40
PARTISAN REVIEW
Doldrums
Despite the best efforts of the Stalin School and their allies, the bu–
reaucrats of Soyuzkino, the cinema perversely refused to thrive. Early in
1931
Vladimir A. Sutyrin, the youthful production chief of Soyuzkino, de–
livered a report to a .conference of art workers. The cinema, he said, was
in a "critical" situation; quantity and quality were both low. He suggested
the remedies one might expect: bigger investments, more studios, rationali–
zation, and "the formation of new cadres." The cinema was faced with
"mounting difficulties," "its reputation abroad is at stake," he said, con–
cluding with an urgent appeal for the "mobilzation of all the resources
and all the energies of the nation" to save the industry from collapse.
4s
Shumiatsky was more sanguine. In fact, the worse the situation became,
the bigger he talked. In the summer of
1931,
when the cinema was almost
at a standstill between the censorship, the bureaucracy, and the problems
of sound, Shumiatsky announced that Soyuzkino ,?lanned to make
500
full–
length films in
1932, 80
of them in sound and
20
in color.46 Two months
later he was talking even more wildly: "By the end of
1932,
we shall need
75,000
projection machine operators.. .. We have today only three theatres
in the whole Soviet Union equipped to show sound pictures. By the end
of this year we shall have
100.
Next year there will be
5,000"'7
But by
the end of
1932
only
25,000
operators were needed, and there were
36
and not
5,000
sound theatres.· s Lenin had a word for it:
komchvanstvo–
"Communist swagger."
Early in
1933,
as the cinema continped to lag far behind its 'norms,'
Shumiatsky announced a "complete reorganization" of Soyuzkino, which
was put under the "immediate direction" of the Council of People's Com–
missars. But in spite of everything, when the All-Union Conference for
the
1934
thematic plan of the cinema met in the fall of
1933,
Shumiatsky
had to admit that only
15
feature films were scheduled for
relea~e
in
1934,
and that during the last five years "at least half the films were bad. He also
compla~ned
about the scarcity of directorial talent, putting the number of
first-rate directors" at
50
or
60,
surely a generous estimate. Yet when the
Conference closed, neither Eisenstein nor Pudovkin had been assigned a
theme. "I am now working on the script for
Moscow,"
said Eisenstein.
"I want very much to produce this during
1934,
but the question does not
depend solely on me." And when Pudovkin was asked what he was going
to do in
1934,
he answered, "As yet I don't know, but I'm beginning
work with Vladimir Kirshon on
A viation."
(Nothing came of either of
these projects.) But Alexandrov, Eisenstein's assistant, who had found
he could make slapstick comedies which pleased the bureaucracy if not
the eithetes, was in no doubt as to
his
plans. ''I'm finishing
Jazz Comedy,"
he replied briskly. "I shall deliver it in March. After that, I am writing
