Dostoevsky and Soviet Film: Visions of Demonic Realism 9781501744068

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Dostoevsky and Soviet Film

By the same author

Dostoevsky and Dickens: A Study of Literary Influence

Dostoevsky and Soviet Film VISIONS OF

DEMONIC REALISM

N.

M. Lary

Cornell University Press ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright

©

1986 by Cornell University

All rights reserved.

Except for brief quotations in a review,

must not be reproduced

this book, or parts

any form without permission

in writing

from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University

Press, 124

thereof,

Roberts Place, Ithaca,

First

in

New York 14850.

published 1986 by Cornell University Press.

International Standard

Book Number 0-8014-1882-8

Library of Congress Catalog Card

Number 86-47645

Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information

appears on the

last

page of the book.

The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

In

M.

N. Boborykina

(Dostoevsky also

named

and

knew that E. N.

urgency of his quest

memory of

E. N.

Heiden

their grandmother,

Heiden, understood the

for the all-connecting idea.)

Contents

Preface

Part

I

Demons behind the Screen 17

Prehistorical 1

2

3

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky as Demons of Darkness House of the Dead: A Dossier

22 39

Myth Shklovsky and Eisenstein on the New Myths

47

Roshal's Socialist Realist

57 59

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line Shklovsky and Eisenstein on Ermler

77 79

Subhistorical

Part

II

Power and the Exorcism of Genius 83

Ideological

4

Eisenstein 's

5

Ivan Pyriev:

Cinema of Cruelly Struggles of a Journeyman Part

6

7

III

85 111

Restrained Polyphony

Voices

153

Gambles with(in) Socialist Realism Kozintzev on the Inadequacies of the Ruling Model Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

155 176

178 7

Contents

Part IV 8

Kozintsev:

The Space

of Tragedy

The Retrospective View

193

Demonological

230

Conclusion

233

Appendix A

The Tragic Universe of Eisenstein's Ivan the 237

Terrible

Appendix B

Eisenstein's Notes for a "Chapter

on Dostoevsky"

255

Bibliographical Note

265

Filmography

268

Index

273

Illustrations Photos and

8

Stills

131-150

Preface

said, "For us film is the most important of all arts," and so Sowas made with a mission. The filmmakers quickly discovered the power of their art. For the revolutionary transformation of their country they found dynamic images, while they gave the classical Russian authors new life on the screen. By the time sound film was developed, they were ready to measure their power against Dostoevsky, whose art was dangerous because he argued against certain old ideas that were now articles of faith for Marxist-Leninist ideology, in particular, the belief that man could be perfected and the denial that God was

Lenin

viet film

a necessary underpinning of morality. As the leading art of the age, film faced a dual challenge in regard to tistic

but also

political.

The

film artists

Dostoevsky

knew there was

new

— not only

ar-

a multiplicity of

Whatever Dostoevsky's later ideological stance, he had been a revolutionary in his youth and he was always a critic of his society. A place had to be found for some

visions to explore within Dostoevsky's work.

of his visions in Soviet

cuttuqg£^^

The controversy around the first Dostoevsky film, House of the Dead, in 1932 showed that the possibilities for imaginative exploration were under constraint. The promulgation of Socialist Realism as a doctrine in 1934 further

reduced these

possibilities,

though

in the early years

opportunities both artistic and political remained, as Grigori Roshal

and Fridrikh Ermler found

in their films. Socialist Realism

bel applied to several artistic tendencies. Sergei Eisenstein thought that

he could

Perhaps the real issue was not

The

call

Socialist

great

and

was

(is)

a

la-

controversial

himself a Socialist Realist.

Realism as such but rather 9

Preface

who

The director Ivan Pyriev unhappened; his battle for control of these meanings grew out of rivalry with Eisenstein and was fought on the ground of Dostoevsky adaptations. In the process Pyriev institutionalized an controlled the meanings of the term.

derstood

this,

and

as

it

essentially naturalistic treatment of the novels

on the screen

;

striving

reproduce commonplace views of the Russia of Nicholas I or Alexander II at the expense of the new, exceptional, fantastic, emerging reality discerned by Dostoevsky. Pyriev and his followers reduced Dostoto

evsky 's subversiveness to criticism of the

ills

Their Dostoevsky was a scissors-and-paste

and place. marked by much

of his time

affair,

avoidance and by some interesting tensions. That this major attempt and appropriate Dostoevsky has been recognized as a failure is

to trim

signaled in recent

moves by filmmakers

to reenter into imaginative di-

alogue with him.

The

felt meanings and insufficiencies of Socialist Realism are espeapparent in the filmmakers' encounters with Dostoevsky. Critics under Socialist Realism are more comfortable with the kinds of realism and even the ideas of Dostoevsky's contemporaries and rivals Tolstoi and Turgenev. What Dostoevsky shows about Socialist Realism in film is the loose organizing principle of this study of artistic encounters.

cially

Depending on the

material,

more

particular topics, cinematic or

liter-

ary or both, are taken up, including the "visionary" interpretations of

Dostoevsky by major film life

artists,

of his controversial novel The

sion, the film critics'

the evidence of the

Demons

shadowy screen

in years of literary suppres-

testimony to the vigorous

life

Dostoevsky led in

his readers' imaginations, cinematic applications of his

models of Rus-

sian experience to interpretations of the otherwise unimaginable pres-

unpack Dostoevsky's meanings, the power of Dostoevsky to suggest extensions of film language. Film and Dostoevsky have served each other well and also serve us here, providing a peent, the

culiar,

power

of film to

inward, close-up view of Soviet culture.

The material assembled for this probing of the interface of Dostoevsky and Soviet film is interesting in its own right and for the questions it opens up. The Russian Formalists are well known as investigators of artistic devices,

but

it is

often overlooked that in their practice they

were concomitantly intrigued by "material" and its many uses in art and in criticism for the renewal of perception and understanding. Material

challenged the organizing principles of art; it could also chaland blindnesses of conventions, methodologies,

lenge the rigidities 10

Preface

and

disciplines.

The material

have drawn on and use here includes two films about Dostoevsky, scripts, a shooting script, film projects, I

film adaptations of Dostoevsky works,

editing scripts,

some

literary

adaptation exercises, theoretical and biographical reminiscences.

(I

critical writings,

have screened

all

and many auto-

the Dostoevsky films

under excellent conditions, although I regret not having had access to an analyst projector, particularly for the study of Ermler's The Great Citizen and Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov's Nasty Story.) This material merits a catholic approach by readers primarily concerned with film studies, if only because some of the important struggles in Soviet film were fought in cinematically unimportant works and because much of the story of Dostoevsky in Soviet film unfolds offscreen. Those whose interest is literary criticism will find some of the extradisciplinary transgressions redeemed because of the evidence they give of Dostoevsky's profound gift of visualization and also of his power to evade the rulings of censors and the prescriptions of critics. In any event, the material allows some significant artists and Viktor Shklovsky, Sergei Eisenstein, and Grigori Kozintsev critics to speak here in their own voices on the subject of Dostoevsky. Respect for the material does not mean imprisonment by it. One of the tasks of this book is to uncover that about which the film texts and film project texts are silent. These texts are formed out of many other at least once,

—

texts:

and

—

Dostoevsky's works, other literary works,

official

versions of pre-

postrevolutionary history, the daily news, political anecdotes, un-

The inand film project texts is a challenge to draw on experiences of silence, absence, or

written biographies, psychosemiotic explorations of identity. tertextuality of the film texts

viewers and readers to

contradiction associated with the texts. Often the biggest absence in the film adaptations

is

in fact Dostoevsky.

The awareness

of his ab-

sence from Soviet film was one of the driving forces in Eisenstein's and Kozintsev's last projects.

The

individual filmmakers are considered in roughly chronological

sequence according to the date of their first significant involvement with Dostoevsky. Enough background is provided for the more important ones to suggest what led them to Dostoevsky and what the consequence of the encounter was. I do not claim to give a complete view of them or that Dostoevsky was the only literary influence to act on them. Eccentric vision does, however, give insights leading to a

shift,

and so a

renewal, of understanding. 11

Preface

My greatest debt is to Jay Leyda, who ever since we met when he was teaching at York University has given generously of his time, ideas, books, and friends. His name was a password securing good will and assistance in Moscow, Leningrad, New York, and London. My other great debt is to the Soviet scholars and officials who guided me to the necessary material and trusted me to use it with respect for the facts, even

if

my

interpretations might be unorthodox.

My

Soviet friends

with their ideas and insights. These scholarly and personal debts cannot find adequate acknowledgment in the foot-

were generous,

too,

notes. I have been fortunate in the institutional support I have received, from York University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, and the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The American Council of Learned Societies awarded me a grant when my project was still a fishing trip, with no mock-scientific framework to prop it up. The Faculty of Arts of York University gave me one Minor Research Grant at the start of my work and another toward the end. The Master and Members of Calumet College at York provided significant support for an exchange with a Soviet scholar, which unfortunately remains only half realized. The Union of Cinematographers offered much friendly help when I first visited the USSR for research and even more help on a subsequent visit to Moscow as a guest of the union. A third trip to the USSR proved necessary, and William Found, Academic Vice-President, York University, used his good offices in securing an invitation for me from the Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies. The institute and the union did everything possible to make this visit a suc-

cess.

Richard Pope, Zbigniew Folejewski, and Stephen Scobie read indi-

and offered many helpful criticisms. Jay Leyda read and as a whole; my discussions with him were always a source of new stimulus. Diana, Tanya, and Anna gave me time, space, and encouragement to think. A year in Victoria, British Columbia, proved unexpectedly profitable, thanks to the work of Howard

vidual chapters

the text in parts

Bayley, the bibliographer of Russian publications at the University of

and thanks to the assistance provided by Tracey Czop. The efficient and tolerant Secretarial Services of York University typed my various final drafts. Sidney Monas put the manuscript into the hands of the best of editors. David Miller helped me in the prepa-

Victoria Library,

12

Preface ration of the manuscript for submission to Cornell University Press

and

in the reading of proofs. Judith Bailey gave

my text a sensitive final

editing. All translations are

my own unless

otherwise indicated. For access

am indebted to the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR, VGIK (the State Institute of Cinematography), TsGALI (the State Archives of Literature and Art), and the Eisento

and use

of

documents and

stills, I

Moscow; the Museum of Modern Art Film Stills ArYork (which supplied those numbered V-VII, X, and XIV-XX); and the National Film Archive and Zed., Ltd., in London. stein Kabinet, in chive, in

New

Nikita

M. Lary

Toronto

13

PART

I

Demons behind the Screen Now a large

herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed. Luke 8:32-36

begged him

Prehistorical

The

story of Dostoevsky in Soviet film begins offscreen, at the

Art Theater, with the dramatizations of The Brothers

and The Demons

in 1913,

and

in the press, with

Moscow

Karamazov

Maxim

in 1910

Gorky's attacks

on

these productions in the articles "On Karamazovery" and "More on Kara-

mazovery," published in September and October 1913. In the stage productions Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko tapped the strongest tradition of the

Moscow Art Theater

—

its

psychological realism,

—

mere naturalism of setting and action and continued the theater's attack on old and new stage conventions. An act was as long as it had to be; the performance of The Brothers Karamazov stretched over two evenings. In the scene between Ivan and the Devil, the actor Kachalov took on both parts at once; a narrator was introduced as a character. The sets by Dobuzhinsky for The Demons renounced naturalistic detail in favor of suggestive symbolism. The productions obviously could not satisfy all critics; Dostoevsky's elaborate parallels of structure and doublings of characters disappeared, for example. Nonetheless, the plays demonstrated how powerful a realist Dostoevsky was in an ordinary if not a in distinction to

"higher" sense. 1

amazov on

stage; his articles attacking Karamazovery were an attempt Nemirovich-Danchenko's work on Nikolai Stavrogin, the play adapted from The Demons. Gorky saw most of Dostoevsky's characters as reflections of Fedor Karamazov, "an indubitably Russian soul, formless

to stop

Concerning the dramatizations and Gorky's attacks, see Vladimir Seduro, DostoevRussian and World Theatre (North Quincy, Mass.: Christopher Publishing House, 1977), pp. 161-86, and Dostoyevski in Russian Literary Criticism, 1846-1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 83-93. 1.

sky

in

17

Demons behind the Screen and motley, simultaneously cowardly and insolent, and above all pathoFedor Karamazov was another Ivan the Terrible. Dostoevsky, an "evil genius" and a "cruel talent," was a master at portraying "the sadistic cruelty of the completely disillusioned nihilist and its obverse, the masochism of the crushed, frightened creature who maliciously displays his own suffering to everyone and to himself." Dostoevsky preached contemplation, savagery, barbarism, and social pessimism at a time when man needed to know the way to "democracy, the people, the social constitution, and science." Readers of the novels were relatively safe since they

logically evil."

retained their critical faculties. gin from The

On

stage,

Demons could have an

however, characters

like Stavro-

inspirational or hypnotic effect; they

could "take possession" of the audience. 2 Gorky's attack and the resulting controversy over the production at the Moscow Art Theater stamped Dos-

and foremost, as the author of The Demons. prominence was given to the work of the Moscow Art Theater and the writings of Gorky in the Socialist Realist models of Societ art that emerged in the 1930s after the years of revolutionary experiment. In film adaptations the realistic tradition deriving from the theater came to dominate, frequently degenerating into external naturalism but rising on occasion to a successful treatment of psychology. The original force of the tradition could sometimes be felt. The intention of Gorky's pronouncements was to direct adapters away from The Demons; their actual effect was to make this novel the great, if only half-acknowledged, influence on Soviet toevsky,

first

Special

filmmakers

when

they turned their attention to Dostoevsky in the 1930s.

Interest

was

in 1928

he called The Demons "the most talented and the most

all

further fueled by Gorky's continuing ambivalent judgments;

the countless attempts to defame the revolutionary

movement

evil of

of the

1870s." 3

The tion,

history of Dostoevsky in Soviet film has origins before the Revolu-

but with the exception of one extremely condensed version of The

Idiot (twenty-five

minutes

long), the artifacts

have

all

disappeared. The big

prerevolutionary film merchants were greedy for plots and eager to capitalize on the big literary names. Between them the firms of Khanzhonkov, Gaumont, Drankov, Kharitonov, and Ermoliev drew on a wide range of Dostoevsky 's writings: The Landlady, The Insulted and Injured, Crime and Punishment (several times), "The Meek One," and The Brothers Kara-

2.

The quotations

are taken from Gorky's articles as printed in A. A. Belkina, ed., F.

Dostoevskii v russkoi kritike (Moscow, 1956), pp. 386-98. 3. "How I Learned to Write," quoted in V. Seduro, Dostoyevski in Russian Literary

cism, p. 89.

18

M.

Criti-

Prehistorical

mazov.

A comparable

after Stalin's

in

range of works would again be tackled in film only

death (and sometimes for motives

on a name). Undoubtedly, some of the old

like

the old one

— to cash

would be curiosities: a scenes from Crime and Punishment (infilms

couple of films of Pavel Orlenov in cluding a 1914-1915 one of Raskolnikov's confession, with an accompanying gramophone recording). Chardynin's Idiot, the oldest located film adaptation of a Dostoevsky work, conveys a sense of the decadence of Imperial Russia.

It is

much of great value was lost; much more concerned to discuss his cur-

doubtful, however, that

Iosif Soifer in Paris in

1976 was

rent plans than to try to

remember

the significance of his seven-reel film

The Insulted and Injured from 1915. The one likely exception to this generalization, the one possibly significant film was Iakov Protazanov's Nikolai

Mozhukhin in the title role, made in 1915. Nikolai Stawas only one of eleven long and medium-length films turned out by Protazanov in the same year. Nonetheless, he had already given abundant evidence of his talent in these conditions of production, and this was one of his first films with Mozhukhin. 4 The important Queen of Spades (1916) and Father Sergius (1918) still lay ahead. Nemirovich-Danchenko's stage adaptation was apparently the inspira-

Stavrogin, with Ivan

vrogin

tion for Protazanov's film. 5 Neither

complexity of The Demons, with Stavrogin, a potential leader

its

and

man

attempted to convey the real

interlocking plots centering

truth seeker.

The

realist stage

on

Nikolai

could not

encompass the dramatic space of the novel: the attempts of Peter Verkhovensky to bind the members of a revolutionary cell through conspiracy and crime; the philosophical discussions between Shatov and Kirilov on the necessity of

God

versus the sufficiency of an ideology based on man;

the psychological exploration of Stavrogin's search for the limits of free-

dom and

for

an escape from meaninglessness; the whole background of

unrest and disintegration, culminating in the industrial

dalous literary fete and

ball,

the great

fire,

and the

strike,

the scan-

series of deaths

by mur-

der and suicide.

The play concentrated on Stavrogin's story. 6 It began dramatically with the scene from the book when Stavrogin's secret wife, the half-crazed cripple Maria Lebiadkina, comes up to her mother-in-law at the end of a church service and mysteriously bows down to her. The play hinted at

4.

1. S.,

"Nikolai Stavrogin

i

prokuror," Kinogazeta (Moscow), no. 10 (1918): 51, sees this

one of Mozhukhin's best achievements. 5. According to M. Aleinikov, Iakov Protazanov (Moscow, 1961), p. 70. 6. The following account of the play is based on Seduro, Dostoevsky World Theatre, pp. 177-86.

as

in

Russian and

19

Demons behind the Screen Stavrogin's potential revolutionary role in a scene between him and Peter Verkhovensky, where the latter acted out some of Stavrogin's fantasies for

him.

It

showed

Shatov's great religious quest

and

his desperate

need

for

Stavrogin's help in another scene. But the play highlighted Stavrogin's

fragmentary, chaotic relationships

and

his

growing sense of emptiness

leading to suicide. (Stavrogin's attempted confession to Father Tikhon

could have

made

a powerful contribution, but the chapter in

pears had been suppressed and was not available in 1913.)

which

Drama

it

ap-

of this

sort lent itself fairly well to the silent screen, as Protazanov subsequently proved in his presentation of a perhaps more tormented character, Tolstoi's

Father Sergius.

A detailed

description of Protazanov's Nikolai Stavrogin in one contem-

porary review7 suggests that

it

began somewhat more conventionally than

the play, with a view of Stavrogin's strange, antecedent burg. As

we might

expect in a silent

film, Shatov's

life

in St. Peters-

ideas were reduced

—

to what could be shown his insistence on truthfulness. It is unclear whether Peter Verkhovensky's revolutionary aspirations were indicated; a scene between him and Stavrogin is mentioned, and in it Protazanov possibly availed himself of his techniques for showing dreams and fantasies. Both Nemirovich-Danchenko and Protazanov appear to have used the resources of the stage and the silent screen to good effect, while leaving aside the key image of the demons possessing society and the disturbing questions raised by the title and the epigraph: Who is the sick man from

whom

the

demons

are expelled: Stavrogin or his mentor, the old liberal

Stepan Verkhovensky? The whole Russian people? The Russian land?

And who

are the demons: Shatov and Kirilov? The revolutionaries? Everyone? (Alternatively, what are the demons? Are they the ideas possessing men?) And who are the swine into whom the demons enter and who

drown

in the lake?

had no direct consequences in Soviet cinema, although the stage production that inspired him made The Demons a continuing influence. The loss of his film is unfortunate, for through its concentration on Stavrogin, it touched on an aspect of Dostoevsky's work Protazanov's film apparently

that

is

imperfectly reflected on the Soviet screen: the experience of evil. So-

filmmakers in the 1930s drew on other significant aspects of the novel. The image of possession was put to use by the producers and distributors

viet

by Dostoevsky's House of the Dead; they insisted that the film be changed so that Dostoevsky appeared as a

of the belated Formalist film inspired

man 7.

possessed by the dark forces of reaction, branded as the author of

Sine-Fono, no. 21-22 (1915): 103.

20

Prehistorical

The Demons. An early model Socialist Realist film, Petersburg Night, harnessed the Utopian dreams of the young Dostoevsky to the vision of revolutionary change he had foreseen in The Demons (but had desperately attempted to counter). In the later Socialist Realist film The Great Citizen, Parts 1

and

2,

some modern

counterrevolutionaries imitated the con-

spirators in Dostoevsky's novel. But as will emerge, these

and subsequent

attempts of filmmakers to contain reality and Dostoevsky in a Socialist Realist

dynamic were inadequate; both

reality

and Dostoevsky were more

powerfully subversive, more demonic, than the filmmakers imagined.

Only in recent times did a

director, the survivor Kozintsev, finally rise to

the demonic and tragic vision of Dostoevsky

which

his imagination could

and make of

it

a space in

move.

21

CHAPTER

1

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky as

Demons

I

of Darkness

looked for ways of showing Dostoevsky as a demon of darkness ImrakHis speech at the Pushkin jubilee offered a way. ... By using

obes}. it

.

.

.

together with his friendship for Pobedonostsev,

was enough

I

thought that there

material in the existing script to explain Dostoevsky's ba-

sic character.

Vasili

Fedorov

After being squeezed out of literature, Viktor Shklovsky shifted over to

the film factory

and went jiggling along the road

of the

demon

of dark-

ness of Formalism [formalisticheskogo mrakobesal. His most recent work, which is now being screened in sound-film theaters, shows that

our rider

is

not the least

bit

weary. S.

Marvich

The introduction of sound in 1930 posed a particular threat to Soviet which had become a flexible and individually inflected art. Montage, the basis of silent film, was marked by shifts in camera distancesangle, and object in the shots forming an editing sequence. Powerful effects of rhythm were achieved from variations in the length of the film bits when they were spliced together, but speech might subject film to its own distinctive rhythms, and the primitive and cumbersome recording techniques might demand a return to the static camera. By the time the authorities decided that the challenge of the "talkies" could no longer be ignored, the opportunity to work out a use of sound that would build on the cinema of the past had already been curtailed. In 1928 Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori

film,

22

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

Alexandrov had subscribed to the principle that "the first experimental work with sound must be directed along the lines of its distinct nonsynchronization with the visual images." In that same year, however, the diverse and relatively free experimentation that prevailed during the New Economic Policy came to an end. The first Five-Year Plan for the economy (to be fulfilled in four years) was introduced in 1929, and with it came new ideological pressures. The modernization of the country had to appear in the light of "scientific" necessity; the course of Russian history had to be "rightly" interpreted; directed, and pre1

canon of acknowledged literature and art. Viktor ShThe House of the Dead, on which he began work in attempts by Soviet filmmakers to extend the of several 1930, was one traditions of silent film in the newly transformed medium. In the new conditions of work and production these experiments could not sucsented, as did the

klovsky' s script for

ceed.

The pattern

of political

and

cultural struggle

was still unclear in Communists and

1930. In society at large suspicion of non-Bolshevik

other socialists was intensified by internecine Party struggles. In

lit-

was entrusted to RAPP (the Ruswhich in 1929 mounted a campaign of criticism against the Formalists, among them Shklovsky, and silenced them as a school. The following year the RAPP critics attacked Dostoevsky and the critics and scholars of his work; the campaign peaked during the period of work on House of the Dead. But all along, as it turned out, RAPP had been but a stalking-horse; in 1932 the Party dissolved it and announced the formation of the Union of Writers. Film work was directly affected by the literary campaigns as well as by the erature responsibility for conformity

sian Association of Proletarian Writers),

growing Party control over the film industry. Direct interventions by Stalin were having an effect too; an early example of his interference was his insistence that Eisenstein reshoot the ending of Old and New. Obviously the new uncertainties could be exploited in any organization by persons eager to secure positions of power. 2 Shklovsky

1.

— the Futurist theoretician, Formalist

critic,

factographer,

See their "Statement" in Eisenstein, Film Form, ed. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt

Brace, 1949). 2.

See Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism (The Hague: Mouton, 1965); Vladimir Seduro,

Dostoyevski in Russian Literary Criticism, 1846-1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957); Richard Taylor,

versity Press, 1979);

The

Yon Barna,

Politics

of Soviet Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

Eisenstein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973).

23

Demons behind the Screen

—

and writer of experimental autobiographies occupied a position of considerable influence in the film world. He found ready application for his Formalist ideas in film, particularly his

concern to break

down

and mere recognition and to restore perception and self-consciousness. Film was the new art of the Revolution, and Shklovsky played an acknowledged role in the de^ velopment of Soviet film. In books, articles, letters, and conversations he offered useful, generous, sharp critical appreciations and advice to the outstanding young filmmakers, Eisenstein and Grigori Kozintsev among them. He worked on the script for Lev Kuleshov's important film By the Law (1926), making maximum use of economy (in both senses) and expressiveness of means. Long before Eisenstein turned to habitual motivation, automatic response,

Ivan the Terrible, Shklovsky gave a distinctive conception of this character in his script for Wings of a Serf (1926), filmed by Iuri Tarich, one

He readily took on journeyman's work in or reediting the films of other men. One film

of the old school of directors.

these lean years, editing

he salvaged was Ivan

Pyriev's

Government

Official (released in 1930),

thus preserving a fine comic performance by Shklovsky's

curiosity, as his

and

Straukh. All in

all,

in the

creative inquiry.

It is

sound

clear that the idea for films,

was

House of the Dead, one

attended by controversy from the just

of the

first

Soviet

Shklovsky's. Unfortunately, the studio entrusted the

shooting of it to a director of mean

had

Maxim

cinema displays the same range, scope, and literary work and the same underlying unity of critical

work

been driven

to

talent, Vasili

start of work

renounce the

Fedorov. The film

on

it

was

in 1930. Shklovsky

"scientific error" of

Formalism,

but his startling pronouncements and his early Social Revolutionary attachments were not forgotten or forgiven. According to one account

he was made

submit six versions of the script before receiving aphe was made to abjure his "old" principles before the script committee. The campaign against Dostoevsky was mounting at home at the very time Shklovsky wanted to make a film about him for foreign audiences and, in the process, to demonstrate the continued preeminence of Soviet film. In a note inserted in one of the script versions Shklovsky seemed to recognize the difficulty of the situation but not its dangers. to

proval; moreover,

3

3. S.

Marvich, "The Dead House of Formalism/ Krasnaia gazeta (Leningrad), 13

1932; V. Fedorov, "The Director s Account," Kino, 30

24

May 1932.

May

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

Of course he admitted; the early revolutionary works of Dostoevsky were most relevant "for us " but he had chosen the autobiographical House of the Dead because it was (he claimed) the most popular of Dostoevsky's works in the West and also because of "its complexity and its multiplicity of themes/' which gave him scope for selection. The theme on which Shklovsky concentrated was that of the Russian empire as "The Prison House of the Peoples/' his original title for the film. He proposed to show the many paths that had led people, among them Dostoevsky, a revolutionary and Utopian socialist, to the prison camp. Dostoevsky was to serve as a case study. Shklovsky seems to have been happily oblivious of how treacherous a terrain Utopian socialism was (as was perhaps the theme of "The Prison House of the Peoples," but about this nobody could or would speak up). This obliviousness was perhaps only dissemblance; if not, why did Shklovsky choose to act in this film, taking on the potentially risky part of Petrashevsky, the Utopian socialist leader? Looking at the project and his comments on it, one must ask whether Shklovsky might really have been aware of the dangers while he enjoyed assaying the limits of the possible, though he may also have been principally unaware of the ;

;

;

new power of mediocrity in the

studios.

Fedorov was a worried man, uncertain of his artistic and political ground. He made drastic changes in the shooting script and tried to portray Dostoevsky as someone who had ended up as an agent of the tsar's adviser, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the representative of autocracy and Orthodoxy. Unfortunately, at almost every point he showed himself insensitive to Shklovsky's artistic devices, even in the less polit-

When the film was released in April 1932, compromises and revisions saved him or the film or the author of the script from a press campaign damning the film and Dostoevsky, the notorious mystic its makers for its subject matter and reactionary and for Formalist tricks or devices that had failed to ically controversial areas.

none

of Fedorov's

—

—

speech perhaps

reveal Dostoevsky's true nature. Clearly, the introduction of

into film simply introduced at this

new

possibilities for subversion;

date even a textbook demonstration of the determination of

Dostoevsky's ideas by class and historical situation might have intro-

duced a dangerous apologetic note. The image, too, was subversive; had proved to be far removed from the supposed objectivity of the photograph. Formalism or Expressionism had to bear the blame, even if it was inadvisable to make much analytic use of these terms. In

film

25

Demons behind the Screen Pravda the

"publicist"

David Zaslavsky launched the kind of attack for

which he would soon become well known, at the time of the purges and, later, in the Zhdanov period: "A little girl gave a kopeck coin to the unfortunate convict Dostoevsky. This was most touching, most moving. Dostoevsky recalled this with a sentimental tear, and his sentimentality infected both V. Shklovsky, the author of the script, and V. Fedorov, the director. They showed Dostoevsky in chains and the girl and the petty coin. But with their sentimentality this is all that they did do. ... In offering this picayune film to Dostoevsky they gave away everything they had. They could not fill their picture with living hatred for Dostoevsky because they did not feel hatred With their political resources they should not have tackled the subject." Other critics were equally vicious, calling the film "The Kingdom of Darkness" and "The Dead House of Formalism" and excoriating its "original point of view" in suggesting that Dostoevsky was a revolutionary. 4 What was interesting about the attacks was that this film was vulnerable on so many apparently separate counts; the case was so overwhelming that the critics were reduced to the sort of personal vilification that would become common in later years, when concatenations of similar charges could be regularly assumed. In the situation,

Fedorov tried to exculpate himself by joining in the witch-hunt. Writing in Kino, he went so far as to insinuate that Shklovsky's political unreliability had shown up in the way his script handled the Utopian socialism of the Petrashevsky circle, to which the young Dostoevsky had belonged. Fedorov also lashed out at the leadership of the

Mezhrabpomfilm Studio, who had been remiss in assigning to him whose errors were too fundamental to be edited out. In contrast to the situation in later years, the accused was able to speak up in his own defense. In "Who Is Guilty?" Shklovsky poignantly explained what he had tried to do. His script had depicted tsarist Russia in miniature as a prison of the peoples of the empire. The a script

5

4.

D. Zaslavsky, "A Picayune Film/ Pravda, 19

Grossman, Introduction

in 1935, see L. P.

(London: Allen Lane, 1974).

On

his

May 1932. On Zaslavsky's attacks

to Dostoevsky:

attacks in the

A Biography, Zhdanov

trans.

starting

M. Mackler

period, see Seduro,

Dostoyevski in Criticism, pp. 276-82. For other critical attacks, see the Appendix to this chapter and, among others, S. Boguslavsky, "The Music of the Kingdom of Darkness,"

and

V. Zalessky,

"Some Original Points of View and a Failed

1932. 5.

Kino, 30

26

May

1932.

Film,"

both in Kino, 30

May

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

form or grammar of the film was important; particularly the use of "The script sound; which was more than just a new technical device. ^WMSswtai^wa^ ^a ^^ ^^^^^^^^^ conversations as it now has, but it did have a did not have as many a

,

The entire script was constructed sound transference from one object to another. Petersburg the Beautiful was shown to the sound of a flute, then Petersburg the Fearsome was shown with the flute signifying a military orchestra." Another connecting link between the two images of the imperial city was provided by the fasces of the ironwork grilles of Petersburg. Of Fedorov, Shklovsky simply says that he had failed to understand the grammar of image and sound in the film and that he had dropped the whole theme of the prison house of the peoples of the empire. Moreover, Fedorov had not understood the portrayal of Dostoevsky's revolutionary inclinations; he had handled the Fourierism of the young Dostoevsky roughly and had cut out the final scenes of the film, which suggested that Dostoevsky died knowing of the attempts being made on the life of Alexander II by the People's Will (Shklovsky's evidence for this was circumstantial, derived from the memoirs of Suvorin and of Florenko). 6 Defiantly, Shklovsky asserted, "One of the best well-organized significant sound

on the

basis of

.

.

.

Soviet film scripts has perished." It was almost inevitable that serious attention to the making of a Dostoevsky film should have awaited the development of sound, and it

was

certainly appropriate that

one of the

first

Soviet

sound

films

was

devoted to such a project. The ideas and great confessional moments in Dostoevsky assumed such overwhelming importance that silent filmmakers scarcely considered the real challenge Dostoevsky offered to

them. (Protazanov's film Nikolai Stavrogin

may

of course have

been

the telling exception.) Mikhail Bakhtin's theory about the polyphonic

nature of Dostoevsky's characterization and writing appeared just as

sound film was being developed and drew new attention to the

signifi-

cance of the voice in Dostoevsky. However, a properly Bakhtinian Dostoevsky with a polyphony of voices was almost inconceivable in the early days of sound film, and no filmmaker since has seriously addressed the challenge of such an interpretation. In any case what drew Shklovsky to the project was above all a wish to show that sound film could resist the pull back to filmed theater. The basic framework

6.

Shklovsky's speculations formed the basis of his article, "Fedor Dostoevsky's

Doubts/' Krasnaia nov' (Dec. 1933), 138-52.

27

Demons behind of the film

the Screen

was conceived

in

terms of montage, as in

with sound providing an essential

The sound

film

had

to

new element

silent film,

but

in the composition.

make new demands on the viewer. What makes

Shklovsky's aesthetic approach suitable for Dostoevsky

is his concern with something akin to Dostoevsky's "idea-feelings." Certainly Shklov-

meaning of revolution for Dostoevsky can be seen as an attempt to make perceptible an idea-feeling for which neither words alone nor images alone were truly adequate. sky's exploration of the

Shklovsky's script

was not a

straight adaptation of Dostoevsky's ac-

count of the convict prison in Notebooks from the House of the Dead. He went beyond the text, taking the thematic concerns and tensions in it

and looking

at the life

experience out of which they had

come and

text

subsequent role in Dostoevsky's life and writings. Dostoevsky's (published in 1860) could be seen as an attempt to deal with a piv-

otal

moment

their

come

to

in which the rebel and the conformist in him had had to terms with each other. Shklovsky in the script he wrote at-

to unpack the significance of that moment. He was to return same task many years later, just after the repressions of the Zhdanov period. In Za protiv, his book about Dostoevsky, Shklovsky's discussion of Notes from the House of the Dead reflected the Formalist analysis he had used in his film. The work was a "novel" of a new, unnamed genre to which Mikhail Lermontov's Hero of Our Time and Leo Tolstoi's Sebastopol Tales also belonged. Lermontov had constructed a unified work of art out of individual parts with different centers of events and different points of view, instead of merely unfolding

tempted

to the

i

life of a hero or of a bourgeois family. Likewise, Dostoevsky's account was no haphazard collection of sketches. The repetitions, paral-

the

lels,

and digressions were on a theme. "The

centrate

by the

and

fate of the writer,

there,

no doubt,

deliberate, serving to generalize

who came to the prison camp a revolutionary by looking for men of decision, revolu-

started

tionaries, potential revolutionaries,

know their worth."

and con-

selection of characters could be explained

and found them and then did not

7

The images and characters Shklovsky wanted for his film conformed same organizing principle. In the scripts the theme of Russia as

to this

protiv: Zametki o Dostoevskom (Moscow, 1957), pp. 97-100, 109. 7. Shklovsky, Za Once again his critical writing and his film work were associated. According to a letter to Boris Eikhenbaum in 1956 (a copy of which is in Shklovsky's archive), he was writing a /

film script called "Dostoevsky" (this

28

remains to be found).

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky the prison house of the peoples had to be established at the outset; with pictures of the monumental Petersburg and shots of ironwork grilles, with their fasces and rods, and of the Anichkov Bridge, with its allegory of the defeat of the revolution in Naples. 8 (Shklovsky's insis-

tence on the motif of the fasces [Russian, fashi) suggests that he was well aware of their transitions

were

modem

use as symbols of fascism.) Although the and metonymic, fluctuations in light-

basically spatial

and in size and distance were called for "to overcome the documentary characteristic of the film camera and to give some subjective shots, to give that which in literature is called an image." Asynchronic sound was one device to be used for the transformation of visual images. In addition, an offscreen voice would quote one of Pushkin's or Dostoevsky's ambiguous tributes to the imperial capital. After the subjective image of St. Petersburg had been presented, a transition was made to a scene witnessed by Dostoevsky the public beating of a Finnish recruit. Close-ups showed the resemblance between the instrument of punishment and the fasces on the iron grilles. Then came shots of the dreary and monumental St. Petersburg, which could now be seen as a metaphor for an oppressive social order. ing

—

Next, the notion of oppression

was

linked with rebellion.

guard was assaulted by his

recruit standing

shooting him. The scripts indicate that this

A barefoot

and provoked into scene was to be intercut

officer

with shots of the Peter and Paul Fortress and of a meeting of the Petrashevsky

circle.

The

topics of discussion at the meeting

Fourier's ideas about cooperative association religion.

and the

were Frangois social bases of

Petrashevsky proclaimed: "We must join with the Chechens,

the Bashkirs,

the victims of civilization,

all

sian prison of the peoples."

all

the captives in the Rus-

Meanwhile a Pole played a Russian

patri-

and religious hymn to provide a cover for the meeting. The meaning of oppression and revolution was broadened by a development of the idea of empire. The scripts called for a cut to the face of a fat general with bald pate and side whiskers, while the music of the hymn was still sounding. As the "strange" figure set to work, he otic

based on an examination of five versions of the script deposited The scripts are for the most part without date and the sequence is unclear. In the time I had available, I established the general form of the versions, noting significant variances. The discussions of the Petrashevsky circle underwent a particularly large number of revisions; the handling of Utopian socialism was clearly a sensitive 8.

This discussion

is

in the library at VGIK.

matter.

29

Demons behind would

finally

the Screen

be seen as Tsar Nicholas

I,

studying a report advocating

the expulsion of the Chechens from their lands of sheep grazing so the exports of

and the introduction wool could be increased. He went

on to other reports on the need for driving out Kirghiz tribesmen and for "civilizing" the Ukraine. The technology holding the empire together was suggested by a semaphore telegraph with waving arms. A clerk copied down a message about the expulsion of minority peoples; an officer in it rushed at the camera; herds of sheep advanced, tended by shepherds in military uniforms; mountain people were thrown out of their homes; nomadic peoples a furiously driven troika with

abandoned their tents. Milestones inscribed with imperial markings were driven in. But technology was also presented as a process that was hastening revolution. The script called for a shot of rails and a steam engine while a member of the Petrashevsky circle quoted Fourier: "History is with us. Steam engines are bringing about association." Oppression involved cracking down on dissent. The tsar looked at the Petrashevsky circle's Dictionary, which had got past an unsuspecting censor, and he was particularly outraged by the politically subversive article on irony: "an example of irony is if someone speaks well of autocracy." Nicholas vowed to have his revenge on the rebels and to show them what irony meant. Dostoevsky then appeared in his room, asleep beneath a portrait of Vissarion Belinsky and dreaming of the green town that would be built under socialism huge buildings surrounded by woods. The dream was interrupted by police bursting into his room and taking him off to the Third Section. Again there came

—

a shot of the

came

Emperor Nicholas

saying,

"I'll

show them

irony."

Then

the staged execution, with a stuttering officer reading out the

at painful length, shots of and from the scaffold (based on Myshkin's description of an execution in The Idiot), the distant sound of a horse neighing, and then, finally, the announcement of the

death sentence

reprieve.

The literal prison, which now remained to be explored, became charged with a wider significance. A column of convicts appeared, marching and singing, and during the space of their song the landscape changed from winter to spring. In the column there were Chechen and Kirghiz tribesmen, Jews, and members of the Petrashevsky circle. The first glimpse of the Siberian prison fortress was as a reflection in a pair of glasses worn by a man with a brutal pockmarked face, the prison commander. The nature of the prison was established with 30

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

wooden

and with the sound of beating. The prisoners included the barefoot recruit who had assaulted his officer; a Chechen tribesman who had been expelled from his home; and Dospictures of the

toevsky himself.

palisade

Some time later Dostoevsky lay in the prison hospital whose back was a mass of raw wounds after a

beside the tribesman

;

and gypsies witnessed the man's death. A visual identity was established between one of the convicts and a soldier who was standing guard. The convicts set free a pet eagle. beating. Jews

A train of the 1870s provided a transition to a scene of Dostoevsky as an old man, removing Christmas decorations in January 1881. Students came into his apartment and accused him of betraying revolutionary ideals. Dostoevsky retorted that they were cut off from the land (pochva) and that they were demons. They talked back, and suddenly with a smile Dostoevsky saw a likeness between one of the students and Raskolnikov. In the next scene Dostoevsky went out for a walk and, in front of a shop with a portrait of Alexander II hanging in it, he overheard two people whispering about a bomb that had been planted. Dostoevsky continued his walk. A sequence of shots showed the Peter

and Paul

and the stone lions in and drum were heard. Dostoevsky said: "I'll cannot. ... I'll write a novel in which Alesha Kara-

Fortress, the Third Section,

chains. Again the flute

not turn them

in.

mazov becomes in sweat;

I

a revolutionary." At

he could

feel

home

again Dostoevsky broke out

an epileptic seizure coming on.

(In

"Who

Is

Guilty?" Shklovsky wrote, "Dostoevsky died of agitation, yet people

suppose that he was agitated over the division of property with his sisA huge explosion shook the town. The exhausted Dostoevsky was immobile in his chair. An epilogue followed in which the revolutionary Sofia Perovskaia read an obituary of Dostoevsky. Brief sequences showed Rysakov and Grinevitsky assassinating Alexander II. Finally, Sofia Perovskaia proters.")

claimed, "The jailer of Russia, Poland, Finland,

etc., etc., is

dead."

metonymic transitions and insistent metaphor, could easily accommodate such unfamiliar facts as the optical semaphor used to transmit messages and such unfamiliar posShklovsky's proposed film, with

sibilities

its

as Dostoevsky 's awareness of a plot against the tsar's

life.

In

was not concerned with literal truth; the script indicates that the optical semaphor might not have come into existence for another ten years, and the expulsions of the tribal groups certainly came two or three years after the Petrashevsky affair. At a time when all

of this Shklovsky

31

Demons behind the Screen was so prevalent at official levels, Shklovwas perhaps reprehensible. His defense would be that he was faithful to Dostoevsky's vision in House of the Dead, that as a Active biographer he was entitled to take liberties, and that his liberties with fact were small ones. His script is filled with particular references and justifications to demonstrate his authority and to tie down the obtuse director, who preferred to fabricate history disregard for historical fact

sky's deliberate artistic carelessness

an attempt to second-guess the evolving party line. There are of own works and one to a book on Fourierism, which had been published in the Soviet Union in 1926. A note about the sentence of death read out to the Petrashevsky followers says: "The original text has been published in the Government Bulletin and it can be produced by Com. Babenchikov." But Shklovsky's basic defense as an artist (which he did not fully articulate) must be that he needed images and sounds to enable the filmgoer to see and in

course references to Dostoevsky's

feel;

the overall truth of the experience was what counted. The truth of

the artist was, moreover, sometimes in advance of the historian's.

Many years

later

evidence emerged indicating that Dostoevsky was

deed aware of the conspiracy against the

tsar's

life,

in-

but Dostoevsky

died shortly before Alexander II. He could not have heard the bomb that killed him. The explosion that Dostoevsky hears at the end of Shklovsky's script

is

certainly ambiguous; equally certainly

it is

not

confusing.

