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Russian Avant-Garde Film

Russian Avant-Garde Film. Pudovkin , Eisenstein, Vertov. Vladimir Lenin. Leader of Bolshevik Party In exile in Switzerland during World War I Germans send him back to Russia in 1917 to foment Revolution Enters Finland Station 3 April 1917 Seizes power on 25 October/7 November 1917.

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Russian Avant-Garde Film

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  1. Russian Avant-Garde Film Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov

  2. Vladimir Lenin • Leader of Bolshevik Party • In exile in Switzerland during World War I • Germans send him back to Russia in 1917 to foment Revolution • Enters Finland Station 3 April 1917 • Seizes power on 25 October/7 November 1917

  3. What was the Russian Revolution? • Marxism-Leninism: Marxism adapted to Russian conditions • Class analysis: Bourgeoisie - Proletariat - Peasantry • Coup-d'état, not revolution from below • “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” • Revolution consolidated by propaganda and terror • Need to raise revolutionary consciousness of masses (workers, peasants)

  4. Cinema nationalized1918 • Lenin’s article “Directive on film-making” (film as a tool for propaganda) • Lenin’s phrase “For us film is the most important art form.” • Lenin’s instruction: to shoot the processes of industrial production; educational and scientific films. • Profitable art: entertainment “without obscenity and counterrevolution”

  5. Who is to make the films? Avant-garde intellectuals quickly join the Bolsheviks. Poets…

  6. Vladimir Mayakovsky Beat the squares with the tramp of rebels! Higher, rangers of haughty heads! We'll wash the world with a second deluge, Now’s the hour whose coming it dreads. Too slow, the wagon of years, The oxen of days — too glum. Our god is the god of speed, Our heart — our battle drum. Is there a gold diviner than ours What wasp of a bullet us can sting? Songs are our weapons, our power of powers, Our gold — our voices — just hear us sing!

  7. Artists… Vladimir Tatlin… Monument to the Third Socialist international (1919-1920)

  8. … and Kazimir Malevich White quadrilateral on white (1916)

  9. Photographers … Aleksandr Rodchenko

  10. …and theatre directors Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Magnificent Cuckold 1918

  11. What were the elements of avant-garde art? • Rejection of “bourgeois” values • Shock effect • Abstraction • collage • focus on form • cult of the modern (“Futurism”), the new industrial processes, machines • Primitivism • revealing the true form of things (Constructivism)

  12. Post-revolutionary film • “agitka” (агитка): spreading the word about the revolution in the villages • non-narrative • ideological • propaganda value • hero system (Lenin) • non-erotic content

  13. “Avant-garde” political cinema Lev Kuleshov (1899-1970) - theoretician Vsevolod Pudovkin (1893-1953) Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) Dziga Vertov (1896-1954) Aleksandr Dovzhenko (1894-1956)

  14. Eisenstein Filmography • Strike 1923 • Battleship Potemkin (pr. PotyOmkin) 1925 • October (Ten Days that Shook the World) 1928 • The General Line (The Old and the New) 1929 • Que viva Mexico! (unfinished – abandoned 1932) • Bezhin Meadow (1935 – undistributed, destroyed) • Alexander Nevsky 1938 • Ivan the Terrible Pt. I 1944 • Ivan the Terrible Pt II (finished 1946, released only in 1958)

  15. Eisenstein and the Theatre • Vsevolod Meyerhold (1874-1940) • antirealist theatre • theatre of the grotesque • clowning, acrobatics • abstract, “constructivist” sets

  16. Vsevolod Meyerhold (portrait by Boris Grigoriev)

  17. Commedia dell’arte and the Grotesque • Jacques Callot (1592-1635): • French artist, engravings of Italian actors • Masks: Pantalone, Petrushka, dottore • Serious characters (innamorati): lovers joined at end of comedy • For Russian theatre: source of grotesque – deformation of the human form, and expressive facial expression as mask

  18. Eisenstein’s essay “Montage of Attractions” (1923) • “Montage of attractions”: cinema compared to theatre and circus • first experiment in film: grotesque intermezzo inserted in play

  19. Eisenstein and the visual arts • Films as “moving frescoes” – the influence of Diego Rivera • Numerous quotes from the visual arts – e.g., from Francisco Goya • Icons in Ivan The Terrible • Eisenstein was an artist himself – created sketches for characters and individual shots • Constructivist imagery

