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Q2 2018

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67 Q2 2018 / CINEMONTAGE CUT / PRINT the director himself described as "the lead icebreaker in the column of sound newsreels," and Shub's K.Sh.E. (Komsomol/Leader of Electrification) (1932). Enthusiasm was widely attacked for being a cacophony of sounds, factories, radio, music, bells and speeches — all heard with no particular hierarchy. Vertov was also trying to give the soundtrack weight equal to the visuals, which he forced upon a Film Society of London screening in 1931. According to Kaganovsky, "Vertov insisted on controlling the sound in the projection booth and raising the volume of climaxes to an ear-splitting level, until he ended up being forcibly removed from the projection booth." She references a note sent to Vertov from Charlie Chaplin calling Enthusiasm, "One of the most exhilarating symphonies I have ever heard." Section three of the book explores "Soviet Cinema Learns to Sing" and analyzes Igor Savchenko's Accordion (1934). This simple musical is based on a poem about a young man who abandons his accordion to become secretary of his Soviet village, but discovers that he is much more prized by the collective as an accordion player. The operetta, as its maker described it, was a forerunner to the Socialist Realism musicals so prized by Stalin, but it still retained too much of the individual artist for the state's liking so was pulled from all screens, foreign and domestic, in 1936. The problem of how to make sound films for peoples of many languages is explored in section four, "Multi-Lingualism and Heteroglossia in Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Ivan and Aerograd." Kaganovsky's terminology may seem overly academic, but in addition to exploring how the "voice" of cinema was being bent to the demands of Socialist Realism, she chronicles the practical problems of funding, production, distribution and censorship. Ivan (1932), although cleared by the Politburo, led to Dovzhenko being criticized for using his native Ukrainian language. He remedied this in his next film, Aerograd (1935), a tale about creating a city on the far East Coast of USSR (never built in reality). Despite its characters being from various regions and countries, the only language heard in the film is Russian. Dovzhenko finds alternatives to speech — from mumbling, gestures and hiding of faces to reliance on sound effects and natural noises. The use of solely Russian dialogue is also a comment on the "voice" of the state, which this film directly addresses when characters speak into the camera, such as an executioner stating, "I am killing a traitor and enemy of the people — my friend, Vasil Petrovich Khudiakov, 60 years old. Be witness to my sorrow." Thus, the government's voice is always there to remind people of its authority. It is hard to imagine a Hollywood film of 1935 using sound, or camera, in this way. Even more remarkable is that the sound for Aerograd, like Ivan, was recorded on location. Section five is again devoted to Vertov and to his Three Songs of Lenin (1934), which over the years, existed in four different versions: two silent and two sound, some of them now lost. It is in this film that Lenin's voice is heard in sync with picture. Since Vertov wrote prolifically, Kaganovsky is able to recount the process by which assistant director Elizaveta Svilova searched through hundreds of hours of footage, and sound engineer Petr Shtro worked to marry recordings made prior to sound-on-film to these images. Remarkably, in 1933, the team was able to produce sync sound footage of Lenin, who died in 1924, addressing the Red Army: "Stand firm… Stand together... Forward bravely against the foe… Victory shall be ours. The power of the landowners and capitalists, crushed here in Russia, shall be defeated throughout the entire world!" Fortunately, this did not come to pass — or else Hollywood might be using the Shorinofon! f Director Dziga Vertov with editor Elizaveta Svilova in the cutting room.

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