Shklovsky used the favorite Formalist devices of "impeded form" and

"making strange" (ostranenie), in the script. The extended visual (and acoustic) description of St. Petersburg with its iron grilles is an example of the former. The fat general who is in fact Nicholas I is an example of the latter device. The sentence read out at painful length is another example of a fact "made strange" and also of a device "laid bare." Critics of the scene were quick to object to this trick, which seemed to become an end in itself. 9 Yet arguably the staged execution called for naked, conscious manipulation; any other treat"defamiliarization," or

ment was almost bound

to be more manipulatively sentimental. This another way too, in that Shklovsky seems to rescene is interesting in turn to some of his Futurist theories about "trans-sense" language. In this speech language does not serve the purpose of communication; in

the slow

9.

and painful reading

Zalessky,

32

of the death sentence language

"Some Original Points of View."

becomes

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

we

pure sound. Here of the

first

The

was

script

find fault with

sky

have a quotation from the Futurist experiments

revolutionary years. filled

possibilities, though one might which it is unclear whether Shklov-

with exciting

the later versions, in

was presenting only his own view of He never wanted to give an

Dostoevsky's.

present images rather than objects. In strangely

wedded

to the

a historical situation or also objective view;

this,

as a film

he wanted to he was

artist,

view of the frame shot as the equivalent of a

—

seemed unaware how powerfully montage in, had conveyed the emotional form of exsay, the films of Eisenstein how subjective the frame shot had proved itself perience (and indeed to be). The real question about his work as film biographer, however,

word

or concept and

—

10

how

he could have best presented a subjective view of whose view he needed to represent. In the early versions of the script, this question does not come up; the assemblage of facts is distinctively Shklovsky's, even if the dramatic moment he is unfolding is that of Dostoevsky in his book about the prison camp. An imaginative film director was required to bring out the deliberate strangeness of Shklovsky's assemblage of facts. In part because of his difficulties in working with Fedorov, Shklovsky was led to introduce a scene in which Dostoevsky, after being arrested, is cross-examined about his socialist beliefs. This dialogue introduced some too concerns not

Dostoevsky's Russia but

—

much

or too

little

—

psychological complexity into the presentation of

if variegated pattern was threatened; and disturbing questions about the essential absence of Dostoevsky as an actor and a thinker were permitted to arise. The crudities in the film Fedorov made are fundamental and have nothing to do with any overinsistent patterning or any initial uncertainty of intention in the script. Fedorov's Dostoevsky is meant to be a straightforward reactionary. The film begins with a scene of Dostoevsky as an old man, delivering his speech at the Pushkin Jubilee held in 1880. The speech climaxes with an attack on communism and leads to the pronouncement: "Humble yourself, o man of pride." A crowd of women besiege Dostoevsty in the theater lobby; one of them hysteri-

Dostoevsky; Shklovsky's insistent

10. Evidently Shklovsky's

views on this point had not changed since 1927,

wrote, "Film begins with photography

— in

Laws of the Cinema Frame," reprinted

in a collection of his film writings,

(Moscow, orist,"

1965). See too the review of this

this there is

book by E. Levin,

no

artistic event."

"Viktor Shklovsky

when he

See "Basic

Za sorok

let

— Film The-

Iskusstvo kino, no. 7 (1970): 109-10.

33

Demons behind the Screen cally proclaims,

"You are a prophet!" In disgust one female revolution-

need for rebellion. The police planted in crowd arrest her, taking their cue from Dostoevsky. The next scene is another Fedorov contribution a meeting between Dostoevsky and Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod, ary starts speaking about the

the

—

friend of Dostoevsky 's last years. Pobedonostsev reminds Dostoevsky of his special responsibilities in keeping back the tide of revolution. Dostoevsky is presented as a mere agent of reaction and as a literary hack; he even asks Pobedonostsev to supply a suitable topic for the next issue of the polemical Diary of a Writer. He is also presented as a strange and uncontrolled genius, who says to Pobedonostsev, "You

remind

me

of the

Grand

Inquisitor," before falling into

an epileptic

trance.

The rest of the story is told in flashback and for the most part amounts to a crude handling of Shklovsky's script. There are stereotyped pictures of the monumental St. Petersburg and the Dostoevskian back-alleys and courtyards (in these sequences there is little room for renewal of perception or ambiguity of feeling). A man is flogged, and Dostoevsky witnesses the scene with morbid curiosity. He seals his ears and all sound stops. The flogging is intercut with shots of the Kazan Cathedral and of the inscription "Blessed Is He That Comes in the Name of the Lord." The meeting of the Petrashevsky circle is reduced to an exchange of horror stories about conditions in Russian society. Dostoevsky tells about the recruit who has been flogged to death and asks, "How is this possible in a Christian country?" Antothe agent of the secret police, solemnly responds,

"It has hapbecause this is a Christian country." After being arrested, Dostoevsky is cross-examined by Dubbelt in a scene based on Shklovsky's later revisions of the script. Dostoevsky declines to give information about the Petrashevsky circle, "No, I will not allow myself to be used as an agent." In lines borrowed from the examining magistrate in Crime and Punishment Dubbelt replies: "But your lips are trembling. You won't get away from us." Dubbelt asserts that he feels like a father to Dostoevsky, declares that scientific socialism will never exist, and argues that Dostoevsky, with his behavior over the division of an inheritance, could not possibly be a socialist. Fedorov was apparently willing to make the next two scenes from the script: the tsar in his dressing room (with a toy train) saying he will show the Petrashevsky group what irony means and then the mock

nelli,

pened

just

.

34

.

.

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky execution. According to Shklovsky ("Who Is Guilty") Fedorov had to be forced by the artistic council of the studio to shoot the following scene, in which the convict procession moves in a single sequence through winter to spring. Here at any rate, something of Shklovsky's intention survives, if nothing of his sensitivity of detail and interconnection.

The dominant theme

of the prison

camp scenes

is

Dostoevsky's

ali-

enation from the people. The political prisoners, aristocrats, are treated

more

gently than the ordinary criminal prisoners. Dostoevsky

reacts strangely to his isolation.

One

restless night

he looks out on a

with the bodies of sleeping convicts, picks up the New Testament and reads the first lines from the tale about the Gadarene swine: "And as he stepped out on land, there met him a man from the Jesus then asked him 'What is your name?' city who had demons. floor covered

.

.

.

and he said, 'Legion.' " Fedorov could apparently assume that his viewers would understand the reference and remember the tale and know that it had provided the basic organizing myth of The Demons. Fedorov's Dostoevsky then prays and prostrates himself. He appears next in a column of marching convicts; a little girl comes up and gives him a kopeck. Dostoevsky's pain over his isolation

is

particularly vivid in the long

bathhouse scene. He holds himself aloof at first but finally joins the mass of men beating, scrubbing, and steaming themselves. Shklovsky's remarks in some versions of the script indicate that Fedorov probably added this scene himself. It was one of the first things he shot, and for whatever reason, he was more successful in this scene than anywhere else. The long rows of seated, naked men are a disturbing vision of humanity if not of Dostoevsky's hellish furnace or oven. Shklovsky, however, appears to have considered it a disaster in relation to his intended theme and grammar; he made repeated appeals to Fedorov to cut

it.

Dostoevsky next appears in the prison hospital. He tosses restlessly in his sleep, as pictures of monumental

St.

Petersburg fill his head and

we are back in Pobean end. Dostoevsky's path to reaction has apparently been portrayed. Some lingering doubts remain. Dostoevsky announces to his friend, "In the next installment of my novel, Alesha Karamazov will be a revolutionary!" Pobedonostsev echoes Dubbelt in the earlier scene, "You shall not get away from us." a voice proclaims, "Humble yourself!" Suddenly donostsev's room.

The long flashback

is at

35

Demons behind

the Screen

The film ends on a suitably morbid note with a shot of the cover of The Demons, quite possibly added after the film was first released; in response to the campaign of criticism against it. The shot was self-explanatory: Dostoevsky was no more than a demon of darkness. On the evidence of the camerawork and the editing in this film, Fedorov could in no circumstances have done justice to Shklovsky's script. In Dostoevsky's dream in the hospital, in the course of which he comes to an uneasy acceptance of reaction, the pictures of Petersburg are fixed and the hospital bed appears to be flying all over the place (Nikolai Khmelev, who gave a good performance in the part of Dostoevsky, deserved better) The early scenes in the film display Fedorov's in.

ability to create a subjective

image of the

city.

eptitude, Fedorov's willingness to put his

venomous propositions

in the press

Given this degree of

name

to foolish

in-

and even

not surprising. In his self-excul-

is

pation he claimed, for instance, that he would not have ventured to follow Shklovsky in showing the Petrashevskyites discussing coopera-

production or the social function of religion because the effect of such discussions might have been to suggest to the filmgoer that Fou-

tive

and his Russian disciples had anticipated scientific socialism in all For the same reason, he claimed, he would not show Dostoevsky's Utopian dream of the green town (for someone else this might have been a cinematographic challenge). Fedorov objected to Shklovsky's presentation of the national minorities and in particular to the rier

essentials.

scenes of forced resettlement of tribesmen by military

officers dis-

guised as shepherds, but he does not risk discussing the ideological ramifications of the resettlement schemes. Instead, he criticizes

them

an Expressionist device, out of keeping with the rest of the film. (It is certainly odd that he singles out this one example of the device in his attack on Shklovsky, when the whole script is a tissue of similar devices.) Perhaps in 1932 no director could have presented the ambiguous, subversive, inwardly divided Dostoevsky that Shklovsky wanted. as

Nevertheless, Fedorov's complaints against his distinguished script-

writer ring hollow in view of his larly

nasty about his complaints

which he was

free to

remain

own is

incompetence. What is particuhe speaks up on matters about

that

silent.

way for some of Fedorov's mawhen he added the scene with Dubbelt. He

Shklovsky inadvertently prepared the jor

changes of the script

believed

it

would help

to explain the

evsky's feelings about socialism,

36

and

subsequent ambiguity of Dosto-

it

would make

clear the final epi-

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

which the old Dostoevsky quarreled with the it in him to denounce the revolutionary plotters. But Fedorov changed the meaning of the Dubbelt scene by dropping the green town dream and everything else that would show Dostoevsky's belief in socialism as real. Moreover, Dubbelt's psychological and political analysis of Dostoevsky suggested to Fedorov a development of this approach to include Pobedonostsev's sode in the

script, in

radical students yet could not find

relationship with Dostoevsky.

Shklovsky's afterthought might of course have shown up as dangerous in a film that followed his script more faithfully and sensitively (but then, with a more sensitive director, he might not have felt the need to add it at all). In the confrontation of Dubbelt with Dostoevsky, Shklovsky drew on the scenes between Porfiri Petrovich and Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment. Shklovsky often used such quotation to great effect, but here, the net result is to bring out the lack of development of the script's Dostoevsky in comparison with that of Dostoevsky's

own

character Raskolnikov. The interest of Shklovsky's original

does not lie in its investigtion of ideas or psychology through dialogue but in the prison-house imagery within which it situates the Dostoevsky of Notes from the House of the Dead. Possibly the script is one-sided in its view of a rebellious Dostoevsky (and perhaps in its failure to foresee the green town as another prison or ant heap) Possibly, too, Shklovsky does not sufficiently consider that for Dostoevsky the ultimate problem concerns man rather than institutions. A partial and maybe sufficient answer to these criticisms is that Shklovsky presented a point of view of Dostoevsky's experiences and society corresponding to the point of view embodied (and partly concealed) in the autobiographical Notes and suggested its enduring significance for the later Dostoevsky. Moreover, he sought to do this in his own disscript

.

—

tinctive

way as

a film author.

Of Shklovsky's conception, what survived is chiefly the stutterer who reads out the death sentence so excruciatingly; Nicholas I as an ugly, old, bald general; and the column of convicts marching into spring. In some measure, too, the beating incident and the Petrashevsky meeting in the script prevented Fedorov from presenting Dostoevsky as a sufficiently single-minded agent of reaction, a simple

In the

end an introductory lecture

demon

(by a Professor P.

S.

of darkness.

Kogan), ponder-

ously explaining that Dostoevsky had turned his back on revolution

and destroyed himself as a writer, had

to

be added to the

film.

37

Demons behind

the Screen

Did Fedorov ruin a great experimental film? Certainly Shklovsky's St. Petersburg would have been interesting. 11

defamiliarization of

Beyond

means

and reader to explore from the House of the Dead, Shklovsky's film should have been effective and even provocative in its suggestion that Dostoevsky's outlook at this stage was closer to that of a

that, as

of getting the viewer

Dostoevsky's vantage point in Notes

his pre-Siberian period than to that in his great Christian novels.

Shklovsky's

work in film was

can be seen in the literary

closely related to his

work in literature,

as

many critical pieces he wrote on film adaptations of

works. 12 Shklovsky was always a creator; the film he conceived

was an attempt

new genre

of biography and history. sound Shklovsky dreamed of exploring, it was a varied and discriminating one, onscreen and off, with synchronous and asynchronous characteristics. Some of it was associated with military order and repression, and some of it with machines and modernization. Speech expressed bare, disturbing ideas and also quotations charged with associations; speech could verge on senseless sound, and music on linguistic significance; the human voice could be reduced to inarticulateness, while animal sounds could be strangely expressive. The visual image retained its mobility and fluidity, while sound became a vertical dimension in the montage (as Eisenstein conceived it). With the clarity and image structure Shklovsky valued, the film he hoped to make would have given the viewer space to see and hear and feel and think. With regard to the film that was actually made, an apt comment is provided by an exasperated note in one of Shklovsky's versions of the script: "A room with a curved mirror and a small table on a turned leg. A room such as the director might see in Leningrad. A director such as Mezhrabpomfilm lacks, just as it lacks an Artistic Council that would know how not to wear out the heart of a (great) scriptwriter and how not to torment him at literary meetings attended by a chorus of rab-

As

at

a

for the space of

bits."

What drew Shklovsky

By one episode from a scene he rememDostoevsky. In the film (which otherwise is based on to Dostoevsky? In his script for Kuleshov's

the Law, Shklovsky constructed

bered reading in

11. Shklovsky's script for a documentary film, "Leningrad" (1930, in the Kuleshov Archive in TsGALI) comes out of the same set of experiments with sound in film. 12.

See Levin, "Viktor Shklovsky."

38

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky Jack London's story "The Unexpected"), the

condemned man gives

his

watch to one of his captors; in Dostoevsky, some Swiss townspeople exchange sentiments of love with a shepherd whom they are going to execute. Apparently, Shklovsky had no particular reason in mind when he used this episode out of Dostoevsky (and not uncharacteristically he even got his source wrong, indicating The Demons instead of The Brothers Karamazov) 13 Perhaps what appealed to him was Dostoevsky's sense of the ambiguity of experience and of the hypocrisy of men. He gave serious attention to Dostoevsky in the script for the House of the Dead in 1930-1932 and again in the book Za i protiv (Pro and Contra) in 1957. The subject matter and the dates of these works at the beginning and end of the period of tightest control over the arts suggest that Shklovsky, like Dostoevsky, was interested in threshold situations. For both of them the question of relationship to authority and revolution was a difficult one. Dostoevsky wrote about a world in which there were demons; the rationalist (and sometime transrationalist) Shklovsky would have preferred to ignore demons. Each had an instinct for survival, while knowing how to safeguard his integrity in his own distinctive way. Fedorov, who lacked talent and integrity, played the witch-hunt game, a dangerous one in which the exorcist might truly become a demon of darkness. ,

—

—

House of the Dead: A Dossier Shklovsky's Differences with Fedorov

Shklovsky on authorship: "Honored comrades,

I

have written length-

no cuts. The text is based on Dostoevsky. Please, no correcThere is space enough. The film is short and the bathhouse must be cut [podrezat'). There will be no need to fear long speeches. That is the style of the film. It is an innovative film. The text has been constructed by me so that it interacts with the end of the picture and with Dostoevsky's prayer Do not change the text to Prossianov's. I am the author and I forbid it" (Script note dated Dec. 1930). ily.

Please,

tions.

.

13. Shklovsky,

Za sorok

let,

.

.

p. 68. In a personal interview in

Moscow

in

March

1976,

Shklovsky could remember no particular reason for borrowing this scene from Dostoevsky.

39

Demons behind the Screen "And then what happened, happened, as it is said about love in Aratales. Dear comrades, I wrote what I wrote. Do not torment this

bian

object;

it is

alive" (Script variant in

"This scene [the interrogation

beg you

now

a cover dated 1932).

by Dubbelt] improves the picture. I The hospital scene must be

to shorten the bathhouse.

reshot" (Script note).

"This

was

is

the script

wrote

I

[for

Dostoevsky's death] but a different one

shot" (Script note).

is form? Form is the law of structure of an object. The form of work is not conveyed here by the director. He did not understand the grammar of the script" ("Who Is Guilty?" Kino, 30 May 1932).

"What

the

Shklovsky on national minorities: "The national minorities [natsmen'shestva) are a very interesting group in Dostoevsky's convict

camp. In the camp we see Poles, Jews, Gypsies, Kalmyks, and a whole group of mountain peoples from the Caucasus. Here in the situation of the convict camp the structure of the Russian empire is given, as it were, in miniature.

.

.

.

"Of course not all the material can be shown, but from a selection of an ideologically interesting film can be constructed in which Dostoevsky's material will not be deformed.

it

.

.

.

"An extremely interesting point in Dostoevsky then, to the policy of Russification. His

is

his relationship,

Akim Akimovich

(the

com-

mander of the mountain fortress) is a conscientious fool and at the same time a patent parody of Maxim Maximovich in Lermontov's Hero of Our Time. So we shall have a film with Caucasian and Russian frontier material and a variety of episodes from the life of the nat. minorities" (Script note).

Fedorov on national minorities: "This part of the

script [dealing

with

was somehow expressionistic of the script and therefore was

the expulsion of non-Russian peoples]

and discordant with the whole eliminated from

40

style

the film" ("The Director's Account," Kino, 30

May 1932).

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky Shklovsky on the Petrashevsky

circle:

"The question

who were

the

Petrashevskyites cannot be completely settled in our script" (Script note).

"I

humanism

explain Dostoevsky's

rather than in terms of religion.

much more

significant

I

in

terms of Utopian socialism

think that the Petrashevsky plot

than they

let

was

out at the police interrogation"

(Script note).

Fedorov on the Petrashevsky

circle:

"How did Shklovsky show

the

Petrashevsky circle?

meeting of the circle Akhsharumov read out some Fourier: '300 combining in an association; would have one fine barn Government; violence, religion must be instead of 300 poor ones. abolished. ... In the future socialist society; labor will be regulated through enthusiasm and competitiveness. The gap between town and country must be abolished.' "Later in the script came Dostoevsky's dream: 'He sees those towns we want to build. He sees the green towns.' "The individual sentences taken from Fourier would give the viewer a series of ordered and harmonious associations with the definite implication that Utopian socialism had preempted the social forms we "At a

settler families;

.

.

.

.

now have. The viewer would deduce tific

socialism simply

Fourier and

The Use

of

St.

had

.

.

the false proposition that scien-

to take over

what had been

fully stated

by

Simon" ("The Director's Account").

Sound

my script; sound is always taken appears with the source of sound to fasten its semantic value; and then the sound transfers its semantic value the semantics of the original visual image to those visual images with which it later coincides. This complex additional burden means that the montage must be simplified; i.e.; its purely visual aspect must Shklovsky's notes in the script: "In

as significant.

—

be

One time

it

—

simplified."

41

Demons behind the Screen "The flute and drum. They play a fugue with the visual image; they do not illustrate it. The sound sometimes anticipates the image and sometimes finishes it. (Orchestration rather than illustration is needed.)" "In the first section

ing

and changing

one moment

of the guard. In

is

all

given synchronously: the reliev-

the rest there will not be a

full

co-

incidence of sound."

"Dear director: This scene (the beating of the recruit) Dostoevsky.

I

am thinking of letting a voice

introduce

is it.

described by This will give

the perception of the thing. "A voice

— neither Dostoevsky

's

nor another character's

— reads a

text.

"And things

start

changing before

us,

approaching the camera and

receding.

"The lighting and angle change. "I want to overcome the documentary character of the camera and to produce a subjective shot, corresponding to what in literature we call an image. "The basic principle of this section has to be sonorization without showing the speaker, i.e., a sort of sonic compere-ing of the visual

image. "Technically this

is

very easy to do, and

it is

easy to substitute an-

other language." [For this reason Shklovsky here rejects his posal to use poetry from Pushkin describing

St.

initial

pro-

Petersburg in favor of

prose from Dostoevsky, since this would be easier to translate for the international market.] Script Excerpts

St.

Petersburg. "Pictures of beautiful Petersburg.

The voice

still

read-

ing Pushkin [The Bronze Horseman].

"Petersburg runs past, but not the Petersburg we saw. Here there are

dreary warehouses. "Canal banks.

"Mournful three-storied houses in Nicholas "Street corners

and a chalk

I

style.

sign saying, everything altogether pro-

hibited here.

"And the voice continues 42

to

speak about beautiful Petersburg."

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

The

tsar.

and a bald pate goes up combs his pate.

"A general with disheveled side-whiskers

a mirror.

The man adjusts

"Now we "The

his whiskers,

to

recognize Nicholas. a shining parquet, the autocrat's legs moving; from the

floor,

echoes one senses that the place "The echoes of footsteps.

is

enormous.

"Other footsteps, a piddling, scraping walk. "Other echoes. "A writing table. "In front of the writing table; Nicholas sits, half supine, his legs in

leather breeches.

"He can't bend because of the leather breeches. "In front of him,

A

bending very low, a respectful

official."

dreams. "Light comes from the window. Belinon the wall. "Dostoevsky is sound asleep. "A dream {Diary of a Writer, 1877, "The Dream of a Funny Man"). "Dostoevsky dreams of an indistinct, musical town. "He sees the towns we want to build; he sees the green town. Huge buildings rise surrounded by woods. Utopian

socialist

sky's portrait

"Covered passageways connect the houses {The Great Utopians: Fourier and Their School

[1926], p. 309).

"Children play in bright rooms. Music.

"Dostoevsky walks floatingly "Factories

down

A building.

a street in the green town.

and machines work without people. Music and then sud-

denly some kind of clanging. "It is dark in the room. A white "The white pony

tail

tail

swishes in the

air.

of a police hat.

"Factory noise, light.

"The policeman has brought an Entries from the Notebook ofFM.D.

The

arrest. "Noise

cobblestones of

St.

and

rattling.

oil

lamp

[St. Pet.,

A coach

is

{Biography, Letters,

and

1883], p. 101)."

hurtling over the jolting

Petersburg.

"Lions holding chains in their teeth.

43

Demons behind

the Screen

"Giants restraining horses.

"A clattering

and rumbling.

"The chains of Chernyshev bridge go past. "They go past first from the top downwards, and then from the bottom upwards. "Quiet. "Iris in.

"We are in the mirror chamber of the Third Section. "A thousand reflections repeat the faces of Dostoevsky, Petrashevsky, and Speshnev. "On the mantle stands a clock with the goddess of history Clio who writes something on a bronze scroll. "The clock ticks, reflecting the Petrashevskyites and the generals. .

.

.

"Antonelli enters.

"Petrashevsky goes

up to him. him toward

"Antonelli walks past

"The police

officer steps

a police officer.

toward him, extending his hands and

speaking. "

Dear

friend, for this

we will make you an

"The reflection repeats Antonelli's "The goddess Clio "The clock

still

writes

assistant section head.'

joy.

on a bronze

scroll.

ticks."

Critical Attack

The subject (Dostoevsky). "What is missing from the picture is the author of The Demons and The Diary of a Writer, those reactionary works of his time. What is given is the puzzle of Russian culture,' the prober of satanic and divine depths,' the vacillating and nervous man, who is nonetheless put together with a definite, subjective sympathy. The puzzle of Dostoevsky' was solved long ago by Marxist criticism. The ravings and dualism and dividedness have been unmasked. Dostoevsky has been the pitiful reactionary and tear-jerking mystic figured out and unmasked. Only in the film House of the Dead is he not figured out" (E. Katerli, "The Unsolved Mystery," Rabochii i teatrainyi

—

Leningrad, 16 June 1932).

44

—

Shklovsky and Dostoevsky

without regard to what is taking place on the platform. The official becomes an end in himself instead of a means of expression. He is overplayed; he has become an 'attraction'; and Dostoevsky and all the Petrashevskyites on the platform are Formalism. "The

official stutters

simply a background" a Failed Film," Kino, 30

(V.

Zalessky,

May

"Some Original Points of View and

1932).

"Over a period of years V. Shklovsky, together with Kuleshov, Eikhen-

baum, Tynianov, and others, nurtured Formalism in film as their theory of immanent development of film art and as their artistic practice. After a statement of repudiation of his 'old' positions at a script meeting,

Shklovsky again repeatedly tried to effect his moves from creative

positions hostile to the proletariat" (Brigade of Critics, Kino, 5 Oct. 1932).

"In the solid Formalist family V. Shklovsky filled the position of a

wanton offshoot. Chronologically he, as a Formalist from the prewar period, was entitled to fatherhood in the family. But fatherhood did not work out because people never could be sure about Shklovsky. His voice never stopped breaking, and every day his thoughtlessness gave birth to new and unexpected worlds. "The success of the man who taught that art was subject to its own special laws without any connection to anything else, gave way to 'difficult' years. The sun of Formalism set. Some Formalists tried to throw off the deadweight; others tried to give the appearance that they had done so, hiding this burden under an academic coat. Here too Shklovsky in no way betrayed himself" (S. Marvich, "The Dead House of Formalism," Krasnaia gazeta, 13

May

1932).

"It seems appropriate to me to speak about the distinctive Formalism of Shklovsky, who was carried away by an idea and who was absolutely uninterested whether the idea corresponded to the essence of historical actuality or not, to say nothing about its significance for our

time" (Fedorov, "Director's Account").

"They did script in the

all

this [the

name

wrecking of the

script]

and tormented the had

of the fight against Formalism. But the script

been received with enthusiasm"

(Shklovsky,

"Who

Is to

Blame?").

45

Demons behind

the Screen

Internationalism. "The bourgeois West frenziedly republishes the works of Dostoevsky. The West, for which this film is evidently designed, will undoubtedly applaud the authors of the film, for basically Dostoevsky has been served to its taste" (Brigade of Critics, Kino).

46

CHAPTER

2

Roshal's Socialist Realist

Myth

The making and reception of House of the Dead in 1932 were a warnno ambiguity in the treatment of Dostoevsky; he was an out-and-out obscurantist and reactionary, best typified by The Demons. Just two years later Petersburg Night suggested that there might be limited acceptance for the young Dostoevsky who participated in revolutionary activity in the Petrashevsky circle and criticized society in his literary work. Petersburg Night was directed by Grigori Roshal (RoshaT) and Vera Stroeva (his wife); the script by Vera Stroeva and Serafima Roshal (Grigori's sister), was supposedly based on Dostoevsky's early works "White Nights" and the unfinished Netochka Nezvanova. This film was quickly recognized as an expression ing that there might be

of the

new

Socialist Realist aesthetic;

it

is,

moreover, evidence that

some

respite occurred in the pressure against Dostoevsky after the disbanding of RAPP in 1932. 1 The film was well received at home; abroad, at the Second International Film Exhibition of Venice (along

with Vladimir Petrov's adaptation of Nikolai Ostrovsky's Storm and Grigori Alexandrov's Jolly Fellows), it helped to secure a prize for Soviet film. 2 Petersburg Night deserves attention today for two reasons in particular: it shows the freedom of Roshal and Stroeva to find and make the norms of Socialist Realism at a time when these norms were 1.

For other evidence of a respite, see Vladimir Seduro, Dostoyevski in Russian Literary 1846-1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), pp. 234-35.

Criticism, 2.

Thorold Dickinson and Catherine De La Roche, Soviet Cinema (London: Falcon

Press, 1948), p. 45.

47

Demons behind the Screen not fully laid down, and

him a place

it

mythologizes and revises Dostoevsky to give

in the great Russian tradition leading to Socialist Realism.

Yet the significant Dostoevsky

it

draws on

is

not the sentimental

(albeit

and Netochka Nezvanova but rather the visionary creator of The Demons. Grigori Roshal and Vera Stroeva were talented followers rather than pathbreakers. In typical fashion, they began as members of an experimental theatrical workshop, which later became the Pedagogical Theater in Moscow. One of Roshal's productions, The Adolescent by revolutionary) writer of "White Nights"

3

Denis Fonvizin, led to his first film, The Skotin Family, in 1926. His other films include one about the Paris Commune, The Dawns of Paris (1936); a film about Nazi Germany, The Oppenheim Family (1938); and

The Artamanov Affair (1941), based on Gorky's novel. Stroeva's films include The Generation of Conquerors (1936). In later years Roshal made films about the lives of the great Russian composers, Mussorgsky (1950) and Rimsky-Korsakov (1952); Stroeva made films of Mussorgsky's operas Boris Godunov (1955) and Khovanshchina (1959). The story of Roshal's relationship with Eisenstein is indicative. The two first became acquainted in a research group belonging to the State Advanced Directorial Workshop under Vsevolod Meierhold. For all Eisenstein's genius, Roshal was put off by his brashness and outrageousness and only later understood his real sensitivity. After Eisenstein's departure from the Proletkult Theater, Roshal was invited to join it; Eisenstein protested the appointment, seeing

it

as a threat to the

leftist

experi-

was head of the Department of Film Direction, but he knew that Eisenstein was the professor that counted. In the Mosfilm Studio, Eisenstein was artistic director when Roshal was shooting The Artamanov Affair. Jay Leyda has noted Eisenstein's "authority and taste in the surprisingly fine film"; 4 Roshal himself acknowledges Eisenstein's help. The two men regularly met at the studio, at Eduard Tisse's home, and at Eisenstein's. Later Eisenstein began to visit Roshal and Stroeva in their home in Moscow and ments of the

theater. Later, at VGIK, Roshal

then in Alma-Ata,

due allowance

Mosfilm during the war. With one can weigh Roshal's com-

after the evacuation of

for these relationships,

ment: "He knew how to respect the work of his colleagues. In regard to myself, it turned out that he knew well my pictures and those of Vera 3.

This sketch of Roshal and Stroeva's work draws principally on Roshal's autobiogra-

phy, Kinolenta zhizni (Moscow, 1974). For the account of his relations with Eisenstein, see his chapter on the subject, pp. 191-202. 4. Leyda, Kino (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), p. 362.

48

Myth

Roshal's Socialist Realist

Pavlovna Stroeva.

He very highly appreciated our joint production, Pe-

tersburg Night, and received her film Generation of Conquerors very well. With tremendous respect, he recognized the principled positions

and

clear views

on

art in

Vera Pavlovna Stroeva 's work." 5

Roshal and Stroeva had a

gift

young group was assembled

named Mosfilm

in 1935).

A

for

drawing people out. A talented this film at Moskinokombinat (re-

for

principal character, the musician,

was

played by Boris Dobronravov, an actor from the Moscow Art Theater associated with several Dostoevsky roles. The role of a student was

played by Ivan Doronin, who had been a member of Roshal's theatrical workshop. The music was important in this story about a violinist and composer of instinctive and, finally, undeveloped genius; it was written by the then promising young composer, Dmitri Kabalevsky The violin was played by David Oistrakh, who was directly involved in the shooting, for he stood playing just off-frame while Dobronravov followed his movements, and the sound was recorded live. The designer Iosif Shpinel had begun his own work in film with Roshal in 1930 and was associated with many other films of the codirectors too, eventually rising to particular prominence in his work for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His sets for Petersburg Night were on a hitherto unprecedented scale; his designs for a vast baroque ballroom used in some of the early scenes called for windows seven meters high. The studio hesitated before approving these extravagant and indeed nonrealist plans. Shpinel was thorough in his work, preparing sketches for all the scenes, including the outdoor shots in Leningrad. 6 He and the cameraman, Dmitri Feldman, both came from the Ukraine and shared in the excitement of tracing the distinctive character of Petersburg. Feldman was particularly intrigued by the white nights .

and eager

to capture

them on

film.

Roshal

shooting dozens of times, since one

recalls,

previous one, 'leaving but half an hour of night.'

growing

rigidity of

"He and

dawn hastened

Mosfilm that in the

fifties,

"7

It is

when

I

went out

succeed the a measure of the to

Pyriev

made

his

5. Roshal, Kinolenta, pp. 198-99. See too the appendix to this chapter. In the rather circumspect "United: Ideas on the History of Soviet Cinema" (1947) Eisenstein said that adaptations of literary classics had helped directors to meet the challenge of portraying "living man" on the screen and he singled out for mention Petersburg Night, Petrov's Thunderstorm, and Protazanov's Without Dowry. See Eisenstein, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1964-71), 5:205. 6. Concerning Shpinel or Shpinel', see T. Tarasova-Krasina, Iosif Shpinel' (Moscow,

1979), in particular pp. 61-68. 7.

Roshal, Kinolenta, p. 257.

49

Demons behind

own sults

the Screen

adaptation of "White Nights/' he attempted — with disastrous — to shoot the Petersburg scenes in the studio.

re-

The film opens with a snowstorm blowing through a gully in which a dead body lies. In the corpse's hands is a note proclaiming, "I spit on the whole world The bells of a sleigh are heard; police officials drive up. They identify the body as that of an Italian violinist. The next scene shows a landowner rehearsing his peasant orchestra. An item in the local Voronezh paper praises the orchestra and announces a recital by a French violinist in the landowner Velemirov's house. The police officials enter with news about the Italian's suicide and about his !"

will,

leaving his violin to Efimov, the landowner's clarinetist. Velemirov

begs Efimov for the if

that

violin.

Efimov responds that he can take

it by force do I oppress on a splendid

his will as master. Velemirov raises his stick: "But

is

you? Do

compel you? You are a free man! You live Scoundrel! They want to destroy and shame me in the eyes of Europe!" In the next scene there is a low shot of elaborate dresses swishing past in the music room, where an elegant company has gathered to hear the Frenchman play. At the last minute a note arrives

footing.

I

.

.

.

.

.

.

from him declining to appear for a man who has failed to appreciate the genius of Efimov on the violin. Shattered, Velemirov goes to Efimov's room and begs him to play. Finally, Efimov agrees to do so once, and once only, and threatens to set fire to the house if he is detained. The violin playing is a revelation; Velemirov is moved to tears and says: "You are a true genius, Egor, a genius! But geniuses like you I would send to Siberia!" Efimov leaves for Petersburg but stops in a tavern and in his first free act spends all his money on an orgy of drinking, eating, and dancing. He is reduced to earning his living as a player in a vulgar provincial theater. Here he meets another violinist, of obviously foreign origin, Schultz, his opposite in many ways. Schultz has no interest in the popular folk songs that are the basis of Efimov's art. He recommends hard work and musical exercises and vows to succeed, predicting that Efimov will fail. The careful, penny-saving Schultz is soon in a position to leave the provincial theater. Efimov stays behind. The triviality of his work is destroying him; he escapes and goes all the way to Petersburg on foot. We see a gathering of both fashionable and ordinary people at a concert hall, where a famous foreign violinist is to play. A radical young woman says: "I don't understand why we are here. Everyone knows that music is a worn-out superstition." A more up-to-date stu50

Roshal's Socialist Realist

Myth

dent puts her right: "Drawing-room nihilism! As for me, I like music and hate parrots." The elegant people exclaim over the marvels of Europe, yet fall asleep during the lifeless and mannered performance of the duke of Baden's soloist. The student finally calls out and tells the soloist to spare everyone's ears. Efimov leaps up and offers to play. The young people are amazed and impassionedly start to sing in accompa-

niment

to his melody. Schultz has

come with

his landlady's gran-

who is also overwhelmed. A major scandal erupts. declaims against seminary students. An official pro-

daughter, Nastenka,

A military

officer

nounces: "This is not music. It is a disruption of social order. Stop it!" Schultz encounters Efimov on the way out, advises him to study counterpoint, and offers to find him a protector like his own, the millionaire manufacturer Shpigulin. Efimov rejects the offer. The student takes Efimov off, shelters him, and tries to advise the obstinate musician. Efimov's song is a good one but he needs words for it. Efimov has got to grow into himself. He must find sympathy and understanding so that his talent may develop, but how is this to be done in Russia? "Here in Russia art is administered away in GovernThe universities teach parading! Russia is the ment Departments. ideal of active, secret and civil councillors." What Efimov needs to do is join the common cause. Efimov is stung: "You do not know the people, mister student! Maybe I, I alone, all on my own, can speak, speak about the people, about the peasants' sorrow, about myself, so that everyone's eyes will be opened!" The discussion is interrupted here by a friend, who takes the student off to the Shpigulin Manufactory. There is now an interlude dealing with the white nights. Nastenka sits musing on a bench beside a canal, when she is accosted by a grotesque, drunken Hussar. Efimov rescues her. For three nights running they meet. They fall in love. Schultz, to whom she is engaged, discovers them and breaks with them angrily. A shot of Etienne Falconet's statue of Peter I (The Bronze Horseman) marks the transition to a scene of a strike at the Shpigulin Manufactory. Efimov looks through the fence at workers being chased by police officers. Off-camera voices are heard shouting: "We're shut up and locked in like cattle in a barn! Let's knock the door out!" Efimov sees his student friend knocked over; the student peers through the grate, his face covered with blood. The student is killed. There is another .

.

.

.

shot of the statue of Peter

.

.

I.

Nastenka and Efimov are married. Efimov submits his compositions 51

Demons behind the Screen government bureaucrats; trying to secure approval popular drama or opera "Fire Victims." He explains, "When the peasant woman mourns wordlessly over her burnt son, I want the orto the appropriate for his

chestra to cry a human cry!" (Roshal here anticipates his film about Mussorgsky.) The functionaries decry his lack of taste and advise him

They debar him from any work in the theater. On Schultz and tells him that he is happy, that a daughter has just been born to him. Ten years later, a poster announces a concert by Schultz upon his return from a European tour. He is to appear with other Petersburg musicians (all bearing foreign names). In a low tavern, Efimov encounters Schultz before the concert and explains despairingly what he has to write like Schultz.

the

way out, Efimov encounters

tried to do: "There are people, there are. But here they are driven to

death and walled up inside a stone wall! There

is

— there are no ears —

Russian

it is

quiet

and

silent in the

no one

to play for

state." In Efi-

mov's garret Nastenka says to her little daughter, "How cold it is becoming on earth." Outside the concert hall, the sound of Schultz's violin dies away and cheers ring out. Efimov says, "There's no denying it,

and then adds, "A copier of other men's works, a muAt home, he looks at his own music in despair. His compositions are unfinished and not worked out. In the streets of the town there is a snowstorm. A crowd gathers; a group of exiled convicts, including some Shpigulin workers, is to march past. When they appear, the convicts are singing Efimov's song: "We will return for the all-Russian rebellion. Our songs flying through the Sibestorm will curse the landowner's rule." The convicts disappear, rian he

is

a virtuoso!"

sical functionary, a gravedigger!"

.

.

.

but the song continues. This

summary indicates the stylized and rhetorical quality of the difilm. What it does not convey is the consistency of the

alogue in the

and and harsh music, the dominating pictures of the opulent country house and of imperial and aristocratic all form Petersburg, and the sad pictures of crushed and tawdry life

film as a whole.

camera

The

theatrical acting, the expressionistic lighting

angles, the often painful

—

a unity corresponding to the heightened imagination of the self-taught

musician of the people. The naturalism of the Moscow Art Theater was not yet an absolute norm. The expressionistic theatricality of the whole is in some measure justified; the musician is looking for truth, but he is not quite able to find it. Within the overall theatricality there are appropriate variations: the dark, stormy nights at the beginning 52

Roshal's Socialist Realist

and end

of the film; the false, blinding glare of the

Myth

music room

in the

country estate and of the concert hall in St. Petersburg; the shadowless white nights, which have the reality or unreality of a dream. The gallery of social types

is

extensive; individually the caricatures

tesques do not weary. Throughout, an unreal society

is

and

gro-

associated

—

as in the shots of the bas-reliefs dewith violence and destruction picting the people on the monument to Tsar Nicholas I intercut with a shot of his rearing horse. The image of cutting wind and blowing snow

runs through the

use

is

made

drum in one

film.

The harsh music

is

never long

silent. Effective

of threatening off-camera voices and sounds

shot of an imperial

in the concert hall scene

monument,

when Efimov

for example).

gives his

(a

The

military conflict

one public perfor-

mance moves out into the open spaces of Russia in the closing shots. The film was patently about the development of a revolutionary consciousness. One critic noted the simplifications the story involved: apparently it was necessary to hear only a few notes to judge whether a piece of music was authentic or false, for example; moreover, it appeared that the ruling classes in the nineteenth century had no musiachievements to their credit. 8 According to one account, the makers of the film did not originally set out to tell a revolutionary fable. Instead, they proposed to make an experimental film based on "Fandango," a short story set in the immediate postrevolutionary years, by Aleksandr Grin; a guitar piece was to be played while the strumming of cal

were shown in visual counterpoint. 9 Presumably this proposal ran counter to the emerging notions of realism. Film could no longer explore a revolutionary consciousness; it had to show concrete heroes with whom the spectators could identify. Roshal and Stroeva then submitted a proposal for a biographical study of Apollon Grigoriev, poet, critic, and major contributor to Dostoevsky's journals Epokha and Vremz'a, who sought to maintain his independence of any of the Slavophile or Westernist factions and who, incidentally, was a proficient guitar player with a great knowledge of Russian folk songs and gypsy music. 10 But in the context of the 1930s, the guitar strings

8. V.

and the

story

Goffenshefer, "Restoration or Creation?" Literaturnyi kritik, no. 4 (1934): 168.

Paul Babitsky and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry (New York: Praeger, 1955), pp. 170-71. Roshal does not himself make any mention of these difficulties in his autobiography. 9.

10. Babitsky is also the source for this second project. Concerning Grigoriev's life, see Ralph Matlaw's Introduction to A. Grigoriev, My Literary and Moral Wanderings (New

York: Dutton, 1962).

53

Demons behind the Screen no middle positions or ambiguity, and Roshal and Stroabandon this project too. They were able to incorporate

there could be

had to some of their previous ideas in their third project, the free adaptation of "White Nights" and Netochka Nezvanova. Petersburg Night won acceptance as a model Socialist Realist film because of its mythologization of Dostoevsky. The story has some eva

compression of time, its historical The musicians who play for the landowner are presumably serfs; although the word is never used in the actual film, the situation certainly suggests that they are. This orchestra would be most consistent with an 1830s or possibly an 1840s setting. Soon after Efimov's arrival in Petersburg, we see the qualities of

myth, above

vagueness, and

monument

We

its

all

in

its

patterns of characterization.

to Nicholas

which was erected in 1859, after his death. II. The exchange over nihilism that

I,

also see a bust of Alexander

among

passes

the

young people

in the concert hall indicates that

these scenes take place in the mid-1860s; the nascent populism, however,

and the

industrial strife point to a setting in the 1870s. Industrial

strife

did not

become important

it

till

later in the century,

and arguably

never (even during the Revolution) had the central role

here.

The work

among

of the students

the proletariat

is

it is

given

an anachro-

nism, but in the world of myth distortions of reality do not matter. The

myth projected by the

film

is

nationalistic as well as revolutionary.

simple typology of characters prevails; sible

and

exception of the derivative,

and so

Italian,

are

the Russian people (and

all

who

is

all

A

the foreigners (with the pos-

dead) are

artificial,

inauthentic,

the Europeanized Russians. In contrast,

some

of the students) have real feelings

and

real talent.

