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PARTISAN REVIEW
It has degraded the cinema to an instrument of factional warfare,
using it ruthlessly to further whatever immediate political aims it hap–
pens to have at the moment. Such films are useful objects rather than
works of art. Once the political maneuver has been executed, or has
failed, the films it called forth are interesting only to the historian.
But a movie like
Arsenal,
broadly revolutionary in spirit and springing
out of a great social upheaval-not some 'line' or 'directive' cooked
up by the Kremlin-remains valid regardless of the fortunes of the
revolution. Its roots strike deep into history.
The general point to be made is that in the twenties, 'propa–
ganda' meant that the Soviet directors made films expressing certain
basic social values with which they were in ardent sympathy. The
word, 'sympathy,' in fact, is not accurate since it implies a detachment
which was not the case: they were part of the society founded on
those values, and this self-identification was a potent inspiration to
them. In the thirties, they must become political hacks, lending their
talents to whatever maneuver the Kremlin has put on the order of the
oay, obediently and fearfully treading the official line as laid down
from on high, a line whose relevance to the interests of socialism may
not be at all clear to them-or, worse, may be only too clear. It
is
significant that such films of a general revolutionary nature (with
certain 'deformations,' to be sure) as are still made tend to be on a
higher artistic level than the rest. One thinks of
Chapayev, Baltic
Deputy, The Last Night, We Are from Kronstadt, The Youth of
Maxim.
(For an account of the 'deformations' in one of these films,
see Victor Serge's letter on page 123 of this issue.) And one remem–
bers the official astonishment at the success of
Chapayev,
which "was
based on a theme that was generally considered to have become bor–
ing for Soviet audiences-the civil war."
111
Here the Kremlin seems
once more to have confused its own reactions with those of the masses.
The Stalin policies in cinema have followed two superficially
contradictory courses: films have more and more come either to have
the immediate, practical political aims described above, or else to
drop all propaganda, specific and general alike, in favor of what Hol–
lywood calls 'entertainment value.' I have already described this latter
category of films, which tend, if anything, to be even worse than the
political films. They, too, reflect the reactionary political aims of the
regime, but in a negative way. During the first five-year plan, the
movies were pressed into service to propagandize for the thesis that
socialism can be built in one country. More recently, the movies have
been called on to popularize an even bigger lie: that socialism
has
been built
in
one country.
If
socialism really had been won,
if
the
living conditions of the Soviet masses had actually risen above those
