70
PARTISAN REVIEW
Index Wanted
Gentlemen:
I intend having
my
issues of PARTISAN'
REVIEW bound.
If
you print an index for
each volume, would
you
be good enough
to supply me with a copy for your most
recent volume?
.
May I suggest at the same time that the
six issues for each volume
you
issue have
their pages numbered consecutively instead
of having each issue numbered as a volume
in itself. The former method will greatly
facilitate the work of any person using your
magazine for reference purposes.
Wishing
you
every success in the pub–
lication of PARTISAN REVIEW, the best
magazine in the market today, I remain,
S. SHAPIRO,
Montreal, Canada.
Editor's Note :
We had not thought of
PARTISAN REVIEW as a reference work, but
if there is any general demand among our
readers for consecutively numbered pages,
we shall be glad to comply.
Three Views of Cinema
Article
Part
I
of Dwight Macdonald's article on
the Soviet cinema was sent in manuscript,
for possible criticism and correction, to
Seymour Stern. editor of the late
Cinema
Quarterly,
and to Jay Leyda, who is the
librarian of the Museum of Modern Art
Film Library. Mr. Stern is well known as
an exponent of revolutionary cinema–
using the term in its esthetic as well as its
social sense--and Mr. Leyda is completing
a history of the Soviet cinema, to be pub.
lished this winter
by
the Museum. The
attempt to elicit corrections, however, was
not successful: Mr. Stern thought too
highly of the article to suggest more than
minor changes,
~hile
Me.
Leyda felt it ;was
on too low a level to merit criticism.
Their letters appear below. The third letter
is from the movie critic of the
City
ColJege
of N. Y.
Campus.
Dear Macdonald,
I don't feel qualified to add to or sub·
tract from, or in any way modify, a critique
of the Soviet cinema as well·documented
and as profoundly unanswerable as the one
you have written. Just as I expected, you
have done a superlative job, one that will
leave a deep and lasting mark to guide
those who wish to preserve a decent respect
for the truth. The picture you have painted
is heart-rending and sickening, and you
have shown genuine courage in painting it
at this time. It is rather trite, I feel, to con–
gratulate you for your conception and
execution of this piece, but as an indication
of my respect for it I want to tell you that
I
consider it great enough to make even the
Stalinist bureaucrats see the light. In my
opinion it is destined to have far-reaching
creative
consequences in the Soviet Union
-not at once, perhaps, but after those in
control have gotten over their quick heat of
anger and have begun to rub their chins and
meditate on what you have written. Then,
indeed, will your critique make history. I
feel this development as inevitable.
I've made a few margin notes for minor
changes-very minor, and question.marks
after the word "ultra·left" in several places
where your use of it confused me. (The
confusion is no doubt in my mind, but I'd
like you to explain why "ultra-left" in
those particular connections). Also, there is
one bit of history which, though perhaps
not important in itself, ought to be included
for the sake of the record. It can be inserted
as a footnote: I refer to the fact that the
great sequences of "A Fragment of an Em–
pire"-precisely those sequences which
made the picture one of the glories of the
golden age (the scene on the battlefield, the
railroad junction on the steppe, the arrival
of the peasant in Leningrad, the restoration
of the peasant's memory, etc.)-were done
not by Ermler, but by Eisenstein. Few
people know this, for it has been kept more
or less of a trade secret in the U.S.S.R. and
has never been published abroad, but it
remains, notwithstanding its obscurity,
:10
historical fact. I had it directly from
Eisenstein himself (in Hollywood), also
from Montagu and others, who were in the
Soviet Union at the time. Ermler had
bungled the production pretty badly, and
after much time and money had been
wasted, Eisenstein was called in to salvage
the picture as best he could. This he ac·
complished by doing through montage what
Ermler had vainly sought to do by the
conventional Hollywood method of acting.
Ermler treated what was predominantly a
psychological n?rrative in exactly the man.
ner that any competent American jobster,