A comparison of the film with its sources highlights the mythic structure of the film. In Dostoevsky 's unfinished novel, written 1848is told by Netochka Nezvanova, his stepdaughter, conceived a perverse and painful love for him. Efimov is a victim of himself rather than of society. His German friend understands that he has failed to develop his talent and suspects that the talent was

1849, Efimov's story

who has

not very great to begin with ("much of

it

was

blindness,

and innate

complacency and feckless self-satisfaction that derived from endless and dreams about his own genius"). In the story Efimov con-

fantasies tinually

Efimov

punishes his wife for his disappointment in life; in the film a loving husband and father, prevented by society from pro-

is

viding for his family. Efimov in the film

54

is

also cast in the part of the

Roshal's Socialist Realist

Myth

dreamer in "White Nights/' but unlike Dostoevsky's character; he is rewarded with the love and hand of the truthful heroine. Dostoevsky's

much

character has spent so for action tsarist

and

for

life.

The

time dreaming that he

film character

is

is

incapacitated

thwarted principally by

Russia but also in part by his vision of what real music would

be. Moreover,

though Dostoevsky had doubts about European culture Russia, he did not resort to the consistent vilifi-

and about Petersburg

cation that appears in the film.

He valued

work; Efimov's friend rises through his

the foreigners' capacity for

own efforts rather than through

the protection of a patron, although he does not achieve greatness the novel he

is

(in

not identical with the acclaimed violinist whose perfor-

mance finally shatters Efimov). The revolutionary direction of the dream world of Dostoevsky's early writings is not clear. In the words of Shklovsky, "The precision of meaning in Dostoevsky

is

often obscured

not for reasons of censorship but because the writer seems not to

want

fully to

express to himself what he sees; this influences every-

even the landscapes." 11 In any event, the vision Dostoevsky failed to express to himself in his early writings was not the Leninistthing,

Stalinist

myth

of the Party-led Revolution leading to Socialism in

One

Country.

Where did the authors were subjected

of the film find their

myth? Obviously they

to external constraints, but the successive proposals

they submitted were presumably their own. Dostoevsky's early works "White Nights" and Netochka Nezvanova were safe sources to

was

give,

but

one other, unspecified source. Roshal said: "We also took material from other works by Dostoevsky inasmuch as the overall atmosphere of revolutionary forebodings seemed to us to be characteristic of them, even though he himself in later life ran away from them." 12 Roshal's words are cautious, but surely the great Dostoevskian novel on which the authors of this film drew was The Demons. 13 In all Russian literature before 1917, this is the novel that most fully examines the revolutionary situation. The dreamers of the forties appear as subversives who generate radicals and extreme revolutionaries. The world of fashionable unrest, public scandal, rootless students, there

at least

11. V. Shklovsky,

Za

i

protiv:

Zametki o Dostoevskom (Moscow, 1957), p. 73. Ekran, 1968-69, comp. M. Dolinsky and

12. Roshal, "Peterburgskaia noch'," in

Chertok (Moscow, 13. In

conversations in

Demons was one

S.

1970), p. 32.

Moscow in

1983 and 1984 Vera Stroeva acknowledged that The

of their sources.

55

— Demons behind

the Screen

despotic landowners; and stupid government functionaries, in which the radicals

way

and

revolutionaries operate,

is

explored. All this finds

its

The young Verkhovensky in the novel is in search of a myth that will enable him to hold his followers together; in the film Efimov's music and song provide the revolutionaries with a into Petersburg Night.

ritual

if

novel

it

Stroeva

not a myth. Nature in the film

is

seen as revolutionary; in the

more catastrophic or apocalyptic. But overall Roshal and must be drawing on this novel. They even borrow the name is

Shpigulin from Dostoevski's provincial factory for their factory in Petersburg. Dostoevsky, in

fact,

made use

of

an actual

strike at a cot-

ton-weaving manufactory in Petersburg in 1870; although he noticed this very early sign of industrial unrest, he not surprisingly treated it in

He also transferred the factory to a town and renamed it. 14 The authors of the film move the enterprise back to Petersburg and suggest some of the militancy of the strike which Dostoevsky overlooked. For their own revolutionary myth they supply the factory with a millionaire owner who is a fitting repreessentially preindustrial terms.

provincial

sentative of the

new capitalism. His name is

Shpigulin. Roshal

and Stroeva

also

taken from the factory's

make use

of the

maniac who seizes

the platform at the scandalous literary fete in the novel. Their student,

who

is actively involved with the workers, says in words borrowed from him: "Russia is the ideal of active, secret and civil councillors," and "The universities teach parading." There is of course much that Roshal and Stroeva overlook in The

—

Demons the discussions of ideas and Christianity, the search for a way to stop the dissolution of society. Without these, the poetic vision of Petersburg Night is in some ways closer to Alexander Blok's than to Dostoevsky's.

They

also leave out the "defamatory" portrayals of revo-

lutionaries in Peter Verkhovensky, Liputin, Liamshin,

and

Shigalev.

On

the other hand, they share Dostoevsky's notion of a special Russian destiny. cialist

Much

of

Realism as

what Roshal and Stroeva it

for using materials film."

litical vision,"

14.

take is consistent with Soemerged. Indeed, one review praised them

from the past to create "the Socialist Realist style in of overcoming the current "sharply nega-

They had found a way

tive attitude to

in his

finally

Dostoevsky,"

they had

and within the "dark demonism

of his po-

seen "those aspects of Russian imperial reality"

Concerning the source of Dostoevsky's industrial scene, see the editorial comment Sobranie sochinenii, ed. L. P. Grossman et al., 10 vols. (Moscow, 1956-58), 7:750.

56

RoshaTs

which

it

reflected.

They had

Socialist Realist

Myth

also revealed the correct solution to Efi-

mov's plight, which the reactionary and petty-bourgeois Dostoevsky was unable to see: the necessity for creative work in solidarity with the peasant-democratic movement and the revolutionary workers' movement. In so doing they had pointed to a solution to a current problem, for there were still petty-bourgeois Efimovs trying to work alone and there were also untalented conformists like Schultz (the growing difficulty of reconciling originality and political correctness was not recognized by the writer of the review) 1S Roshal and Stroeva's film was politically correct. What raises it today above the textbook rectitude of so .

many

later exercises in Socialist

Realism

is its

slightly grotesque, ex-

pressionistic, nonnaturalistic treatment of reality and, with

it,

a

num-

Efimov in the film has a defeatism in face of what he might achieve; in this he is akin to Dostoevsky's old dreamer, Stepan Trofimovich. Visions may always be subversive. Ideas are dangerous in the present as in the past. The student and Efimov both bemoan the fact that in Russia "art is administered away in government ber of Dostoevskian

traits.

departments."

New Myths

Shklovsky and Eisenstein on the

Soon after the attack on the Formalism of The House of the Dead, Shklovsky published a review of the script for Petersburg Night, in

which he

implicitly attacked the mythologizing tendencies of the

emerging

Socialist Realist notions of art.

literature

and

One could not simply rewrite

moving Dostoevsky's and supplying new motivaDostoevsky was too deeply rooted in his

history as the script set out to do,

characters from one decade to another tions for them.

An

artist like

time to be "corrected" in this way.

and wants to elevate it to the Netochka Nezvanova becomes a daughter of the heroine of "White Nights." The people of 1849 are transferred to the 70s. This is melodramatic because it is abstract. Here we have the old sin separation of dramatic principles from social principles and abstraction of social principles. Everything will be grand the winter landscape, the violinist. The violinist will sob from the [Roshal] rethinks the tragedy of the musician

tragedy of an

artist of

the

new

class.

.

.

.

—

.

.

.

—

15. N. Plisko, "Klassiki

i

kino," Literaturnaia gazeta, 26 Feb. 1934.

57

Demons behind

the Screen

girl will be pathetic; the merchant's factory will bum down. It be both musical and revolutionary. A melodrama. But why use Dostoevsky? Not that Dostoevsky needs pity or that he is untouchable. But he is different. He is specific; he is real. Bits of him from different decades are

screen; the will

incompatible.

The main failing of Roshal as a filmmaker is that the literature he wants and to struggle with remains out of frame, and before us appears an ordinary film, made fairly grammatically and with some life. to rethink

("Peterburgskaia noch," Kinonedelia, 12 July 1932, p.

Three years

later, to

3.)

Eisenstein at any rate, Roshal's film appeared in

a more favorable light. It now which to measure more recent

offered a standard of achievement

by

films.

Many people

are pouncing upon and attacking both Storm and Petersburg Night on the line of film orthodoxy, as you know. Here I must take up the defense, withdrawing on the line of my personal opinions of taste in this matter.

that

we

It is

utterly

wrong

to close one's eyes

are wallowing before the classics

selves with oldsters,

and so

and

and

that

we

hysterically

howl

are busying our-

on.

say that this period of film making conforms to

all the rules. For this reason as an approach to the problem of creating images of new people, it was natural that these masters looked at past masters to find how they expressed and constructed these people. I repeat, concerning the formal achievements and the artistic qualities (insufficient) of many of these works, I can fight, quarrel, and disagree. But my quarrels and often sharp criticism must not conceal the basic principles of my assessment of events in Soviet film as a whole, and so I have tried to explain these principles once again for those who try to make hash of them. "Comments and Concluding Address at the Ail-Union Conference of Soviet Filmmakers in I

(

1935," Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 2:140.)

58

CHAPTER 3

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line

Fridrikh Ermler (1898-1967) presents the Western viewer with a challenge. His films are serious ideological

and

political; as

and undeniably

we would

talented; they are also

expect. In particular; however;

they are dramatizations of the current Party line on one or another

major

issue: industrialization in Counterplan, codirected

by Sergei

Iutkevich (1932); collectivization in Peasants (1935); the Kirov assassina-

and the background

The Great Citizen (Part 1, 1937; Part 2, 1939); the battle of Stalingrad and the war in The Great Turning Point (1945); Lysenkoism and the struggle for liberation from foreign science in The Great Force (1949). Like Eisenstein and Koat any rate in these zintsev; Ermler had roots in agitprop, but Ermler is the most propagandists of the three. Eisenstein was films tion

of the purges in

—

—

more

interested in dialectical materialism as a principle of thought

than in the Party line; and his imagination could not be confined to present time and place. Kozintsev was a child of the Revolution rather than the servant of the Party line. Nonetheless; Ermler does not appear as an opportunist currying favor with Stalin whose personal taste increasingly dominated and limited film production (and hence Socialist Realist norms); unlike PyrieV; Ermler did not simply rely on wellworn stereotypes of class enemies and on sweet and jolly pictures of the new society. Ermler did accept the Party line unflinchingly; yet sought to understand it in terms of characters and experience he had encountered. What he looked for were the conflicts; struggles; and difficulties underlying it (there are parallels between his position and the ;

59

Demons behind

the Screen

—

Ivan Medvedkin's). His handling of the topic of sabotage an ongoing concern in his films illustrates his position rather well. He accepted the Party versions of gross conspiracies to destroy life and property, yet managed to suggest something of the simple noncooperation and sullen resistance that were commonly encountered. He satirist

—

showed the

anger, fear,

and violence

were part of the

that

life

of the

along with the demonstrations of collective pride and strength. Ermler was a convinced Bolshevik, who took his responsibilicountry,

Party member seriously. He was always ready to tackle diffiand controversial subjects (and new artistic challenges). For this he had the respect of his contemporaries, and above all of Kozintsev, his friend and colleague at Lenfilm, and Eisenstein in Moscow, with whose help he revised several of his scripts. He was aptly named by ties as a

cult

Eisenstein "the Bolshevik

artist."

1

Ermler was born into a German-speaking (probably Yiddish) Jewish family in Rezhitsa (Latvia) in 1898. His father, a cabinetmaker by trade,

was forced

to emigrate to

America

in 1905

and died there

in 1909.

As

the eldest of five children, Ermler had to go to work, adopting the "pro-

boy (one of the more intelligentnye occupations, according to his mother). Movies became his distraction. He used to

fession" of druggist's

sneak into the old Diana Music Hall to watch them. In the daytime he sometimes ran into a photographer's shop and had pictures taken of himself in the clothes and attitudes of his screen heroes. Of course he was a fan of Asta Nielsen's. In 1916 he was conscripted into the imperial army. In 1917 he deserted from the army near Riga and escaped to

wartime Petrograd, where he tried to find work in the movies, to fulfil his childhood dreams. All doors were closed to the uneducated youth, and so he rejoined the army. For the first time he read Tolstoi and became a passionate reader. When the October Revolution came, the issue was a simple one for him: the Bolsheviks were against the bourgeoisie and so he was a Bolshevik. During the civil war he joined the Cheka the secret police and took part in the fight against contraband. The name Ermler was a pseudonym he adopted at this time. In 1919 he joined the Party.

—

—

2

1.

Sergei Eisenstein, Fridrikh Ermler: Dokumenty,

(Leningrad, 1974), p. 86,

and passim. This

collection

stat'i, is

vospominaniia, ed.

an important

source, consisting of autobiographical accounts by Ermler, plans relating to

each of his

films, a

thorough

critical

examination of his

and essays and reminiscences by Eisenstein, Kozintsev, and other by actors and script writers who worked with him. 2.

Fridrikh Ermler, pp. 90-96.

60

factual

I.

Sepman

and

critical

and other material work by I. Sepman, directors, as well as

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line

gun in his belt got into the Film InLeningrad with the help of false documents stating that he had completed middle-level education. He soon suspected that his teachers had found out his total lack of education; but they tolerated him, their only Communist student, and helped him. Reading was his In 1923 the young Chekist with a

stitute in

salvation.

War and Peace was

new

his favorite novel (he claims to have re-

He began to know Shakespeare, StenHomer, and the Greek playwrights (Sepman adds Dostoevsky to this list of "early" reading). 3 In 1924 he founded KEM, the Experimental Film Workshop, which had three main aims: to abolish the Film Institute, a den of counterrevolutionary ideas; to train film actors rather than stage actors; and to treat contemporary subjects only. In principle the workshop stood opposed to Konstantin Stanislavsky's ideas about "becoming" a character and experiencing that character's emotions. Acting was a craft like any other. 4 KEM solicited commissions. Ermler's first work was for a documentary on the prevention of scarlet fever, which he turned into a humorous and fantastic attack on witch doctors and miracles. This film was not released, but two years later he won national and international acclaim for his film Katka's Reinette Apples, and his career was launched. Ermler's career is exemplary in a different sense from that of the FEKS director Kozintsev (to be examined in the last part of this book). From the start in his silent films his main interest was in psychology and characterization. Sound film was a natural fulfilment for him. Beginning with Counterplan, he developed the realistic conventions of the new medium while he turned his interest in individual psychology to the examination of political issues. He became a model Socialist Realist, and yet because of his characters and the extraordinary reality he examined, he was a very Dostoevskian artist. read

it

before each

film).

dhal,

The Problem of the Good Man

Two

of Ermler's early films, Katka's Reinette Apples (1926)

sian Cobbler (1927), reveal

3. Ibid.,

in Silent Film

pp.

12,

an

interest in individual

and

Pari-

psychology that

93-94.

Concerning KEM, see ibid., p. 95. See too the series of archival material published by the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography and the Lenfilm Studio, Iz istorii Lenfil'ma, vol. 2: Stat'i, vospominaniia, dokumenty. 1920e gody 4.

(Leningrad, 1970), pp. 227-36.

61

Demons behind the Screen goes beyond social type. They indicate

why Ermler was equipped

to

reader of Dostoevsky. The differences between these films also demonstrate Ermler's developing interest in political film.

be an

effective

Katka

set in the

is

shady world of

ant

girl,

has been forced to the

street

hawkers and dealers

New Economic Policy. Katka,

Petrograd during the years of the

city to

earn

in

a peas-

money following the death

on one of the city's busy bridges. She is seduced by Semka, a holligan and petty thief, and has a child by him. Her eventual rescuer is Vadik, a declasse intellectual, who is above all a good, childlike man. In the first instance, Katka helps Vadik, offering him food and shelter. To her amazement Vadik kisses her hand. In the evening Vadik modestly undresses under a blanket, removing his tattered clothing bit by bit and revealing all his pathetic attempts to maintain respectability. Semka, a true NEP man gambles and steals to raise money for a shop; at the same time, he wants to keep his hold on Katka even though he has a new girl friend. He visits Katka's room and threatens and frightens poor Vadik, who has been caring for the child while Katka goes out of work. Driven by a sense of inadequacy, Vadik tries to kill himself. He jumps into the river, only to land in three feet of water. He returns home. Upstairs, in Semka 's flat, there is a commotion. Semka has been trying to drug and subdue an entrepreneur, in order to rob him. When people appear at the door, Semka hides. Vadik discovers Semka, disguised as a woman and manages to hold him until the militia come and arrest him. Vadik has proved himself a worthy husband and surrogate father. At the end he joins Katka as a worker at of her cow. She sells apples

the factory.

The

film gives

an array of

distinguished in this film part of Vadik.

reminisced:

About the

"I

is

portraits of

types, but

innocence of

childlike

preserved in

NEP

what

is

truly

the performance of Fedor Nikitin in the

my

Vadik the best

— shyness, delicacy, a

this character, Nikitin traits

inherited from

and outer chastity My Vadik knew evil and could see in all situations and conditions. his open relationship to peoit, but he did not lose his truthfulness ple." A wonderful visual identity is established between him and the baby in the scene in which Vadik holds the baby in one arm while he childhood

.

striving for inner .

.

—

5

tries to trim his beard with his other hand. Both are vulnerable; the baby wets himself and Vadik cuts himself. The discovery of Nikitin was

5.

In /z istorii Lenfil'ma, 2:78.

62

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line

happy accident. He had been making desperate attempts to get work and was utterly destitute. The doorman at Sovkino in Leningrad would no longer admit him, but Nikitin sneaked past him one day and was seen by Ermler, who was delighted. In every way, even in his dress, Nikitin was what he was looking for. Ermler was always concerned with realism of manner and often tested his actors in real-life situations. The one task Nikitin set himself by way of preparation was to go out in the streets, and beg. Nikitin knew he had succeeded when a charitable-looking lady rounded on him for not doing any useful work. Some of the credit for Nikitin's performance in this film must certainly go to the codirector, Eduard Ioganson (Johanson), who was in charge of the good characters, while Ermler looked after the bad ones. But Ermler directed some of the scenes with Nikitin and the relationship the two men established was extremely important, in a

as a film actor

part because of the struggles between them. Nikitin regarded himself

whose views on the transformation of character Ermler put at naught. At the same time, Nikitin shared Ermler's strivings toward realism of manner and insisted on speaking meaningful sentences rather than nonsense that would produce attractive lip movements on the screen. Throughout the shooting Nikitin had to endure the taunts of more established film actors, but most doubts were stifled by the success of the film at its premiere and the as a

proud pupil

of Stanislavsky,

acclaim given to Nikitin.

Ermler went on to make three more films with the Snowdrifts (1927), Parisian Cobbler (1927),

pire (1929). In the

first

Nikitin: The House in and Fragment of an Em-

of these films Nikitin again played a part with

who was

which he could

readily identify, an intellectual

cian. In Parisian

Cobbler he took on something new, playing the deaf-

mute

also a musi-

The cobbler was another innocent; all his friends were for them he made shoes in the latest Parisian style. Nikitin prepared for this role by living for a few weeks in a community of deaf-mutes, and he became quite adept at communicating with them. But though a deaf-mute might seem a perfect subject for a silent film, new problems arose. The lip movements deaf-mutes make in communicating were not appropriate on the silent screen, for it was impossible to distinguish between them and ordinary speech. New conventions had to be worked out. 6 cobbler.

children,

6. Ibid.,

and

pp. 94-95.

63

Demons behind

the Screen

The Parisian Cobbler shows Ermler's move toward political subjects. Here he tackled the problem of the rowdyism and hooliganism of the

members

Komsomol, the Young Communist League. The good The film was controversial, and the Leningrad Komsomol Organization sponsored 7 The setting is a sleepy provincial town, which is shown with its it. pigs and horses, its one buggy, the fire brigade's cart, some women in black, people staring out of windows, and church bells. Naked boys swim in the river. The villain Andrei likes "style, girls, and international significance [fasokh, devchat, i mezhdunarodnyi mashtab]" Kirik is a popular figure with the children of the town. One of his young friends of the

character; the cobbler Kirik, did not belong to the league.

whom

Andrei has made pregnant. On a moonlit summer lit all along the river, Katka confesses her situation to Andrei. He curses her, avoids her at work, and keeps putting her off. Grandly he complains that now he is "a real bourgeois with a heap is

Katka,

night

when fires

are

—

He seeks advice from a friend at the Komsomol, who can only come up with a book called Sejcual Problems in Russian Literature. Andrei becomes even nastier in his treatment of Katka; he tries to get her to sleep with lots of young men to get rid of his responsibility. He also gets his friend, the hooligan Motka Tundel, to help in compromising her, and the two of them spread rumors about her. There is a meeting of the Komsomol to discuss the behavior of Andrei and Motka, and only the testimony of the mute Kirik shows the innocence of Katka. At the end Andrei and Motka are beating Katka up. The cobbler rescues her, and then the two youths start fighting each other. of troubles."

Motka is about to knife Andrei, when the cobbler knocks Motka over the head with a stick. Kirik wipes the mist off his glasses. The final words on the screen, aimed directly at the viewers, are the famous

"Who is to blame?" Ermler worked with Nikitin once more, in his last great silent film, Fragment of an Empire, about an amnesiac who recovers his memory ten years after the Revolution and is amazed at the difference between question from Russian literature,

new Soviet society and old tsarist Russia. This film shows a further development of Ermler's psychological investigation of character in his handling of the dual time scheme and the problem of memory. In fact, because of the complexity of the subject, he ran into difficulties the

7.

Paul Babitsky and John Rimberg, The Soviet Film Industry (New York: Praeger, 1955),

p. 129.

64

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line

with the script, and shooting had to be interrupted for two or three months while Ermler worked out the problems with the help of Eisenstein. In this film, too, the goodness and innocence that Nikitin projected were important. In one scene Ermler instructed him, "You must have the eyes of Christ." In this film as in the earlier ones Ermler was interested in the social determinants of character portraits of social types, but

and gave a

he was also aware of the

series of

ability of

people

go beyond social determinants. In his attention to the problem of the good, innocent man in Katka and Parisian Cobbler, he tackled one of Dostoevsky's major artistic challenges. The evil and suffering that Dostoevsky's Prince Myshkin has to confront exceed anything Ermler's good men must face. Nonetheless, Vadik and Kirik are unusual studies of childlike men. There was a Dostoevskian bent to Ermler's vision even before he needed Dostoevsky for help in imagining the unreal world of to

the

Moscow trials

following Sergei Kirov's assassination in 1934.

Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Villains

and 2, about the background of the Mosgood example of Ermler's work in sound film and is the work in which he turns to Dostoevsky for portraits of evil. Specifically, he turns to The Demons and particularly to Peter Verkhovensky's The Great

cow trials,

Citizen, Parts 1

offers a

conspiratorial cell there. Ermler's use of Dostoevsky several ways.

It

was an

is

interesting in

indication that Ermler could see beneath Dos-

and was evidence

he

the

toevsky's caricatural portraits of revolutionaries

that

force of dynamic conflict in this novel.

of the perceived

It

(and only half-understood) importance of The

Demons

felt

as a

model

for experience not only in the prerevolutionary past but also in the thirties. It

was

a sign of the failure of the

trials to

produce a convincing

model or prototype of the class enemies of the Revolution. Finally, it was a reminder of the moral force Dostoevsky shares with Socialist Realism. Ermler's film also points up the weakness in Dostoevsky's revolutionary villains, which does not matter in the disintegrating society Dostoevsky provided for them but becomes significant in the setting of constructive socialism Ermler puts them into. In his sound films Ermler was able to achieve a naturalism of manner which satisfied him. The Great Citizen represents Ermler's maturity;

here he exhibits the repertory of techniques that are the basic ac65

Demons behind the Screen modern tradition. The film is makes considerable use of continuous shots, with the camera moving in on a subject or away from it and with lots of tracking movements. There is movement within the shot when the camera is stationary. Deep focus is used to extend the screen. The camera becomes a sensitive commentator on the story. Sepman notes how the camera races ahead of the hero in the last scene as he walks toward the door behind which the assassin lies in wait for him. 8 All in all, Ermler's conventions satisfy our modern notions of the natural, without obtrusive editing and calculation of effect. Much the same case can be made for him as a consummate master of the craft as for a number of contemporary American filmmakers whose ideology is more invisible to us and whose craft we are therefore perhaps freer to quisitions of

full

sound

film in the mainline

of dialogue. Ermler

enjoy. In Part 2 of the film Ermler's repertory of techniques

worked

He felt that in Part

out.

1

he had

relied too

is fully

much on traditional

notions of montage, with interruptions necessitated by changes from

medium

shots to close-ups. These interruptions interfered with the

naturalism of the actors' performances. More continuous shooting

would help the

actors

and reduce the

strain for the viewer.

It

would

lead to a "cinema of pure dialogue." 9 Ermler's Bolshevik commitment, or rather

well brought out

faith, is

by an incident during the shooting of this difficult film. Late one night Mikhail Bleiman, one of the scriptwriters, was summoned to the studio. Some terrible breakdown in the shooting had occurred. Ivan Bersenev,

who was portraying Kartashov, the chief conspirator in the film,

found himself utterly unable

to

respond with the required hatred and

energy to Nikolai Bogoliubov in the part of Shakhov, the great citizen of the film's title. Bersenev refused to go on. Roused and angry, Ermler berated everyone. Nothing helped. Five hours went by. At last Ermler stood up and quietly said,

damned

this

film

is

that

"I

swear, the only reason

am

I

I

do not

give

up

a Communist." Bersenev pronounced

himself ready without further ado to carry on with the shooting. The force of Ermler's

supposed See

8.

I.

to

"I

am

a

Communist" had shown him what he was

be up against in the main character of the

Sepman, "The Art

of

Sudden Changes/'

film. 10

Iz istorii Lenfd'ma, vol. 4: Stat'i,

vospominaniia, dokumenty, 1930e gody (Leningrad, 1975), p. 55. See, too, A. Garbicz and J. Klinowski, Cinema, the Magic Vehicle: Journey 1975), pp. 9.

One (Metuchen,

313-14.

Fridrikh Ermler, pp. 141-42.

10.

M. Bleiman,

66

O kino

(Moscow,

1973), pp.

418-19.

NJ.: Scarecrow Press,

:

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line Socialist Realism was simply a matter of Bolshevism. Ermler offers as good an explanation as any of Socialist Realism when he says (somewhat inelegantly)

It

seems

to

me that in everything we create, whether it is a film, a tractor, a

building, or a fashion workshop, in everything, everywhere

thought thing

— and

we

we are

create

Communism is

striving, in

— are

necessarily present.

You

and always, see, every-

a movement, a step leading to something big, to a

word

it is

which

Communism.

seemed to me that if in our film, in each episode, in each shot, in movement of the actors, in every speech this thought and Communism were understood, deeply felt, concealed in our minds and hearts, and not importuned or made a passing slogan, that in sum would It

—

every

—

be

—

Socialist Realism. 11

The Great Citizen was a dramatization of the assassination of Sergei Leningrad Communist Party and member of the Politburo. It was made while the trials and purges triggered by this assassination continued unabated and was based on the official account of the assassination as it was emerging from the "confessions" extorted from the trial victims. According to this account, Trotskyite conspiracies extended throughout Soviet society, right up to the Politburo. Grigori Zinoviev and Sergei Kamenev were directly implicated in the murder, and they were said to have conspired with Trotsky (who of course was abroad, in exile). Although the main character of the film is Shakhov, a regional Party secretary, it was made very clear that he was modeled on Kirov, who had been helpful to Ermler during the making Kirov, secretary of the

of Counterplan. Kartashov, Shakhov's chief rival during the

the film, corresponds in a rough, general

names tion

—

way

to Zinoviev.

first

part of

The

actual

some of the identified conspirators in the Kirov assassinaAvdeev and Borovsky, for example are used for atmosphere of

—

rather than with any regard to their bearers' supposed historical role.

eponymous counterpart in the triand member of the Central Committee. Despite these changes and the faithful adherence to the Party line, Ermler's willingness to touch the subject at all was a sign of boldness, but Ermler had personal ties of affection and a passionate faith to motivate him. The Lenfilm administration did not want to make the film, either because they were afraid or because they had Piatakov loosely corresponds to his als,

the deputy commissar for heavy industry

11. Fridrikh

Ermler, p. 140.

67

Demons behind the Screen good reason to doubt the authorized version of the assassination. In the atmosphere of those times, however, to hold back was a sign of conspiracy. The tentacles of subversion were seen to reach right into the studio. The administration of Lenfilm was purged and the film was made. 12 Part 1 of the film is set in 1925, one year after Lenin's death, and deals with the background to the Fourteenth Party Congress (of Industrialization). Part 2 is set in 1934 and deals with the background of the Seventeenth Congress (of Victors). The major themes running through both parts of the film are Socialism in One Country and Rationalization of the Economy. The film accepts the basic Party wisdom on these matters in the form it had taken in the midthirties. It appears that in 1925 Stalin had already been advocating industrialization and collectivization and moreover that Shakhov the Kirov-like character was always a steadfast supporter of Stalin. The oppositionists rejected Socialism in One Country and (contrary to the facts) industrialization. The subtleties of the existence of "leftist" and "rightist" oppositions no longer mattered. The oppositionists were even willing to support counterrevolution and subversion by foreign powers all in the cause

—

—

—

of the international revolution. on, the supporters of Stalin

It

appears, moreover, that from 1925

were the true democrats, never

appeal directly to the masses,

who would

afraid to

instantly recognize their

and the masses had to unmask and bureaucrats who had infiltrated the Party keep power for themselves and to plot against Social-

true leaders. Together the true leaders all false

leaders,

elitists,

an attempt to ism in One Country. This version of history is not so much imaginative as mythological. Accordingly, the apparent realism of the film is misleading; it should be assessed not in terms of documentary realism but (with open eyes) in terms of its effectiveness as mythic structure. The opening words, spoken by Shakhov, member of the local Party committee, are: "Comrades, the Revolution is continuing." In 1925 the in

opposition

is still

out in the open; Borovsky, who is head of the Organiis manipulating the Party lists in an

zation Division of the committee

12.

Jay Leyda, Kino (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), p. 344. The account of the purge

of the Lenfilm administration

Ermler published

an article by Bleiman, Mikhail Bolshintsev, and (April-May 1938), but it is left out of the abprinted in the Fridrikh Ermler collection. For the history

comes

in

in Iskusstvo kino

breviated version of this article

of the purges, see Robert Conquest,

The Great Terror (London:

Pelican, 1971); Isaac

Deutscher, Stalin: A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).

68

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line

attempt to retain control over meetings. Shakhov wants to move toward a rationalized; planned economy. Tractors must be built at the Red Metalworker Factory so that agriculture can be mechanized and transformed. The number of machine tools in the factory has to be increased; the workers will put their energy into useful production and stop making cigarette lighters. The oppositionists lack faith in the power of industry to absorb more workers; they argue that mechanization will increase unemployment and insist on the need for an international revolution before Russia can become truly modern and socialist. The chief spokesman for the still dominant opposition faction is

Kartashov,

tional car

who

on a

is first

train.

One

seen returning from abroad in an internanight he calls

matches, but his real intention

is

on Shakhov

to ask for

some He

to feel out Shakhov's views.

speaks about the dangerous state of the country: "The peasant are sharpening their axes." In face of Shakhov's unswerving support of industrialization,

he

retreats, saying

he has only come

for

matches. Sha-

and barely rethe wall: "If you say

khov of course recognizes Kartashov's real motives strains his anger as

he holds his opponent against

we are not building socialism, everything is deprived of sense

thou-

millions believed in it." Kartashov's subsands of people died for it. versive nature is revealed in another scene in which he meets Maxim (the mythical Party leader from the Central Committee, borrowed from Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg's Majcim trilogy and played by the same actor, Boris Chirkov). He dares not look at Maxim in the eye. Afterwards Kartashov is quite hysterical, and Borovsky has to knock him into his role as leader again, acting much like Peter Verkhovensky in his manipulations of Stavrogin in The Demons. 13 The last open fight waged by the oppositionists in their struggle for control comes at a special meeting of the local Party. Borovsky has tried to keep Shakhov away by misleading him as to the time of the meeting. Using the powers of Party secretary (!), Borovsky has revised the membership lists to ensure that only supporters of the Kartashov faction are admitted. Kartashov arrives in a chauffeur-driven Benz. .

.

.

Meanwhile the indignation of true Bolsheviks who have been turned at the door grows; they force their way in. With the overflow of members, the meeting has to be transferred to a large movie theater (the Coliseum). On the platform, Kartashov almost manages to domi-

back

13. For discussions of the matches scene, see Bleiman, meeting with Maxim, see Fridrikh Ermler, p. 147.

O

kino, pp. 37-39.

69

For the

Demons behind nate

the Screen

Maxim by means

of his exhortations to

members

to wait for the

revolution in the West. Shakhov, having discovered that he

deceived,

now turns

someone

had been

up. In a desperate attempt to sabotage the meet-

Matches are lit like candles in the dark, and the meeting continues. A motor hums in the projection booth, and a ing,

transforming its

rays.

podium

Then

pulls a fuse.

beam in a

of light shoots out, catching the leader

demonic explosion

of reality Shakhov

Maxim

moves

in

to the

movie theater and addresses the and on the screen behind him is projected his shadow, which we know is actually larger than life. In the confusion of spatial relations between our screen and that other screen, we are invited to take the ecstatic step of union with that other audience beyond our own screen as Shakhov proclaims to one and all: "One can deceive a simple man, confuse him, frighten him. But one cannot deceive thousands of Bolsheviks, thousands of Communists."

faithful.

in front of the screen in the

His figure almost

fills

the frame,

meaning of bolshevism is appropriated and so too is the meaning of communism. The opposition has to move underground. In words taken from Peter Verkhovensky, Borovsky says: "We must create the impression we do not exist. But we exist, we do exist. What can be stronger than a secret force, which nobody suspects." For the time being the opposition will be covered by the Western parties. The closing sequences of Part 1 prepare for the contrasts that run through Part 2 between the triumphant collective and the sordid underground. The first tractor rolls off the production line and the first subversive Trotskyite poster appears on a fence by night. Huge parades are held to celebrate the achievements of the factory, and the scene is intercut with a meeting of the conspirators Kartashov, Borovsky, and Briantsev in a small, dark room. The conspirators are seen to be inwardly divided and schizophrenic; in contrast to the wholesomely self-assured workers and their leaders. In The Great Citizen, Part 2, we move properly into the dual world of the second Five-Year Plan and of Dostoevskian revolutionaries (or counterrevolutionaries as they are here). The workers are fired by the excitement of the plan, the goal of which is 120 percent fulfillment of the norms. Shock work, further rationalization, and mechanization are ways of achieving the goal. Shakhov is now regional Party secretary. The big new project he is entrusted with is the construction of a canal through a marsh and then through a hill. Shakhov, combining chaIn this act of identification, the

risma with the 70

common

touch, arrives at the construction site to ev-

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line eryone's excitement

and

kinds of construction

joy.

Quickly and humorously he sorts out

difficulties

and personal problems. In

all

his great

energy and love of life, he is going shooting. Suddenly the world of conspiracy casts its shadow. The woodsman accompanying him, moved by Shakhov's joyfulness, confesses that he has been stalking

him but could not bring himself to pull the son of a kulak and he has been visitor (Kriuchkov). The regenerate woodsmysterious tempted by a man now enters completely into Shakhov's plans and helps him to Shakhov and has meant

the trigger.

to

kill

The woodsman

is

overcome the opposition of the local kolkhoz peasants to the canal; he even rounds up some peasants to help in cutting the canal through the

hill.

Other intrigues are afoot at the Red Metalworker Factory. A proposal for a change in the production line to raise the output to the magical 120 percent is put forward by an ordinary working woman, Nadia Kolesnikova. This scheme is opposed by the director of the factory, Dubok, an old worker (and even an old Bolshevik) who defers to Avdeev, a specialist with a reputation of "European dimensions" and (unbeknownst to Dubok) a member of the underground conspiracy. The local cell of conspirators is led by Borovsky, who has lost his Party position and now works as a statistician. He is a manipulator like Dostoevsky's Peter Verkhovensky (who was himself inspired by the historical figure Sergei Nechaev). The counterrevolutionaries think that through Dubok they have power over one-third of the country's output of tractors and one-fifth of the output of tanks. Moreover, they feel that they have the protection of Kartashov and Piatakov, that is, the KamenevZinoviev faction, which still had supporters in positions of power. They also have mysterious and disturbing friends; an anonymous note warns them that the woodsman is now dangerous. But the nervousness and worry of the conspirators is revealed. Borovsky is constantly swallowing pills. He and Avdeev are almost hysterical when their associate Briantsev, the director of the

Museum

of the Revolution, foolhar-

on them. Shakhov scores a victory at a public meeting of the factory workers, when Avdeev cannot explain his opposition to Kolesnikova's proposal. The meeting turns into a session of criticism and self-criticism. Avdeev blames everything on Dubok, who for the moment is discredited. Avdeev proclaims, "An error not corrected in time becomes a crime." dily calls

His fellow conspirators rejoice at his triumph. Borovsky believes 71

(like

Demons behind

the Screen

Peter Verkhovensky) that he possesses the secret of control: "In each

man man

find the screw turn ;

morally

Borovsky

is

is

it,

severely critical

less operator,

and the man

is

finished.

And

to destro}/ a

much more

who

important than simply to kill a man." of the museum director, a crude and reck-

has killed the woodsman's mysterious

visitor,

Kriuchkov.

The triumph of the conspirators is short-lived. The clairvoyant Shakhov knows that there is something "impure" about Avdeev's confession. "You came to the leadership by methods that are not quite clean, but the deed, the movement, which is now rising from the very depths, is incredibly pure. The people are showing that they are great masters of life." Shakhov suspects that other people are involved. He implores Avdeev to complete his confession. "For us Bolsheviks, self-criticism is the basic moral nature of Soviet man. There is no rejecting it it is the inner need of a citizen to overcome everything bad in others and in himself." Avdeev fails to defend himself. He realizes that he now stands fully revealed. He goes to Borovsky and begs to be released. His request

—

is

denied.

At a conference of shock workers, Nadia Kolesnikova

new

director of the

Red Metalworker

Factory.

is

Her former

made the Dubok

rival

turns up; old workers can be regenerated and ultimately they are not afraid of self-criticism.

Shakhov proclaims the

faith of the future:

Only an enemy fails to see that beyond the forests of our construction and beyond Stalin's great Five-Year Plans, there are emerging the traits of the new, free man, the creator and transformer. The fact that we can call on such people to get their advice how we are to live and work this, comrades, is the source of our strength, and this strength cannot be conquered. One can bomb cities and blow up factories everywhere, but it is impossible to break, conquer, and destroy the people, which has not only understood and become conscious of but has also achieved the age-old dream of man.

—

and Kartashov, the most highly placed leaders of the counterrevolution, are in a country dacha when they see a newspaper with Piatakov

Kolesnikova's picture. Piatakov "All

is

displeased with the turn of events.

these psychological experiments in the spirit of Fedor Mikhailo-

vich Dostoevsky selves." Piatakov

letter

and of your friend Borovsky have not proved themwants action now. Somehow he has received another

from Trotsky, 72

who

apparently

is

extremely displeased over their

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line inaction.

It is

urgent to create the impression that the opposition are a

powerful force. A man in a coat comes in to extract a promise of action. He is satisfied by a plan of sabotage and assassination.

The promised act of sabotage takes place. Nineteen people are seby a cave-in at the excavation site on the hill. At first it is thought to be an accident; maybe it was wrong to drive the canal

verely injured

through the

hill.

Briantsev, the

sky

is

But the cool-headed Shakhov suspects sabotage. director has in fact done the deed, and Borov-

museum

furious with

him

for his ineptness.

The conspirators then

try to

persuade a worker at the factory to perform an act of sabotage. The worker refuses, and soon afterwards is run over by a car. An extraordinarily improbable scene indicates that the counterrevolutionaries are working at cross-purposes. One conspirator, the factory

coman act of subversion for a "friendly" foreign power, but somehow Zemtsov knows that the chauffeur's real name is Lieutenant Vladislavsky. He then whispers his own name and rank (in the same counterrevolutionary organization?) into this lieutenant's ear. Meekly the chauffeur salutes him and accepts his orders. Luckily Zemtsov is almost immediately unmasked as an enemy of the Bolsheviks. One of the members of the Parry committee wants to sort out the inconsistencies in the membership files. Shakhov at first cheerfully sees this as a formality in no way connected with the terrible catastrophe on the construction site, but he at once becomes suspicious over Zemtsov's inability satisfactorily to account for a gap in his records between 1911 and 1913. He notes too that Zemtsov is struggling to keep the verification procedures in his own hands. The NKVD, or secret police, which throughout has been closely connected with chauffeur, tries to blackmail the assistant secretary of the Party

mittee, Zemtsov, into committing

the

work

of the Party, arrests Zemtsov.

Kartashov turns

up

in Borovsky's

little

room bearing a

bottle of

good old times and to celebrate his own birthday. He speaks about the time he once held a girl's hand and said: "Only he has a right to live whose deeds are part of History." Borovsky knows that they have all been squeezed out of History and that they are just filth (der'mo), but nonetheless he agrees to arrange Shakhov's murder. The designated assassin is Briantsev, who has just been fired French cognac

from his job

The NKVD he belonged

to drink to the

at the is

on

Museum

of the Revolution.

Zemtsov knew everything, even though grouping within the counterrevolutionary

their track.

to a different

73

Demons behind the Screen movement, and he has confessed. He himself had been an old member of the Okhrana, the tsarist secret police, and during the unaccounted for space in his life he had blown up a Bolshevik printing press. He has connections with "every kind of filth"

— Trotskyites, Zinovievites, Social

one Freemason for good measure, and of course Kartashov. But the NKVD is not fast enough. Shakhov comes to the Palace of Culture for a ceremony celebrating the achievements of the shock workers. This is his last appearance as charismatic leader, and again he exchanges jokes and friendly remarks about all kinds of projects and problems as he makes his way through the crowd. He offers a cigarette to the director of a match factory, knowing that the man will be unable to strike a light from one of his own matches (the Revolutionaries, White Guards,

suggestion

is

that the director

is

criminally negligent

if

not a saboteur

and counterrevolutionary). Shakhov reaches the door, behind which lurks the assassin.

show Shakhov's solemn funeral. We are warned enemy is still lurking. The factory chauffeur is seen among the crowd of mourners. Some of the key words of the funeral oration are: "Sacred mercilessness to individuals in the name of the The

final

scenes

again that the

—

happiness of the millions that is the thought which he lived with, which he carried out, and for which he was treacherously murdered. ... He was just the same as us, only a little bit taller. He had the same eyes as us, only a little bit sharper. He thought about the same things as us, but much more deeply. ... He was a citizen just like us, but bigger. ... He was a great citizen; he had great faith, great love, and great hate, which he has left to us, hate for our enemies, faith in our victory, great love for the people, for the Party, for Stalin." Shakhov's portrait fills

the screen.

The music

of the Internationale

is

played.

