Nikos Kazantzakis’ Unshot Adaptations of Don Quixote and Decameron

This article examines two of Nikos Kazantzakis’ unshot screenplays of the early 1930s: his adaptations of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Boccaccio’s Decameron, kept in typed manuscripts at the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum Foundation in Iraklion, Crete. The article analyses Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron in the contexts of early talking cinema and his ideas of the image-language relationship. Written at a time when the artistic value of talking cinema was still debated, Kazantzakis’ adaptations demonstrate that he sought to express ideas with images rather than dialogue (Don Quixote) and use sound as a creative element (Decameron) in ways alluding to Eisenstein’s 1928-1929 writings, with which, as evidence suggests, the Greek author was familiar. Thus, Kazantzakis’ Don Quixote and Decameron show how a technological development in film history – the coming of sound – and the Soviet film theory influenced this author’s adaptation techniques, while also enhancing our understanding of his creative career as well as the worldwide resonance of Cervantes’ and Boccaccio’s literary milestones.

«I don’t want to watch every Sunday how I slash someone again»: The Memory of the Civil War, the Cinema and the Viewer’s Reception in the 1920s

During the 1920s in the USSR, the theme of the Civil War became an essential part of the mass culture of the period, and more specifically of Soviet film production. Produced in a context of shortages – experienced filmmakers and celluloid were lacking –, these films, which portrayed a simplified vision of events, had an essential propaganda purpose for the new Bolshevik regime. This article analyses the reception of these films on the basis of public discussions and opinion polls in cinemas among moviegoers. This work deals with the generational gap concerning the reception of this production: films that aroused the enthusiasm of a young public were often more criticized by the older generations, survivors of the Civil War. Indeed, the latter considered that the productions did not do justice to their sacrifices during those years of conflict. The violence of some shots, the blood on the screen, as well as the fate of the main characters are at the focus of heated discussions. This study focuses on the memory and commemoration of the Civil War in the first post-war decade.

The Georgian period of the filmmaker Otar Ioseliani

The creation of the film director Otar Ioseliani has a significant role in the evolution of Georgian cinematographic art. Since the 1950s, Ioseliani had been active in RSS Georgia, and since the 1980s, thanks to ideological circumstances, he continued his work as a filmmaker in France. Ioseliani imposed himself through a special style in the detection and cinematic expression of the negative parts of everyday life. That is why most of his films were not accepted by Soviet film critics, acclaiming them as negative works that did not fit the Soviet reality and lifestyle. Those works corresponded more to the conditions of critical realism than to socialist realism - the dogma of the totalitarian regime. As arguments for these ideas will serve the analysis (thematic, ideational background, cinematic expression, etc.) of Otar Ioseliani’s films from the Georgian period, starting with the bachelor’s thesis Watercolor (1958) and continuing with the films that became known to the general public: November, The Last Leaf, Pastoral, Once Upon a Time there was a Blackbird.

Grand Piano-the Audiovisual Hero of the Soviet Cinema Screen

Статья посвящена особым случаям использования фортепиано в советской киномузыке: не только в составе партитуры, но и как непосредственного «участника» экранного действия. Обычно это происходит в фильмах революционной и исторической тематики, а также в экранизациях русской классики. Среди множества картин, где рояль появляется на экране, нужно выделить ряд шедевров, в которых введение его отмечено уникальными решениями. В статье рассмотрены примеры из фильмов «Новый Вавилон» (музыка Д. Шостаковича), «Строгий юноша» (музыка Г. Попова), «Веселые ребята» (музыка И. Дунаевского). The article is devoted to special cases of the use of the piano in Soviet film music: not only as part of the score, but also as a direct “participant” of the screen action. This usually happens in films with revolutionary and historical themes, as well as in film adaptations of Russian literary classics in scenes of home music. However, among the many films where the instrument appears on the screen, it is necessary to note a number of absolute masterpieces in which the use of the piano is marked by unique solutions. The article considers examples of this kind from the films “New Babylon” (music by D. Shostakovich) “A Strict Young Man” (music by G. Popov), “Funny Guys” (music by I. Dunaevsky).

Soviet Art House

This book examines cinema in the Brezhnev era from the perspective of one of the USSR’s largest studios, Lenfilm. Producing around thirty feature films per year, the studio had over three thousand employees working in every area of film production. The discussion covers the period from 1961 to the collapse of centralized state facilities in 1986. The book focuses particularly on the younger directors at Lenfilm, those who joined the studio in the recruiting drive that followed Khrushchev’s decision to expand film production. Drawing on documents from archives, the analysis portrays film production “in the round” and shows that the term “censorship” is less appropriate than the description preferred in the Soviet film industry itself, “control,” which referred to a no less exigent but far more complex and sophisticated process. The book opens with four framing chapters that examine the overall context in which films were produced: the various crises that beset film production between 1961 and 1969 (chapter 1) and 1970 and 1985 (chapter 2), the working life of the studio, and particularly the technical aspects of production (chapter 3), and the studio aesthetic (chapter 4). The second part of the book comprises close analyses of fifteen films that are typical of the studio’s production. The book concludes with a brief survey of Lenfilm’s history after the Fifth Congress of the Filmmakers’ Union in 1986, which swept away the old management structures and, in due course, the entire system of filmmaking in the USSR.

The Cinema Centaur

The 1960s witnessed the transformation of “film factories” from metaphor to lived reality. Lenfilm’s output rose once more to the levels its predecessor studios had reached in the 1920s, but the conditions of production were now far more complex and demanding, with staffs more than ten times the size. And while the 1960s was an era of optimistic emphasis on the Soviet film industry’s capacity to equal and surpass the world in technological terms, during the 1970s, the conviction took hold that the technological superiority of Western films was of direct relevance to audience share. Increasingly, ambitious filmmakers petitioned Goskino for permission to shoot on Kodak and to use Arriflex cameras; criticism of inferior Soviet film stock and GDR-produced film editing tables mounted, both across the USSR and at Lenfilm itself. Yet investment in studio infrastructure and technology remained at best haphazard, particularly at Lenfilm, which enjoyed less generous support from the center than Mosfilm, but also more limited resourcing than film studios in the capitals of Soviet republics. At the same time, Lenfilm had an unusually diverse, energetic, inventive, and loyal workforce, with corporate values that inspired manual workers and porters as well as “creative” personnel. Hierarchical at some levels, the work culture was egalitarian at others, and the frenetic process of scrambling to finish films in trying circumstances created strong bonds. The chapter explores the various conflicts and contradictions, but also rewards, that this situation generated.