Soviet movies for the masses and for historians

NOTES

• Taylor , R. 1979 . The Politics of the Soviet Cinema, 1917–1929 Cambridge, , England D. Youngblood, Movies for the Millions (forthcoming); idem, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (Ann Arbor MI, 1985; reprint Austin TX, 1991); P. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953 (forthcoming). These books are excellent guides to popular films up to 1953, as is A. Lawton, Towards a new openness in Soviet Cinema, in: D. J. Goulding (Ed.), Post New Wave Cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (Bloomington, IN, 1989), pp. 1–50, for the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras; there is no comparable work as yet in English on the Khrushchev period. For parallel discussion of other popular arts, see: S. F. Starr, Red and Hot: the Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union (New York, 1983); J. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read (Princeton, NJ, 1985); R. Stites, Soviet Popular Culture in the Gorbachev Era, Harriman Institute Forum (March, 1989); and the works on Socialist Realist fiction by Vera Dunham, Katerina Clark and Régine Robin.
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• Ginzburg , S. 1963 . Kinematografiya dorevolyutsionnoi Rossii (The Cinema of Pre-Revolutionary Russia) Moscow massive and detailed; R. Sobolev, Lyudi i fil'my russkogo dorevolyutsionnogo kino (The People and Films of Pre-Revolutionary Russian Cinema) (Moscow, 1961), short and gossipy; N. Zorkaya, Na rubezhe stoletii: U istokov massovogo iskusstva v Rossii 1900–1910 godov [Between Two Centuries: The Sources of Mass Art in Russia 1900–1910] (Moscow, 1976), a masterly analysis of the function of movies in popular culture; J. Leyda, Kino. A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (London, 1960), a Western perspective by a keen critic of art film.
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• The others are: The Children of the Age (Deti veka 1915 Mirages (Mirazhi, 1916), A Life for a Life (Zhizn'za zhizn’, 1916), and The Last Tango (Poslednee tango, 1918).
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• Silent Witnesses: Russian Films 1908–1919 et al. London & Pordenone, , Italy 1989 478 484
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• See: Stites R. Iconoclastic Currents in the Russian Revolution Bolshevik Culture et al. Bloomington, IN 1985
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• For the background, see: Taylor R. Boris Shumyatsky and the Soviet Cinema in the 1930s: ideology as mass entertainment Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 1986 6 1 48 64
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• In Soviet iconology, the woman had come to be identified with the countryside and thus with a relatively nurturing role in society (in spite of her prominence in the urban work force); the man with the city, the factory, the machine—and thus power. See: Lapidus G. Women and Soviet Society Berkeley, CA 1978 and R. Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia (Princeton, NJ, 1978).
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• Siegelbaum , L. 1988 . Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935–1941 76 – 76 . Cambridge, , England 80, 273; and see passim for the realities behind the Stakhanovite mythology.
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• See the detailed analysis by Maria Enzensberger of this film also known as The Radiant Path, in: Stalinism and Soviet Cinema Taylor R. Spring D. (forthcoming)
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• Bliznakov , M. Architecture as Decorative Art , (unpublished manuscript); V. Paperny, Kul'tura ‘dva’ [The ‘Second’ Culture] (Ann Arbor MI, 1985). A Western visitor to Moscow in 1936, Kurt London, after lamenting the vulgar array of porticoes, parapets, cornices and friezes of the Hotel Moskva (then used for delegations of workers and peasants), cites this explanation of its decor from a Soviet citizen: These people, who very often only live in poor huts, are to see that the greatest luxury is thought fit for their reception. They are to return home with the feeling that they are citizens of a great and wealthy country. That increases their self-respect and strengthens their allegiance to a regime which affords them such princely hospitality. Seven Soviet Arts (London, 1937), pp. 259–61.
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• Brezhnev , L.I. 1980 . Trilogy: Little Land, Rebirth, the Virgin Lands 231 – 398 . Moscow
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• Sobolev R. ‘Grustnye priklyucheniya prikyuchencheskogo fil'ma’ (The Sad Adventures of an Adventure Film), Literaturnaya gazeta (Literary Gazette) March 1987 8 8 11 Sharply conflicting opinions on ‘popularity’ and ‘commercialism’ in cinema were voiced openly at the November 1989 Soviet-American Film Conference in Moscow.
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