For anyone in a position of quasi-anthropological detachment in the post-Stalinist period Ermler's attempt to mythologize experience is of considerable interest. The central Socialist Realist myths in Ermlej^s^ film are those of the Great Visionary ler says,

"I

considered

it

Leader and the One People. Erm-

my Party duty and my direct artistic responsi-

images of people whose flesh and blood comprised the elevated concepts, the new moral bases of the new man of socialist society, the new ethical valuations of human deeds and acts,

bility to create artistic

honor and purity of ideas, selfless dedication to the People's cause, and an organic need for daily participation in the struggle to carry out 74

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line the great ideas of the

Communist

hardly exist in this strange

new

Party." 14

Love and private relations

world. The central myths are cele-

brated in certain rituals in great public meetings or conferences, in the exhortations of leaders and workers to one another, in solemn pledges,

and above

all

in acts of public confession, or self-criticism, as

if you cannot overcome your sense of injury, your shame.") The age of simple revolutionary struggle is gone; the time for stories announcing and celebrating the October Revolution and the Civil War is past. The One Socialist Country is in sight, but the Trotskyist kingdom of darkness without and its agents of subversion within remain, perhaps for all eternity. The forces of good and evil, light and darkness are at war. The conflict is underlined by the score Dmitri Shostakovich wrote for the film. it is

called here. ("You cannot be a Bolshevik

your own

vanity,

faith that there was a myth powerful hold Russia together. The Demons is a dramatization of this problem. In his view modern man was infected with the virus of doubt; man could more readily acknowledge the beauty of an idea than its truth. Moreover, Dostoevsky knew that there were no great leaders to save society; without a leader in whom the people would believe, Peter Verkhovensky was not even an effective revolutionary. In Dostoevsky's

Dostoevsky lacked Ermler's

enough

to

The Demons salvation and meaning became part of a desperate personal search while society crumbled. His novel

was the vision

of disin-

by a man desperately searching for faith, regeneration, a new beginning. Ermler did find a faith, Bolshevism obviously not at all the one Dostoevsky was looking for (in fact, the funeral oration for Shakhov sounds like a quotation from the program of Dostoevsky's half-crazed revolutionary, Shigalev). A sense of the tests of faith and of the threat to it by evil runs through the film. Demons possess the new tegration held

—

names have changed; they are counterrevolutionaries rather than revolutionaries. The Great Citizen, Part 2, is an adaptation of The Demons made by a

Russia just as they possessed the old Russia, but their

man

of strong faith. In

its

fantastic realism (without rible).

what

The is

way

Ermler's film approaches Dostoevsky's

coming

as close as Eisenstein's Ivan the Ter-

certainties of ordinary existence have

the strange

and unusual

is

the

Ermler felt the closeness to Dostoevsky 14. Fridrikh

little

new essence

meaning

here;

of reality.

— the reference to him in the

Ermler, p. 99.

75

Demons behind dialogue

and

a sign of this. Borovsky in his manipulations of his leader

is

of the

the Screen

members

the novel. Both

of his cell

men

is

a relation of Peter Verkhovensky in

lack originality

and need a leader (when

—

Karta-

new tactic of the opposition "Use the official own aims" Borovsky is angry at himself for not thinking this up). The name of Ermler's hero, the Kirov-like character Shakhov, must be inspired by Shatov, who of all the possible great men in The Demons is the one who is closest to accepting the true faith shov announces the slogan to pursue our

—

—

Dostoevsky so desperately wanted. The connotations of Shakhov shah and also checkmate and maybe mine or shaft are, however, suitably opposed to the wandering conveyed by Shatov. Like Shakhov in the film, Shatov dies a martyr's death, a victim of conspiracy. A mar-

—

tyr's

death enhances the mythic significance of the hero;

diminish

What

it

does not

it.

is

obviously lacking in Ermler

is

the intensity of

felt

thought

and questioning we find in The Demons in the searching examination to which Dostoevsky subjects his great bearers of ideas, Kirilov, Shatov, and Stavrogin. Ermler did claim that he wanted to find the "ideological roots of conflict" but here he was fettered. Bersenev, the character who was finally persuaded to risk playing the role of the archvillain Kartashov, seems to have come close to exposing Ermler's inadequacy. He claimed over and over again he could not play Kartashov unless he understood what kind of a person he had to portray, and he begged Ermler to introduce him to persons of that type. (Bersenev had some experience in the matter of villainy, since he had played the part of Peter Verkhovensky in the 1913 adaptation of The Demons at the Moscow Art Theater.) Ermler responded, "I assured Bersensev that fortunately I was not personally acquainted with them, had not met them, and could not provide anything more than I knew from the documents." Ermler and his fellow scriptwriters Mikhail Bleiman and Mikhail Bolshintsev began to supply him with imaginary biographies of the "Karsatisfied: "Once he demanded him [Nikolai] Ustrialov's Changing Landmarks and several other books, which were hard to get. And in the end these books were procured for him," but this was still not

tashov faction." that

Still

Bersenev was not

we immediately procure

for

enough. Ermler says that finally "some unique documentary materials were made available to us which in some measure satisfied his thirst." Ermler claimed that "the basic philosophical question had to do with 76

Ermler's Pure Art of the Party Line Socialism in

One Country and

a planned economy." 15

Marxist the disagreements over this question look

like

To a non-

a family quarrel.

was having difficulty in creating characters with adequate social determinants and convincing ideological motivations. And clearly whatever the nature of Ermler's own work in the Cheka, it Clearly Ermler

;

did not supply him with an adequate psychological understanding of the actions of counterrevolutionaries.

Here

lies

one reason why Ermler turned

to Dostoevsky, apart

the general similarity he perceived between the situation in lived

and the

know what

from

which he

situation in Dostoevsky's novel. Ermler simply did not

kinds of characters he was supposed to be portraying. For

his counterrevolutionaries

he

relied

on the convenient model pro-

vided by Dostoevsky's villainous revolutionaries. 16 In Dostoevsky's

vi-

sion of revolution, any inadequacies or puzzles in the characterization of Peter Verkhovensky scarcely matter; in Ermler's

more confident

vi-

sion of a society building socialism; the inadequacy of motivation of his conspirators

is

a glaring fault.

They

are reduced to petty, spiteful;

vindictive caricatures.

With the passage of time, Ermler's picture of his country during the purges has lost its power as propaganda. The smile and joyful energy of Bogoliubov in the part of Shakhov seem forced. The evil machinations of the conspirators seem implausible. What remains is a picture of Stalinism which is true to its time in its demonic myths of the One Leader and the One People and in its rituals of excited celebration of collectivity and feverish self-criticism. What remains, too, is a film by an artful craftsman who understood the public's newly developing sense of acceptable conventions of the

real.

Shklovsky and Eisenstein on Ermler "The beginning of the film looks traditional, almost a cliche: happy people, walking about, playing tennis, living in rest homes, getting medals. 15. Ibid.,

Landmarks 16.

et

al.,

pp. 145, 136. Ustrialov was a former Cadet, who had published Changing and Paris, and who returned to the Soviet Union in 1935.

in Prague

This connection was noted in Ocherki

istorii

sovetskogo kino, ed.

Iu. S.

Kalashnikov

3 vols. (Moscow, 1956-61), 2:108.

77

Demons behind the Screen "This

the

is

way our films

often end.

"But Fridrikh Ermler's film only begins this way. "This

happy

disguise.

.

.

state

a device of the plot (siuzhet).

is

The enemy

is

in

.

understand the logic and tactics of knowledge; to create new forms of art." From Shklovsky's 1939 review of The Great Citizen, in the (probably revised) version printed in Za sorok let (Moscow, 1965), pp. 211, 212-13. "[Ermler's] collective is trying to

the

and with

fight,

this

"Ermler poses the problem independently, deriving

it from the thick use film images in order to find by himself the correct basic solution of one or other topical and burning question to do with the fight of a Bolshevik for communism." Eisenstein, "Three Directors: 3)The Bolshevik Artist," Iskusstvo kino, no. 5

of

life

as

we

(1941) :36.

78

live

it.

He

tries to

Subhistorical

Ermler took on the role of sorcerer's apprentice

mons

when he chose The De-

model for the conspiracies threatening Soviet society in the 1930s. Sergei Kamenev, one of the two leading figures in the supposed Trotskyist conspiracy portrayed by Ermler, had been involved in an attempt to disseminate Dostoevsky's novel. During the interval between Kamenev's removal from political power and his arrest and trial as one of Kirov's assassins, he was assigned some responsibilities in the field of as a

publishing. In January 1934 in an article over his

Kamenev announced

own name

in Pravda

the publishing plans of "Academia," listing a sepa-

Demons, for which he himself was to write an introducPresumably he proposed to extend his earlier defense for publishing

rate edition of The tion.

Dostoevsky, arguing that because the novel reveals to poverty" of Dostoevsky's ideal,

it

would help

its

readers the "inner

extirpate the "last

remnants

of petty-bourgeois illusions." In January 1935 David Zaslavsky launched an attack

on

this

forthcoming edition in an

article in

Pravda under the

title

"Literary Rot," describing the novel as "the filthiest libel against the revolu-

Gorky came out in his role as champion of Russian literature, saying The Demons was "much clearer and less untidy than many other of Dostoevsky's books" and that it and The Brothers Karamazov were his most successful novels. Zaslavsky countered with quotes from Gorky's own articles on Karamazovery. By the time the new edition of The Demons went to press, Kamenev had to hide his introduction under the pseudonym P. P. Paradizov. By the date of publication, Gorky's belated defense was powerless to save the edition. It was effectively suppressed, and the Paradizov/Kamenev introduction was excised from the copies that surtion."

that

79

Demons behind the Screen News of this Trotskyist-Dostoevskyist conspiracy was stifled. Whether Ermler knowingly alluded to this episode in modeling the Trotskyite conspirators in his film on characters from The Demons is unclear. In any event Ermler's susceptibility to a dangerous example for the interpretation of events was passed over. Perhaps it was felt that his relabeling of Dostoevsky's revolutionary forces as counterrevolutionary had made the whole disturbing vision of this demon of darkness safe for a while. The Demons possessed some inner power that made it dangerous. Surely its power was not that of an obscurantist ideology. Dostoevsky questioned and doubted his own most cherished ideas. He was not a convinced believer; he could not speak with one voice. One disturbing thing the novel does is to present a world where discourse has broken down and ideas acquire a dangerous separate life. Tragically, this world betrays and perverts man s best hopes. People needed a certain distance from the purges to see the absurdity and the evil of all the ideological explanations and justifications, the denunciations, the confessions, and the condemnations. From this distance they might see that The Great Citizen, with the credence it gave to official ideas, was more a symptom than an explanation of the times. Perhaps they needed this distance really to understand The Demons. In the 1960s and 1970s one director, Kozintsev during his great final burst of creativity came to understand why The Demons could serve as a model for the understanding of Stalinism. vived. 1

1. Concerning Kamenev's edition of The Demons, see Vladimir Seduro, Dostoevski's Image in Russia Today (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1975), pp. 292-93. Concerning Zaslavsky's and Gorky's interventions, see B. Bursov, Lichnost' Dostoevskogo: Roman-issledovanie (Leningrad, 1974), p. 92, and L. Grossman, Introduction to Dostoevsky: A Biography, trans. M. Mackler (London: Allen Lane, 1974).

80

.

PART

II

Power and the Exorcism of Genius The popularity

of the four-time Laureate Ivan Pyriev

is

beyond ques-

tion.

Of the People. For the People. the People is grateful to him.

And

The People From itself.

gives birth to

all

sorts of

men and women.

And for itself. The genius Lenin. The blazing falcon Gorky. The fiery tribune Maiakovsky. And the same People gives birth

to thousands of kolkhoz brides, hundreds of thousands of tractor drivers, pig-girls, and shepherds. It gives

birth to district Party secretaries It

also gives birth to Ivan Pyriev

these

live

an inspired

life.

.

and Red Army

soldiers.

— the author of films in which

all

of

.

Our cause is a fighting one. There are many fights ahead. And the fighting has to be tough, well aimed, and well timed. It is no disaster if not every shock (udar) is pretty. There are times when a strong shock matters more than an elegant shock. In subject matter shock [work] Pyriev will always be right in step. And for this the widespread thanks to him of the People. For the People knows, loves, and values those who emerge from its entrails.

Eisenstein, "About Ivan Pyriev" (1946)

Ideological

need due weight in the history sometimes little more than screens for power struggles. Eisenstein knew what was involved in these struggles: "the private, nighttime, leg-dislocating business" and "the forces which almost always have a name and address." In the thirties he was the victim of much ill-intentioned and supposedly ideological criticism emanating from Boris Shumiatsky, the head of the Soviet film industry, who was jealous of Eisenstein's genius and authority and was in a position to take action against him. At first Shumiatsky prevented Eisenstein from starting films; later he resorted to the banning of almost completed films. Shumia-

The

individual

and the

role of accident

of a subject. Ideological battles are

1

fell victim to the forces of denunciation that had made his He was purged and accused of allowing Trotskyists, Bukharinists, Fascists, and other foreign agents to wreck the film industry. But before that he had helped to launch the career of Ivan Pyriev, who after The Party Card (1936) was the establishment's favorite son and Eisenstein's chief of-

tsky eventually career.

ficial rival.

The tangled relationship between Pyriev and Eisenstein is beginning to be documented; it is now part of the published record that the rift between them began in the Proletkult. What is not known is the cause of this rift. According to Jay Ley da, who gives it on his authority, Eisenstein told Pyriev that he had no talent as an actor and should try something else ("Ivan, nothing will come of you"). The ultimate significant twist in their relationship developed much later, during World War II, when Eisenstein announced that his films of Ivan the Terrible would be followed by an ad-

1.

Eisenstein, "Sergei Eizenshtein" (1944), in Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 6 vols. (Moscow,

1964-71), 1:95.

83

Power and the Exorcism of Genius remember the connection Gorky had established between the two names back in 1913?) The announcement provoked Pyriev to prove himself as the maker of the new Russian Dostoevsky and so the true claimant to Eisenstein's position. This he eventually did, confirming the weaker, commonplace, naturalistic tendencies of Soviet film; his popular films stressed external, cumbersome detail and broad, colorful characterization. By accident, Dostoevsky was aptation of The Brothers Karamazov. (Did he

on which Pyriev's struggle for possession of the norms and meanings of Socialist Realism was fought. At the end, being in a position of power, Pyriev was also free to trespass beyond the prescribed respectability into cruder reality. His last film, a three-part adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov, does justice to his oddly Dostoevskian-Karamazovian temperament if not to Dostoevsky. the ground

84

CHAPTER

4

Eisenstein 's

Cinema of Cruelty

My sadism is an "acquired," literary one.

I

did not learn "sadism" in the

happens in a charming way in the life story of Dostoevsky's Netochka Nezvanova or in the similarly situated first impressions of David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and other suffersituation of child's play, as

ing children of my beloved Dickens. Eisenstein, Yo

Eisenstein

was

a many-sided genius,

whose

writings about aesthet-

and painters, including Zola, Remand Dostoevsky, are interesting in relation to the films he made or proposed to make and also in themselves. As a visual artist he sees dimensions of Dostoevsky's work to which literary scholars are blind and finds in it ciphers for the extension of film language. Studies in many areas on gesture as language, with Meierhold; on ics

and about

particular writers

brandt, Pushkin,

—

the image as a principle of structure in art in the Elizabethan drama;

on trauma followers

as the basis of the artistic personality, in

Freud and his

— prepared Eisenstein to be a particularly good seer of Dos-

The nature of his artistic gift as a creator of dramatic and the development of that gift toward film tragedy together ac-

toevsky's work. films

count for his growing interest in Dostoevsky. The new waves of directors and auteurist and structuralist critics in recent years have been reluctant to recognize that gift and its force. After doing long service at home among the dealers in Stalinist aesthetics, for whom Eisenstein had no notion of realistic or "living" man he has been subjected to similar accusations from the champions of new 85

Power and the Exorcism of Genius radicalisms in film.

He was too

directorial

and

theatrical, giving

no

space for spontaneity; his historical films were operatic and Wagnerian; he missed the narrative and descriptive realism proper to film;

were overly static and composed; his montage was doctriand manipulative (of course, since he had been influenced by D. W. Griffith, a reactionary and racist); he was too ideological, reducing the viewer to the role of mere consumer and judge. The novel has room for both the analytic novels of Flaubert and the poetic novels of Joyce. Surely in film there is room for a deviant genius and an obligation to see how his practice continually subverted and went beyond his ideas. In Eisenstein the move was from exciting propaganda to explosive testing of forms and ideas. There was no disingenuous conversion and acceptance, no retreat to entertainment. He explored the limits of artistic expression in Stalinist Russia and Depression America and in the process suffered terrible losses: Bezhin Lug and Ivan the Terrible, Part 3 were destroyed; Ivan the Terrible, Part 2, fell victim to Eisenstein's own mutilations; his script for An American Tragedy, with all its extraordinary inventiveness, was too subversive for Paramount, which rejected it along with his proposal for Sutter's Gold; the footage of Que Viva Mexico was never given to him for cutting; a long series of Russian projects scarcely got beyond the preliminary stage a comedy, "MMM"; an exposition of Marx's Capital; two historical films, "Moscow 800" and "Ferghana Canal"; an experimental color film about Pushkin's life and works, "The Love of a Poet." The six or seven surviving films are classics that speak for a whole revolutionary generation who had fought for something more than power. In his last years Eisenstein's development as an artist, his ideas on art, and his experience of life were all taking him closer to Dostoevsky. He had read Dostoevsky's major novels as a child. In his midfor an object lesson in dle years he returned to them on occasion the single-shot treatment of the murder scene in Crime and Punishment and for an ally against the advocates of everyday realism. While he was working on the Ivan trilogy in Alma-Ata, he reread The Brothers his shots

naire

—

1

—

1. The editors of the six-volume selection of Eisenstein's writings, Izbrannye proizvedeniia (Moscow, 1964-71), 5:584, note that, after an initial attitude of reserve, Eisenstein made increasing reference to literature, starting with Joyce and Zola; going on to

Pushkin, Gogol, Shakespeare, and Balzac; and in his Nikolai Leskov as well.

86

last

years taking on Dostoevsky and

Eisenstein's

Karamazov and

Cinema of Cruelty

was kindled. "I demake and would make was The

his creative interest in Dostoevsky

clared that the next film

I

wanted

to

Brothers Karamazov." 2 According to Eisenstein, this declaration led to Pyriev's "wanting" to

make

a film of The Idiot (using for the

title

role the

actor cast by Eisenstein in the part of Ivan's half-witted cousin). In the

had momentous consequences for 2, and the scrapping of access to studios and devoted all his evi-

event; Pyriev's desire or ambition

Soviet film. After the suppression of Ivan, Part

Part

3,

dently

Eisenstein lost his still

considerable energies to theoretical writing, working

ously to assemble and complete old projects,

furi-

some going back almost

A long study on pathos ("Nature Is Not Indifferent"), which he now returned to, is filled with references to Dostoevsky, and fifteen years.

other interesting material

is

contained in the manuscripts for another

long study, "Method." 3 In his last month Eisenstein again faced the cinematic challenge of Dostoevsky in an extraordinary gesture-bygesture analysis of Rogozhin's attempted Idiot.

4

Finally,

the

murder

of

Myshkin

in

The

"Autobiographical Sketches," which Eisenstein

wrote during this period of remarkable literary productivity, 5 make tantalizing use of Dostoevsky's characters as models for his own experience. In his last years and months Eisenstein was ready for an encounter with Dostoevsky on the ground of art or, failing that, at the level of lived experience.

Dostoevsky and Eisenstein's Tragic Aesthetics and analytiwere directed to practical concerns. As a young ma n of twenty-two fae spf pu t tn destroy art; the established order of society^ Had to be abolished and with it the role of art, which offered fictitious In the early revolutionary years Eisenstein's theoretical

cal writings

2.

Eisenstein,

"Pro

Domo

Suo,"

an unpublished manuscript, dated 28 Aug. 1947, It belongs with "The Question of Mise-en-Scene,"

in the Eisenstein Archive at TsGALI.

which Eisenstein wrote

in

January 1948 as a chapter for his often interrupted manu-

script "Rezhissura" or "Direction" (published in Izbrannye, vol. 3.

4).

See Appendix B. These manuscripts are discussed at length by V. V. Ivanov for their

contribution to semiotics, in Ocherki po istorii semiotiki v SSSR (Moscow, 1976). 4. Eisenstein, "The Question of Mise-en-Scene: Mise-en-Jeu and Mise-en-Geste" (1948), in Izbrannye, 4:717-38. 5.

Published selectively in Izbrannye,

Memoiren, 2

vol. 1,

and

in full in Eisenstein, Yo: Ich selbst

vols. (Berlin, D. D. R.: Henschelverlag, 1984), in

German.

87

Power and the Exorcism of Genius satisfactions in the place of real ones. "To

kill!

To

destroy! This noble

worthy of Raskolnikov, swayed other heads besides mine, whether for the same chivalrous motives or the same incomplete thoughts I do not know." But in order to destroy art the young Dostoevskian "criminal" felt that he first had to master its secrets, and with this twofold aim he took his stand on the LEFtists' "platform of impulse

to

kill,

when there was a general outcry for and documents, for the abolition of meaning, for construction rather than organicism, and for the actual rebuilding of life without fictions and fairy tales. The young Eisenstein practical hatred for art" at a time

replacing the image with facts

played with his intended victim, studied

it,

tried putting

it

to utilitar-

and succumbed to its charm even as he turned his training in engineering and mathematics to the task of reducing art to a theory. "The victim turned out to be more cunning than the murderer; while the murderer thought that he was stalking his victim, the victim carian uses,

ried off the executioner." 6

This

was the beginning of Eisenstein 's

"bipolar activity in

art."

Some-

times he would subject a work of art to analytic commentary, and

sometimes he would turn

to creation to test theoretical hypotheses.

Eisenstein found that he learned equally from both forms of activity.

"And actually

for

me

that

successes and bitter the

was the main

however pleasant the work we note a contin-

thing,

failures!" (1:104). In his

between practice and theory, a constant willingness to an openness to new ideas and to technical innovations, a generous concern to advance the state of the art. Much that he could not re-

ual interplay learn,

and is partly subsumed in The Ivan trilogy grew out of a scene from the tragedy Boris Godunov which he proposed to use in an experimental color film about Pushkin's life and works; the famous monologue about Boris' bloody path to the throne would have led to a vivid filmic treatment of Boris' nightmares (3:492-93). Later, when much of Ivan, so long in gestation, was aborted, Eisenstein had to get his remaining satisfactions from theory and writing. The uncompleted Ivan films remained at the forefront of his practical, creative concerns in his last theoretical writings. The many references to Dostoevsky there are connected directly and indirectly with these films. alize in film plays a big role in his writings

films

6.

he did

realize.

Eisenstein, "Kak ia stal rezhisserom" (1945), in Izbrannye, 1:101, 104, hereafter cited

parenthetically in the text by

88

volume and page number.

Eisenstein's

Not long before his death Eisenstein gave a knowledge of the novelist:

Cinema of Cruelty

fairly full

account of his

Dostoevsky has long been "outside" my authors. In fact my interest in him arose only "through Ivan/' and this came about in Alma-Ata, that is to say, had been prepared. Moreover, it came about only long after the script through The Brothers Karamazov, which I reread there. My first readings of both The Idiot and The Brothers are lost somewhere in utter oblivion. Wrongl I first read The Broth e rs inm 191 4 in Staraia Russa when I was getting ready to meet Anna Grigorevna Dostoevsky, whom we had invited for tea and cherry pie (an episode I have described in my "Memoirs"). Crime and Punishment I read twice. Once wearily in my schooldays (I .

remember I

read

it

der" for

—

it

was

in

.

.

my father's study, and so it was in Riga before 1915).

again in Kislovodsk in 1933

my classes

at

GIK

.

.

.

?

when I was working on the

"mur-

[the State Film Institute].

I cannot remember when I read (probably also in the summer and I had so completely lost any associations with it that in hospital last year [1946] I was astonished to find that it contained the story of Nastasia Filippovna. From my first reading I remembered only that the book described some kind of a strange house belonging to Rogozhin with a picture by Holbein (I liked this picture very much). Everything else was quite beyond recall.

The

Idiot

of 1914),

7

A lot

of the

new interest

in

Dostoevsky has to do with characterizawas concerned with the collective

tion. In the earlier films Eisenstein

hero or with the individual as part of a

collective. In Ivan the Terrible

he addressed the problem of the great man in history and thus the problem of the human character (far more complex here than in Alexander Nevsky, which was a testing ground for ideas on the relationship between visual images and sound images). What drew him to Ivan was "the tragic duality along with that fusion into a unity which makes the characters of Dostoevsky so fascinating." 8 Here he needed professional actors, and in his search for a fully expressive art he was

Domo

remembered one other episode from The 1:465.) In addition he had done some serious thinking about The Demons (which he read while at work on Ivan, in 1944, on the train from Alma-Ata back to Moscow) and "The Meek One," and he had some knowledge of The Village of Stepanchikovo. (See Izbrannye, 3:392, 4:451.) The Demons and The Gambler he saw as works connected with the postrevolutionary music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev (Yo, 1:413). Note that he did not get to talk about The Brothers Karamazov with Dostoevsky's widow. (See "Autobiographical Sketches," in Izbrannye, 1:426, 465.) "Pro

7.

Idiot

8.

— Ippolit

Suo." Eisenstein possibly

s failed suicide. (See

Izbrannye,

Eisenstein, "Neravnodushnaia priroda," Izbrannye, 3:138.

89

Power and the Exorcism of Genius ready to draw on the experience not only of his master, Meierhold but also of Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater. He drew, too, on the full resources of speech (in a script of wonderful resonance written by himself), sound,

and music

(Sergei Prokofiev's

work on the

trilogy

was

properly collaborative). Eisenstein was conscious of the richness and distinctiveness of the resources available to

him

in film, but Dosto-

evsky provided a measure of the challenge facing him, to

show "the

dy-

namic unity of mutually opposing principles." About Dostoevsky 's characters Eisenstein writes: Along with the giants of Greek tragedy, which embody the contradictions of the Greek national character, we are bound to recall that array of characters and images which surpass them in their range of superhuman "lacerating" passions, the

most innerly contradictory characters and im-

ages in world literature before the October Revolution.

Namely, the tragic images of Dostoevsky. Raskolnikov, who out of great affliction and pity proceeds to the

First,

crudest act of blood.

Next his proud women with bustles and parasols and flounces, those Petersburgian true sisters to the ancient Medeas, Phaedras, and Horatian

who can inhumanly humiliate one of the mighty — a "million— and in the next instant wallow in the ashes of self-humiliation

mothers, aire"

at

who is unworthy of their spittle. Then a holy ascete who "stinks." And then Ivan Karamazov, whose "second" nature is

the feet of a nonentity

materializes before his eyes

and engages

in the

so intense that

it

cunning casuistry of met-

aphysical argument.

And a hero bearing the stigmata of duality with the militant invincibility and the guileless meekness of an idiot, with the collisurname Myshkin [mousy] and the name Leo which Dostoev-

of a shining knight

sion of the

sky gave to him. The range of passions and the theatricality of these Dostoevskian char-

who as Maikov noted seem to be illuminated by an unnatural electric light, are not the only reasons why Dostoevsky springs to mind along with ancient theater, and ancient theater along with Dostoevsky. In both one is often struck not so much by duality and doubleness as, above all, by unmotivated disintegration of someone's character into an extremity or pole to which it cannot be reacters with their highlighted outlines,

duced or

reconciled.

With the Greeks the change Like the

first

awkward

step

is

abrupt, short.

away from the

primitive dramaturgic taboo

imposed on the actor by the persona-mask with its welded, fixed countenance, in which without a change of image or character he played the 90

Eisenstein's

Cinema of Cruelty

Then came the possibility of change. PeoOnly the coming of Shakemask could be changed. speare in the sixteenth century and still more of Dostoevsky in the nineteenth raised tragedy from the level of opposing component halves and tragedy from beginning to end.

ple realized that a

led to a

full

.

.

.

unity in opposition of the proponents' characters, so that

there resulted an unsurpassed dynamics of inner tension, with outbursts that led

from adoration to murder, from hate to love, from meekness to with that "divine ecstasy" in which all their deep pathos is un-

bestiality,

folded. (3:136-37)

The conception

of Ivan the Terrible

owed much

to Eisenstein's fa-

and Ben Jonson (3:139), but in the event, Eisenstein found a Shakespearean and Dostoevskian duality of character in the hero toward which he had been moving. In a desperate attempt to make the film acceptable, the last time he had access to the cutting room Eisenstein excised much of the criticized brutality and violence from Part 2 of Ivan; possibly the debt to Webster and Marlowe was highlighted in these scenes, as well as in the last part of the trilogy. The core of the film, which Eisenstein

vorite

"archaic" Elizabethans, Webster, Marlowe,

sought to preserve, involved the "unity in opposition" of Ivan's characEisenstein approvingly quotes Belinsky's view of Ivan: "We can un-

ter.

derstand the madness, the bestial bloodthirstiness, the unheard of crimes, the pride along with the burning tears, the tortured repen-

tance and the abasement, in

all

of which Ivan's

was manifested. We

life

can also understand that only angels can change from spirits of light Ivan is instructive in his madness; he was a to spirits of darkness. fallen angel, who in his fall discovered the strength of an iron charac.

ter

and the strength

.

.

of a superior mind."

Though

Eisenstein criticizes

Belinsky for not seeing the necessity of Ivan's change of character,

— to unify Russia in spite of the — he admits that he too in his film

given the historical challenge he faced fierce opposition of feudal interests

was

less

drawn by the

ose inner conflicts."

objective historical results than

by

"the grandi-

9

makes great use of musical analogies in his theoretical He knew that in music he could find what he described as a "unity in opposition," and to explain how he characterized Ivan in the films, he relies above all on the term polyphony. In "Pathos" he disEisenstein

writings.

10

9. Ibid.,

pp. 138-39.

We hear the voice of a man who had been furiously criticized for

his interpretation of Ivan. 10.

The term had been given currency by

Bakhtin's influential

book on Dostoevsky s

91

— Power and the Exorcism of Genius cusses in detail the handling of the funeral service for Ivan's wife, Anastasia. The dominant emotion in this scene is despair. In Potemkin a visual "polyphony" of grief was created with shots of different faces in

crowd edited in a sequence to convey the rising course of emotion. Correspondingly, in Ivan different shots of the tsar beside the coffin are edited into a sequence, and the transitions from position to posithe

The whole

is used as a sort of orbody serving as instruments. But the addition of sounds, voices, and music make the polyphony of grief and despair audiovisual. The significant images and sounds include Ivan

tion are cut out.

figure of the actor

chestra, with the parts of the

moaning, the knocking over of the candlestand, Ivan's face with a bright patch half devoured by shadows, Ivan's head thrown back and up, his crazed eyes peering over the carved coffin, his barely audible whisper, "Am I right?" In this scene two contrasting voices that of the metropolitan, reading psalms urging passivity and acquiescence,

—

and

that of Ivan's faithful informer Maliuta, confiding to

plots by the boiars

—

climax of the scene the

and he

him a series

of

play an especially important part. At the ecstatic despair turns to forceful anger,

tsar's abject

continue his struggle against the boiars and the church. Here the theme of despair and impotence which dominates rises to

the scene

is

reconciled with the theme of the film as a whole

power. 11

To explain what he was doing in this very Dostoevskian scene of depower and rebellion, Eisenstein introduces the notion of a

bate about

fugue (which, interestingly, is the term he applies to The Brothers Karamazov). He uses the word in the sense of "Bach's conversation of several speakers, in which it is best for someone to remain silent when he has nothing to say" (3:360). Ivan the Terrible is a fugue in which the basic

theme

is

power. The speakers in

this filmic conversation include

edited pieces of film, each one regarded as expressive of emotion, and certain other speakers not present in silent films

music. Such a

full

— voices, sounds, and

analysis as Eisenstein hints at

would

take into spe-

account the characters, the acting, the composition, and other elements of expression. cific

all

the

poetics in 1929. Eisenstein's use of the term partly overlaps with Bakhtins, but there is

no evidence that he had read

this book.

Eisenstein's "carnivalization of experience"

is

See the interchapter "Voices" herein.

something

Bakhtin and to Dostoevsky. 11.

"Neravnodushnaia priroda," esp. pp. 338-60.

92

else that brings

him

close to

Eisenstein's

Cinema of Cruelty

new interest in characterization and in musical struchim to expand and to rethink his notion of pathos in art, which he had first introduced in connection with Potemkin. The meaEisenstein's

ture led

sures of pathos applied to Ivan are his character as the "dynamic unity of mutually opposing principles/' the polyphonic presentation of his character,

and the unity between

this characterization

and the 'mu-

rendering of the landscape and setting" (3:136, 339, 359, 394). In his theory Eisenstein speaks as a Marxist dialectician engaged in the struggle to create a human world. Nature is not indifferent; for a start, sical

not "the nature around us" but rather "the nature of man, who does not approach the world indifferently but passionately, actively, and creatively, and recreates it" (432). Of course the nature around us is also shaped by man. But it is art that truly humanizes nature, so that it becomes an allegory (294) about man and shows what the idea of harmony between man and nature can mean. A pathetic structure serves "to embody the relation of the author to the content and at the same time to get the spectator to relate to this content in the same way" (62). Hence, the work is characterized by organic unity and gives a sense of the unity and diversity of the world. Where Eisenstein's new theory differs from the earlier one is in the stress on a composition that has the emotional form of the author's relation to the subject rather than a composition embodying the laws governing the natural phenomenon. 12 In discussing landscape paintings, he is interested above all in the emotional forms underlying their composition (hence a hidden music is attached to landscape in art). There is a stress on image rather than representation. In his analyses Eisenstein considers art a metaphor. it is

In a previous formulation of the theory of pathos, the thetic

work is that

ex-static state.

A

it

puts the viewer

pathetic structure

(or

mark

of a pa-

reader or whatever) into a new,

makes us

relive "the

moments

of

transformation and becoming," of processes such as the transforma-

steam or ice and of iron into steel (3:70). In a fully pawork "each element corresponds in its structure to an ecstatic so that it either is changing or has changed into a new quality." 13

tion of water into thetic state,

The change

emphasis can be observed in "Neravnodushnaia priroda," an unfinof sections written at various times from 1939 to 1947. The first and earliest section was published as "The Structure of the Film" in Film Form, ed. and trans. Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949). 12.

ished work

13.

in

made up

See "Rezhissura," 4:256.

93

Power and the Exorcism of Genius In the new theory the scientific models and the psychological mechanisms survive only as ghosts, and ecstasy is defined with reference to the works of art themselves. For instance, Eisenstein compares the various versions of El Greco's Purification of the Temple, showing how they move from illustration and narration to a more symbolic and

imaginative vision. static leap,

He

finds,

although there

is

however, that the series lacks a true econe taking us beyond the series to the

Resurrection of 1595-1598. This ecstatic transformation affects every-

— the —

thing in El Greco's art

palette, the

brushwork, the composition,

and the conception and makes him the great, individual artist he is. It raises him above the "measured and trivial" constructions of so

many of his

contemporaries (3:147-52).

Pathetic art

is

prevalent in periods of social change. At other times

the task of art tends to be the reflection of reality, but great artists can

stand outside their time to reveal the pattern of the great

moments

of

becoming of man and of history. Both Oriental landscape paintings and Piranesi's Carceri engravings go beyond ordinary realism, the latter in their passion and the former in their luminosity. There are two forms of ecstasy, "an aggressive Western one and a quietistic Eastern one." In Piranesi everything is "dynamic, a whirlwind, a furious rhythm of involvement in depth and inward." In the Oriental landscapes everything leads to "a peaceful and solemn ascent to luminous heights." The true artist is like Pushkin's prophet, who has a coal burning in his breast and whose divine word burns the hears of men. El Greco, Piranesi, Zola, Whitman, Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoi are "consumed by ideas which are more valuable for them than life itself" (3:182-83, 171).

In the context of Eisenstein's discussions of El Greco, Piranesi,

and

Dostoevsky, the Ivan films are a fulfillment of the tradition of pathos. are also an extreme development of the techniques of montage with which Eisenstein had been working, seeking to arrive at the language of emotions. Mise-en-scene, mise-en-shot, and gesture form one dramatic and organic whole. With speech and intonation and sounds the montage extends into a vertical dimension. And with Prokofiev's

They

music "penetrates the fabric of the scene and flows back into the plastic medium from which it used to be heard, to arise, to be bom" (3:390). The stresses no longer lie between the shots as in the silent films, in which the joins between the film strips provided a rhythmic score,

94

Eisenstein's beat; they

now lie

worked out the

within the shots

(3:384).

14

Cinema of Cruelty

(Eisenstein

and Prokofiev

articulation of the "harmonic counterpoint" in collabo-

ration during the final cutting of the films).

The

polarities in Ivan's

character are extended into the whole setting, in the contrasts be-

tween

Ivan's role as powerful leader of the Russian people (in the bat-

Kazan and in the concluding scene of Part 1) or as the master schemer surrounded by court intrigue in the claustrophobic interior of

tle

scenes (393-94). But the nature of these oppositions cannot be taken Beyond the dualism, ambiguities open up in his identity.

for granted.

No

relationship with

plays roles

(as in

him can be taken

for granted. Ivan constantly

the staged deathbed scene and the abdication se-

quence). In the carnivallike freedom of Ivan's revels with his opri-

masks are worn and identities are swapped (Eisenstein moves world of primitive drama). Ivan places the imperial crown on his feebleminded cousin Vladimir and acts the fool to ferret out the assassination plot. Fedor Basmanov, who has regarded Ivan as an alternate father, feels jealous over this sudden intimacy with Vladimir and while dancing in woman's garb appears to offer himself to Ivan as chniks,

back

to the

a substitute wife. In

submerged

its

ultimate, ecstatic development, character

in a carnivalistic

world akin

is

to that of Dostoevsky's De-

mons. 15 In the carnivalistic climax of the truncated trilogy, outward power is seen as growing inner disintegration. The truth of the visionary autocrat seems questionable and dangerous as his energies are given to strange games. Throughout, Eisenstein's wonderful control and deliberation are evident (he compares himself to a player moving pieces on a chessboard), but the Ivan he has left us defies such formulas as "the necessary cruelty and even mercilessness of a man whose

14.

Regarding the

way this development was

anticipated in silent film, see Eisenstein,

"Za kadrom," in Izbrannye, 2:290-91 ("The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideo-

gram," in Film Form, pp. 38-39). On the ecstatic connections between different forms of art, Eisenstein wrote with specific reference to Ivan the Terrible, quoting from Repin,

who

Son was inspired by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's II in March 1881 (Yo, 1:414). from Eisenstein's detailed work notes in Appendix A show how

says his painting Ivan Killing His

"Revenge" in the aftermath of the assassination of Alexander 15.

The

carefully

selections

he planned

this role playing.

Elsewhere Eisenstein wrote about the underlying

and festivals. In "Rezhishe discusses Russian mystery plays as challenges to ecclesiastical authority. On the carnivalistic exchange between the "Marseillaise" and "Mein Lieber Augustin" in The Demons (pt. 2, sec. 5), see Eisenstein, Yo, 1:414. cultural significance of the licence allowed during carnivals

sura" (4:253)

95

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

was to create one of the greatest and mightiest The film is about absolute power, about the ecstatic transformations of absolute power, and above all, with the emotional form of its composition, about the felt and lived experience of absolute power. Its profound and pervasive dualism is tragic rather than dialectical (see Appendix A). Eisenstein arrived at a tragic vision, historical mission

states of the world." 16

as did Kozintsev, working from very different principles, in his last film,

King Lear, a quarter of a century

was

later.

impressed with his method of polyphonic fusion. He held that it corresponded to the highest stage in the history of thought, the first being the undifferentiated consciousness; the second, the analysis and isolation of each phenomenon; and the last and highest, the recreated whole, which gives "life to the connections and interactions of the separate parts and reveals to the consciousness the Eisenstein

truly

fullness of the synthetically

the

method

of socialist

an individual within a

art,

apprehended world." 17 He presents

particularly suited to

collectivity

.

.

.

when each

show

individual

independent, personal task in the solution of the (3:323).

He

Ivan films

it

as

"the actions of

knows

common

his

problem"

rather revealingly suggests that the real organic unity of the lies in this

method

(rather than in their theme)

link this "unity" to the stage of

Now after passing

development of Soviet

and

tries to

society:

fire of war the Soviet nation has achieved which was being forged in all the years of Soviet power. Is this taking place through the oppression of one part of the country by another? ... at the expense of some individuals? Is that which

through the

the monolithic fusion

is

independent

lost in the fusion? Is originality

reduced

to facelessness

and mediocrity? No, no, a thousand times no. The amazing thing about along the dimension of the problem of the nature of Soviet power is that personality there is an astonishing harmony of the one and the many, the collective and the individual, independent nationality and socialism.

—

—

(332-33) is Eisenstein here? It is hard to see how he could say all with the fantastic realism of the Ivan films to show how painful

How ironic this 16.

Eisenstein, "Ivan Grozny," in Izbrannye, 1:193. In "Sergei Eizenshtein"

(ibid.,

compares the trilogy to a chess-game with the tsar and the boiars as opponents. But the metaphor is ambiguous. Are two opposing chess-masters fully in possession of one another's strategy? Isn't the object of the game simply victory, and 1:91 -92), Eisenstein

isn't

17.

the cost of victory irrelevant?

"Neravnodushnaia priroda," 3:326-27.

96

Eisenstein 's

Cinema of Cruelty

and unstable a "monolithic fusion" could be. Eisenstein was suspicious of art produced in periods of stability and habits of thought fostered by absolutism (3:1 73). 18 Perhaps he refused to see the implicaGermany, his faith in dialectical progress under Stalin could be renewed. Or perhaps he hoped that statements like this one from his manuscript would clear the way to the release of the second part of his film. Eisenstein did have some doubts about his achievement. Art was supposed to be a vehicle of knowledge, but his new method could produce artistic solipsism. "The perfect fusion of the parts with one antions of his vision; in the excitement of victory over Nazi

other

may

slip into a distinctive self-enclosure of

the thing in

itself.

The channels through which the work draws the viewer into itself may be closed." Wagner's music dramas suffered from this self-containment. But the big danger was regression. The too perfect fusion of image and sound could produce the synesthesia characteristic of primitive thought (3:422-23). In our ordinary existence this sense-

we

dreams or in states of was particularly suited to recapture primitive forms of thought, but to do so might be to stand in the way of knowledge. He found that the first part of Ivan the Terrible succumbed to dream-visions in several places. His major criticisms of his method and achievement reflect his duality as an artist and as a theorist. He has the same difficulty with the Ivan films as he had with The Brothers Karamazov in his studies for "Method" and for a film adaptation. Dostoevski's novel is a fugue, a conversation of several voices, but to break it into component parts is awareness

is

something

find only in

intoxication. Eisenstein did think that art

difficult

because of "the

This dense "bonding"

intricate

is

weaving of interconnections"

similar to

what happens

(3:299).

in the Ivan films.

Alexander Nevsky was like a long scroll unfolded horizontally: "You can even read it as two parallel horizontal lines in the score the sound line and the image line just like the lines of air, water and earth in a Chinese landscape." In contrast, Ivan is like a strip that has been "rolled back on itself because the relationships and interweavings have become so intricate and the elements forming the whole emotional unity are so numerous" (374). The old LEFtist iconoclast reasserts himself. Eisenstein wants a perceptible counterpoint. He wants an awareness of the joins in the film.

—

—

18.

See too 331-32, and "Za kadrom," 2:288 (Film Form, p.

35).

