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Q2 2018

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66 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2018 The history of Soviet sound differs greatly from the one of how sound came to film in the US. Not only did Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s face the challenges of flawed emerging technologies, financial risk and artistic adaptation, they were confounded by a policy- shifting, revolutionary government that oversaw artistic and commercial production in every field. Movies were part of Stalin's Five-Year Plans, and people working at any job in cinema faced the risk of job loss, imprisonment in the gulag or possibly death — just as did "comrades" working in every sector of society. Although different today, Vladimir Putin's Russia is modeled on this foundation of media dictatorship. And, as much as we decry the inane policy shifting at the White House, it is good to note that not even Alec Baldwin has been imprisoned. The early years of Soviet struggle was followed by Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) from 1921 to 1928, which represented a temporary retreat from extreme centralization and produced some of the world's greatest silent films, Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), among others. Cinema was always considered by Soviet leaders to be a prime way to gain support for their agendas, and silent film — with its ability to cross ethnic barriers — was perfectly suited to a nation of 8,649,500 square miles with over 100 different spoken languages. With translated intertitles, a silent film could speak to many millions. Russian filmmakers also developed a language of silent cinema that reflected the dialectic goals of Marxism meshed with the artistic influences of Constructivism, Agitprop and the vestiges of Futurism. They wrote and debated about their art, its purposes and possibilities in theoretical ways unmatched by filmmakers in the West. They were excited about the possibilities of sound to expand upon their visual montage theories. Kaganovsky quotes director Vsevolod Pudovkin, who spoke to American photographer Margaret Bourke-White in 1929 (and which she published in her book, Eyes on Russia, 1931) as stating, "Sounds and human speech should be used by the director not as a literal accompaniment, but to amplify and enrich the visual image on screen. …[S]ound film could become a new form of art whose future development had no predictable limits." In the Soviet Union, the introduction of sound coincided with "The Great Turning Point," Stalin's introduction of the First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932). Previously, films were made in service of the Communist revolution, but their creation remained mostly in the hands of filmmakers and regional studios. With the First Five-Year Plan's total consolidation of the industry under one office came a ban on using any equipment, from camera to film stock to laboratory materials, that were not made solely in the Soviet Union — a trade embargo of gigantic proportions. Since refining and manufacturing sound technology was a slow process, equipment was scarce. Even major directors had to wait in line to use Shorin's or Tager's inventions, and that place in line could change at the government's whim. The author's main argument is that because the transition to sound took longer in the USSR, filmmakers "had a chance to experiment with sound to a degree that was unavailable to filmmakers in the US or Europe, [who were] under the pressures of commercial cinema. As a result, they made remarkable films that reflected the chaos but also the possibilities of the new sound apparatus." She demonstrates this in detailed discussions in five sections. "The Voice of Technology and the End of Silent Film" is the first, and features Alone (1931), one of many films co-directed by Leonid Trauberg and Grigori Kozintsev. The second, "The Materiality of Sound," covers Vertov's Enthusiasm (1930), which CUT / PRINT Esfir Shub at a flatbed with a celluloid strip.

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