THE SOVIET CINEMA
41
with Kataev a comedy about a collective
farm-Odarka
or
Four Bride–
grooms."·9
By
1934
the sterility of the cinema was beginning to cause alarm even
in official circles. The movie critic of the
Moscow
N
ewf
wrote that the past
year and a half "has been, not to mince words, perhaps the most arid period
in the history of the Soviet film." 50
Izvestia
surveyed the recent films and
found them dull, inartistic, and overburdened with propaganda.
51
Dinamov,
editor of
International Literature
and most official of official critics, wrote
in a review of progress on the 'art front': "Unfortunately, the cinema is
greatly lagging behind the general program of Soviet art."52
The Red Commander to the Rescue!
But help was on the way. At the end of
1934,
a film was released
which was excellent alike as propaganda and entertainment: the fast-moving
adventure story of Chapayev, the Red Commander.
It
had all the virtues–
and no virtues beyond them-of the Hollywood 'Western,' with the White
Guards cast as the cattle rustlers
~nd
the Red Partisans as the sheriff's posse.
It
was a hit at once. "Exceptiohally interesting ... a remarkable film,"
pronounced Marshal Voroshilov. "A new victory for Soviet art!" exclaimed
Marshal Budyonny. The critics hastened to agree with these authorities, and,
more important, so did the masses.
Chapayev
scored the greatest box office
success the Soviet Union has ever known, eclipsing even
Potemkin.
There
was nothing accidental about this success. The bureaucracy lavished time
and money on this supreme effort. The Vassilievs spent two and a half
years on
Chapayev-more
than twice as long as Eisenstein had spent on
Potemkin
and
October
combined. The effort seems to have exhausted both
the Vassilievs and the bureaucracy.
Ivor Montagu sees in
Chapayev
a sign of "an expanding delight in
individualism and personalization in all art fields of the Soviet Union
corresponding to the flowering of the individuality consequent on the raising
of the level of living accompanying the second Five-Year Plan.... No
picture so simple, so innocent of a desire to prove points, or even of a
feeling that they needed proving-in fact, so box-office could possibly have
been produced anywhere but in a society that had long lost its doubts about
itself."53 One can agree with this analysis, merely raising two questions :
(1) whose individuality is flowering?
(2)
is it a question of doubts being
lost-or not permitted?
With
Chapayev,
socialist realism consolidated once for all-until the
next reversal of the Stalin line, at least-its victory in the cinema. "The
Vassilievs," wrote Prof. Yesuitov, "made a new synthesis of the creative
aspirations of the Soviet cinematographic masters. This . . . has laid the
foundation for a new epoch in the Soviet Cinema."5.
On January
11, 1935,
Kalinin, as chairman of the Central Executive
Committee of the U.S.S.R., announced a long list of awards in celebration
of the fifteenth anniversary of the Soviet cinema. The Order of Lenin,