97

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

Cinema other

is

arts.

supposed

A

to

be a young art arising from the decadence of

perceptible counterpoint

is

characteristic of literature in

mature decadence as well as in its vigorous youth. He speaks above all of Laclos, but he mentions too the epistolary novels of the young Dostoevsky (3299). Perhaps Eisenstein felt uncertain and fearful as to what the dominant voice of Ivan would have been had he continued its

was also a vehicle of self-knowledge. His remind us of the Raskolnikov-like young man who know the structure of art so that he could destroy it.

his analysis of the films. Art self-criticisms

wanted

to

Confluences

Through most

of Eisenstein's career Dostoevsky

wings. Eisenstein turns to

him on

occasion, but

is

it is

waiting in the

only at the end

that Dostoevsky plays a significant role in Eisenstein's thinking. His early theories

and

films

were worked out without reference

when Old and New was

to Dosto-

growing campaign against Formalism, Eisenstein drew on Dostoevsky's famous statement to Strakhov: "The everydayness of phenomena and the established view of them fall short of realism in my opinion; in fact, the reverse." Eisenstein used this to argue that form could not be separated from ideas, or rather ideology. Without ideology filmmakers would never produce revolutionary realism but only reproduce trivial (poshlyi) everyday life and "established" (bureaucratic) views unfired by enthusiasm. 19 Eisenstein's attitude to literature was initially guarded. Literature might restrict him in his creativity and in his attempts to create a language of film. Later he came to see literature as a welcome challenge to and test of the expressive power of film. His knowledge of literature grew and with it his enthusiasm for individual writers (it is impossible to subscribe to Shklovsky's view that Eisenstein was not much interested in literary art) For a while the problem of the inner monologue in literature seemed to hold the key to the future of film. Here a limit of expression had been reached; Joyce's solution to the problem was "an evsky, but

criticized in the

.

extremely

brilliant

19. Eisenstein, "V

one within the cruel

limits of literature." 20 In Po-

interesakh formy" (1932), in Izbrannye, 5:47.

20. Eisenstein, "Odolzhaites'" (1932), ibid., 2:77 (translated as "A

in

Film Form).

98

Course in Treatment"

Eisenstein's

Cinema of Cruelty

temkin and October, Eisenstein had reached a limit of his own; the had the structure of emotional speech, but for the

events in these films

laws of "affective logic/' he needed to turn to inner speech, which was governed by sensual thinking. 21 Inner speech could be rendered in film; indeed it was only in this new art form that Joyce's problem could find a solution. Eisenstein had been pondering this problem for six years when he found that he needed an inner monologue in the script of An American Tragedy so that the thoughts and actions of Dreiser's hero should appear in clear relationship to the society that condemned him for murder. Paramount could not accept Eisenstein's view that American society was the real culprit, and his inner monologue was never made. 22 Eisenstein discussed his plans for an inner monologue in film with Joyce when they met in Paris in 1930 (as a result the almost blind Joyce wished to see the parts of Potemkin and October which bore on this question, and he later confided that Eisenstein was one of only two directors to whom he would entrust Ulysses). Eisenstein was particularly impressed by the "inimitable sensuousness" and the asyntactic form of Joyce's prose. He mentioned Dostoevsky as one of Joyce's predecessors, but with regard to content only, and Edouard Dujardin as another, with regard to writing technique 23 He referred specifically to the irrationality of the inner monologue of Dostoevsky' s "The Meek One" and considered how an impression of this irrationality might be given on the stage through an illusion of inverse perspective. 24 In the yet unpublished "Method," Eisenstein further discusses Dostoevsky 's fantastic tale, commenting particularly on the shortcomings in the rendering of inner speech: magic of the true movement of inner speech, he "roughness" and takes as measure the rhetorical model of

After sensing the

smooths out

its

the conventional form of inner

.

.

.

declamation. In two or three places

true samples of "the other syntax" break through, but they are infinitesi-

mal

in the context of the general conventionality of the

the

meek

raw life,

monologue about and even these examples are really fragments of colorful of which Dostoevsky captures the "colloquial" syntax. 25 wife,

21. Eisenstein, "Dickens, Griffith,

and the Film Today"

(1942), ibid.,

5:174-77,

and Film

Form, pp. 249-51. 22. "Odolzhaites,"

2:69-79 (also in Film Form, pp. 103-4).

23. "Autobiographical Sketches," 1:485. 24. "Rezhissura," 4:555. 25.

Quoted

in Ivanov, Ocherki, pp. 120-21.

99

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

Many people mourned

the

end

an view of them: "The arrival at an understanding of normal film speech quite naturally went through this stage of excess in the realm of the trope and primitive metaphor." 26 One reason for his passing interest in the inner monologue with its "other syntax" was that it would have enabled him to continue his early experiments with poetic imagery. When he finally returned to film after the disasters of An American Tragedy, Que Viva Mexico, and Bezhin Lug, he had a far richer affective language in audiovisual counterpoint, and the inner monologue no longer presented the same artistic challenge. He knew that a subjective world could be created in film he mentioned Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca and Spellbound and Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake but the result might be little more than a trick effect. 27 (Paradoxically, when he again considered how to render the inner state of a Dostoevskian character, he had made such advances in the investigation of expressive means that he was able to offer an extraordinary behavioral analysis of the elusive Prince Myshkin.) What Eisenstein retained from his early work was his discovery of the power of the image. He spoke of silent films as the passing of

age of poetry, but Eisenstein later took a somewhat

critical

—

—

and Paul Fortress, he was being suffocated by images because he was

feelingly of Dostoevsky's situation in the Peter

where he

felt

that

denied materials to write. 28 Eisenstein was faced with a series of problems connected with the centrality of the image in art: to give shape or image to the flood of representations, to avoid the excesses of symbolism, to convey metaphor without resorting to poetic tropes, to pro-

duce an

illusion of reality. Eisenstein

worked out most

of the so-

lutions to these problems without reference to Dostoevsky but later

drew on him in discussing these questions. The image was crucial, but too great a generalization of the image led to abstract symbolism. This fault affected the German Expressionists, including Robert Wiene in his films Raskolnikow and Dr. Caligari's Cabinet. Eisenstein 's criticism of the Dostoevsky film applies chiefly to (

the filmsettings, since the characters were played by ater actors

who had been

Moscow Art The-

stranded in Germany during the war, and

under Wiene's direction they combined their usual naturalistic acting with mime.) Excessively generalized images had some of the signs of and the Film Today," Film Form, p. 246 (and Izbrannye, "On Stereo-Film," in Izbrannye, 3:475-76.

26. "Dickens, Griffith, 27. Eisenstein,

28. "Rezhissura," 4:205.

100

5:172).

Eisenstein's

Cinema of Cruelty

schizophrenia and tended to appear in times of social decay, as in Germany after the collapse of the imperial government and the onset of postwar inflation. 29

For Eisenstein the problem of visualizing and creating an acceptable

problem of finding the signifiis an example of the cant detail. The in his later significant and more kind of image that becomes more films {pars pro toto or synecdoche), replacing similes like the roaring marble lions in October. The problem is particularly great in waking illusion of reality

was

in large part the

surgeon's pince-nez in Potemkin

life,

with

its

flood of experience. Eisenstein notes Dostoevsky's sense of

dreams. This characunderstood even by people who see everyday reality as a "viscous undifferentiated mass." As an example of the dream world, Eisenstein cites Ivan Karamazov's conversation with the devil, in which the button on the sleeve is given alongside "higher phenomena." But Eisenstein's own interest does not lie in waking reality or in the world of dreams but in "a borderline state between the

the part played by the teristic of

the

significant detail in

little

dream world

is

two." 30

have offered some actual help to Eisenintroduced into an everyday tale could have a metaphoric meaning. The fan of vertical clouds above Ivan the Terrible on the hillside at Kazan is an image of kingship rather

Where Dostoevsky seems

stein

is

in recognizing

to

how

details

than a meteorological phenomenon. The shadow of an astrolabe on the wall above Ivan's head in another scene is meant to suggest his thoughts. Eisenstein is not concerned just to represent an object but to reveal meaning and emotional significance in it. Composition, framing, lighting, the position of the object are all crucial. He speaks of this metaphoric presentation of objects as siuzhet v detaliakh. It is a term he takes from Andrei Bely's study of all the everyday objects that acquire a dual significance in Gogol. The term can be applied to Dostoevsky too. "I think that starting with the nail on Dmitri's big toe when he is arrested at Mokroe and ending with the imagistic conception of the novel as a whole, Brothers Karamazov belongs in a class with the phenomena so masterfully unfolded by Bely in Gogol." Eisenstein acknowledges Gogol and Dostoevsky as two influences that helped him to recognize his own method (along with black cats, which first

29. Ibid., pp.

66-67.

30. "Autobiographical

Sketches/ 1:508.

101

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

showed him

that

an object has

"a

meaning apart from

its

immediate

being"). 31

Artistic

Encounters

In January 1943 Eisenstein proposed to make a film of The Brothers Karamazov. From the published evidence it is possible to offer only general speculations about the form of the film he had conceived. The ambiguity or dual significance of imagery discussed by Bely would have been central. Both the big toe that Dmitri suddenly glimpses and the "imagistic conception of the novel as a whole" were marked by dual significance (1:91). The detail about the big toe has of course the reality of dream logic. Apart from that it functions as a badge of shame, of self-punishment. Certain remarks in the fragmentary "Chapter on Dostoevsky" suggest ways in which this image might be related to the conception of the novel. Eisenstein says that in Dostoevsky "fate dims where there is a Redeemer who willingly takes on, who willingly transfers to himself the guilt and sin of the world. The emphasis is not on fate, but on the situation of transference. The system of ex.

.

.

.

.

.

constructed on the figure of transference

—

on The four brothers are linked by transference of ideas, of actions, of guilt. They are images of one another. "In Karamazov there is no sense of punishing fate and so be-

pressive devices

metaphor

as a

is

means

of expression."

—

cause of this absence of a punishing

fate all the characters

without ex-

ception are compelled to punish themselves." 32 The key to the images

seems to lie in shame, guilt, self-punishment, transference and redemption. His interest in The Brothers Karamazov was excited by the thought that with this novel's intricate metaphoric and metonymic structure he might achieve what he had been calling for: "the creation of the montage image-episode, the montage image-event, the montage image-film in its entirety of equal rights, of equal influence and equal responsibility in the perfect film on an equal footing with the image of the hero, with the image of man, and of the people." 33 We know too that he was impressed by Brothers Karamazov as a of the novel

—

fugue, although

its

—

complexity almost defied analysis. In explaining

31. Eisenstein, "Sergei Eizenshtein," 1:90-91. 32.

See Appendix

B,

and also Ivanov, Ocherki, p. 179. and the Film Today," Film Form,

33. "Dickens, Griffith,

102

p.

254 (and Izbrannye,

5:179).

Eisenstein's

the appeal of fugual; contrapuntal; relates

them

Cinema of Cruelty

and polyphonic

he theme

structures;

to "the repetition of a theme, the tracing of the

through other themes the weaving and unweaving of different voices working as ramifications of a single whole." From the point of view of montage, he was interested in all literature in which the exposition was entrusted to different points of view and especially to shifting points of view within the confines of a single scene. He was enthusiastic about Orson Welles 's Citizen Kane, in which the story was told from different; intersecting points of view; each characterized by its own cinematic style. 34 Eisenstein's "Chapter on Dostoevsky" indicates that the treatment he was working on for the characters depended on the individual expressions of the same metaphor. The published material contains two adaptations for film of scenes from Dostoevsky; one from 1933; showing Raskolnikov's murder of the old pawnbroker; 35 and another from the last month of Eisenstein's life; dealing with the attempt on Myshkin's life by Rogozhin. The Crime and Punishment scene was a pedagogic and technical exercise carried out for Eisenstein's students at the film institute GIK; it was designed ;

;

to

show the

rich possibilities of expression within a single shot. Eisen-

stein exploits to the full the technical characteristics of the wide-angle lens; the

depth of

field;

and the properties

of the two-dimensional

screen and within these parameters concentrates on mise-en-scene leaving aside speech and intonation as expressive devices not part of the exercise. The mise-en-scene allows for the necessary

and gesture

;

and the pawnbroker; emphasizes the moments; and conveys Raskolnikov's confusion and the collapse of his theory of the superman. A sense of compression and stifling is created with the wide-angle lens. The adaptation is interesting as an illustration of Eisenstein's idea of the relationship between mise-en-scene and gesture; gesture is a compressed mise-enscene. The adaptation is a reminder that Eisenstein was very much aware of the possibilities of the long take. It is an illustration of his principle that montage exists within a shot as well as between shots. contrasts between Raskolnikov significant dramatic

"Neravnodushnaia priroda," 3:302-3. Kurosawa's Dostoevskian film Rashomon way in which the murder scene and trial in The Brothers Karamazov might have been treated, although Eisenstein seems to have been looking for more of an interweaving of the stories. 34.

suggests one

35.

Vladimir Nizhny, Lessons with Eisenstein, trans, and ed. Ivor Montagu and Jay

Leyda (New York:

Hill

and Wang,

1969).

103

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

"When the tension within a shot reaches its limits and can increase no longer within the shot, then the shot bursts, splitting into two editing pieces." 36

The second adaptation, almost the last thing Eisenstein wrote, is a tour de force. 37 Eisenstein takes the scene in the hotel corridor where kill Myshkin after following him through the Petersburg for a whole morning. Eisenstein looks for the

Rogozhin attempts to streets of

St.

subtext or key images that underlie the representational reality

and

and

scene to its context (Stanislavsky and Freud are influences he acknowledges in the search for an underlying reality [4:724]). He takes into account the specific expressive power of characterization

literary

relate the

language and above

all

what

repeatable in Dostoevsky's writing.

is

unique, particular, and un-

What

is

specific to Dostoevsky's

method is the "inverse commonplace," described by Turgenev in cal words quoted by Eisenstein:

criti-

Do you know what an inverse commonplace is? When a man is in love, his heart flutters; when he is angry, he turns red, etc. These are all commonplaces.

a lion.

With Dostoevsky everything

What does he do?

is

man meets run away or

reversed. For instance, a

Naturally he turns pale

and

tries to

any ordinary story, one by Jules Verne for instance, that is how it But Dostoevsky will do the opposite. The man will turn red and stay put. This is an inverse commonplace. This is a cheap way of passing

hide. In will be.

for

an

original

man.

(4:724)

With his dialectical belief in the unity of opposites, Eisenstein is not shaken by Turgenev's criticism. He himself holds that "in any given conditions of composition both the direct solution and the directly opposite one are equally true and effective. This phenomenon occurs in the very treasure-house of the expressive signs of man

instance, in a

moment

of terror a

the cause of his fear; he

may

man

— nature. For

does not only draw back from

just as often find himself

drawn

to

and

approaching it, as though entranced." 38 Eisenstein sees Dostoevsky as one of the true poets, who can subjectively experience an emotional state and communicate it in objective form (3:210). With regard to the scene from The Idiot, Eisenstein stresses that Myshkin is a Christ-like 36. Eisenstein, 37. 38.

quoted

in Nizhny, Lessons with Eisenstein, p. 124.

"The Question of Mise-en-Scene," 4:717-38. "Neravnodushnaia priroda," 3:234, and see p. 242 for another reference to Turge-

nev's characterization of Dostoevsky's

104

method.

Eisenstein's

character,

opposed sense, he

who

in his

moral and

to his society. is

of writing

From

seen as absurd,

was

Cinema of Cruelty

spiritual outlook stands in every

the standpoint of ordinary

idiotic.

way

common

Dostoevsky's characteristic

method

perfectly suited to the actions of this character. "From

Myshkin's point of view, in Rogozhin's attack it is Rogozhin who is in danger, rather than he himself, Lev Myshkin. Rogozhin is on the point of damning his soul." 39 Everything in Eisenstein's mise-en-geste serves to bring out Myshkin's character. "The center of gravity of the interpretation, the center of radiation for in this scene of 'collision' sion' of

all

the elements of resolution

must be the motives determining the

Myshkin's actions"

(4:725).

Eisenstein analyses the passage into a series of actions (1)

'inver-

Rogozhin's eyes gleamed;

(2)

mad

a

and gestures:

smile distorted his face;

(3)

Rogozhin's right hand was raised; (4) something glistened in it; (5) the prince did not think of stopping it; (6) the prince shouted, "Rogozhin, I don't believe seizure; step.

(9)

Then

quence

it"; (7)

the prince gave a terrible howl;

the prince

fell

(8)

the prince

had a

backward, banging his head on the stone

Eisenstein looks for the most significant element in this se-

to serve as a focus for the rest

prince did not think of stopping

it.

and

fastens

This, as

it

on the

fifth

one: the

happened, was the most

The challenge was to find a cinematic way of deand with it Myshkin's state of mind. Eisenstein develops a mise-en-geste that penetrates the meaning of the scene and reveals the profound consistency of Dostoevsky's vision. The prince could not simply perform another action, for this would literary description.

scribing this nonaction

not be seen as a negation of the normal action of stopping the attack.

The reason that the prince does not think of stopping Rogozhin's murderous gesture is that he wants to see who the man is, to learn whose eyes have been following him all morning. In bald outline the action of the Prince

is like

inner meaning

that of a

man who wants to

stop the attack, but in

its

The dual action of looking and recognition is conveyed by Myshkin's eyes, which first squint and strain and then open wide. But the "oppositeness" of Myshkin's behavior has not yet reached its limit; with childlike innocence Myshkin reaches up toward the threatening hand and feels the cold metal. He shakes his hand as in a gesture of denial, and then his whole body starts shaking as he calls out, "I don't believe it," not because he is 39.

it is

quite the opposite.

"The Question of Mise-en-Scene," 4:723.

105

Power and the Exorcism of Genius because he fears for Rogozhin. The next transihowl and the collapse, and to motivate this Eisenstein suggests having Rogozhin lower his hand as if to say, "You are wrong; it is true." Rogozhin now stands revealed to Myshkin as someone who has been a murderer not just in thought but in intent. Myshkin cannot bear this and collapses just as he would do if he were afraid, although fear is no longer called for. Earlier Rogozhin appeared as a brutal peasant, his right arm raised above his left shoulder to deliver a powerful blow; he peered out over his arm like a hidden, secretive animal. Now, in astonishment at Myshkin's behavior, he stands lost; his only gesture afraid for himself but

tion

is

is

to the

a passive one, the weak, silent lowering of his arm.

The inner meaning or subtext

of the passage appears in the actions

Eisenstein has used to translate the literary text into the language of

A

film.

touch

series of expressive devices are used: sight (Myshkin's eyes); (his

hand); speech

(his voice).

Two

and Rogozhin's

of the key

themes

in this

have been prepared for in the preceding scene of the nightmarish wanderings through St. Petersburg. 40 A mise-en-scene based on the "logic of the situation," on ordinary everyday behavior in the situation, would completely miss scene, Rogozhin's eyes

knife,

the point. In other passages the ordinary logic of the situation

may

supply some of the actions, but the inner meaning or subtext will intersect with this representational reality. For example, in the scene close to the end of the novel where Myshkin accompanies Rogozhin back to his house, according to ordinary logic, the two men walk on opposite sides of the street to avoid exciting suspicion. But underlying this representational reality is an image of the relations between the

two men, going

their separate but parallel

their relations before the corpse of the

ways

to the

woman who

denouement

till

of

then divided

them. Besides the specific Dostoevskian subject matter, method, and vision that

come out

in the scenario, there

mythological structure. "Pro

Domo

emerges an underlying

Suo," the manuscript that

was

at-

tached to this interpretation of the frustrated murder attempt in The Idiot, examines some parallels between Dostoevsky's scene, starting from Myshkin's hesitations about whether or not to go back to the hotel, and the scene in Ivan the Terrible following the feast with the

40.

The musical analogy Eisenstein uses

Domo

Suo."

106

for these scenes

is

"symphonic flow"

in "Pro

Eisenstein's

oprichniks,

when

Cinema of Cruelty

the tsar and his followers go into the cathedral to

simpleminded cousin

pray. Ivan corresponds to Rogozhin; Ivan's

Vladimir to Myshkin. Ivan and Vladimir are

rivals for

the throne;

Rogozhin and Myshkin are rivals for Nastasia Filippovna's love. Rogozhin and Ivan both appear as "elder" brothers; and in both cases the elder brother is cast as the younger brother's murderer. There are several parallels between the actions of Vladimir and Myshkin. Moreover, the hotel corridor and the cathedral are both womblike. "The underlying scheme towards which both subjects were striving was one and the same. As the situation 'sank' beneath the confines of an anecdote down to a deep mythological base, it provided an impulse for the two subjects to arrive at the same structure." There is here an echo of Eisenstein's old notion that art was a basic, primitive form of thought, with its own laws. (In this connection he found it both significant and amusing that when Pyriev first proposed to film The Idiot in 1943 he wanted Myshkin to be played by the same actor, Pavel Kadochnikov, as Eisenstein had used for Vladimir.) Eisenstein felt that there could be no question of borrowing (since he had forgotten his childhood reading of The Idiot) or of unconscious influence (the subject matter, setting, and historical situation were too different). But his discussion of the structural similarities between his film

and Dostoevsky's novel and

scene from The Idiot confirm feel in

his penetrating film vision of the

how close to

the last phase of his creative

and

Dostoevsky he had come to

theoretical work.

The Personal Encounter In a portrait of himself as an

ent in

all

his films

artist,

and observes

Eisenstein notes the cruelty pres-

that Ivan the Terrible

was

his favorite

hero. 41 Aggression characterizes his ideas about the construction of film

and

his theories of action

on the viewer.

All of this

he somewhat

playfully relates to childhood trauma, without attempting a complete analysis.

He was not

a "regular" child because he did not break objects,

torture animals, or tear out the insides of dolls. Since get rid of his primitive aggressions

and

his

need

he had

41. "Sergei Eizenshtein," 1:84-97. In the "Autobiographical Sketches"

Ivan's self-humiliations

and head choppings

failed to

for aggressive self-

he

identifies

(1:500).

107

with

Power and the Exorcism of Genius an

assertion, his cruelty sought

and

outlet in artistic themes,

methods,

showed how childhood he himself had been shaped

ideas. Eisenstein said his films about Ivan

traumas shaped Ivan as a ruler. Likewise, and maybe restricted as an artist by childhood trauma. Another artist whose work was marked by trauma, and whose example was therefore important to Eisenstein, was Dostoevsky. "The prob-

lem of transference of guilt and of transference of the act of redemption was Dostoevski's trauma." In contrast stood Pushkin, with his "lightness and transparency of manner" and his "inexhaustible variety of means and ways of expressing his thoughts." This free abundance had to be a result of Pushkin's freedom from "traumatic attachment driving thought." It is interesting that the one bit of to a guiding the proposed Pushkin film that Eisenstein reworked was Boris' nightmares, which moved into the traumatic and Dostoevskian Ivan the

—

—

Terrible. 42

wanted

have a sense of open possibility and of becoming. He experienced these in the Soviet Union, the United States, and Mexico, but after his various artistic disasters in these All his life Eisenstein

to

countries he could not be confident that his faith in the ultimate har-

mony and freedom thing. For

him

man, society, and nature would come to anywas no escape. He knew that Tolstoi took a dim

of

there

view of Dostoevsky 's restlessness; for Tolstoi the cure for restlessness lay in Confucianism or Buddhism. But Eisenstein suggests that the only place these ideals could find expression in "the police state of Pobedonostsev and Nicholas the Bloody" was in self-destruction or death. (Moreover, as an artist if not as a teacher, Tolstoi knew this.) 43 Perhaps Dostoevskian restlessness was preferable. However, the final image Dostoevsky leaves Eisenstein is a bleaker one, a despairing vision of meaninglessness.

the

In

"Autobiographical Sketch" beginning "There are [town]

squares that look

like

rooms," Eisenstein talks about places and people

42. The quotations on trauma come from "Method," as cited by Ivanov, Ocherki, pp. 100-101. Eisenstein aspired for harmony and unity, but he recognized that an artist might be confined by his time and place to the achievement of "tragic pathos" and "inner

division."

quotes

Maybe there could be only moments of contemplation of harmony. Eisenstein words in The Demons "There are instants, just five or six of them coming when suddenly you feel the presence of eternal harmony, perfectly within

Kirilov's

together,

:

reach" (3:392, 402). 43.

"Neravnodushnaia priroda," 3:409-10.

108

Eisenstein 's

Cinema of Cruelty

he has known and about books he has read during his arrives at the real subject of the sketch

I

once engaged in a Note: the

very Is

much like it

fairly

outcome

— suicide.

He then

complicated form of indirect suicide. is still unclear. But the affair looks

of the attempt

a fiasco.

for this reason that

pital after

travels.

one of the first books The Idiot?

I

read in the Kremlin hos-

my heart infarction was

Not for the title. But for the scene of Ippolit's unsuccessful suicide. A master at putting heroes in humanly shameful situations, Dostoevsky surpasses himself in The Idiot. Nastasia Filippovna, Ganechka, and the money. The whole story of Rogozhin's love. Almost all the situations in which Prince Myshkin appears, from the scene of his arrival up to his speech at Aglaia's house. And among these scenes perhaps the most tragically humiliating is Ippolit's fiasco after his public "exhibitionism" in the reading of his confession-testament. (1:465)

on

he sought to commit suicide not by hanging himself or by eating forbidden food but by work. At the same time the notion of fate as an automatic, mechanical, inexorable proEisenstein goes

to say that

He finds this notion of fate in his treatment An American Tragedy (it fascinated him too

cess fascinates him.

of

Roberta's death in

in

murder of the old pawnbroker). 44 His image of fate went back to the civil war years, when he was living in a locomotive in the railroad yards in Smolensk. At night he would walk the long distances along the lines, searching for his locomotive. Most frightening of all would be a long train backing up, moving straight toward him, with a red light mounted on the rear car. Nothing could stop it or hold it back. "The opponent. A random encounter." It is to these images that Eisenstein traces the soldiers' boots on the Odessa steps, the knights' helmets, and the oprichniks, gliding in black robes as they follow the Raskolnikov's

trembling candle in Vladimir's hands.

The kindling of my intention goes back to the autumn The beginning of 1946 is bearing fruit. This was probably the most awful autumn of my life. Leaving aside two catastrophes:

of 1943.

44. "Rezhissura," 4:277.

109

Power and the Exorcism of Genius The wreck of Mexico, and the tragedy of Bezhin

The departure

for

Lug. (1:465)

Alma-Ata had meant leaving behind

of his artistic struggles for twenty years,

all

all

the records

his unfinished writings,

seemed to haunt his apartment. He felt one with these imagined ghosts of ideas." In Alma-Ata all he had were some narrow creative satisfactions in his work on Ivan, and of these he says there were not many. We know that for a while his thoughts about a Karamazov film gave him an escape into a world without punishing fate. The Karamazov world was, however, as he noted, one of self-punishment. Perhaps his decision to make Ivan into all

the unrealized ideas that

"physically

a suicidal project

was

his

own

self-punishment. Eisenstein's cruelty

could also be directed against himself. The sketch about his suicide attempt is filled with a poignant sense of waste and loss. But why does Eisenstein speak of his suicide as a fiasco? Possibly

because his

stroyed films had been no

criticized,

more

suppressed, mutilated, de-

successful at finding an audience

than had Ippolit's public confession and because he knew now that he could not complete his most fully engaged and dangerous film, Ivan, on which he had staked everything. He might not be able to choose his form of death since it had become almost impossible for him to work in Stalin's Russia. And with the heart attack came the image of blind crushing fate. For Ippolit there was no redemption, no possible transference. And so at the end Dostoevsky leaves Eisenstein with an image of shame, humiliation, and death. After writing this sketch, Eisenstein produced his remarkable plan for an interpretation in film of Rogozhin's attack on Myshkin, which came out of his work both as theorist and creator. His final encounter with Dostoevsky was an artistic one after all. His will to create was a refusal to accept the limitations of trauma and also a denial of fate.

110

CHAPTER

5

Ivan Pyriev:

Journeyman

Struggles of a

The principal and most subtly understood person in Dostoevsky is Fedor Karamazov, who is repeated over and over in parts and in entirety in all the novels of this "cruel talent." He is an indubitably Russian soul, formless and motley, simultaneously cowardly and inso-

—

—

lent.

Gorky, "On Karamazovery"

was for many years the dominant figure in Him estaoushment; he was also the most determined popuDostoevsky in Soviet film. The Idiot (1958) was followed by

Ivan Pyriev (1901-1968)

the Soviet larizer of

White Nights (1959) and, posthumously, by a three-part serialization of The Brothers Karamazov (distributed in the United States in a drastically cut version)

.

Although

who remembered him

this

stream of adaptations surprised those maker of popular and

as the Kremlin's favorite

pretty Socialist Realist musical comedies, he insisted that a Dostoevsky

back of his mind. He had in fact written the script for a two-part film of The Idiot in 1947, but the making of the film had to wait for the more permissive climate following the Twentieth

film

had long been

See

at the

1

A. Pyriev, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 2 vols.

(Moscow, 1978), 1:186. This the principal source of information about Pyriev and his views. Memoirs and articles from various journals make up the first volume; official speeches form the greater part of the second volume, which has a useful filmography. The memoirs have 1.

collection

also

I.

is

been published separately

as

O proidennom

Iurenev's introduction to the two-volume edition insolently self-assured

and

bold, yet

deep down

iperezhitom (Moscow, is

1979). Rostislav

and provocative: "He was soul was wounded; he was openly

suggestive

his

partisan but percipiently just in his relations with people"

(1:8).

Ill

Power and the Exorcism of Genius Party Congress. Part 1 of The Idiot, subtitled Nastasia Filippovna,

was was never made. The idea of shooting White Nights had caught Pyriev's fancy, and this became his next project. Then after making a couple of other films, he devoted his energies to The Brothers Karamazov. He died just before completing the third and last film in the Karamazov series, leaving two of the leading actors, Mikhail Ulianov and Kirill Lavrov (who played Dmitri and Ivan respectively), to released; Part 2

finish

it.

Pyriev achieved his position of greatest influence in the years after

World War II. He was

and, for two years, director of the and became chairman of the Union of Cinematographers, which he had helped to organize. He was also a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the recipient of many awards. Obviously he was an important interpreter of Socialist Realism. Obviously too he enjoyed enough freedom to make films of the big Dostoevsky novels. Some questions to consider are why he chose to do this and what relationship the Dostoevsky films bear to his films of comedy, romance, and intrigue. Pyriev had limitations as a reader and as a filmmaker. He misunderstood Dostoevsky's art and saw Dostoevsky simply as a naturalistic genre writer. In adapting The Idiot he had his film team study the ordinary life ibyt) of the 1860s from pictures and old photographs, with a special eye to the layout of houses, people's costumes and coiffures, and objects in everyday use. For him this was what the famous "realism in a higher sense" amounted to, despite all Dostoevsky's statements protesting that he was not interested in the familiar aspects of everyday life or in historical reality, with its set and definite forms. In Pyriev's attempts to make period pieces, he showed himself the true artistic director

biggest studio, Mosfilm,

2

whom he began his an assistant in the making of Wings of a Serf. With Pyriev's approach the difficulty is to see what, if anything, set Dostoevsky apart from other writers of the 1860s and 1870s except possibly his heir to Iuri Tarich, the leading traditionalist, with

film career as

choice of characters and settings. Pyriev, working with a safe and established Socialist Realism, saw Dostoevsky as limited by his epoch. At best, he was a critical realist, who showed the faults of his society. Pyriev dismissed "mystical and

2. Pyriev,

Izbrannye, 1:185, 199, hereinafter cited parenthetically in the text by volume

and page number. See too Sovetskii ekran, no. 8

112

(1958): 9.

Ivan Pyriev pathological" aspects, for they (1:174-75, 199).

were not progressive or humanistic eliminate these qualities and still

He thought he could

retain the essential content of the novels, the inner lives of the charac-

"Without tearing the characters from their everyday setting, we intend to bring the viewer as close as possible to their emotional life" (202). Such a film might still leave us with something of the essential Dostoevsky were it not that Pyriev's notion of the inner life was a blank. He thought that a character's most important thoughts and feelings could be revealed through an actor's eyes (180). What Pyriev did not ters.

grasp was that there actor's eyes

feelings

is

a difference between turning a camera

and seeing through a

on an

character's eyes. Dostoevsky's idea-

cannot simply be read from an actor's

face;

they are a

way

of

experiencing the world.

and everyday psychology. A Dostoevsky film had to be above all an actors' film. Pyriev's main concern was to find actors who were convinced in what they were doing and who knew how to express passions and feelings (1:179-80). His need for the familiar and theatrical was associated with his natural and unreflecting simplicity as a filmmaker. He dutifully spoke of montage as a "characteristic of our film art," but for him montage was simply a problem to be solved scene by scene in the process of shooting (this "theory" was presumably his answer to Eisenstein's) (204). The main cinematic challenge as he saw it was to get some variety into the shooting of a scene conceived in terms of a fixed stage. "It would be easy to shoot continuous stretches of dialogue at long range and most of the scenes at medium range. But this would be theater. A great effort was needed to avoid theater in conditions of confined action in a small number of fixed decors" (182). A Dostoevsky film amounted to reducing the chosen novel to a series of set dramatic scenes, which would Pyriev stressed naturalistic settings

then individually receive "cinematic" treatment. Pyriev's view of montage did not rest on any elaborated notion of the language of film. At best he had an instinctive understanding of dramatic relationships within and between shots and of the overall rhythmic structure of a film. Despite the disclaimers, Pyriev worked with theater as a (primitive) model. Unfortunately, he soon forgot the little he had learned about nonnaturalistic theater in his early work with Eisenstein in the Proletkult and later with Meierhold. Pyriev relied heavily on the theater, without being a particularly gifted theater man. Great efforts were put into creating plausible interi113

Power and the Exorcism of Genius ors for the Petersburg scenes in The Idiot; the claustrophobic world in which Nastasia Filippovna had to decide her fate was well enough suggested by the naturalistic sets. But costumed characters have to move and speak, and once Aglaia Epanchin and her mother, both of them important characters in the novel, open their mouths, the illu-

sion of Pyriev's nineteenth-century Russia voices of the

new families

is

shattered;

we hear

of the Soviet establishment (without

liberate irony) His lack of a sense of time .

and place

left

the

any de-

Pyriev vulnera-

ble to gross mistakes in casting. Pyriev's version of

The

Idiot

shows

limitations. Nastasia Filippovna

is

crazed capitalist society. There

is

arising

his peculiar gifts

and

from the fragmentation of her personality which

makes her seem

at first so full of possibility

dimension underlying Myshkin's quest cause Pyriev believes

it is

their severe

presented as a victim of a moneylittle in her of the demonic quality in the novel

and promise. The

religious

brotherhood is ignored bea barrier to a modern audience (1:176). The for

dilemmas of selflessness are barely suggested; the cultural ambiguities and allusions attached to self-sacrifice and martyrdom are dropped; Dostoevsky's concern with the "perfectly beautiful man" disappears. Pyriev reduces everything to the moral qualities of "kindness and openness." Iulia Borisova and Iuri Iakovlev are well enough cast in their roles (as Nastasia Filippovna and Myshkin) but are left with little to do except provide a safe and generalized illustration of the inadequacy of goodness in face of the lusts and capitalist passions of nineteenth-century man. The one area in which Pyriev's notion of goodness is not a handicap is in the exploration of the scandals and intrigues surrounding the main characters, particularly in the scenes

when Nastasia Filippovna arrives unannounced to meet the family of her fiance and then her other suitor, Rogozhin, bursts in with his rowdy crowd of followers. Pyriev's The Idiot, Part 1, stands on its own as a reasonably complete piece. Indeed, the part of the novel it derives from has a dramatic integrity, but the film does not reflect the inner unity of the novel. In no way does it allow for the difficulties that would have faced Pyriev in trying to cram the remaining three-quarters of the novel into a twohour film. Pyriev's tendency to approach Dostoevsky scripts one scene at a time was in danger of leading to a second part consisting of at the Ivolgins,

3

3.

Pyriev's script for Part 2

114

presumably survives and might present some

slight interest.

Ivan Pyriev a series of unrelated scenes. (Charles Spaak's excellent script used by

Lampin pitfall.)

in his film

This

is

The

Idiot [1946] avoids this dramatic

surely one reason

and cinematic

why Pyriev did not complete the film:

did not hang together. Another reason must have been the inadequacy of the actress cast in the part of Aglaia, who would have had to play a much bigger role in Part 2. We see here another consequence of Pyriev's tendency not to think beyond the contingencies of the drait

matic situation of the moment.

With his everyday historical reality, his theatrical models, and his litdoes not advance the task of adaptation beyond Petr Chardynin in his 1910 Idiot. This silent film relied on mime and melodrama, and all the major scenes in the novel were enacted eral faithfulness, Pyriev

in the space of about twenty-five minutes.

rooms

The

richly overfurnished

in Chardynin's black-and-white late imperial version register

the confining nature of Dostoevsky's society rather better than do the

Open, unone scene Rogoby spitting water in

historical reconstructions in Pyriev's Sovcolor period piece.

affected vulgarity

had

a place in Chardynin's film; in

zhin revives Nastasia Filippovna from a fainting

fit

her face. But neither Chardynin nor Pyriev conveys the indeterminate nature of Dostoevsky's

reality.

Certainly

it is

a mistake to attempt to re-

produce the apparently known shape of past reality. Lev Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment scores a partial success by moving into the inner world of a character. Lampin's Idiot stresses the background of reform and thus creates a sense of fluid reality. Another solution is to transpose

Dostoevsky to a present setting or to a catastrophic or

postcatastrophic situation, as Kurosawa does in Hakuchi, his version of

The

Idiot, set in

postwar Japan, where the sense of dislocation and

the strangeness of Dostoevsky's world are wonderfully brought out. Placing Dostoevsky in a congealed historical reality

and casting him

may

as

have been all but inevitable at Mosfilm in the fifites, although the real lesson Dostoevsky had to teach was the challenge of apprehending the new. White Nights illustrates Pyriev's weaknesses without any compensating strengths. Dostoevsky was interes ted in the power and mystery of dreams, which gave the writer freedom but isolated him. a critical realist

What

is there for our sensuous lazybones in that life which you and I want so badly? He thinks that it is a poor and pitiful life, not guessing that for him too a sad hour may strike when for one day of that pitiful life he

115

Power and the Exorcism of Genius would

up

and wouldn't even give them up for and wouldn't bother to make a choice in that hour of sorrow, repentance, and indiscriminate grief. So far this stormy hour has not struck; he desires nothing because he is beyond desire, because he has everything; he is sated; he is the author of his life and creates it every hour as he likes. give

all

his fantastic years,

the sake of joy or happiness,

comes to see the increaswhich have only themselves to feed

In the cold light of the present, the narrator

ing insubstantiality of his dreams, on.

Now all

he can do

is

celebrate "the anniversary of his feelings, the

was once so sweet and never really was." 4 of an escape into happiness had been through His one chance

anniversary of what

his

love for Nastenka, but this turned out to be another fantasy or dream.

which he no longer believes are the only thing to give meaning. The distinction between dream and reality is crucial in Dostoevsky's tale, but Pyriev's world is conceived so utterly in terms of theater that the distinction disappears. The worst of it is that Pyriev is totally unconscious of his use of theatrical models. The aging narrator in the present of the film is clearly a young man with his meeting flour in his hair. When he relives his dream of happiness with Nastenka during the white nights we see him as a man without powder walking in a St. Petersburg made of ill-painted and poorly lit canvas sets. The actress who plays the part of Nastenka is strangely pert and confident for a girl who has been kept tied to her grandmother with a string and who is desperate for happiness. To indicate the nature of the narrator's dreams, Pyriev simply cuts in film clips of performances of the ballet and opera. Pyriev had a wonderful cinematic opportunity to indicate the strangeness of the Petersburg white nights, when for one fantastic moment the stuff of dreams merges with the stuff of life. Unlike Roshal's assistants long before, Pyriev did not rise to the challenge. Shklovsky was cutting: "The director Pyriev started by filming the white nights in Moscow where they do not exist, and so they had to be created in a workshop; the embankment and canals were built in an enclosed space. The white nights are a glowan absence of shadows. By mistake the ing a scattering of light workshop produced twilight and shipmasts seen through fog." 5 Dos-

The dreams his lonely

in

life

—

—

—

4.

—

Dostoevsky, "White Nights," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, ed. V. G. Bazanov, G. M.

Fridlender, et 5.

al.,

30 vols. (Leningrad, 1972-), 2:116, 119.

Shklovsky, review of White Nights, reprinted in Za sorok

let

(Moscow,

1965), p. 289.

Shklovsky also noted Pyriev's complete lack of a historical sense and his failure to realize

116

Ivan Pyriev toevsky's

work may be

subtitled a sentimental tale, but

it is

also a diag-

nosis of sentimentality. Pyriev simply reduced Dostoevsky to the worst

kind of theatrical sentimentality.

The Brothers Karamazov is an actors' film, which works rather betFor once we may believe Pyriev when he claims, "The depth, the

ter.

and even the extremity of Dostoevsky's depiction of feelwith which he recreated the world of human passions, are very close to me." 6 Pyriev was far less inclined to reduce this film to a moral complexity,

ings,

exposure of the power of money in the bourgeois Russia of the 1860s than he was in The Idiot; nor did he wish to deal with the power of fantasy, about which he knew nothing, as in the disastrous White Nights. Instead, he sticks more closely to the world of human passions, particularly with Dmitri, "a powerful, primordial nature, an intellectually and morally gifted person, wracked by tragic passions and perishing in the sink of vice" (1:196) and with old Fedor, who in the film turns out

be a wonderful study of sensuality and degeneracy. Despite these two interesting characters, the Karamazov trilogy has many familiar weaknesses, starting with the hackneyed naturalistic genre settings. The opening sequences show a picturesque old Russian monastery; bells are ringing; a crowd is dispersing after a service. Dmitri drives up and vigorously strides through the crowd. A procession of chanting monks emerges from the church; the camera swings up for pretty shots of onion domes and flocks of birds in flight. Dmitri marches through a glade of cardboard birches to Zosima's cell. Mother Russia seems as remote in the Mosfilm studios as in Southern California. Pyriev can manufacture local color, but except for a certain sensuality of vision he still does not know anything about different ways of seeing the world which would encompass Ivan's poignantly weak image of life, the sticky buds in spring, or Dmitri's sense of the living force of nature. Dostoevsky's idea-feelings are reduced to fleeting noto

—

—

tions.

We get some

thing

is

striking Dostoevskian precepts (such as that every-

permitted and each

is

responsible for

all),

but they are neither

nor debated. For the most part the trilogy illustrates a story rather than tells it. In the novel Pyriev notes "a sharp contrast of people and events,

felt

that the narrator's

dreams were connected with a wish

for a historical role and, indeed,

for revolutionary action. 6.

Pyriev,

Foreword

to the printed editing script of

The Brothers Karamazov.

117

Power and the Exorcism of Genius one extreme moral monsters such as Fedor Karamazov and at the other 'angels' such as Alesha and his spiritual instructor Zosima." He claims: "This work is very Russian, and of a

with

at

Smerdiakov, and

deeply national character. Therefore

it is

not surprising that the

attempts of foreign film masters to adapt

it

partial failure" (1:195-96). Nonetheless, despite his

spective, Pyriev either fails to give

own

national per-

us these extremes (with the one ex-

ception of Fedor) or renders them in distorted form. The sickly

and

pale; Alesha

is

many

have led to complete or

monks

are

strangely bland. Ivan unexpectedly looks like

a sturdy revolutionary; yet he

is

too overwhelmed by the implications

man

of action. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor is dropped, although Ivan's question that precedes it is kept: "Could you torture just one little creature in order to establish an order for men's lives in which they would find happiness, peace and rest?" Without the legend, the question lacks resonance, and Ivan's role as an intellectual is botched (Lavrov manages to salvage part of Ivan's role in the last film of the series). Pyriev has missed the opportunity to present a bold apology for a society providing equality and earthly bread. Moreover, innocence is not something Pyriev's cinematic eye can see. We do not have the child Iliusha, who rebels over the treatment his father receives from Dmitri and later dies. Alesha's innocence and the willingness of people to trust in him are simply not a problem for Pyriev. For some reason he retains the devil, but elsewhere he presents a compassionate, humane, socialistic Dostoevsky without any "pathological" probing into the mind and soul: Dostoev-

of "everything

is

permitted" to be a

— without

the "Dostoevsky-itis" or

Pyriev's blinkered interpretation, however,

does take in Fedor's sod-

sky without the Dostoevshchina "Dostoevskery."

den sensuality and the dynamics the world. In

of Dmitri's passionate approach to

much of the film the way of seeing is Fedor's. We note the

sensual touch: the sumptuous colors in Fedor's room, his blue-and-

gold dressing gown, a female nude (by Briullov) on the wall, the red-

carpeted

stairs.

curtains.

have

is

When Grushenka framed between rich

Pyriev shares this sensual vision.

