contradict his basic principle of medium specificity.

6. Piotrovsky was a serial victim of Formalism. In 1928–1930 he fended off repeated attacks for his advocacy of artistic experiment, which in the lingo of the day was termed ‘Formalism.’ In 1936 Piotrovsky was subjected renewed pressure as the author of the libretto to Dmitrii Shostakovich’s ballet The Limpid Stream, which was faulted for formalism. ‘Formalism’ here denotes something much more general than adherence to the ‘Formal Method’ of aesthetic analysis, but the terminological confusion did not help.

7. In Zhizn’ iskusstva, 21 October 1919.

8. On GIII see Clark, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution, pp. 149–150; K. A. Kumpan (2005, n.d.), ‘K istorii vozniknoveniia Kinokomiteta pri GIII,’ in Shipovnik: Istoriko-filologicheskii sbornik k 60-letiiu Romana Davidovicha Timenchika (Moscow: Vodolei, 2005) pp. 175–201; ‘Institut istorii iskusstv na rubezhe 1920-kh-1930-kh gg.,’ http://www.pushkinskijdom.ru/Default.aspx?tabid=10460. Last accessed 4 October 2019.

9. Tynianov, ‘Ob osnovakh kino,’Poetika kino, ed. B. M. Eikhenbaum (Moscow, Leningrad: Kinopechat’, 1927) pp. 70–72. The book exists in an English translation: The Poetics of Cinema, ed. Richard Taylor (Oxford: RPT Publications, 1982). The fine German edition includes many earlier texts published by the authors in the periodical press: Poetika Kino: Theorie und Praxis des Films, ed. Wolfgang Beilenhoff (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005).

10. A. Piotrovskii, ‘K teorii kino-zhanrov,’ Poetika kino, p. 145. Further references to Piotrovsky’s essay and Richard Taylor’s translation in The Poetics of Cinema (which I freely adapt in my own translations) will be given parenthetically in the text. [ed. note: not all of the equivalent pages in Taylor’s translation have been provided by the author].

11. Cf. Robert Bird (2008), pp. 195–217.

12. Cf. also Piotrovskii’s earlier edition: Aristofan, Kniga komedii (Moscow, Leningrad: Academia, 1930).

13. The editors of Bakhtin’s Collected Works take care to refute any possibility of Piotrovsky having influenced Bakhtin (Bakhtin, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 4/2, p. 560).

14. Ed. note: The author did not supply complete reference information for this citation and the editors were unable to locate the source for this quotation.

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Robert Bird

Robert Bird (1969-2020) was a Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. His wide-ranging scholarship engages with Russian film, literature, and intellectual history, as well as modernism and 20^th century revolutionary culture. He is the author of several books and essays on the work of Andrei Tarkovsky, including Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (2008); his translation of it into Russian appeared in 2021 as Андрей Тарковский: стихии кино. In 2017 he co-curated the exhibition Revolution Every Day at the Smart Museum in Chicago. His newest book, Soul Machine: Soviet Film Models Socialism is in preparation for publication.