THE SOVIET CINEMA
39
leaving aside politics, ideology, and social thematics,
Counterplan
was dull,
uninspired, a stage play acted out before the camera by professional 'char–
acter actors.' Its quality is suggested in this description from the
Soviet
Culture Bulletin
(No.
10, 1932):
"It freely combines elements of healthy
romance with joyous comedy, dramatic intensity with lyric warmth . . .
unimpeachable pictures of Leningrad's white nights. . . . Special mention
should be made of the work of the painter-architect Dubrovsky-Eshke, who
built within the studio a giant department of a metal factory with all of its
machines and lathes." Eisenstein deserts the theatre for the cinema the better
to capture the reality of a factory; Ermler-Yutketvitch bring the cinema back
to the theatre by building a stage factory inside the studio. Such consider–
ations, of course, didn't bother the bureaucracy.
"Counterplan,"
writes Prof.
Yesuitov, "was the first victory of socialist realism in the Soviet cinema."H
And that is that.
If
Ermler and Yutkevitch were the founders of the Stalin School, the
Vassiliev brothers have been its heroes since the appearance of their
Chap–
ayev.
They have been working in the movies since
1924,
but, up to
Chapayev,
had produced nothing of note. Today, as the producers of the
greatest success in the social-rea1ist cinema, they are at the top. The other
leading figures in the Stalin School may be briefly defined. Professor Yesuitov
recently listed as "new men"-in the sense of gaining eminence recently–
the following: Petrov, Macheret, Ekk, Barnet, Kavalleridze, Roshal, Raisman.
The list may be accepted as definitive. Petrov made children's films until
1934,
when he released
The Storm,
a tediously theatrical version of a literary
classic. His latest film is
Peter I,
of which more later. Macharet in
1932
produced
Men
&
Jobs,
a variant of
Counterplan.
Ekk worked in Meyerhold's
theatre, and was graduated from the State Cinematographic School in
1928.
After the- Success of
Road to Life,
he was assigned to make the first all–
talking, all-color Soviet film-a sentimental little tale with revolutionary
trimmings called
The Nightingale.
(One can imagine Shumiatsky's excite–
ment: Sound! Color! Ekk! It's colossal!) The film was planned as the
first of a trilogy, but it turned out so badly that the idea, and apparently Ekk
as well, was dropped. Barnet worked with Kuleshov before
1925,
and has
made a number of films, with only one of which I am familiar:
The Girl
with a Bandbox,
a comedy as forced and painful as most Soviet comedies.
Kavalleridze is a Ukrainian like Dovzhenko; his
Prometheus
was recently
banned by the authorities. Roshal has been working in the cinema since
1925.
His best-known productions are
Seeds of Freedom,
a rather crude
silent film,
St. Petersburg Nights
(1933),
and
People of the Eleventh Legion
(Paris Commune),
of which more later. Raisman made an excellent silent
film,
Katorga (In Old Siberia).
I am unable to find any recent information
about his work.