(played by his last wife)

first

appears, her face

When Alesha visits her after Zosima's

is

death, the

first

shot

of her legs. Dmitri's intense experience of the world

is

we

also

some effective camera work in the scene at one moment the screen is filled with a shot of Dmitri and Grushenka lying in close embrace, and then the camera slowly caught, particularly in

Mokroe, where

118

at

Ivan Pyriev to

tilts

show the

legs of a police officer standing over

them. Pyriev's so-

conscience does not allow him to make anything of Dmitri's question "Is there beauty in Sodom?" Thus he reduces the impact of closely related words: "The terrible thing is that beauty is awful and mystericial

ous.

The

devil fights

with God here, and the battlefield

is

men's

hearts."

But a great deal of the real Dmitri survives in his conflicts with old Fedor, in the free celebration of his love for Grushenka, and in the words he speaks in the prison cell: "I can overcome everything; all suffering and all torture as long as I can say that I am alive, that I exist; and that I see the sun. Even though I shall not see it there in the mines ;

beneath the earth;

I

will

still

know it

is

there."

Fedor

;

too, suffers

from

Pyriev's social conscience: since the religious dimension does not exist;

the film character

comes across

as a

mere

atheist rather than a

blasphemer. But the absence of religion and the ignorance of ideology are far more damaging for Alesha and Ivan than they are for Dmitri; with his passionate experience of life; or for Fedor with his sensuality. Mikhail UlianoV; who played Dmitri; and Mark Prudkin who played ;

;

Fedor (and who had performed

this character

Moscow

had

Art Theater adaptation)

parts

on stage in the 1960 that were a proper chal-

lenge to their talents.

Self-portrait of the

Auteur

Why did Pyriev turn to What always

Dostoevsky? He himself wrote:

me was

contemporary life; I was insp ired by images They were the only ones I wanted to make moviesabout. And so I worked for thirty years. But then came a period in my creative life when I felt more and more keenly an inner dissatisfaction with my work. I began to feel that I was marking time, getting stuck, and repeating myself in my film directing. As I looked for the basic reason for these disturbing symptoms, it became clearer and clearer that the dramatic scripts I had to work on as a director seldom satisfied me. They almost never gave me a difficult creative challenge; they did not require the full concentration of creative powers, and did not give me anything new, unexpected and profound. Almost every script I received for shooting had to be reworked by me. I am not a dramatist, and so this compulsory reworking was especially burdensome. It took a lot out of me and often failed to meet my needs as a director. However much I strained my creative inventiveness, fantasy, and imagination, as director I often turned excited

of our simple Soviet people.

out to be powerless to conceal the defects of dramaturgy from the specta-

119

Power and the Exorcism of Genius tor.

ing.

With enormous inner unease I began to feel the danger of stereotypIt was becoming ever more difficult to resist repetition and sameness

my films.

in

7

Nowhere does

Pyriev

seem

to realize that

problems could

arise in the

adaptation of novels. Here, although he comes remarkably close to

admitting his failure as an self

by speaking of an

artist;

artistic

he

is

able to hide this truth from him-

impasse. Dostoevsky had provided an

escape. In looking to Dostoevsky, a better "dramatist/' he found "char-

and complexity, strong conflicts, powerful passions, and the art of lively, intelligent, and exciting dialogue" (1:191). He was struck by the power of Dostoevski's writings as compared with the scripts submitted to him, and despite his selfconfessed inadequacy as a scriptwriter, he was sufficiently confident acters with psychological depth

of his understanding of Dostoevsky to write

all

the scripts for his film

adaptations of the author's works. Pyriev it,

was driven

to look for a

more meaningful

art.

Did he achieve

or are his Dostoevsky films what one might expect from the

maker of

musical comedies and political films? The answer to both questions is

a qualified yes.

his

An

analysis of the other films suggests that even

comedies have a dark, or "Dostoevskian,"

side,

although only The

Brothers Karamazov trilogy begins to struggle out of the world of

ste-

reotypes which threatened all his work. 8 Sabotage, subversion, and conspiracy are the subject matter of his early silent film istocrat

The Government

Official (1930). Razverzaev,

has become an important Soviet

ing for the restortion of the monarchy.

new

factory.

Pyriev,

An

a quick-thinking

Razverzaev meets other counterrevolutionary sa-

"An Answer to the

Izbrannye, 1:263-64.

ar-

the destruction of

moment by

boteurs and conspirators in a church, which 7.

an old

while secretly work-

He orders

locomotives but is foiled at the last

worker at the

official

Open

is

well attended by gro-

Letter from the Mosfilm Studio Workers/' in

edited version of this confession of inadequacy appears in the

memoirs (1:190-91). 8. The following discussion

of Pyriev's early

work

is

based on a

selective

examination

One gap is The Conveyor of Death (1933), supposedly dealing with the struggle of the German working classes against Nazism, which was not released for screening by Gosfilmofond Archive. Another gap is the documentary films made by of different types of film.

Pyriev,

which

I

did not try to see. The musical films not covered include The Tractor

Drivers (1939), S/x O'clock after the War (1944), and Cossacks of the Kuban (1950). For a full filmography, see Izbrannye, 2:262-72. In his debut in film as director's assistant for

Tarich in Wings of a Serf (1926), he worked with some outstanding talents, including Shklovsky for the script and Esther Shub for the editing.

120

Ivan Pyriev

One

tesque survivals of the ancien regime.

of his contacts

is

a Black

Hundreds pogrom leader who plans the hijacking of a large consignment of government bills. The attempt fails, and the money accidentally falls into the hands of the affable bookkeeper of the locomotive factory (played by the great actor Maxim Straukh), who has been busily drawing on factory funds for his own needs. With the encouragement of his wife, the bookkeeper keeps the government money, although to salve his conscience he goes to the church and puts a large donation in the collection plate. The man taking the collection happens to be the Black Hundreds thug. The secret is out, and there is a desperate, comic struggle for the money. Naturally, the men are all apprehended ;

before the bookkeeper can to the

Supreme

Soviet

ambitions there. In the

fulfil

his

own

and pursuing final

plan of standing for election

his petty-bourgeois

scene the three

traitors

stand

Menshevik before

trial

the assembled masses.

This Expressionist film with largely negative types ran into ties

and was

he turned

shelved. Pyriev suggests

it

was too

difficul-

"Formalistic," although

to the Formalist Shklovsky for help in revising

and

editing

has some classic mad chase scenes and a memorable gallery of rogues. The churchgoers are as sickly a collection of people as the clergy in Pyriev's Brothers Kara-

the film so that

mazov but are to

it

might be released

(1:55). It

successful as grotesques. In retrospect

view The Government

characterization

Official as a

and techniques

comedy

effectively.

it is

easy enough

that uses Expressionist

But

it

suffices to set this

and original comedy Extraordinary Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) to see that

against Kuleshov's self-confident

Adventures of Mr. West Pyriev

is

in the

playing on the terrors of black

terrevolution

is

comedy

to suggest that

coun-

a real threat. Although the opponents to the regime

are simply villains, they are weak only because they are divided; the masses are vulnerable. In the context of the early years of the first FiveYear Plan, this trading in an audience's fear was too simply an invitation to exposure and denunciation. The Party Card (1936) implicitly endorses the purge trials sparked off by the assassination of Kirov in 1934. Though the subject matter is too serious for comic treatment, there is still some Expressionist exploration of horror within a developing Socialist Realist presentation of

romance. In the tivities

but

is

scene all of Moscow is given over to a well-orchesMay Day celebrations of 1932. Anna joins in the fes-

first

trated party for the

bored with the attentions of gentle, fair-haired Yasha. She 121

Power and the Exorcism of Genius delighted to meet Yasha's dark-haired Siberian friend Pavel, who soon gets a job in the same factory as Yasha and Anna. One day in a storm he finds Anna alone in a room, speaks about his hopes of being received into the Party, and ends up declaring his love for her. Actually Pavel is a saboteur. He sets fire to the factory, making it appear that he

is

has struggled to stop the fire. He is regarded as a hero and receives his Party card. Anna's doubts are settled and she marries him; the selfsacrificing and rational Yasha goes off to a kolkhoz in Siberia.

him a job

Pavel s brother-in-law gets

in a munitions factory. At

home

megalomaniac fit. An agent of a secret organization visits him, congratulates him on his work of infiltration, and instructs him to get hold of a woman's Party card. Pavel takes Anna's card. Next day Pavel has a

the police find

it

in the possession of a counterrevolutionary criminal

whom they have apprehended. Anna has of course been guilty of carelessness in not guarding her card with her votes to expel her,

perience

by

is

and Pavel takes the lead in

traumatic; Anna

terrifying flashes of light

to comfort her. Next

is

The Party committee denouncing her. This ex-

life.

in the throes of a

when

morning Yasha goes

evidence he has brought back to

nightmare punctuated

Yasha, fresh from Siberia, rushes in

show

to the Party

committee with had mur-

that Pavel, a kulak,

dered the founder of the Siberian kolkhoz. Meanwhile Anna discovers a paper revealing her husband's real name. Pavel surprises her

and

Anna reaches for a revolver he has been keeping and waves it at him; he tries to make love to her; Anna is saved from having to pull the trigger by the arrival of Yasha and the Party secretary. Anna goes back to Yasha as if her marriage to Pavel had never been. Everyone has been warned that counterrevolutionaries and saboteurs are threatens her;

everywhere and

The

will strike ruthlessly

even

at

the purest of the

faithful.

on the witch-hunt atmosphere of those years; it only rethe pathological behavior brought on by the purges. In contrast,

film feeds

flects

Ermler's Great Citizen did try to confront the issues laid

down

in the

Party line.

account of the production difficulties attending the film if he himself were the victim of intrigue and sabotage. The directors of Mosfilm finally shelved the completed film, but Stalin, who saw all films, screened it. The "political correctness" of the film was recognized; it was released and distributed with every mark of Party support. In the meantime, Mosfilm had barred Pyriev from directing Pyriev's

sounds as

for

two years, apparently 122

for actions taken against Eisenstein (Pyriev

Ivan Pyriev hints at the role played by certain too compliant artistic

comrades

in

suspension [1:74- 75]). To pursue his career, Pyriev went to the Ukrainfilm Studio in Kiev, where he made The Rich Bride (1937), a triumphant celebration of collectivization in song and dance. There are this

sweeping shots of the Ukrainian countryside and of the wheat harvest on the collective. The hero is a tractor driver, who has come to the kolkhoz to show how machines can help in the race to gather in the harvest. Nature and mechanical breakdowns are one threat to this vision of happiness. Another is the evil that lurks in men's hearts; the bookintrigues keeper once again a convenient petit-bourgeois villain against the tractor driver in an attempt to win the hand of Marianna (played by Marina Ladynina, for many years Pyriev's leading lady, with whom he scored his most popular successes). For the most part, the terrors of the present are overlooked. We are given a laundered picture of agricultural life, which could serve as an antidote to Eisenstein's Old and New, criticized by Pyriev for its heroine s distorted physiognomy and its nonrealistic "montage of attractions" (1:67-68). At the end of The Rich Bride the intrigues are exposed and everything is forgiven. Selfish passion is more comic than dangerous. Apparently, this film too encountered difficulties with the industry in Kiev and Moscow, and Stalin's direct intervention was needed to secure its release. The Pig-Girl and the Shepherd (1941) 9 is a marginally more somber piece, released when the Germans were threatening Moscow. Glasha in the title role (again played by Ladynina) is determined to increase pig production on the collective and so picks up all the knowledge she can on a trip to the Moscow Agricultural Fair. There she meets handsome Musaib from the Caucasus, and the two fall in love. The postal clerk Kuzma, from her own village, intrigues against Musaib and intercepts his letters. Fortunately, Musaib turns up in the village just in time to rescue Glasha from a marriage to Kuzma. At the end, love and the unity of the federated republics are celebrated in song, with Glasha saying, "There is no place more beautiful than our powerful and free Soviet land" and Musaib rejoining, "And when the tanks draw near, you and I shall go off to fight." Socialist Realism found expression as truly popular art in Pyriev's musical films. Pyriev's White Nights continues the sentimental themes of The Rich Bride and The Pig-Girl and the Shepherd, omitting the soaring panora-

—

—

9.

Shown

in the

West as They Met

in

Moscow.

123

Power and the Exorcism of Genius

mas and the happy ending. In contrast, the antecedents of his Idiot and Karamazov lie in the portrayal of bourgeois intrigues, jealousies, and decadence

in

The Government

Official

and The Party

Card. In the

early films evil appears in the struggles of the individual against the

Dostoevsky films it appears in a prerevolutionary sooppressed the individual. There is an ongoing concern with scandal and with the exploitation of sexual relationships to achieve power. The stereotypic view of old Russia and its survivals is rather more effective in the early films than when it receives more "naturalistic" treatment in the Dostoevsky films, without the benefit of caricacollective; in the

ciety that

ture or music.

There

is

a dark

and possibly "Dostoevskian"

films, just as there is a

Pyriev's vision incorporates

the early

Dostoevsky 's. The Dostoevsky films and of the same auteur. so to speak

work bear the imprint

—

Dostoevsky enabled Pyriev to go on making ters that led

mazov,

who

side to Pyriev's early

popular, socialist side to his Dostoevsky films.

—

films,

but the only charac-

him onto new ground were Dmitri and old Fedor

Kara-

represent a considerable psychological advance on, say,

Musaib and Razverzaev. Was it to these two Karamazovs that Pyriev was referring when he said that Dostoevsky was especially close to him? People remember Pyriev as a very Dostoevskian type. According to his own memoirs, he was born in 1901 in Siberia into a family of peasants and boat haulers. Drink and brutality were some of his early impressions. His father died in a drunken brawl. Pyriev went to live in the home of his uncle, an Old Believer, where he observed more drunken fights on family occasions and religious holidays. For a time he lived with his stepfather, a Tartar, whom he once had to fight off with an ax. He ran away and worked in a sausage factory, where he was kept awake at night by rats. In 1915 he enlisted in the Russian army, from which he was twice sent away because he was underage. There his artistic talent was recognized. At the time of the October Revolution he was in hospital, wounded. He set off for home and on the way joined a group of "anarchist maximalists" fighting against the Czech army in Siberia. After a bout of typhus he joined the Red Army. In 1921 he went to Moscow to study acting and directing; there he 10

joined Eisenstein's Proletkult theater. At the time of the

nomic 10.

Policy the troupe

was

starving. Pyriev states that

See especially Izbrannye, 1:29-45.

124

New

Eco-

he led a move-

Ivan Pyriev

ment to get rid of Eisenstein and to replace him with Evgeni Vakhtangov but that he failed and so was turned out and then went to work with Meierhold. All in all, Pyriev's life story sounds more like something out of Gorky than out of Dostoevsky. If he were less reticent on the subject of women, one might be able to say directly whether his passionate life had something Dostoevskian (or Karamazovian). Here the

official

record

is silent.

We have another kind of clue in the published and unpublished accounts of his relations with Eisenstein. One of the recurring themes in memoirs is his resentment of Eisenstein and his rejection of

Pyriev's

Eisenstein's film theories. Rostislav Iurenev, in the Introduction to the

two-volume edition of

Pyriev's writings, declares: "All his

jealous of Eisenstein, right from the Proletkult period

and

life

he was

that quarrel

which has remained unknown in film studies" (1:23)." One fact about Eisenstein's treatment of him is indicative: in Glumov's Diary, the short film Eisenstein introduced into his production of Every Fool a Wise

Man, Pyriev was for the film

cast in the part of a Fascist (this

has been

performance

survives,

recently rediscovered). Pyriev's public career,

af-

from the Mosfilm Studio, was a striking success in contrast to Eisenstein's; he made the films he wanted to make and got the technical resources he wanted. 12 Moreover, he had every mark ter his brief rustication

of official recognition.

when he had

It is

the

more

striking that at the

end

lishment, he could not forget his resentment of Eisenstein.

ment

of his

life,

attained a sort of preeminence in the Soviet film estab-

The

treat-

dead rival in the memoirs is at best ungenerous (1:66-68). was Pyriev's demon, whom Pyriev resented yet needed, without whom he might not exist. The rivalry with Eisenstein led Pyof his

Eisenstein

Immediately upon hearing Eisenstein's proposal to make The Brothers Karamazov, Pyriev gave notice of his intention to make a film of The Idiot (in January 1943). The script followed in 1947 and the half film in 1958. In the meantime he had tried to step riev to Dostoevsky.

13

11.

On

the quarrel, see also Jay Leyda,

ed.,

Eisenstein 2:

A Premature

Celebration of

Eisenstein's Centenary (Calcutta: Seagull Press, 1985). 12. The Conveyor of Death (1933) was one of the first

sound films. The 1948 Order of Lenin awarded to Pyriev was specifically for work in developing color film. 13. From Eisenstein's account of this episode in "Pro Domo Suo" (manuscript, dated 28 Aug. 1947, in Eisenstein Archive at TsGALI). It is of course possible that Pyriev had been nurturing a project to film Dostoevsky and that he was driven by a jealous concern than by simple rivalry with Eisenstein. Iurenev notes in his introduction that Pyriev carried Dostoevsky's novels about for years, marking them and writing on them, but he does not say when this habit started (Izbrannye, 1:19).

for the project rather

125

Power and the Exorcism of Genius by making his own Ivan the Terrible was stopped; but his script was rejected. Py-

directly into Eisenstein's shoes

when

Eisenstein's film

White Nights can probably be explained by his difficulties with The Idiot, by his wish not to concede defeat to Dostoevsky, and by a simple infatuation for the young actress Liudmilla Marriev's

Part 2 of

chenko. As for The Brothers Karamazov, the film Eisenstein wanted to it was Pyriev's ultimate chance to measure himself against his everlasting rival; an attempt to find in literature the source of Eisen-

make

;

power

stein's

self-liberation

as a filmmaker his genius.

and

It

was an

act of exorcism

and

vindication.

If this was Pyriev's motivation; it must be admitted that he partly succeeded. The Brothers Karamazov, with its almost scandalous lack

of respectability;

was

ration from people

joyed his

jolly

was not

still felt

musicals in their youth. The successful portrayal of

Dmitri was widely as "the

and even won grudging admiembarrassed because they had en-

a popular success

who

commented

dominant image" of

on. But though Pyriev spoke of Dmitri

this film (1:196)/ 4 his real interest surely

had been he might have followed Fedor made after emigration; Der Morder Dimitri Karamasoff, with Fritz Kortner and Anna Sten. That film; with its strong story line, cast; and direction; simply eliminated Alesha and Zosima. But Pyriev needed these characters just as he needed Prince Myshkin and the White Nights characters) even though he could not empathize with them. In the Karamazov film the way of seeing is Fedor' s not only in the sensuality but also in more fundamental ways. Fedor is a buffoon ("It always seems to me when I go somewhere that I am baser than all the others and that everyone takes me for a buffoon and so I play the buffoon because every last one of them is stupider and baser than me"). Pyriev plays the buffoon in his presentation of Alesha and the monks. He takes on parts he does not really understand. He has Zosima bow down to Dmitri even though in the film the gesture is devoid of dramatic significance. He lets a well-known comein this character;

if it

;

Otsep's example in the film Otsep

(

;

15

On one occasion Father when Alesha

dian, Valentin Nikulin, act the character Smerdiakov.

he apparently adopts the perspective of God the

accepted that Ulianov and Lavrov faithfully followed the director's intentions It might be interesting to know what initiatives they had to take. Regardless, the following discussion should still stand. 15. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book II, Chapter 2 ("The Old Buffoon"). 14.

It is

in finishing the film.

Polnoe sobranie,

126

14:42.

Ivan Pyriev is howling in despair because Father Zosima has died and the miraculous preservation of his body has not occurred. Unexpectedly this

scene

is

shot from above, the camera looking

"plays" different parts, striking

many

false

looking for the source of Dostoevsky's

down on Alesha.

notes and

fire

some

Pyriev

true ones,

from heaven, sensing his it. Pyriev gives us

dramatic power, playing with it, and trying to tap Dostoevsky as seen by old Fedor. In the novel the elder

A man who

Zosima admonishes Fedor: "Do not lie

to your-

who

does not believe his own lies reaches a point where he does not distinguish any truth in or outside himself, so that he loses respect for himself and for others. Without respect for himself, he stops loving, and for occupation and distraction self.

lies to

himself and

absence of love, gives himself up to passions and gross sensuality." Fedor Karamazov is one kind of Dostoevskian character (for Gorky he was the fundamental Dostoevskian character), and accordin the 16

ingly, Pyriev's film is

properly "Dostoevskian."

Fedor' s circle of lies

and

authentic voice, Dmitri's, to be heard

on a rough form

What

his refuge in sensuality (in

is

saves the film from

the struggle of one

other terms, Pyriev stumbled

of polyphony). In his groping for the truth, Pyriev

achieved a victory but died before realizing he had succeeded.

Was

The corpus of oral anecwas a man of great lusts, unbridled temper, and despotic will, in the mold of old Fedor. At the age of nearly sixty, he fell madly in love with Marchenko when his young son brought her home; he made her the star of White Nights, courted her, Ivan Pyriev a sort of Fedor Karamazov?

dotes about

him

suggests that he

humiliated himself, while she spurned him, loudly proclaiming her

and women were tanHe could say unprintable things to a person and speak to him next day as though nothing had transpired. One distinguished actor, summoned by Pyriev late one night to the Mosfilm Studio, arrived to find all lights blazing and sounds of shouting within; Pyriev finally burst out, saw the actor, and turned on his assistant, demanding to know why he had brought the guy with the "... mug." There are indications from people who knew Pyriev that he did not really believe in the worth of his own films (it would follow that his work was a form of lying). We see signs of self-

love for her costar. His relations with his wives

gled and mysterious .jle loved power and a^h^yeajt.

doubt in his defensiveness over his

films, in his

admission of their lack

16. Ibid.

127

Power and the Exorcism of Genius of dramatic power,

and

in his constant attempts, explicitly

and by impay

plication, to set himself against Eisenstein. His reported refusal to

union dues might be seen as a confession of unworthiness. There are achievements that must be remembered. Chief among these was the creation of the Union of Cinematographers, which has given Soviet filmmakers space in

which

to act for themselves.

The

oral

One story suggests an impulsuch as we never see in old Fedor (although he has a fitful imagination). One day Pyriev called on an impoverished scriptwriter, who sent his wife off with the last money in the household to buy some vodka. Very moved, Pyriev arranged to give them a sizable loan with a completely open term. And Pyriev could respect someone who stood up to him. Once he started to chase a young stagehand with a stick, but the boy got the stick from him and stood his ground, anecdotes do not

all fit

a clear pattern.

sive generosity

defying him: "Get away, oldster!" Pyriev, grabbing the boy's hand, congratulated

him

for being a

man. But these actions are not so much

ex-

ceptions as marks of a Dostoevskian multiplicity of being.

One

by the complex and contradic-

obituary, written immediately after his death, "He Lived

Passions," spoke suggestively about Pyriev's

tory being: "He

was a possessed,

frenzied, furious

man

... a vivid

an artistic nature ... an amazing raconteur wounded." With reference to Pyriev's work between 1944 and personality,

.

.

.

easily

1951, the

was a complicated period in the director's life but, with his enthusiasms and mistakes, he remained true to himself." He defended jolly, positive art, "somehow limiting himself in his searches for a broader reflection of life." He had the "moral right" to make film adaptations of Dostoevsky because "the world of Dostoevsky's characters was close to him especially where they lived by the and not gray everyday passions high, furious, grandiose passions life." Pyriev's strange "truth to himself" was described more bluntly by obituary observed that "this

—

—

the generally outspoken Shklovsky, said, "Everything

film has

who

has been stood on

no head." In

its

in his review of White Nights

head, but unfortunately the

his adaptation of this tale of the 1840s, Pyriev

had

turned the dreamer, who should have been something of a revolutionary, into an amateur of the arts and had presented Nastenka's practically

minded

17. L. P.

fiance as

an 1860s-vintage revolutionary. 17

Pogozheva, "On zhil strastiami," Iskusstvo kino, no. 3

40 and 41; Shklovsky, Za sorok

128

let,

p. 290.

(1968): insert

between pp.

Ivan Pyriev

One

film director

and

scenarist,

Alexander Macheret, came close to

identifying outright the character type corresponding to the overlap

between Dostoevskian qualities and clownish ones. Pyriev, according to Macheret, was an autochtonous Russian being, goaded by a restless spirit. "National traits could easily be recognized in him and constithat which aptuted one of the typical kinds of Russian character peared in the works of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky with greatest strength and the most diverse variants." 18 The name is missing, but the allusion here has to be Fedor Karamazov, Gorky's archetypical

—

Dostoevskian character.

What did Dostoevsky mean to Pyriev? The filmmaker certainly showed that he knew what it was like for a Fedor Karamazov to read Dostoevsky when he wrote: "His heroes argue with such conviction and passion and such good reasons, each one of them giving such paradoxical examples, such sharp and unexpected ones, that you can get

and you won't know which of them to believe. You can lose your in the windings and contradictions of good and evil, and honor and dishonor, and truth and falsehood and then it is dangerous, and harmful to film the novel" (1:199). The official explanatio n Pyriev gave was. that it was his national and political duty to rescue Dostoevsky from foreign filmmakers who were ignoring his protests against the evils of bourgeois society and his compassion for the insulted and injured; officially speaking, Dostoevsky was a good critical realist. But the scattered evidence suggests that at any rate in The Brothers Karamazov, Pyriev turned to Dostoevsky's "very Russian and deeply national work" to prove himself and break out of a familiar pattern of selfdeception. Maybe he could purge himself of the demon who had possessed him throughout his career and speak with his own voice. He nearly lost himself (how does a Fedor Karamazov know when he has found the truth?) but Dmitri in the film has sufficient autonomy to escape from the limitations of the Fedor-Pyriev vision. The struggles of Fedor engaged Pyriev's whole being. In this film the central hero is Fedor, who loses his power, his woman, and his life. Pyriev lost his life, and almost found himself as an artist. lost

way

—

'

18.

Alexander Macheret, "Ivan Pyriev's Last Film/' in the compilation, Ekran, 1968M. Dolinsky and S. Chertok (Moscow, 1969), p. 150.

69, ed.

129

I.

Formalist Vision. Shklovsky

used

s

Formalist script for House of the

intricate linkages of images, sounds,

of Petersburg Russia

and

Dead

(1932)

words, and themes to reveal the

to suggest the basis for Dostoevsky's continuing,

evil

am-

biguous, revolutionary sympathies. In the film the mock-execution scene registers something of the disturbing visual quality (and sound) of the script.

I.

House of the Dead

131

(1932)

II.

Melodrama (and Expressionism). The

tial

director, Fedorov, dissipated the ini-

Formalist inspiration of the script in a typology of nasty reactionary char-

acters

and good revolutionary ones. Here Dostoevski's evil genius, PobedonHoly Synod, has worked the writer into an epileptic

ostsev, procurator of the fit.

II.

132

House of the Dead

(1932)

III.

Melodrama. A

nihilistic

woman denounces

Dostoevsky as a

movement after his speech proclaiming cance of Pushkin and Russian culture. revolutionary

III.

traitor to the

the universal

signifi-

House of the Dead

133

(1932)

Naturalism. Fedorov's bathhouse sequence falls outside both his own melodramatic structure and the Formalist vision of the script, without attaining Dostoevsky's fused intuition of the strangeness and the brotherhood of man. The raw naturalism seen here is unusual in Soviet film. IV.

IV.

134

House of the Dead

(1932)

Realism: An Expressionistic Model. Roshal's Petersburg Night was an early attempt at Socialist Realist interpretation of nineteenth-century Russia in film. The heightened artificiality of an imported civilization fueled a nationalistic and necessarily one-directional revolutionary movement.

V. Socialist

V. Petersburg Night (1934)

135

Realism: An Expressionistic Model. The Expressionist energies on which Roshal drew for his vision of revolution were most visible in the tormented strivings of the victims of society. VI. Socialist

VI.

136

Petersburg Night (1934)

VII, VIII, IX. Socialist

potentially

Realism:

more open

The

was which had

Fantastic Dimension. Socialist Realism

to the present

and

future than to the past,

simply led to the Revolution. For Ermler, attempting in 1937 to understand the

and the purges, the "fantastic realism" of Dostoevsky's The Demons was profoundly congenial. Shakhov, Ermler's Great Citizen, lived in a reality which was simultaneously revolutionary (VII: an encounter between Shakhov and the secret agents of conspiracy and assassination, Borovsky and Briantsev); demonic (VIII: Shakhov, with his shadow cast on the screen behind him after the true Party had overcome an attempt to sabotage a crucial meeting); and ecstatic (IX: Shakhov proclaiming, "One can deceive a single man But one cannot deceive thousands of Bolsheviks, thousands of Commuassassination of Kirov

.

.

.

nists").

VII.

The Great

Citizen, Pt.

II

137

(1939)

VIII.

138

The Great

Citizen, Pt.

I

(1938)

IX.

The Great

Citizen, Pt.

139

I

(1938)

X. Socialist

as the

Realism:

norm

The

model and dramati-

Naturalistic Model. Ivan Pyriev established this

for Soviet versions of

Dostoevsky on

film. Visually

it was linked with the traditions of the Moscow Art Theater (and in this scene with the paintings of the Peredvizhintsy or Wanderers as well) Dostoevsky's multiple conflicting worlds were simplified and reduced while the criti-

cally

.

cal force of naturalism

was encapsulated

X.

140

in a safely picturesque past.

The Brothers Karamazov,

Pt. Ill (1969)

XI, XII. Socialist

Realism: Filmic Self-Consciousness.

Though the

director

and

the editor strive for invisibility in the dominant model, some outstanding performances in this "film art of the actor" challenge the encapsulation of

—

and break through the Socialist Realist mediation. The appalling drunkenness and lust projected by Prudkin playing Fedor Karamazov in Pyriev's film is one such question-raising performance. the past

XI.

The Brothers Karamazov,

Pt. I (1968)

141

XII.

142

The Brothers Karamazov,

Pt. Ill (1969)

The Naturalistic Flaw. Directors after Pyriev discovered real nineteenthcentury buildings and settings. Too often, however, intrusions of inappropriate modem voices, gestures, manners, and characters suggest that the quest for naturalism is wrong not only in its particular applications to Dostoevsky,

XIII.

but also in

its

inception.

XIII.

The Gambler

143

(1972)

The examining magistrate contemplates and appears to identify with the rebel and murderer Raskolnikov. In Porfiri's victory over himself, the state is connected with the restrictions of the official film model.

XIV. Socialist Realism: Filmic Self-Consciousness. Porfiri

XIV.

144

Crime and Punishment

(1970)

XV. Naturalism Abroad. In the

German

director Robert Wiene's adaptation of

Crime and Punishment made with members of the Moscow Art Theater company abroad, the actors' typically naturalistic presentation and development of character are at odds, in most places, with the Expressionism of Andrei Andreev's

sets. Occasionally,

Wiene's mise-en-scene and superimpositions

ef-

fect a synthesis.

XV. Raskolnikow (1925)

145

The murderousness of Ivan and of his substitute sons Fedor Basmanov and Vladimir is brought out through metonymic connections.

XVI. Tragedy.

XVI. Ivan the Terrible, Pt.

146

II

(1946)

The candle Ivan hands Vladimir is a multivalent metaphor of redemption and of death and damnation.

XVII. Tragedy.

147

XVIII. Self-images.

Eisensteins art in Ivan the Terrible, was a preparation for a film of The Brothers Karamazov exploring Dostoev-

his final ecstatic leap

—

deployment of metaphor and metonymy, in search of an art beyond cruelty and beyond tragic fate, based on images of self-punishment, transference, and redemption. sky's intensive

XVIII. Sergei Eisenstein with Nikolai

and Erik Pyriev, portraying Ivan

148

Cherkasov

the Terrible

XIX. Tragedy.

An image

of a world

where "everything is permitted" from Kozin-

tsev's last film.

XIX. King Lear (1971)

149

.

Tragedy. Another image of a world without an "all-connecting idea."

XX. King Lear (1971)

150

PART

III

Restrained Polyphony In spite of all the declarations about fantastic realism, Dostoevsky

my

is

in

opinion an adept of the naturalist school. ... he has real houses,

real people, real passions,

and

all this is

truly typical.

Lev Kulidzhanov, 1970

Voices

Dostoevs ky; speaks y^th

member of the cial

many

voices. At times

he even speaks

like

a

school of civil protest calling for a transformation of the so-

order as a solution to man's

ills.

The naturalism or realism or

critical

realism the Socialist Realists find in nineteenth-century Russian literature is

in their

minds always associated with

this sociopolitical content.

The

Dostoevsky caught by Pyriev fits into this mold. The indignities of the cash nexus and the pursuit of power through capital inflame the passions of Pyriev's characters in The Idiot, in a not-yet-quite capitalistic Russia. In appearance Pyriev's own naturalism is artificial; he was at home in stage sets (more or less well constructed). He did not seem to realize that there was a real St. Petersburg, indoors and outdoors, which could be used for his shots. His principal weakness, however, was that his Dostoevsky was onedimensional and occasionally hollow, a frozen frame out of context, cut off from the real interplay of ideas and feelings and voices in Dostoevsky's world. Pyriev himself, with Fedor Karamazov, and his followers too, tried in a variety of ways to acknowledge the other voices in Dostoevsky, without, however, disturbing the basic sociopolitical premise of the authorized model. This premise had been challenged by a number of critics, particularly by Mikhail Bakhtin in his famous Problems of the Poetics of Dostoevsky (first published in 1929). According to Bakhtin: "What is important for Dostoevsky is not what his hero is in the world but above all what the world is for the hero and what he is for himself." Balditin felt that this su bjective world in the novels was so important that there was no dominant authorial voice in them. Still less was there an objective social world other than the world of other equally significant subjects or consciousnesses. The diversity of voices that characterized Dostoevsky's world was something

153

Restrained Polyphony that also characterized each individual consciousness. "In Dostoevsky's

dialogues the encounter and dispute

is not between two integral monobetween two fragmented voices. The open speech of the one is a response to the inner speech of the other." All Dostoevsky's world of consciousness is a many-sided dialogue, a polyphony. This world, in which all ordinary certainties are questioned and sometimes even reversed, is akin to the free world of the carnival. According to Bakhtin's analysis, Dostoevsky developed a special form of the novel to give expression to his carnivalistic vision, through which each character's truth about himself is explored and revealed. Bakhtin's critical standpoint presented a general problem to the cruder forms of socioeconomic determinism espoused by Marxist critics and presented particular problems to the healthy Socialist Realism espoused by Pyriev not only in regard to naturalism but also in the emphasis on the element of scandal, through which Dostoevsky's carnivalistic vision is generally unfolded. It further appeared to challenge any hope of Dostoevsky on the screen: "The Dostoevskian hero is not an objective image, but rather a fully measured voice; we do

logical voices, but

not" see him,

.

we hear him."

In actual fact, in

all

.

.

1

these areas Soviet film has laid the groundwork for

Dostoevsky adaptation that might measure up to Bakhtin's radical interpretation. The most significant achievement in the area of Dostoev-

comes in the early sequences of Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment, which explore the hero's lacerating inner and sky's multiplicity of voices

outer dialogues. Moreover, Bakhtin's "voices" are really states of consciousness. Eisenstein

made an

showed how everything on the screen could be him gesture becomes a fully devel-

expression of thought. With

oped body language. Mise-en-scene leads

to as fully subjective a sense of

a character's consciousness as Dostoevsky achieved; in particular cases

even a stationary lens could render this subjective view. As for the carnivalistic vision in Soviet film, it was until recently suppressed. It did emerge, unfortunately without significant voices, in Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov's adaptation pressed. Eisenstein explicitly in the

A

Nasty Story, only to be effectively supquite its uses in Ivan the Terrible

—

had understood

banquet scene in Part

2,

and elsewhere. The voices

that

disturb the adaptations of Pyriev's followers are not only those of Dostoev-

but also those of other traditions of Soviet art that were stopped or interrupted. Kozintsev, whose own development as a film artist suffered a long interruption, was haunted by these voices at the end of sky's characters

his 1.

life.

M. Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo,

71.

154

rev. ed.

(Moscow,

1963), pp. 63, 65, 344,

CHAPTER

6

Gambles

with(in)

Socialist

Realism

A

relaxation of controls in the film industry in the early 1960s

followed by uncertainty and hesitation. Directors

who wanted

was

to re-

and also measure themselves against the new cinema coming from Western and Socialist countries had to work within a constantly shifting framework. Makers of Dostoevsky films could safely operate inside the naturalist and critical realist guidelines used by Pyriev in his films: faithful vive the great tradition of Soviet film before Socialist Realism to

(or plausible)

depiction of the social reality of prerevolutionary Russia

and exposure of its evils and the evils of bourgeois society in general. What was unclear was how far filmmakers could venture from these prescriptions, even though toleration now extended to the early FEKS work of Kozintsev and Trauberg, to Eisenstein's long suppressed Ivan the Terrible, Part 2, and to the films of Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini. Production decisions were typically cautious. The big Dostoevsky novels were reserved for the establishment directors; to Pyriev's Idiot and Brothers Karamazov one may add Lev Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment (1970). For the rest, lesser and shorter works were chosen for adaptation: The Meek One (1960), a Lenfilm production directed by a stage and film actor, Alexander Borisov; Nasty Story (1965), a Mosfilm production by the well-known directing team Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov; and The Gambler (1972), a coproduction of Lenfilm and the Barrandov Studio in Czechoslovakia, directed by Alexei Batalov, the film actor, who had previously directed a remake of The Overcoat (1959). A sign of the prevailing cau155

— Restrained Polyphony tion

was

that Nasty Story

was withheld from general

release.

anniversary celebrations in 1981 a biographical showpiece si?t

Days

No

in the Life

of Dostoevsky

— was produced.

For the Twenty-

particular pattern connects the lesser works selected for adapta-

was written in 1862, when the momentous decree on emancipation of the serfs had been proclaimed but not yet implemented. It was published in Vremia, the journal in which Dostoevsky was trying to clear a space between the opposing factions of Westerners and Slavophiles and to reconcile them through contact with the ground, or soil ipochva). The short novel The Gambler, arising out of Dostoevsky's rejection of the West, his gambling, and his affair with Polina Suslova, was itself a gamble, written in a desperate race to pretion. "Nasty Story"

vent losing the copyright to his other works, dictated in just twenty-six

Anna Grigorevna Snitkina (soon to become his Meek One," a story about a suicide published as an polemical Diary of a Writer in 1876, came out of the

days in October 1866 to

second

wife).

"The

installment in the

period of questioning that culminated in The Brothers Karamazov.

The production

no grand each separate decision or a decorous tribute to the past.

decisions, viewed retrospectively, suggest

policy concerning Dostoevsky.

More

likely,

seemed an appropriately small risk of the films and of their reception shows that the naturalist and critical realist guidelines can only lead to parochialism and factitiousness. Dostoevsky's sense of newness, danger, and risk is that part of his "new word" which needs to be projected today; Soviet filmmakers know that it can no longer be contained.

An analysis

The Meek One: Blandness and Humility The story "The Meek One" and the novel The Gambler are first-person narratives for which the films missed the challenge of finding an acceptable cinematic mode. "The Meek One," subtitled "A Fantastic Tale," seeks to register the flow of thoughts in a person's mind. Dostoevsky applies the notion of "fantastic realism" to this piece: "I have called it fantastic' when I regard it as in the highest degree real. But the fantastic does indeed exist here in the very form of the tale." The narrator contemplates the body of his wife, lying on a table in the room, almost immediately after she has jumped to her death from a window, clutching an icon of the Mother of God to her breast. He is 156

Gambles with(in)

Socialist

trying to understand her suicide, his responsibility,

and

Realism his

life

with-

out her. Despite the apparent consecutiveness of the speech, he contradicts him-

both in his logic and in his feelings. He justifies himself, and launches into tangential explanations. There is coarseness of mind and heart, together with deep feeling. Little by little he does make the deed clear to himself and does concentrate his thoughts. The succession of memories he evokes inexorably leads him at last to the truth; the truth inexorably elevates his mind and heart. Toward the end self several times,

blames

her,

even the tone of narration changes in comparison with the orderly beginning.

and

definitely, at

The

any

truth

is

revealed to the

relatively dis-

unhappy man fairly clearly

rate for himself. 1

How

something is said determines what is said. Form determines the sayable. Dostoevsky knew that the surface of the story was misleading: "If a stenographer could overhear him [the narrator] and jot everything down, it would all be rougher and more unfinished than in my presentation, but as far as I am concerned the psychological order would probably be the same." Eisenstein paused over "The Meek One" when he was seeking to extend the language of art on the basis of the laws of inner speech and affective logic. He felt that Dostoevsky had sensed the "syntax" of inner speech but had cloaked it in conventional rhetoric. 2 The influential theorist Bakhtin, another deep reader, stressed the particular form of "The Meek One" because it offered a distinctive solution to the challenge Dostoevsky solved in different ways in his big novels: "Only the confessional self-expression can give the last word about a man which is truly adequate to him." 3 With the amount of attention "The Meek One" has drawn, any film of it needs to give some recognition to the tension and ambiguity underlying its distinctive form. One might note the silent speech of the narrator, the proud meekness of his wife, his own humiliating cowardice or mere ineffectuality when he fails to defend his regiment's honor, his self-regarding bravery or deliberate cruelty when he lies still in bed waiting for his wife to shoot him. As he attempts to win the respect of 1.

In the introduction to the story, in Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, ed. V. G.

Bazanov, G. M. Fridlender, et 2.

1976), pp. 3.

al.,

30 vols. (Leningrad, 1972-),

From "Method," quoted in V. V.

24:4.

Ivanov, Ocherki po istorii semiotiki v SSSR (Moscow,

120-21.

M. Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo,

rev. ed.

(Moscow,

1963), p. 64.

157

Restrained Polyphony

and of society, he becomes increasingly despicable. There is an ironic mismatch between his wife's wishes and his own. When she attempts to confide in him, he cuts her off; he finally discovers his love for her when she can no longer respond. The suicide is paradoxical: she dies holding an icon. Is it an act of despair and confusion or of ecstasy? Of blaspheming rebellion or truthful martyrdom? Toward the his wife

end

of his long dialogue with himself the narrator relives his discovery is a sudden sense of release, till at the empty darkness, with only his own theatrically His escape may lie in madness or death.

of the possibility of love; there

very end he

is left

ringing voice.

in

Borisov's black-and-white film

is

starker in

films with their pastel passages. Despite

the suicide, however,

it

reason for the failure

is

fails to

an

opening shot of

a basic, formal one. Most of the narrative

Borisov avoids Dostoevski's

diacy of thought

effective

than are Pyriev's

capture the tension of the story. The

consigned to a voice-over, with flashbacks life.

mood

— although

problem— how to

is

episodes in his

illustrating

capture the imme-

directors starting with Eisenstein have

shown that film may be better equipped than literature to reflect the mind. Some sense of the ambiguity and intractability of experience can be given when what we see on the screen is patently at odds with the narrative voice, but Borisov's voice-over does not even provide an effective counterpoint between voice and image. The failures of direction begin in the script,

which

is

credited to Borisov himself (with

Akiba Golburt as cowriter) and which

is

simplifying

and reductive

in

tendency.