  20. Eisenstein: early biography • Born in Riga, Latvia, into the family of a prominent architect and engineer • Father Jewish, mother Russian • Graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineering in Saint Petersburg • In 1920, joined the Proletkult (“proletarian culture”) Central Workers’ Theatre in Moscow • Studied in the School for Stage Direction under Vsevolod Meyerhold in early 1920s

  21. Film Strike (1923) as a commedia dell'arte • First feature film, about workers’ strikes before the revolution • Serious heroes: revolutionaries • Dark comedy, the revolutionaries are suppressed. • “Typage” : uses found faces, not actors • Masks: factory managers, spies…

  22. Of Men and machines • Eisenstein’s films are didactic: they always channel an ideological message • There is no hero (well-rounded individual) in his early films: there are masses, classes, types • Montage of attractions: juxtaposition of unrelated expressive images in a rapid succession (technique influenced by D.W.Griffith’s Intolerance, 1916) • Psychological effect of montage – “cutting” on the audience. Strike

  23. Battleship Potemkin (1925)

  24. Eisenstein shooting Potemkin

  25. Battleship Potemkin • Pronounced “Potyomkin” • Planned as a part of a cycle of films about the Revolution (along with Strike and October) • Tells about an episode of the 1905 revolt (suppressed) • Myth-making, but relatively true to the historical events (not in details!)

  26. Historical Events • 11 days of mutiny on Potemkin • Hailed and supported by the population of Odessa • Unrest in the city suppressed by Imperial troops • No support from other ships • Ran out of food and fuel, fled to Romania • No significant political outcome

  27. Battleship Potemkin: structure Five parts (reels) introduced by intertitles, resemble five acts of tragedy: Reel One: Men and Maggots Reel Two: Drama on the Quarterdeck Reel Three: Appeal from the Dead Reel Four: The Odessa Steps Reel Five: Meeting the squadron

  28. Montage and cameraThe Odessa Steps • Innocence vs violence (ex., the face of the woman – the rows of soldiers with bayonets lowered) • Soldiers as depersonalized graphic lines moving forward; citizens of Odessa as individuals (close-ups) • Difference in perspective: soldiers are in control, move downwards; victims’ perspective is from below

  29. Francisco Goya The Third of May 1808 (1814)

  30. Michelangelo’s Pietà

  31. Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)

  32. Themes and motifs • Brotherhood: Vakulinchuk’s cry “Brothers!” • Religious motifs: slaughter of the innocent • Machines and men

  33. Lens Theme • Doctor refuses to see maggots • Shattered lens of woman’s glasses • Canvas over mutineers so that comrades with guns cannot see them • Camera lens sees and records

  34. The glorification of the machine… • Battleship itself joins the revolution • camera focuses on guns, machinery of engine room • Soldiers advance like faceless automatons down the Odessa steps

  35. Hand-painted flag

  36. Dziga Vertov: Man with Movie-Camera

  37. Dziga Vertov(David/Denis Kaufman)1896-1954

  38. Dziga Vertov Real name David Kaufman Born in Bialystok, Poland Pseudonym means “spinning top”, references his Jewishness (“dreidal” = “top” in Yiddish); also references the turning of the movie camera

  39. Cine-Eye "Our eyes see very little and very badly – so people dreamed up the microscope to let them see invisible phenomena; they invented the telescope...now they have perfected the cinecamera to penetrate more deeply into the visible world, to explore and record visual phenomena so that what is happening now, which will have to be taken account of in the future, is not forgotten." (Dziga Vertov)

  40. Aesthetic program The Kinoks group (kino “cinema” + oko “eye” and okno “window”) Programmatic "Manifesto" “Kino-glaz". Documentary truth. Films as “wall-newspapers” "It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple." (Dziga Vertov) Using one's eyes (lens as an eye)

  41. Man with a Movie Camera (1929) Begins with a statement of values: Against theatre, acting, scenarios No intertitles (but many bits of text tell the story) Continuation of "Kino-Pravda" ("film truth") – a film series started by Vertov in 1922, the title played on the state newspaper title Pravda (“Truth”)

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