The

simplifying tendency appears in things small

and

large. In the

he understands everything and later his confession he appears in turns as

story the "hero" says initially that that

he understands nothing; in

self-pitying victim, as braggardly villain, as all

as

blundering

someone who does not know himself

character

who

in time.

fool,

The

and above

film gives a

says only that he understands everything (and

who

ac-

good position to offer an orderly reconstruction of his life). For Borisov he is above all a victim, first of society and later of chance. He wanted the respect of his wife at once and that of society later, when pawnbroking had made him a rich man. The handling of the attempted murder scene in the film is indicative. His wife approaches him when he is lying in bed and points a revolver at him; he opens his eye and she clearly sees him open it. His voice interprets the situation; he is proving to himself and to her that he is brave and not afraid of death. Nothing on the screen belies this interpretation. In the cordingly

158

is

in a

Gambles

with(in) Socialist Realism

story the situation is richly ambiguous. Does she realize that he is awake or doesn't she? Isn't he really trying to prove only to himself that he is brave? Does he possibly want to die? Is he tempting her to commit the crime? Even the handling of the revolver is revealing. Dostoevsky's pawnbroker first mentions it when he remembers it, in con-

nection with this episode. Borisov pedestrianly prepares for the revolver with

some

stage business, involving

it

right at the start of the

marriage.

one about the lack of human significance in a society based on position and wealth. The pawnbroker discovers love, but by this time his wife feels only contempt for him and kills herself. The transforming power of love which Dostoevsky presents is for the most part left out, even though this has to be an (the) essential part of the truth that the sad hero discovers. The pawnbroker suddenly intuits that his wife has her own being when he overhears her singing softly to herself when she is alone in her room. This discovery is a revelation to him; he wants to start again and to share her life. He will take her abroad so that she can recover Borisov reduces the story to a safe

critical realist

her health. This much is shown in the film, but not his failure to grasp otherness and his subsequent realization of what selfless love is. Upon his sudden outpouring of passionate feeling, she shows "severe surprise." Her last, disturbing words to him, which he does not grasp, are: "I thought you would let me be like this." All kinds of thoughts rush through his mind. Maybe she killed herself because she despised him; maybe she did so out of purity, because she cannot simulate a love she does not feel. And earlier, at the start of his self-examination, he suggested that maybe she really was to blame for her death; her marriage to him had been a postponed death. But none of these doubts and questions matter in face of his present realization of what her life

meant and

of the solitude in

which he must now live.

—

Blind, blind! Dead she doesn't hear. You don't know the paradise I would have surrounded you with. There was heaven in my soul, and I would have planted it around you! Even if you didn't love me fine, what of it? Everything would stay "like this," everything would be left "like this." As long as you told me, as to a friend we would rejoice and laugh joyfully, looking into each other s eyes. That is how we would live. And even if you loved another that would be fine, fine! You would walk with him and laugh, and I would look from the other side of the street.4

—

—

—

4.

For the quotations from Dostoevsky, see Polnoe sobranie, 24: 28-29,

35.

159

Restrained Polyphony is completely dropped in the film; there is no attempt dream. The story gives one earlier glimpse of paradisiac love, in which its religious dimension takes concrete, visual form. The meek stranger brings an icon to the pawnbroker: "Right away I'll explain what happened but now I just want to recall how I showed off before her and grew in her eyes. That was my sudden wish. The thing is she brought

This key speech to visualize this

me

this icon (got herself to bring

ning

— before

about

this,

I

was

each

it).

Listen, listen! That's the begin-

The thing is I want to remember all each little thing. I want to concentrate my

just stumbling.

little detail,

—

and cannot there are these little things, little things An image of the Mother of God. A Mother and Child; a homely one, a famthoughts,

.

piece, old, with a silver frame covered with

ily

He cannot

roubles." clearly

his

he

own

feels

it

gilt

up,

when the

icon

is still

six

and yet

— both in his words and in the way he hangs it

.

— worth — well —

articulate the significance of this icon,

icons. But before hanging

.

it

with

lying

on

the counter before him, he compares himself to Mephistopheles:

am

"I

whole which wants to do evil and does of heaven, earth, and hell are brought to-

that part of the universal

good." 5 Here the realities

gether (something Bakhtin notes as characteristic of Dostoevsky). 6 This juxtaposition of levels of being also occurs in the heroine's ambig-

uous or paradoxical

suicide. In

both scenes there are moments crying

out for cinematic treatment. There had to be at least one close-up of

no commentary, but Borisov does not take the leap; the speech about the icon is overlooked; the speech about Mephistophe-

the icon with

les falls

flat.

Dostoevsky 's pawnbroker

lives in

a fantasy world. The cruelty of his

experiment on his wife is occasionally forced on him. Hints of a transformed reality occasionally impinge on him. His audience does not have to be only the mocking society that haunts his imagination. Borisov' s pawnbroker, in contrast, lives in a two-dimensional world in which he is a warped product of a false society. His confession is an unillumined exculpation rather than a revelation. What drew Borisov to "The Meek One" remains unclear, but he is not alone in his

failure.

The basis

director Robert Bresson

is

of the adaptation

slender. In La

offscreen narration, as did Borisov. There are pp. 8-9. Bakhtin, pp. 131-37.

5. Ibid.,

6.

160

made by the significant

Douce

(1969)

some

Bresson uses

effective contrasts

Gambles with(in)

Socialist

Realism

between the camera's view of events and the hero's description of them, but on the whole, the camera presents an objective, un-Dostoevskian narrative. The mystery and intractability of experience is suggested, particularly in shots of Dominique Sanda's face. But the mystery and intractability may rely too much on the strangeness of the transposition of Dostoevsky's story to modern Paris and on the puzzle of how Dominique Sanda, with her striking beauty, could have retained her innocence in the modern city-world. 7

The Gambler as an International Venture The Gambler may serve as a bridge to the major novels (of first, Crime and Punishment, was almost complete when Dostoevsky stopped to write this short work) Its first-person narrative comes in the shape of diary extracts that are close to the events they describe. Most of the characters with whom the narrator, the young tutor Alexei Ivanovich, is involved in the German gambling resort are the German Baron and Baroness Wurmeressentially caricatures helm, the intriguers the "marquis" de Grieux and Mademoiselle Blanche "de Cominges," and most of the itinerant Russians. The universe inhabited by the narrator is not entirely solopsistic; there are two In form,

which the

.

—

other thinking and feeling people

— Polina and the

Russian grand-

mother. The three of them can understand passionate commitment to action. They are not hidebound by forms and conventions; they take risks.

They

are also

In their confusion

tempted to abdicate their will and to trust chance. and the falsity of the German spa, they have diffi-

culty in recognizing truth

The

when

it

appears.

subjective narration in this novel

freedom from

is

associated with a Russian

and with a Russian capacity for "The Russians are too richly and diversely

restrictions of type

greatness (and for nullity):

endowed for them quicky to find a decent form." For a Russian, to find form requires genius. The Western Europeans have forms, but that is 7.

Critical

(and generally negative) views of the Russian

film, are

given by N. Velekhov,

"An Answer Must Be Found," Nedelia, 15 Oct. 1960, pp. 18-19; and by la. Bilinkis, "Screen Reflections of Dostoevsky/' Iskusstvo kino, no. 11 (1971): 62. Regarding La Douce see John

Simon, Movies into Film (New York: Dial Press, 1971), pp. 388-89; Lindley Hanlon, "The Seen' and the Said/ " in A. Horton and J. Magretta, Modern European Filmmakers and the Art ofAdaptation (New York: Ungar, 1981), pp. 158-72.

161

Restrained Polyphony

and failing: "Only among the French and certain other Europeans has form become so definite that a man may seem extremely worthy while being utterly unworthy." 8 Alexei's claims are particularly plausible because he appears in the novel as a consciousness and not as a physical type. Moreover, Alexei may be associated with Dostoevsky's exploration of the fantastic edge of reality, what he considered "sometimes the very essence of the real." In the big novels Dostoevsky is concerned to explore a number of new, emerging, still fantastic types. Cinematically, the challenge of The Gambler is that a solution here to the problem of subjective presentation of character could find ready application to the big novels in which several charactheir limitation

with powerful centers of consciousness appear. The Meek One, Batalov's film adaptation fails to present the experience lived by Alexei in its immediacy. The whole film is framed by ters

Like

between the honorable Englishman Mr. Astley and and a burnt-out case. It is autumn; leaves are falling from the trees in the park outside the casino. How he has come to be where he is is told in a series of flashbacks. There are intense scenes of gambling. One good scene (shot from below) depicts love as power and enslavement: Alexei and Polina are high up on a narrow bridge, from which he will jump if she wills. But the long a long dialogue

Alexei,

now

a confirmed gambler

muted conversation in the park muffles the impact of the crucial scene in which Polina comes to Alexei's room and offers herself to him. Pocome, the whole me comes; that is my way." 9 She still has to find what she expects of Alexei. When he chooses to save her and himself by rushing off to the gaming rooms, he loses her. The film needs the subjective time of the gambler, who abdicates his will and

lina says,

"If I

stakes everything

on a throw, and

loses.

It

gives instead the jaded

world of the addict. Once again the weakness of the film starts with the script (written by M. Ol'shevsky). Some criticisms that Shklovsky directed at Batalov's earlier adaptation of The Overcoat (1959) have application here: "The writing of a script is hard. But before writing a script, one has to determine the subject matter what to write about. In an adaptation one must start by rereading the thing and then figure out, discuss, and Once one knows the main thing, one can think what it is about.

—

.

write. 8.

In

The

.

come by

themselves." 10

Polnoe sobranie, 5:230.

9. Ibid., p.

10.

details will

.

289.

Reprinted in Shklovsky, Za sorok

162

let

(Moscow,

1965), p. 305.

Gambles with(in)

Socialist

Realism

The atmosphere of scanneeded to animate the masklike European characterizations and to interfere with and obscure the true word. The opposition between Russia and the West, comes only in one or two of the conversations, and not at all in the cinematic treatOther

faults are ascribable to the director.

dal at the spa

hardly conveyed, yet

is

ment. Alexei here

he plays

is

it is

a typical gambler; as a bearer of the Russian idea,

little role.

The pressures the film.

A

of international coproduction obviously influenced

fine old casino in a resort

town

in Czechoslovakia

was

found, and the aid of the Barrandov Studio enlisted. Color film was de-

cided upon, and the temptation to create a naturalistic illusion of a nineteenth-century resort was strong. Shklovsky had warned that old

and towns might survive and might serve for a setting but was no point in adapting a literary classic unless one heard the "word" of the author. The occasional trick camera shots the distorted lens when Alexei runs away from Polina to gamble and the do not suffice to get beneath whirling camera in the gaming rooms buildings

that there

—

11

—

the surface

the specious prettiness of form. Old buildings did

reality,

not have to be a barrier to the exploration of subjective worlds, as Alain

shown in Last Year at Marienbad. comes from a distinguished acting family. His

Resnais had Batalov

12

culture ap-

pears in a touch he introduces in the park scene that serves as a frame for the film: a girl text is

German;

on a bench

it is

Job. Dostoevsky did

is

reading aloud to a blind old man. Her

in fact a passage of bitter despair

mean

from the Book of an im-

to present the playing of roulette as

a description of a kind of hell, like the 'convicts' bath-

age of hell:

"It is

house'"

The House of the Dead). 13 In Roulettenburg

(in

ties intersect in

The

a

way

different reali-

generally characteristic of Dostoevsky's work.

discreet reference to Job,

who

has been punished by Satan on

God's orders, gives acknowledgement to Dostoevsky's sense of

and hope

crisis

for the transformation of reality.

Twenty-six Days in the Life: An Anniversary Film

To celebrate the centenary of Dostoevsky's death and the 160th anniversary of his birth, Mosfilm released 7\venfy-s/x Days in the Life of 11. Ibid., p. 308. 12.

For Batalov's views on films and acting, see A. Batalov and M. Kvasnetskaia, Dialogi

vantrakte (Moscow, 1975). 13. Letter

Grossman

et

quoted in the editorial notes to the novel, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. al., 10 vols. (Moscow, 1956-58), 4:604.

163

L. P.

Restrained Polyphony Dostoevsky, directed by Alexander Zarkhi, a Lenfilm stalwart

bered for Baltic Deputy, which he shot with

was

great potential in the subject

when Dostoevsky write The

remem-

Iosif Heifitz in 1937.

There

— the tense days of October 1866

interrupted his work on Crime and Punishment to

Gambler and

fell in love with, proposed to, and was accepted by Anna Snitkina, his young stenographer. It was a film about the man and the writer; scenes from the novel he was dictating were included in it. The script had been lying around since 1967, and Vasili Shukshin, who in his short life made his mark as a countercultural

writer, film director,

and

actor,

was

originally considered for the title

role.

A

biographical film about a writer

—

like

biography

itself

— must

avoid simply identifying literature with the kinds of statements an au-

thor makes in

letters,

conversations,

and speeches, must avoid

treat-

novel as mere autobiography. The film House of the Dead tried modeling the confrontation between Dubbelt and Dostoevsky on ing, say, a

between Porfiri and Raskolnikov, with little success. (Jean-Paul long and incomplete study of Flaubert in the light of Madame Bovary can serve as a model, or at any rate a deterrent, to all biographers.) Zarkhi and his scriptwriters were oblivious of all dangers (the staff of the Dostoevsky Apartment Museum in Leningrad, their literary consultants, might have guided them). The asumption of the film is that The Gambler was a barely disguised account of Dostoevski's relathat

Sartre's

Germany in the year 1863; that in dictating was reliving his experiences with this "infernal" woman and at the gaming tables; that the novel's central character, Alexei Ivanovich, was Dostoevsky's alter ego (effectively suggested in several shots in which this character's face is blank or difficult to see). The film caters to modem expectations. Anna Grigorevna Snitkina is a liberated woman. She finds the great man's rudeness at their first meeting inexcusable; he may be Dostoevsky but "I am a woman." She takes the active role in defending Dostoevsky against officials and tions with Polina Suslova in

the novel Dostoevsky

against the rapacious Stellovsky's attempt to gain control over the author's copyrights.

She

is

even Dostoevsky's partner in creation;

when

cannot be written in the third person, he simply asks her to change everything in her transcription to the first person. In making Anna a model "new person" the filmmakers slight

he

realizes that his novel

the historical role of Polina Suslova, in the film

164

she

is

a

rather worn

who was ready-made for the part;

courtesan.

Gambles with(in)

The

film

an occasional piece.

is

Its

Socialist

Realism

surfaces are pretty, starting with

autumn scene in the cemetery where Dostoevsky's brother being buried. The textures of the facades of houses and of

the mellow

Mikhail

is

the inner walls of apartments are lovingly (and for Dostoevsky unchar-

rendered. Evgenia Simonova,

acteristically)

ably beautiful.

The

who plays Anna, is undeni-

flashbacks associated with The Gambler scenes are

tantalizingly lurid.

The world is

a

of the film

woman

is

peopled with Dostoevskian characters. Anna

of the compassionate type,

and Polina

of the

demonic

Lebedev in The Idiot serve the needs of dramatic exposition; in the cemetery scene two men retell to one another everything they know about Dostoevsky's debts following his brother's death, the ruinous terms of his contract with Stellovsky, the state of his affair with Polina Suslova, and the interesting new school of stenography which has just opened. The filmmakers treat the facts with true type. Gossips like

artist's licence; actually,

Mikhail's funeral took place in

summer and

not autumn, and the contract with Stellovsky was negotiated only the following year. 14 At the climax,

Dostoevsky

tells

Anna

when The Gambler

has been delivered,

the "story" of another novel, in which an old

much younger woman. Dostoevsky then asks could love his hero. Anna immediately guesses real question is, but here the film departs from the account before she can answer, the bell rings. Dostoevsky goes to in her Diary the door and is confronted by Polina. He is thus in the position of Prince Myshkin, who at one crucial moment has to choose between Aglaia and Nastasia Filippovna (Polina may in fact have called on Dostoevsky in later years). Melodrama results from the irresponsible use of

man

falls

whether what his

in love with a

this

woman

—

—

fact

and

The film "Dostoevsky" says, "There is pleasure in huand "There is pleasure when a knout tears through the flesh

fiction.

miliation,"

spine." Anna desperately denies such statements but willy-nilly caught up in the world of Dostoevskian feeling in her nightmares. Dostoevsky of course has an epileptic seizure. All in all, the effect is of a

on the is

bad Dostoevsky novel

— Dostoevsky-itis,

or dostoevshchina, without

Dostoevsky.

The use

of Dostoevsky's

words without the

context provided by his novels (or by his

significant dramatic

by Konstantin Mochulsky or Leonid Grossman or Joseph Frank) debases them. The 14. V. Nedelin,

"Moments

life,

as seen

of Truth," Sovetskii ekran, no. 24 (1980):

4.

165

Restrained Polyphony

simple assumptions about the relations of ranted.

art

interesting puzzle of Anna Snitkina

The

is

and

life

ignored:

are

unwar-

What

is

the

between the apparently prosaic woman of the published Diary and Reminiscences and the woman Dostoevsky loved? Is there a significant subtext to unpack in her writings? Looking at the silences relationship

of the Diary, Zarkhi's literary consultant speculated (after the release of

had witnessed a mock execution like the one he himself had undergone on the morning of the day on which he first met Anna. 15 Films about writers and poets may be more difficult than films about painters and composers, although such films as Shklovsky the film) that Dostoevsky

wanted

to

make about Dostoevsky and Kozintsev about Gogol held Twenty-si}c Days was successful with audiences.

much promise.

Nasty Story: A Century of Sixties Liberalism

and Vladimir Naumov (also translated as Bad Joke co-written by them and Leo-

In 1965 the film directors Alexander Alov

completed Skvernyi anekdot — Nasty Story

and Unpleasant Predicament). The script, nid Zorin, was an adaptation of Dostoevsky's short

story of that

name,

written in 1862 at the time of liberal excitement over the emancipation of the serfs.

They had previously made a number

of films together, in-

an adaptation of Nikolai Ostrovsky's classic Soviet novel, How Steel Was Tempered. In the usual way, stories and publicity about the new Mosfilm production began to appear in Sovetskoe kino and Sovetskii ekran. Suddenly all printed discussion ceased because a decision was made not to release the film to the general public. For a while it was allowed limited distribution in film clubs, where it drew the special attention given to any restricted work of art. Leading film workers and Dostoevsky scholars saw the film, but it did not become a cause celebre like Andrei Tarkovsky's Rublev; the restriction was not relaxed. Interest waned; the film was merely another work consigned to limbo. Someday when the sociology and politics of Soviet film are fully developed fields of study, Nasty Story may serve as a good case study: Who made the decision not to release it and on what grounds? How available was the film to clubs? What accluding Pavel Korchagin

15.

(1956),

See the discussion of the film in Iskusstvo kino, no. 5 (1981): 69-95, and especially I. on pp. 86-92.

Volgin's contribution

166

Gambles

with(in) Socialist Realism

count was taken of audience response in these club showings? 16 For the present the questions that may be considered are, above all, critical ones. Cinematically Nasty Story is exciting, but does it show that the battle for Dostoevsky in film has been won underground, so to speak?

opens with contorted faces and a drunken fight, shot in slow motion and serving as a background for the credits. Thereafter

The

film

scheme of Dostoevsky's tale, with much invenand visual detail. Three civil service "generals" in a the people. A richly furnished room discuss that great Russian topic miniature dog creeps out of an elegant little doghouse. A shot of the the film sticks to the tion of episode

three

men

stances of the

is

—

frozen while a narrative voice-over explains the circum-

— the time of reforms associated with the emancipation. One

officials, Pralinsky,

must be humane so

proclaims his faith in humanity; the leaders them to carry out the

that the people will trust

necessary reforms. His "progressive" speech is a set piece. He is seen from behind, head out of frame, while his friends, sitting symmetrically on either side of him, disagree with his liberal views. "General" Pralinsky's faith is put to the test as soon as he leaves his host's

new establishment,

only to find that his coachman

is

not wait-

walk home through the dark streets of St. Petersburg. A streetwalker flounces her skirts at him and a pound cart filled with stray dogs rattles past (both details supplied by the film) while he pursues by himself the argument he had begun about humane government, deciding whom he will embrace, cursing his coachman, and speaking more and more loudly, so that one passerby even takes to his heels in fright. At a crossroads he comes upon a tumbledown house set among the tall blocks of tenements; wild sounds of revelry emerge from it. A constable is keeping an eye on things, and in speaking to him, Pralinsky realizes that one of his own junior clerks, Pseldonymov, is celebrating his wedding to the house owner's daughter. In his mind's eye he sees an ideal scene: well-attired guests dance with decorum in a simple, clean room; he has been ing for him.

The

He decides

to

would no doubt have had interesting answers to these questions comments on the interpretation of the film offered here), but I did not talk with them. Another script by Alov, Naumov, and Zorin, "The Law" was approved but 16.

directors

(and useful

never made;

Liehm and

it

dealt with people returning from Siberian concentration camps.

A. Liehm,

The Most Important Art

M.

(Berkeley: University of California Press,

1977), p. 312.

167

Restrained Polyphony observing

them but

rises to go,

sures of work; the guests

all

muttering something about the pres-

applaud when the bridegroom

says,

"He

is

what a man!" Encouraged by this vision of enlightened behavior, Pralinsky decides to drop in and surprise the wedding strict as

a boss, but

party.

The entrance is dark and cramped; he puts his foot down in a supper dish that has been left there to cool. Inside the house, with its crazily sloping floors, wild drunken dancing is going on. A nervously jumping camera records the scene. One man pursues a plump blonde. A woman is flipped upside down by her partner. There are shouts. Someone spits on a portrait of an important personage. Everything stops as some screaming guests run in playing blindman's bluff. The blindfolded groom Pseldonymov flays about with his arms until he seizes hold of the general's jacket; then, realizing what uniform he is holding, he rips off his blindfold and stands there in appalled recognition. Everyone is silent. The camera pans, picking out the sullen faces. Because of the wide-angle lens, Pralinsky appears to be in a fishbowl with everyone staring in. To his relief, he recognizes the chief clerk from his office among the guests and seizes upon him as if an old friend. Pralinsky explains why he has come; nobody listens and his prepared speech is lost. The bride is brought up to be introduced, her face all twisted and twitching. General Pralinsky patronizingly asks, "I didn't disturb you, did I?" and is answered with a stifled grunt. The one bottle of wine in the house is brought to him, and he drinks it while trying to banter about whether the name Pseldonymov might come from Pseudonymov. One man tries to speak; the others hush him up. The clerk watches in despair as the general empties the wine bottle. The general is growing tipsy and the wild dancing resumes (the guests are drunk on vodka of course). The clerk moves a table in front of the general in a vain effort to defend him; the plump blonde topples into his lap.

The

clerk realizes that

more wine

is

needed

for this

awkward

Neither he nor his mother has any money. His father-in-law

is

guest.

his last

hope. The old miser will not give anything until it is coaxed out of him by a group of young women, who sing and dance around him, stroking the lecher. The dancing grows wilder; one man ends up dancing on his hands. Everyone moves into the next room for the wedding feast. General Pralinsky 's sofa is moved up to the table. The meal is crowded and disorderly. Bread pellets keep stinging Pralinsky on the cheek. The bridal couple are called upon to exchange a kiss; the bride's face is so 168

Gambles

with(in) Socialist Realism

screwed up that the clerk has to slap her before he can kiss her in a sort of convulsive despair. The newly purchased bottle of champagne is produced for the unwelcome boss. The clerk spills half the wine before managing to pour some. The general drinks what remains while expounding his favourite themes to the chief clerk: "They will remember me and drink my health/' and "Russia is going through a lot." He is now quite drunk, and when he reaches under the table for a napkin he tumbles over and falls asleep. Here he dreams of the party as he imagined it: children with old faces and dressed up as adults dance a minuet; he reads them a speech about how he intends to be a father to them; they applaud. Pralinsky wakes up and pulls himself back into his seat, where he resumes his prepared speech about how he has wanted to make them happy by dropping in. Someone interrupts with a story about a lieutenant who had kept saying "Admirable! admirable!" to everything until people realized that he had to be mad. The general, now quite drunk, suggests that the man must have been dead. Realizing he has made a fool of himself, he mumbles, "I have lowered myself." One of the guests echoes his voice: "Yes, you have lowered yourself. All you are is a reactionary. And you wanted to surprise us with your humanity." Finally, Pralinsky collapses on the floor. Pseldonymov leans over to listen to his heart, and in silence a strangely loud beating noise is heard. The clerk is appalled, until he realizes he has been hearing his boss's watch and pulls it out. Everyone bursts out in mocking laughter. The final scenes complete the humiliation and unmanning of the clerk. The general is put to bed on the bridal couch. The clerk and his bride are put on an improvised bed, which almost immediately collapses, to the delight of the inmates of the house, who have all been listening outside the room and now rush in. His mother-in-law turns on him: "What kind of man are you after this?" All night the general is tended by Pseldonymov's mother, who has to put him on a chamber pot, like a child. His sleep is troubled by dreams. First he sees the blindfolded clerk dancing with him. Then he dreams that Pseldony-

mov and

his bride are in

bed out

in the street; a beggar

the bed, asking for alms; the beggar turns his face and

comes up

is

to

revealed as

on him and the beggar-general up and is creeping out of a shriveled Pseldonymov being

the general in rags; Pseldonymov spits

meekly accepts of the house,

this as his due. Pralinsky wakes

when he

catches sight

held in his mother's arms and rocked

like

a baby.

We next see the general in his office, saying to the chief clerk that he 169

Restrained Polyphony

does not object to Pseldonymov's transferring to another job and does ill. He then affirms his new faith in strogost' (discipline). The liberal experiment is at an end. The film ends with a flashback to the party; the clerk dashes around the room frantically trying to get people to stop laughing; a voice says, "It is a funeral; not a wedding." Cinematically, Nasty Story is imaginative. The mobile and restless camera, the lens changes, the rapid cutting, and the grotesque characterization are a change from the steady vision preferred in Socialist Realist film (except, sometimes, in the treatment of stories about the Revolution or the war) The makers of the film are free and bold in their inventions the specific imagery of Pralinsky's fantasies and dreams, Pseldonymov's mannish mother, the masturbatory coaxing of the father-in-law. Their freedom echoes the revolutionary spirit of Soviet film in the twenties. With the addition of modem cinematographic techniques and a provocative new frankness (a salute to the 1960s?), Nasty Story recalls the eccentric, pre -Socialist Realist style developed by the FEKS team, Kozintsev and Trauberg in The Overcoat, their clasnot wish him

.

—

sic

adaptation of Gogol. 17

Is

the FEKS-Gogol style appropriate for Dostoevsky's story?

literary standpoint,

consider

how close

this story. At the start of his career,

vision.

The humble hero

To take a

Dostoevsky comes to Gogol in

Dostoevsky reacted against Gogol's

of Poor Folk (1845) exclaimed in horror over

"Why write this kind of thing? What need is there for it? Sometimes you hide and hide, to keep secret what they haven't got hold of. You are afraid to show your nose anywhere because you might be condemned, because they can make a joke out of anything on earth, so that all your civilian and family life goes about in books, all of it published, read, mocked, and condemned." The film of "Nasty Story" comes close to mocking Pseldonymov's "civilian and family life." Two views are possible: Either Dostoevsky's vision of man moved closer to Gogol's in this short story, or Alov and Naumov imposed an interpretation on Dostoevsky, possibly because this story gave them some latitude. "Nasty Story" was written in 1862 when Dostoevsky was still desperately trying to get his career going after the years of prison and exile. It is important to decide what kind of break the Siberian experience meant in his development. According to one view, his whole early caGogol's portrayal of Akaki Akakievich in "The Overcoat":

17. This connection is made in one of the few critical discussions of the film, in the annual compilation Ekran, 1966-67, ed. Valeri Golovskoi (Moscow, 1967), pp. 190-96.

170

Gambles with(in) reer can be seen as an attempt to find his

own

Socialist

Realism

distinctive voice

and

form, with Notes from the Underground (1864), five years after the re-

turn from

exile, as

the significant turning point where Dostoevsky be-

gins to emerge as master of his novel. 18 Before then

we

see

own

him

(the epistolary novel in Poor Folk),

kind of ideological and religious new forms, mastering them exploding them (the fantastic tale in trying

"The Double"), and sometimes fumbling (The Uncle's Dream, which he began as a comic play and finished as a novel). The Siberian years ap-

which Dostoevsky rushed desperately to and to write the works he might have written had he not been arrested. Nikolai Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? (1863) brought an end to this apprenticeship; it gave Dostoevsky the sense that the struggle to grasp ideology was urgent, that it was a struggle both to understand and to shape reality, and that this struggle had to begin in literature. After this he was able to use in his art some of his big experiences of recent years the moment of anticipation of death on the scaffold; the years without freedom, as a convict and an exile; the moment of chance of the gambler and at the same time, to draw on all of his intense involvement in pear as an interruption,

make up

after

for lost time, to finish old ideas,

—

—

the present.

"Nasty Story"

evsky for the

was written just before

first

of serfs, proclaimed a year

The

story

is

this great turning point. Dosto-

time tackles a highly topical issue, the emancipation

and a half before, which was being enacted. works and

also a return to the subject matter of his early

of Gogol's writings about Petersburg, the world of poor clerks.

throwback

It is

a

were popular in the 1840s. What is less clear is where Dostoevsky now stands on the ideals of philanthropy and perfectibility, which had led him into subversive activities. Is he satirizing the "liberal" dream of brotherhood as a dangerous delusion, as Mochulsky would have us believe? 19 Or has to the "physiological" Petersburg tales that

Dostoevsky retained this dream, seeing only that a stronger basis for it must be found, while he criticizes superficial, inadequate views of philanthropy?

18.

One

It is

striking that in this short story

interpreter

who

Dostoevsky comes very

sees this novel as the significant turning point

is

Joseph

and Notes from the Underground" Sewanee Review, another reader who emphasized the continuity of the early

Frank. See in particular his "Nihilism

69 (1961): 1-33. Shklovsky

19.

and those

is

immediate post-Siberian period. K. Mochulsky, Dostoevsky, trans. M. A. Minihan (Princeton: Princeton University

writings

of the

Press, 1967), p. 227.

171

Restrained Polyphony

whose "Our ProTown" appeared in Dostoevsky's own journal two issues before "Nasty Story" and whose "To the Reader" had appeared in Sovremen-

close to the tone of N. Shchedrin (Mikhail Saltykov), vincial

nik in the spring of 1862. 20 In these Satires in Prose, Shchedrin ex-

posed the selfishness and pseudoliberalism of officials of this time. A few months later, differences between this radical westerner and Dostoevski emerged, and the two men were for many years opponents. To stress the transitional nature of "Nasty Story" it is useful to quote Dostoevsky's announcement of his aims: Together with our weighty and light denouncers, we repudiate the rottenness of certain alluvial deposits and primordial filth. We strive for renewal but we do not want to throw out the gold together with the filth; life and experience have convinced us that gold exists in our soil, our own indigenous gold, that it underlies the natural and native bases of the Russian character and customs, and that salvation lies in the soil and the .

.

.

people.

In "Nasty Story," Dostoevsky

is still

feeling his

way toward the great deHe is still

bate over the necessity of a Christian basis for brotherhood.

hoping

work with

radical Westerners as well as with their oppoDostoevsky does not cannot expose himself yet. He is writing under the cover of a mask. The Dostoevsky of the mask is close to Shchedrin and close to the Gogol greeted with jubilation by

nents.

to

The

real

—

—

the critics from the school of civil protest (and with utter despondency by the humble hero of Dostoevsky's first work, Poor Folk). Taken in isolation from his earlier and later work, "Nasty Story" can be made to fit into the tradition of critical realism. 21

The eccentric style developed for Gogol in film in the 1920s is a poor model for the film adaptation of "Nasty Story." The style of the silent film The Overcoat was a solution to a problem. As far as Kozintsev was concerned, the oppressiveness and menacing violence of Petersburg in the civil war years opened him to Gogol's vision of the city; Kozintsev's own sense of freedom was directed in the film to finding visual symbols and images for the most significant expression of humanity, 20.

Shchedrin, "Our Provincial Town," Vremia, no. 9 (1862). Concerning "To the

Reader," see the editorial notes to "Nasty Story" in Dostoevsky, Polnoe sobranie, 5:353. 21. For the Vremia program in no. 9 (1862), see Polnoe sobranie, 20:209-11. One view of the relationship of this short story to Gogol and to Shchedrin Dostoevskii v shestidesiatye gody (Moscow, 1966), pp. 400-401.

172

is

given by V. Kirpotin,

Gambles

with(in) Socialist Realism

—

language. 22 In contrast, humanity, in Gogol's world Alov and Naumov's film gives a sense of stylization rather than style. One feels that Dostoevsky's short story provided them with an opalbeit distorted

portunity rather than a challenge. Stylization and parody can be an

means of dealing with such painful or taboo subjects as the drunken behavior of the people and their resentment of authority (the treatment of violence in A Clockwork Orange is a parallel illustration). effective

account for the invention of visual details in Nasty can become a substitute for an attempt to really understand Dostoevsky, particularly the Dostoevsky behind the mask. Surely Pseldonymov's mother is wrongly portrayed as a large, mannish woman ("manful" would be a better translation of Dostoevsky's muzhestvennaia); with her fearless caring for others, she is the kind of person on whom any social brotherhood of the future would have to depend. There has to be more to Pseldonymov than the pathetic creature who emerges in the contact with his superior. Surely too the very specific and childish content provided for General Pralinsky's dreams in the film is unwarranted, unfair to him, and more significantly, damaging to the ideal of philanthropy. Finally, the eccentric film style in The Overcoat supplies the human dimension in Gogol the fantasies of Akaki Akakievich, the artistic exuberance and inventiveness of the narration to which the critical realists were deaf (and which the hero of Poor Folk could not find). Dostoevsky's "human" dimension is different from Gogol's, and Alov and Naumov fail to look for it. As a result, Dostoevsky takes on the appearance of a cynic in this film; the victims are all impotent; there is no sufficient answer to the general when he retreats behind the mask of strictness and discipline. At the same time, in fairness to the directors, it must again be asserted that although Dostoevsky is not a cynic in this tale, he does remain hidden; he exposes the shallow mask of the liberal reformers without suggestStylization helps to

Story, but

it

—

—

ing a reconstruction of the threatening society.

The most Dostoevskian achievement of the film is to convey the carwhich Bakhtin has made familiar as a key principle in Dostoevsky's work. 23 In the freedom of the wedding party, social roles are inverted or suspended. The humble ordinary people act nivalization of reality,

out their resentments; the general

22.

is

exposed as a helpless

child; sex-

See Chapter 8 herein.

23. Bakhtin,

Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo, pp. 182-209.

173

Restrained Polyphony ual identity spite

all

is

shown

be confused or nonexistent.

Significantly, de-

and exposure, camivalization

in this tale is not

to

the unmasking

directed to the great purpose of self-revelation or discovery. In this

Alov and

Naumov are

fully carnivalized,

true to the original work, in

but Dostoevsky

is still

which

reality is very

not the Dostoevsky of the

great novels.

Why

Naumov make this film? The evidence suggests were not particularly interested in the embryonic, emergent Dostoevsky here. They overlook aspects of the tale which Dostoevsky would have seen as important. Nor were they interested in the characteristic Dostoevskian use of camivalization; they would have chosen another work or portion of a work for this. They did not know Dostoevsky very well. Perhaps Alov and Naumov had a sense of the enduring value of FEKS and were attempting to widen the range of accepted film styles under the aegis of Dostoevsky. Possibly, one hundred years after emancipation, they saw a new relevance in this transitional and relatively neglected work to the debates over the significance of Krushchev's liberalism. Krushchev is still famous for his attempts to behave as a man of the people, to narrow the gap separating him from ordinary men, and for his difficulties in doing so because of the habits acdid Alov and

that they

quired during

many years

controversial for

two

of power. In this context, the film appears

different but related reasons: its stylistic charac-

ter (with devices for incorporating gutter realism)

of an old critical realist lesson to a

brand new

and

its

situation.

application

Dostoevsky

is

more than a slice-of-life novelist or a critical realist; the fantastic realist in him includes and transcends both of these. On the first two of these counts, if not entirely on the third, Alov and Naumov had shown that Dostoevsky remains a subversive (and necessary) influence. And to this the

official

answer was the same old

"Discipline! Discipline! Disci-

pline!"

The Uncle's Dream A Note :

Konstantin Voinov's color film, The Uncle's Dream (Mosfilm, 1966) an embarrassingly inept work. There are undoubtedly major problems in Dostoevsky's comic novel, which he wrote in exile in Siberia and which he later disowned. These inadequacies have not, however, stood in the way of its successful adaptation for the stage (the Mos174

— Gambles with(in)

cow Art Theater production Nikolai

Khmelev was

Socialist

Realism

of 1929 with Olga Knipper-Chekhova

and

particularly famous). In the critical literature

Bakhtin suggested that the novel was a crucial link in Dostoevsky's emerging camivalistic vision of reality; there have also been attempts

comic conventions in this novel to the puppet theWhatever the weaknesses and strengths of the novel, Voinov's film represents the naturalistic tradition at its most debased. There are pretty pictures of troikas and churches in the snow, superficial characterization, and much forced good humor and laughter^ The script is crude; the acting is feeble; the camerawork and editing are no better. The faults of this film lie squarely with Voinov and the artistic directors to link Dostoevsky's ater.

of Mosfilm.

It is

a sad

comment on

cance) of the naturalist

model

the strength (and political

signifi-

in the industry that this apparently

innocuous film was released, while a film from which Nasty Story, made just one year to learn something

it is

possible

earlier

— was

withheld.

The subject

of "The

Meek One"

is

a consciousness engaged in a dia-

and in a search for itself, culminating in a moment of self-realization. The subject of The Gambler is a consciousness confronting a society in disintegration, evading freedom and truth, and staking everything on chance. In the film versions little is added to logue with

itself

a third-person narration even

when

a first-person point of view

adopted. The naturalist traditions of Soviet theater and

is

which Realism, interfere with any film,

were enshrined with the advent of Socialist intimation that Dostoevsky's meaning might be definitely involved with his form, that his art was concerned with the imagination of catastrophe and an urgent quest for salvation. The critical realist interpretation of Dostoevsky's work is a further barrier. The subjects fall victim to the preferred film conventions, leaving only a sentimental

tale

about a socially determined pawnbroker and a nostalgic story about a Russian gambler losing himself abroad. Alov and Naumov's restricted film offers an idiosyncratic view of an idiosyncratic work. Their view is opposed to the mainline naturalism of Soviet film (although it revives a concern of naturalism that is often censored in Soviet art a glimpse of the seamy side of life). Their car-

—

tempt nary"

may rely too

heavily on carciature;yet it is an atproblem that escapes the narrow boundaries of "ordiNot every film needs to show the major Dostoevsky or to find

nivalization of reality to solve a

life.

175

Restrained Polyphony "the Dostoevsky in Dostoevsky." Nasty Story sity of

Dostoevsky's talent.

taken in

art,

and a sign

It is

is a reminder of the diverreminder that risks have to be prescriptions for containment of

also a

that Pyriev's

Dostoevsky could not work.

Kozintzev on the Inadequacies of the Ruling Model Excerpts from a 1972 Review of Batalov's The Gambler "Take a literary work. The literary work has a story. The story

transposed into a

script;

so that what

is

said

there are characters, in certain relationships. characters)

good actors

are selected,

who

is

may be shown. Then To play the

parts (or

give true performances. At

the level of adaptation of this sort, the film scores quite a few successes. But besides the characters and the story, there is the spiritual world of the writer, which must come to life on the screen. The question arises here: what has happened to Dostoevsky?"

"A subject

we

are willing to take

is

the

power

of

money, which we

perceive as anticapitalistic. But just that, the theme of money,

way from "I

is

a long

Dostoevsky."

am sorry that the comrades who had the chance to screen the film

material did not say that the scene flouted

had

to

be reshot

—

where

'social

"In the specialist literature

on Dostoevsky, the metaphoric

cance of the mass-scandal scenes

is

thoroughly dissected.

prised that no one in the milieu in which the film the director's attention to

conventions' are

for that is the basis of everything."

I

signifi-

am

sur-

was produced drew

this."

"Blanche is a mask; she is not simply an attractive prostitute with (in terms of possibilities at Lenfilm) a low-cut bodice. The general too is a mask which does not mean that he is psychologically impoverished

—

by the author. His inner world instead of being spoliated is raised to a type. The characters in their decadence have a generalizing force. There is not just one stupid general landing abroad, but rather a whole class crumbling, a whole class achieving utter absurdity of existence. A 176

Gambles with(in)

him

Socialist

Realism

The Gambler is a culmination of a social state. Batalov made genre-scenes, whereas in Dostoevsky there is no genre-reality, no ordinary life." figure like

in

"We are now richer because we have made Dostoevsky ours. We understand that realism does not preclude 'typing' and condensing phenomena into grotesques" (Kozintsev, Sobranie sochinenii, 5 vols. [Leningrad, 1982- ], 2:289-94).

From a Review of The Meek One "It

lacks the tragic intensity

which

is

right for Dostoevsky."

"The two characters are fired to a state of passion that can only lead What Sawina plays may result in fainting to murder or meekness. .

but not in

.

.

illness."

"One gets a mixed-up psychological picture of the inner heroes"

life

(Ibid., p. 158).

177

of the

CHAPTER

7

Kulidzhanov's

Urbane Dangers Crime and Punishment (Mosfilm, 1970) evsky film to

come out

The

adaptation.

is

the most interesting Dosto-

of the established Socialist Realist tradition of

film's director;

Lev Kulidzhanov was an influential

ure in the Union of Cinematographers (he became

fig-

chairman after making the film). He and his coscriptwriter Nikolai Figurovsky were urbane men. Unlike Pyriev, who brought to his films a raw Siberian enits

and the uncertain vision of a self-made official; they had a sense They understood the nineteenth-century intelligentsia. They were prepared to pay more attention to Dostoevsky's ideas than was allowed for in the critical realist framework into which nineteenth-century writers were usually fitted. Kulidzhanov enlisted several prominent actors: Innokenti Smoktunovsky (who had risen to fame as Myshkin in Georgi Tovstonogov's production of The Idiot) for the part of Porfiri Petrovich; Maia Bulgakova for Katerina Marmeladova; and Efim Kopelian; for Svidrigailov. For the younger characters Kulidzhanov had to go outside the established ranks: the Leningrad actor Georgi Taratorkin, cast as Raskolnikov, subsequently emerged as a leading actor on the Moscow stage. Generous time was allotted for rehearsals^ for the discussion of shots with the actors; and for retakes. New scenes were added and changes made when rough cuts of the ergy

of history.

;

overhead cables were removed and traffic was banned to turn Leningrad back into Petersburg. Common sense was a constraint. Kulidzhanov would film revealed weaknesses. In the external locations;

1

1.

This chapter owes a great deal to K. Isaeva

Akter. Bezhisser (Moscow, 1975). in

March

1976.

178

I

s

book about the making of the

film, /to/'.

am also indebted to Lev Kulidzhanov for an interview

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

have liked to use color while preserving a basic black-and-white tonality, but to achieve this effect, he would have had to shoot only in the early morning light, and the work would have been impossibly long. All in film,

all,

it

because of the intelligence,

talent,

and care expended on this

provides a good oportunity for an examination of the principles

and their limitations. was a success at home and abroad.

of Soviet film adaptation

The

film

Soviet critics

found a

great deal to praise, particularly in the performances of Smoktunovsky

and Bulgakova and

in the portrayal of the city. Shklovsky

(who could

—

remember) wrote: "The Petersburg of that time i s good authentic, and confining." But on the whole the critics were respectful rather than enthusiastic. (To fulfil the expectations of Russian viewers may be impossible; everyone knows the novels too well and has very definite ideas about the characters.) Critics chided Tatiana Bedova in the part of Sonia for tearfulness and lack of decisiveness, and they faulted Taratorkin for projecting too great a sense of doom and relying too much on hollowly staring eyes. Kulidzhanov had stated that the main burden of significance lay on the actors and that the challenge for him and the cameraman had been to find an actor's individuality. 3 Critics seemed to take their cue from this and to focus their remarks on the performances, except for some sug2

vast, tragic, beautiful, replusive,

gestions that the film did not deal with the complexity of philosophic

were raised by an American was too literal an adaptation and that

issues in the novel. 4 Cinematic questions

who felt that the film medium of film was not suited for rendering the inner life that was

reviewer,

the

Dostoevsky's special concern. The reviewer (who had read his Kracauer) apparently accepted the basic realism of approach of Soviet film,

while suggesting something

many

Russians would quietly agree

compare the films with such remarkable stage productions as Tovstonogov's The Idiot at the Gorky Theater in Leningrad and Iuri Liubimov's Crime and Punishment in Iuri Kariakin's adaptation at the Taganka in Moscow.) with: Dostoevsky

is

basically uncinematic. 5 (Russians

2.

In his review "Krutoi put'/' Nedelia, no. 31 (27 July 1970).

3.

In a collection of interviews with the director

and

actors,

published in Iskusstvo

kino, no. 8 (1970): 68. 4.

See Shklovsky, "Krutoi put' ";

skom ekrane (Moscow,

L. P.

1971), pp.

Pogozheva, Proizvedeniia Dostoevskogo na sovet-

39-40;

la. Bilinkis,

"V mire Dostoevskogo," Iskusstvo

kino, no. 12 (1970): 41, 46. 5.

Walter Gordon, "Why Faithful' Adaptations

Fail?"

New York

Times, 8 June 1975.

179

Restrained Polyphony

The merit

American reviewer is that he raises the fundamental something to avoid? (Eisenstein in his exermanaged to be literal and cinematic.) And how responsible are

questions: cises

of the

Is literalness

the constraints of the mainline Soviet tradition for the failures to translate

Dostoevsky into film?

The opening sequences

of the film quickly establish the reality of

A somber,

lean Raskolnikov is sitting in a low where the drunken titular councillor Marmeladov launches into the monologue leading to the well-known question: "Have you ever asked for a loan knowing you will not get it, just because you must go somewhere?" The film cuts back in time to a scene in which Raskol-

Dostoevsky's Petersburg. tavern,

nikov climbs the long stairs to the pawnbroker's to offer her a pledge. Then, back in the tavern, a lachrymose

Marmeladov

new

delivers

Judgment. We are well superimposed on a dream

his vision of universal forgiveness at the Last

into Dostoevsky's world.

The

credits follow,

sequence of Raskolnikov running through the St.

streets

and arcades

of

Petersburg, the police in hot pursuit, until finally he throws himself

into a canal. Next, shots are intercut

showing Raskolnikov

in bed, in

the streets, and by the canal staring into the water while his thoughts

whether to kill or not to kill the pawnbroker. comes into his cramped room and rouses him musings with a letter from his mother. As he reads his mother

are voiced-over, debating

The

servant Nastasia

from his speaks her message to him; suddenly she is beside him, talking calmly and forcefully about the plight she and her daughter Dunia are in.

Raskolnikov and his mother are walking, but really they are going nowhere; the movement of the camera cancels their movement. Beneath the rational surface a struggle between mother and son is going on. Raskolnikov turns to climb the stairs to the pawnbroker's in spite of his mother's objections that he must know the place is now empty. In this hallucinatory scene the pawnbroker's gentle sister ushers them into the apartment and they walk through the bare rooms, occupied only by two tramps who mysteriously appear to know everything. Raskol-

mother speaks about Svidrigailov and his attempts to seduce Dunia and about the rising middle-aged entrepreneur who has offered to marry her and save her honor. Raskolnikov breaks away, crying that he rejects Dunia's sacrifice. He now appears in the crowded Haymarket, where he suddenly overhears the pawnbroker's sister arranging to meet a stallkeeper on the next evening at seven o'clock. We see Raskolnikov in bed, with the words "at seven, at seven" ringing in his ears. He nikov's

180

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

wakes up;

seven in the evening. He

it is

kitchen, gets the doorkeeper's axe,

rises, slips

and

sets off to

past Nastasia in the

murder the pawn-

broker and to begin his struggle to be a man beyond morality. This whole opening section, with its cinematic inventiveness, ploration of a fragmented consciousness,

movement

in

and out

cally faithful to

sense. Film

is

of a

its

its

inner and outer voices,

dream world, works.

It is

exits

neither pedanti-

Dostoevsky nor naturalistic in the ordinary mainline to powerful effect in the transformation of the

used

mother's letter into an argument that takes place against the background of the pawnbroker's flat, where the crime has already been committed (as Raskolnikov's mother half knows but refuses to admit). Kulidzhanov is telling a story and not simply illustrating it. Moreover, all of Dostoevsky seems to be there: the oppressive streets and rooms and the crowds and isolation of St. Petersburg, the Christianity, the ideas that are not only thought but felt and lived. It seems as if the battle for Dostoevsky in film has been won, outside the naturalistic tradition yet at the heart of the establishment.

The excitement and momentum

of this

whole

first

part can carry

the viewer through to the end of the film. Only then does the sense of

movement

in

and exploration

it

appear that

of subjective time has not

been sustained. Increasingly, the action is reduced to a sequence of set scenes; the film turns from complexity to simplicity; there is a growing sense of confinement and even claustrophobia. The film is not true to the movement of the novel, which keeps its intensity and its sense of possibility right to the end, even though the murder is committed early on and the murderer is known. The novel is about detection but also about motive and identity. Raskolnikov's crime is an attempt to escape from the prison of the self; there is a pulsation between experiences of self-assertion and self-transcendence. In a sense we do not know the murderer: who is Raskolnikov? And at the same time we want to know: can Raskolnikov get away with the crime? We are engaged with him in his struggle to escape detection because with the questions he asks he seems more interesting and valuable than the other characters. In the film the questions are simple. Can Raskolnikov

be a superman?

And

if

not

is

he simply a trembling louse? With the

concentration on the Napoleonic motive, Kulidzhanov

may

not

suffi-

middle term between louse and superman. And one might cavil at other things, such as Raskolnikov's dream about being pursued by the police. Why make this up and leave out the key dream ciently allow for a

181

Restrained Polyphony

about the beating of the old horse, in which Raskolnikov figures as executioner and victim and helpless onlooker and which is almost as rich in meanings as the letter Raskolnikov receives from his mother. In the flow of the opening sequences the guilty dream about a man running away from justice is not untrue to Dostoevsky, but in the in the novel

context of the film as a whole, the one-dimensional dream signifies an overriding tendency towards simplification.

The record of work on the film shows that the shape of the opening was an afterthought. In the shooting script the scenes kept much more closely to an ordinary chronological sequence.6 But a rough cut of the film was found to be lacking in intensity. Moreover, the scenes with Marmeladov (played by Evgeni Lebedev, with whom Kulidzhanov had not been able to work as closely as he wanted) needed to be shortened or eliminated. The first part of the film was sections

7

completely recut, but Kulidzhanov's basic conception of the story

would not have allowed him to recut the whole film in the same manner. For him it was crucial to move out of subjective space and time into objective space and time. He stated: "Egocentrism gives rise to extremism or maximalism, which enters into irreconcilable contradiction with the norms of any human society, and particularly with the norms of healthy human society. Since man is part of a society of people, he cannot simply ignore

its

laws.

If

he wants

to

remain

among people, he must not transgress the moral laws which they have worked out in the course of struggle with various forms of social oppression and injustice." 8 In Kulidzhanov's conception, the custodians of the norms of society are the criminal investigator Porfiri and the police.

Dostoevsky was less certain that social justice was acceptable or sufficient; he also needed the scene at the crossroads, where Raskolnikov bows down and kisses the earth, and the miraculous regeneration in

Kulidzhanov simply omits these scenes. The film leads up to and concludes with Raskolnikov's admission of guilt at the police station. Surely Kulidzhanov could have found a more Dostoevskian soluSiberia.

tion.

6.

at

Without necessarily adopting Dostoevsky 's religious perspective,

The shooting

script

is

deposited along with a copy of the editing script in the library

the Union of Cinematographers in 7.

whose 8.

Moscow.

Isaeva, Rol. Akter. Rezhisser, pp. 24, 126.

Lebedev was a distinguished stage actor

parts included Rogqzhin in Tovstonogov's production of The Idiot.

Kulidzhanov, in the interview in Iskusstvo kino, no. 8

182

(1970): 66.

;

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

one could remain

faithful to the novel

by showing Porfiri from Raskollaw and also of arbitrary

nikov's point of view, as the representative of

power. Raskolnikov s real regeneration begins in the Siberian epilogue in this miraculous awakening to love and to ignore Dostoevsky's doubts and questions. Dostoevsky may have defended a reactionary social order but the need to transform life was something he never lost sight of. To make him into an advocate of a merely conventional morality is to risk turning him into a champion of repression and this danger Kulidzhanov does not sufficiently acknowledge. The revolutionary in Dostoevsky needs to be looked for, not forgotten. Smoktunovsky and Dostoevsky conspired to underaiine in some measure Kulidzhanov's conception of the criminal investigator. Smoktunovsky was acutely aware of ambiguity, resentment, and nasti-

whether or not one believes repentance one is not free ;

Looking at the character in the novel, Smoktunovsky felt that at one time Porfiri had been very close to committing a crime like Raskolnikov' s but had made his peace. This intuition helped Smoktunovsky to account for Porfiri's elusive nature, about which he said: "Just as Prince Myshkin is raised by Dostoevsky to such heights of good that it suddenly turns into its opposite, so with Porfiri Petrovich his good wish to push and direct man to regeneration or, in Dostoevness in

7

Porfiri.

sky's term, resurrection

becomes so

clear that

it

almost

is

cruel;

hence

may easily, and wrongly, appear to be evil." All in all it was "the devil of a role." Smoktunovsky is known to be a deeply intuitive actor. To feel his way into this character he had to play him barefoot. Kuliit

9

dzhanov gave him patient support allowed the actor

in his

work

of creating the role

much unnecessary stage business when this

and

helped him to work, particularly since Smoktunovsky might then be persuaded to act a given scene again in a lower key, or failing this, certain excesses could be eliminated with judicious camerawork and editing. Shklovsky in his review remarked on Smoktunovsky' s gift for making himself the advocate of any character he was playing. In working with Smoktunovsky, Kulidzhanov recognized this knack. The performance he elicited from the actor is a tour de force perfectly addressed to the screen. But Smoktunovsky walks away with the film, and Kulidzhanov possibly did not realize how subversive this was of his conception of the film. With the movement out of Raskolnikov' s subjective space and 9. Ibid., p. 80.

See too Isaeva, pp. 77-99.

183

Restrained Polyphony time, Porfiri

the person in the objective world to

is

must humble himself theory"). 10 In the final

whom Raskolnikov

man who reveals Raskolnikov's pernicious sequences we have fewer of the restlessly prob("the

ing camera shots; the camera retreats to the position of an observer."

We move from the teeming prison of Raskolnikov's mind to a comprostatic, black-and-white world where people no longer look for meaning. The film seems to endorse the objective world of the ambiguous and disturbing official protrayed by Smoktunovsky. Whereas Porfiri could survive and indeed triumph over the reduction of Raskolnikov to a Napoleonic man, the effect on Sonia was another matter. One thing which Dostoevsky's Sonia responds to in

mised,

Raskolnikov ery.

is

his charity

and

his struggle against suffering

and mis-

This side of his character finds expression both in Christian im-

pulses and in utilitarian fantasies but not in great-man strivings. With-

out this side of Raskolnikov, there latch onto

when

is

nothing for the concept of sin to

Raskolnikov confesses to Sonia; she can only

feel

ap-

and at his isolation. But to give scope to these motives would have meant dealing with Dostoevsky's religious dimension and also with his criticism of utilitarian and Utopian theories. Religious faith is given token acknowledgment in this adaptation: Sonia is a believer; religious symbols are used in one or two places (for example, shots of Raskolnikov looking like a crucified Christ). But the whole problem of faith is not considered. Admittedly this is a part of the novel which raises many questions, but without the biblical passage

palled at his deed

about the resurrection of Lazarus, sionate beliefs

and precarious

we

cannot understand Sonia's pas-

sanity or Raskolnikov's feeling that

and madness. In does not merely concern the afterlife. A mature actress might have been able to imitate Smoktunovsky and to bring her whole understanding of the character in the novel to bear on her creation of the part from the script version. The young actress Tatiana Bedova failed to do this, but if she breaks down too readily, the fault has to be in part Kulidzhanov's for depriving this ahead of her

lie

just three possibilities: vice, death,

the novel faith has practical consequences;

it

character of the ultimate support of faith.

What

the seasoned actress Maia Bulgakova did with the part of Ka-

Marmeladova provides additional evidence of the and weaknesses of Kulidzhanov's work with actors. This

terina Ivanovna

strengths

10. Isaeva, p. 89. 11. Bilinkis, "V

184

mire Dostoevskogo," p.

47.

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

secondary character naturally occupied less space in the script than Sonia or Porfiri, and many of her lines had to be cut because Lebedev in the part of Marmeladov was felt to be inadequate. But in an extraordinary performance she manages to portray the Katerina Ivanovna about whom Sonia says, in the film as in the novel: "She is just like a She is looking for righteouschild, her mind is disturbed by grief. ness, she is pure." In her despair, hope, anger, and passion, she is the most fully realized Dostoevskian character in the film. A fortunate decision by the director led to the expansion of her role through the inclusion of the funeral banquet scene, after a rough cut of the film showed that this scene was necessary, for dramatic reasons, to sepa.

rate Raskolnikov's

funeral banquet

which leads performer.

two confessions,

we

.

to Sonia

and

to Porfiri. At the

see Katerina Ivanovna's descent into madness,

to her pathetic attempt to gather

some

coins as a street

We are reminded as we watch her that madness was a pos-

sible resolution for

better than

when he

.

any

Sonia and for Raskolnikov. In this performance,

other,

we can

see

what Kulidzhanov was

held that the other characters in the film

all

striving for

existed only for

Raskolnikov; they were "like fragments of a broken mirror

.

.

.

[and]

if

would be possible to see Raskolnikov in this mirror." Maia Bulgakova says that it had always been her ambition to play Sonia. The chance to do so did not come her way in time, they were gathered together

it

12

but her Katerina Ivanovna encapsulates

all

her knowledge of Sonia.

Kulidzhanov's remark about the broken mirror suggests one

way to

have rendered Raskolnikov's complexity of motive. It is a reminder that certain pieces of the mirror are missing in the film, in both Raskolnikov and his "fragment-characters." We do not see his active and instinctive compassion, his liking of humble things, and his grand dreams of a better world. The utilitarian vision set forth in the conversation between a student and an officer disappears. Bilinkis, an intelligent critic, understands Dostoevsky's hero very well: "Georgi Taratorkin had to reveal in his Raskolnikov an infinity of influences impinging on his brain and his soul, but beyond that he had to reveal an energy and a determination to resist them, even if they were the energy and the determination of despair. Even the name of Dostoevsky's hero must surely point not only to the

'split'

in his soul but to the 'schismatic'

frenzy of this man." Bilinkis accurately criticizes Taratorkin's perfor-

12.

Quoted by Maia Bulgakova

in Iskusstvo kino, no. 8 (1970): 84.

185

Restrained Polyphony

mance: "This Raskolnikov decides to commit murder in the same way as people bury their head in a pillow or stick it into a noose. He is simply doomed, doomed by all that presses on him, so that without insight or chance of escape, he is enmeshed in his deed, and then immediately sinks to the bottom, without a hope of triumph or victory." 13 But it is unfair to blame only Taratorkin for failing to convey Raskolnikov's abundant and intense force of life. Kulidzhanov eliminated those parts of Raskolnikov which best convey his force of life. Understandably, Kulidzhanov did not wish to weigh down his film with philosophic discussions, but did he do enough to translate these discussions into the "language of emotions"? 14 All in

all,

the film

is

easier to praise in parts than as a whole.

creation of Raskolnikov' s subjective world in the

first

The

re-

part of the film

is

one major achievement, and the "fragment-characters" of Katerina Marmeladova and Porfiri Petrovich are others. Kopelian's Svidrigailov might have been another classic performance had more of the character been retained, but Kulidzhanov may have felt that this character was redundant since in the film Raskolnikov corresponds in essence Napoleonic or Svidrigailovian potential of Raskolnikov in the novel. Dostoevsky's oppressive Petersburg is convincingly rendered in the street scenes and in Raskolnikov's room, and in such details as the massive woodpiles in the courtyards and the thick double

to the

windows in Porfiri Petrovich's office. The cameraman Viacheslav Shumsky admitted that the townscape was in some measure an expurgated Petersburg; the rubbish in the courtyards, for example, was not shown. But the makers of the film were confident enough not to 15

prettify or

falsify

the wonderful eroded facades of the Leningrad

houses. There are abundant signs of intelligence. The close-ups involve us in a world of thinking

rector

and the

inventiveness

actors

—

all

and

feeling characters,

know what

because the

thinking and feeling

for instance, in the cutting of the

is.

We

di-

see

opening sequences

or in that strange musical phrase associated in Raskolnikov's

mind

with the crime, which he cannot get out of his head. But in the end this intelligence

and inventiveness

officer mentality

they serve.

are

compromised by the

all

police-

13. Bilinkis, p. 44. 14.

Term quoted by

Quoted Dolinsky and 15.

186

Isaeva, p. 28.

in

"Ochishchenie ot skverny"

S.

Chertok (Moscow,

(A

purging of filth), in Ekran, 1968- 69, ed. M.

1969), p. 168.

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers Is

it

a valid criticism to say that the film

equally true: the film

is

not

literal

is

too

literal?

The

reverse

is

enough. More scope needed to be

given to the exploration of Raskolnikov's motives, particularly to his utilitarian calculations

and

his Christian feelings.

ism that was part of Dostoevsky's world brutality

—

is

also part of

The

gutter natural-

— the violence and primitive

modem society; the dream about the beating

which so involves Raskolnikov, has to be part of our view and has to disturb us in a similar way (a significant Equus). Svidrigailov's vision of eternity and hell has to be shown: "What if it's one little room, like a bathouse in the country, black and grimy, with spiders in every comer, and that's all eternity is." Raskolnikov's of the horse,

of Dostoevsky

world

is

also hot

not just physically confining, as

and

stilling

and

dusty,

it is

and yet there

shown in the film: it is moments of release

are

and self-renewal in contact with the earth, with the grass, with nature. The boundaries of rooms are also boundaries of the mind. In the film the street crowds are just background. Bakhtin has shown that in the novel they are involved with Dostoevsky's carnivalistic vision of reality.

The public scene when Raskolnikov bows down

at

the crossroads be-

handing himself in to the police is a kind of unmasking of the king. 16 The chaos of a carnival upsets truths but gives flashes of visionary insight. (In film Came in Les Enfants du paradis understood crowds and carnivals.) To show all this in a film of Crime and Punishment to be properly literal might mean stretching the medium of cinema; indeed, Nikolai Figurovsky proposed preparing a six- or seven-part television serialization to be released together with the twopart film, but this suggestion was ahead of its time. The alternative of course is to be selective but not to shy away from what is literally there

fore

—

—

in Dostoevsky's world.

Kulidzhanov's film showed that he had the capacity to develop a cinematic realism properly detached from the naturalistic theatrical

model

that

is still

normative in Soviet film adaptations

The

(in spite

of

all

an interesting exploration of Raskolnikov's inner life, but Kulidzhanov needed to explore this inner world more fully and maybe even to expand it by including some of Svidrigailov's fantasies in it if it turned out that this "double" or "character-fragment" of Raskolnikov could not be more fully developed. If Kulidzhanov had had the courage of his artistic findings, he Eisenstein's work).

16. Bakhtin,

first

portion of this film

Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo (Moscow,

is

1979), pp. 143-45, 197.

187

Restrained Polyphony

might have stayed in Raskolnikov's subjective world; or recognizing that there were other subjective worlds to be explored, he might have set it in conscious juxtaposition to the barren and disturbing blackand-white world of Porfiri Petrovich so that the film moved consciously and deliberately between two different kinds of reality as in Luis Bunuel's Belle de jour. Instead, the director chose to retreat to the familiar, established positions.

Kulidzhanov

said, "In spite of all the declarations

alism, Dostoevsky

is

in

cruel naturalist, in the sense of the of this school."

17

about fantastic

re-

my opinion an adept of the naturalist school, a

His reliance

on a

word used by the representatives naturalistic and theatrical model

shortcomings of his interpretation of the novel. Crime and Punishment is an actors' film stressing ordinary speech and plausible action; the truth that matters is the truth that

for his film is related to the

can be stated rather than the truth that can be experienced.

It is

not

altogether surprising to find Kulidzhanov subscribing to this prosaic

explanation of his aim: to criticize the worldwide manifestations of

Nietzscheanism and neo-Nietzscheanism. 18 Maybe the me-generation can be satisfied by neoconservatism, but is the truth that matters a social truth? Unexamined assumptions underlie Kulidzhanov's statement: "The basis of antifascism is the search for a moral support within the self, a striving for a purging of filth." 19

model of the theater, which plays so great a role in was challenged by Meierhold and has again been challenged by the best theatrical directors in the Soviet Union. They know The

naturalistic

Soviet film,

that theater

now has

resources not available in Dostoevsky's day; they

may suspect that the theater can recapture some of the ground taken by the novel and by film. The challenge for them is to find how much of Dostoevsky they can express on a stage in which lighting can create every kind of space (including the inner space of the soliloquy)

which nonnaturalistic gesture can project

far

more

and

effectively

in

than

can naturalistic behavior. One old advantage of the theater still reis so important for Dostoevsky. Obviously cinema cannot compete in this area. Recorded sound

mains: the power of the living voice, which

can

now be used to

as

good

effect in the theater as in the

17.

M. Dolinsky and

18.

Kulidzhanov, interview in Iskusstvo kino, no. 8

19.

M. Dolinsky and

188

S.

S.

Chertok, "Ochishchenie ot skverny," p. 170. (1970): 66.

Chertok, "Ochishchenie ot skverny/ p. 170.

cinema, and

Kulidzhanov's Urbane Dangers

common

to both media. And so even in the age of the sound image and editing are the cinematic means through which the film director can hope to compete with the stage director. The film director should have an advantage; in film adaptations Dostobesides speech can receive attenevski's other uses of language tion. Kulidzhanov shied away from the challenge of Dostoevski in film. There may be room for future exercises with the naturalistic Dostoevsky in film, but they will have to rely on the subtle directorial shaping of the material that is found in Louis Malle's My Dinner with Andre, rather than the ultimately static, observational role of the camera in

acting

is

film the visual ;

—

Kulidzhanov's

—

film.

Kulidzhanov invites severe criticism because he has come close to showing what Dostoevsky in film might be. He understands a range of Dostoevskian characters; he is aware of human complexity; he begins to deal with the ideological Dostoevsky. He did at any rate bring Dostoevsky out of the closet before attempting to moralize

him

safe.

him and

to

make

Kulidzhanov's endorsement of his custodian of law and or-

der, the investigator Porfiri,

is

almost as striking a paradox as Ermler's

conversion of Dostoevsky's revolutionaries into counterrevolutionaries (and indicates that the novelist's interpretation of the dynamic of Russian history

is

of continuing relevance in the later Soviet period).

the film Crime and Punishment lacks evsky's reality, the relations in

is

What

the imaginative space of Dosto-

and transformations

of that space,

convincing presentation of self-realization.

189

and a

PART IV

The Space The

struggle against literature in film followed

of Tragedy by

films of Gogol, Cer-

vantes and Shakespeare; the hurly-burly platform shows and a growing

sense

of the

tragic;

the

"eccentric"

agit-skits

—

and a constantly

deepening bond with Russian culture all this everyone of the generation of the twenties has passed through.

Modem

art:

the distrust of

"common

film-

sense"; the intensification of

all

contrasts; the introduction into "high art" of imagery considered base. .

.

.

The search for means

to express not the outer shell of life

the inner movement. In the beginning this

world seemed

to

but rather

— in childhood — the way into

go through Maiakovsky, Picasso, and Meierhold.

Now it goes through Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Goya, and Shostakovich. Grigori Kozintsev

CHAPTER

8

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

Grigori Kozintsev (1905-1973) is one of the founders of Soviet cinema, even if Pudovkin, Eisenstein, and Kuleshov, with their early theoretical work, are better remembered. He lived and worked in Leningrad, helping to keep the old capital a center of creativity; he was conscious of belonging to a Petersburg tradition comprising Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Alexander Blok in the past and Anna Akhmatova and

Dmitri Shostakovich in the present. In the 1920s, in association with

Leonid Trauberg, he created FEKS (Factory of the Eccentric Actor), an artistic workshop that quickly won notoriety with a bold stage production of Gogol's Marriage. Since Kozintsev's view of their joint work will be stressed here (as it generally is in the histories, in part because Kozintsev's accounts are better), Trauberg's testimony may be quoted at the outset: "We were not brothers. But for quarter of a century we bore responsibility for each other for our common creative work." Kozintsev and Trauberg's early experimetal films, especially The Overcoat, based on Gogol, and the Zolaesque New Babylon, carried the FEKS acronym throughout the USSR and abroad. In the thirties the partners made the Socialist Realist Majcim trilogy, about a revolutionary worker. This was in effect their last joint endeavor. The growing controls over film production drove Kozintsev back to the theater where he could work more freely and quietly. Then, after Stalin's death, Kozintsev rose to new peaks of achievement with three widely .

.

.

—

1.

Leonid Trauberg; Film nachinaetsia (Moscow,

1

1977), p. 112.

193

The Space of Tragedy acclaimed

Don

films,

At the time of his

about Gogol,

and a Dostoevskian King Lear. was deep into plans for a film

Quixote, Hamlet,

own

death, Kozintsev

whom he now saw through Dostoevsky.

intensive, very creative period, Kozintsev also

During this last, wrote several books,

which, with the notebook excerpts that have since come out, give a rich account of his life in art, his changing view of literature in film, the

meaning

of the Russian tradition

Dostoevsky in

it.

and

of the place held by Gogol

and

2

Kozintsev was very conscious of his difference from Eisenstein, with

whom he became friends in 1921, soon after the founding of FEKS. About Eisenstein, Kozintsev wrote: "There can be no question of Olympian repose or classical balance. The reverse was true: dissatisfaction, the impossibility of staying within any bounds, the need to cross

boundaries. All that he invented, drew, produced

— burst somewhere

outward and onward, outgrew the form in which he tried to put his thoughts and feelings. And so he lived breaking, destroying, passing beyond. He was in such a hurry!" Kozintsev's own achievement was less marked by conflict or by continual struggle against the constraints of such defined and redefined constructs as montage or pathos. He suggests that to the question What is cinema? he would simply have given different answers at different times: namely, montage in his twenties; a poetry of dynamic representation and a rendering of flowing time in his thirties; a revelation of man in his forties; and then, finally, a realism making visible the invisible processes of history and the spiritual world of man. 3 After years of titanic struggle and defeat, Eisenstein died in confrontation with Stalin over Ivan the Terrible, one of the few contemporary works expressing the fantastic reality of Sta-

—

linist

power. In contrast, Kozintsev followed the more

common path of

withdrawal, once he had realized the dangers of compromise. He lived to

make

his significant post-Stalinist films reasserting the continuity of

the Russian artistic and intellectual tradition

problem of conscience ("Conscience

The

tury"). 4

2.

tragic vision of his King

is

and the primacy

of the

the principal theme of the cen-

Lear

is

influenced by the experi-

most important book is Glubokii ekran (Moscow, 1971), an autobiograand including his work on Don Quixote, filled with critical and theoretical re-

Kozintsev's

phy up marks.

to

A

five-volume collection of his writings, Sobranie sochinenii (Leningrad, 1982-),

edited by Valentina Kozintseva, his widow, 3.

Glubokii ekran, pp.

4.

Vremia

i

194

sovest'

5, .127.

(Moscow,

1981), p. 94.

is

in the process of publication.

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

ence of Nazism, Stalinism, and the war; it also comes out of his earlier artistic experimentation in a time of revolutionary disand his later rereading and rethinking of the Ruschange and location sian classics and of Dostoevsky in particular. Kozintsev is a paradigmatic Soviet filmaker with a career spanning half a century and artistic achievements in all but the worst years of repression in the film industry. This major film artist's view of Dostoevsky is interesting in several respects. In Dostoevsky he finds the roots of modernism and of that sense of dislocation expressed in all the art of the revolutionary period. Like Roshal and Ermler, but much later, he comes to see The Demons as the novel that provides a model for understanding the continuities of the Soviet period with the Russian past. He is a provocative critic of the Dostoevsky films of Pyriev, Kulidzhanov, and others, his jugments being conveyed for the most part obliquely but here and there forcefully and directly. Like Eisenstein but in his own way, he found in Dostoevsky a possibility of renewal of artistic work after moving from a revolutionary world view to a tragic one. 5 His ideas on Dostoevsky will be examined here in relation to his exemplary life in Soviet art.

mad and joyful

FEKS (and Revolutionary Ferment) Kozintsev's youthful experiments in

art,

seen from without, are joy-

and rejecting of authority; on a closer view, they are a art. His work in art began when he was a thirteen-year-old schoolboy in Kiev in 1919. In the evenings he went to art classes run by Alexandra Exter, who had worked in France and had brought back an enthusiasm for the paintings of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. The young Osip Mandelstam and the future journalist and novelist Ilia Ehrenburg were among the visitors at Exter's workshop. Burning questions were debated ("Akhmatova or Mandelstam?"). Kozintsev was caught up in the ferment and fully iconoclastic

discovery of the revolutionary tradition of Russian

excitement of this world. "The mischievous

spirit of

the twenties, the

turbulence of invention, the passion for contrast and brightness, the crossing of genre boundaries (with love for the circus, the platform

show, and the poster in everything) were combined with fervor for 5. B.

Bursov, "Golos bol'shogo khudozhnika," Neva, no. 11 (1973): 199.

195

The Space of Tragedy geometries, mathematical precision of motion

We

and

definition of forms.

passed through the time of enthusiasm for Cezanne and Cubism." 6 With companions from the workshop, he worked on an agittrain outside the town. He also served as assistant to the stage director Konstantin Mardzhanov (who later moved to Petrograd and produced a mass-revolutionary spectacle involving four thousand Red Army soldiers and actors from workers' clubs, for an audience of forty-five thousand people). Kozintsev and another youngster, Sergei Iutkevich, opened a theater, the Harlequin, on the premises of an abandoned nightclub called Crooked Jimmy's. In the midst of all this excitement, Kozintsev fell victim to typhoid fever. By the time he recovered, his arall

had dispersed. He followed some friends to Petrograd; in move was a permanent one. The ferment of revolutionary art had not subsided in the old capital. Blok and Maiakovsky were real voices and faces. Meierhold unfortunately had left, but visitors from Moscow brought tales of his latest feats in theater. Kozintsev met Trauberg, and together they founded tistic circle

the event, the

FEKS, the Factory of the Eccentric Actor. No old-fashioned studio devoted to the "sacredness" of artistic creation, FEKS wanted to take the energy, rhythms, and contrasts of contemporary life and to express

them on the

stage. Instead of directors there

were "engineers" or

"shopmen." Eisenstein, who was visiting Petrograd, joined the group, as did Iutkevich. One of the first projects was the "explosive" production of Gogol's Marriage in 1921, which transformed the unhurried story of the unsuccessful marriage of a court councillor into a carnival in celebration of electrification,

where "popular hurly-burly fused with

the technology of the future" (34-35). Tatlin's

monument

to the Third

on the backdrop. Some policemen, seen pursuing Charlie Chaplin on a movie screen, then charged onto the stage as live characters. The performance was supposed to burst across the footlights and spread out from the theater to the streets. By way of apology for the liberties he had taken (at the young age of seventeen), Kozintsev later referred to the subversive power of Gogol's own writInternational appeared

6.

Glubokii ekran, p. 94, hereafter cited parenthetically in the text by page number. is the principal source for the account of Kozintsev's early life that follows.

This book

Barbara Learning's Kozintsev (New York: Twayne, 1980) to consult this this

and other Russian sources. Two

time were to be closely interwoven with his

matova became a

196

friend.

of the life.

is

limited by the author's failure

names Kozintsev encountered

Ehrenburg married his

sister;

at

Akh-

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

"The carriages with galloping horses seemed motionless; the bridge was stretching out and breaking at its arch; a house stood upside down; the sentry box was reeling towards him; the sentry's haling:

berd and the gilt letters of a signboard and the scissors painted on it seemed to be glistening across his very eyelashes." 7 Not all of Kozintsev's fantastic imaginings could be realized in the theater; yet the play did sweep across the footlights at one performance, when leftist artists in the audience began a game of catch. Kozintsev's memoirs vividly convey the freedom and power felt by the revolutionary artists of those years, contradicting the other view of the death and destruction of the Palmyra of the North, given by Zamiatin and emigre writers. "At the same time, among the snowdrifts, in the iced-up houses with broken windowpanes, people were holding exhibits of canvases which burned with bright colors; they were inventing architectural Utopias of glass and steel; they were dreaming up carnivals." This double vision of cold and hunger and of freedom and creativity underlies Kozintsev's early and late work in film. "The young artists began to love the earth in company with which they froze" (40). Kozintsev and Trauberg had to go beyond theater to achieve what they wanted. Film held the answer. In the freedom of those years the two young men got a script accepted. The Campaigns of Oktiabrina, made in 1924, the same year as Kuleshov's Mr. West's Adventures in the Land of the Bolsheviks, was a joyful agitfilm about a young woman defeating some reprobates of the ancien regime. The exterior locations included the roof of Saint Isaac's Cathedral, from which the villain jumps at the end of the film. With its clowning and masks and carnival scenes, the film was a direct outgrowth of FEKS theatrical work. Through it Kozintsev and Trauberg were introduced to some of the major talents in this new field: the wonderfully inventive cameraman Moskvin, who worked on their next films, and the theorists and scriptwriters Iuri Tvnianov, Viktor Shklovsky, and Adrian Piotrovsky.

As the FEKS workshop grew, the factory discipline of its sessions was intensified in reaction to the laxity of life under the New Economic Policy. Piotrovsky supplied the script for the film The Devil's Wheel (1926), which had a good NEP theme, the discovery and destruction of a band of criminals. It was in some sense a transitional work, and in retrospect Kozintsev was unhappy with its melodramatic 7.

Gogol "Nevsky Prospekt," quoted

in Glubokii ekran, p. 37.

197

The Space of Tragedy Although in shooting he had expanded some of the scenes from life, he felt that the portrayals coming out of the FEKS workshop were too much like caricatures: "From eccentrism there remained the wish to take characterization to an extreme; real traits were often lost; much became conventional" (67). The solution did not tale.

ordinary

lie

in naturalism, but in

was

faced

metaphor (69). The challenge the workshop measure of lifelikeness, another conven-

to find "another

tion" (97).

The Overcoat (1926), derived from Gogol, was the film through which FEKS found itself. It set a new standard for screen adaptations, which until then had concentrated on main characters, plot, and historical reconstructions, so that Pushkin, Tolstoi, Turgenev, and Lermontov all

ended up looking

alike.

"The great silent film was a dim reader" the stress on byt

(80).

— the

appearances and trivia of life was a waste. "Was it worth being an artist in an epoch of world change only to copy petty reality" (79). The whole point of an adaptation was that it be "a lesson in how to read" (81). What drew Kozintsev to Gogol was his image of the grotesque, dead, fantastic reality of Nicholas I's capital and its inhabitants, who seemed reduced to mere externality. Kozintsev had himself experienced the deadness of the old capital in the cold winter nights of 1921 as he went home from the theater, passing the long-extinguished lamps, the vast frozen Neva, and the statues and two-headed eagles symbolizing the old imperial order. He felt then as if he were wandering into some relict of the old empire. Brigands too felt the influence of the strange townscape; camouflaged in sheets, they would emerge from snowdrifts and pounce on passersby. After a day filled with work and bustle, at night the fantastic world of Gogol had a strange reality. "The picture described by Gogol was remarkable for its sense of utter authenticity and nightmare; it seemed completely plausible that the ravings of the characters were indistinguishable from their daily existence, and that their waking life resembled a nightmare. The form arose from the content, from its naFor a revolutionary

artist

—

ture;

.

.

.

the grotesque

became

a natural

method

of reflection; the

boundaries between the ordinary and the fantastic were erased.

.

.

.

Who here was alive, who dead, what was a dream, and what was real?" (83).

At the time, Kozintsev

saw "The Overcoat" not

as a tale but as a

grotesque history, in which Gogol, the failed professor, showed

how

Russian history had to be written. Later, after the purges and after the war, he came to appreciate Dostoevsky's view of the tale as a tragedy written by a colossal

198

demon. This

tragic

dimension of Gogol was

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

something he could understand only with Dostoevsky's help. In 1928 "we had no inkling of tragedy." 8 Besides love for Gogol's fantasmagoric world; Kozintsev had an excitement over the power of film, along with a conviction that the FEKS

group had the talent to express each detail of Gogol's characters "literally yet without words" (98). 9 The nightmarish world of "The Overcoat" called for extreme contrasts of light and darkness, but the necessary lights were not available. Instead, a few borrowed army projectors were used to highlight buildings and figures, so that the image of the town could be given through contrasts of scale and through silhouette and shadow. In a number of shots Gogol's little man was shown dwarfed by the sphinxes and monuments of St. Petersburg. Long shots were used to show his insignificance in the oppressive vastness of the city. His spiritual world was shown in close-ups: the large painted tea pot on the stove in his room, the paper and quills. The climax of the story, when Akaki Akakievich is robbed of his new overcoat, is particularly memorable in the film. It is shot from above: Akaki Akakievich is returning at night from the party in honor of the coat; he is crossing a vast snow-covered square when long black shadows appear on the field of white and converge on him; only then do the robbers enter the frame. In another vivid scene, men with distorted faces (shot from below) mock him; they pelt him with quills until he is completely buried in them. Everywhere the strange nullity of Akaki Akakievich

is

contrasted with the grotesque faces and gestures of the

other characters. The distinction between

The

face of

one character

is

Akakievich mistakes a dressed threaten man.

men and objects

never seen inside his huge

up dummy

The splendid new coat

is

too

is

blurred.

collar.

Akaki

for the tailor. Objects

much

for Akaki to bear

(85-86). 10

Kozintsev, Prostranstvo tragedii (Leningrad, 1973), p. 172, published in English as

8.

King Lear: The Space of Tragedy (The Diary of a Film Director), trans. Mary Mcintosh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), with a useful index. The references here to the original Russian edition and the translations are my own; the English verwas helpful in clearing up certain difficulties. 9. From the start Kozintsev was interested in the look and feel of a film and a literary work. Later, as he became more concerned with the moral significance of art, he

are

all

sion

stressed another danger to be set beside the naturalistic, reductive approach to litera-

no common truth to be learned from Pushkin, Shakespeare, Gogol, Dostoevsky" ("Stanislavskii, Meierkhol'd," Teafr, no. 9 [1978]: 108). 10. Moskvins expressive camera angles (often involving considerable discomfort for ture: "There is

himself)

were something of a

novelty.

199

— The Space of Tragedy The author of the script, the Formalist Iuri Tynianov was convinced methods of cinema required certain changes in The Overcoat; the story needed to be made more complicated, and the hero "dramathat the

dimension not given by Gogol but seemingly implicit in his manner." The additional material came from Gogol's "Nevsky Prospekt" and "How Ivan Ivanovich Quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich." 11 In the opening sequence a young Akaki glimpses a beautiful woman in the street and then sees her go off with a brash young man from his office. tized in a

rooms he

is haunted by visions of her; he dreams of receiving an from her and going in a golden coach to see her. A knock at the door rouses him. A disheveled servant hands him a note from his brash acquaintance, who needs him. When Akaki enters the other clerk's rooms, he finds a crowd of strange shady characters, among

In his

invitation

them the beautiful woman. The clerk knows Akaki's skill as a copyist and wants to get him to forge a document. Bedazzled by the woman, Akaki does the deed; then everyone turns on him and mocks him. The film raised questions that had scarcely arisen for adaptations serving up literature as costume dramas. What point was there in all why adapt Gogol, a master of the word, And was it necessary to expand "The Overcoat"

adapting literature? Above to the silent screen?

with material from the other Petersburg Sketches? The Formalist critic Boris Eikhenbaum, who did seminal work in film,

was untroubled by these

questions. Literature

had far more

affin-

than for theater. Dramatization remained in the domain of the word but sacrificed a series of characteristic literary devices parallelism, digression, description of detail. Characters lost their mystery and charm once they were embodied by actors. But on the screen you had to have a "translation to film-language." The result was someity for film

thing like a dream: "A face draws near, and

you see

and as though

just the eyes,

It is then just the hands, and then everything disappears you were dreaming a novel after reading it." The images on the screen excited the spectator's "inner speech." The FEKS Overcoat was true to Gogol in its play on objects and its sense of the grotesque. It was also

11. See Iuri Tynianov, "Libretto kinofil'ma Shinel'," originally published in 1926 and reprinted in the series of archival material published by the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music, and Cinematography and the Lenfilm Studio, Iz istorii Lenfiima, vol. 3: Stat'i,

vospominaniia, dokumenty. 1920-1930e gody (Leningrad, 1972), 79-80. His impor-

tant critical

work on Gogol,

tory (Leningrad, 1929).

200

"Dostoevskii

i

Gogol',"

appeared

in his

book Arkhaisty i nova-

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

expansion of the story. 12 Kozintsev, however, later published doubts about the first part of The Overcoat and even spoke of it as a failure both in the script and the true to the "laws of film-narration" in

its

film. 13

What Tynianov (who had done some path-breaking Formalist analyart) had sought to do was to bring out the "material metaphors." The parallels between the two halves of the story Akaki's ses of Gogol's

—

dreams of a relationship with the beautiful woman and then with the new overcoat, and also the scenes of men mocking him and then of men robbing and destroying him emphasize certain metaphors, which may be sufficiently obvious on their own. Akaki's relationship

—

with his coat

is

a loving one; the coat

is

the expression of his dignity.

Tynianov also wanted to show the masklike characterizations and the use of mask changes in Gogol's world. 14 He may have underestimated how well prepared the FEKS workshop was to act out these aspects of Gogol's

art.

Tynianov knew that a script could not tie a director down; his main concern was the stylistic properties of the image. In this instance he and the directors suffered from the constraints of deadlines; they had to complete the film within six weeks, in time to attract people away from the Easter services. There are wonderful moments in the first part of The Overcoat, above all the scene in which Akaki is buried under the pile of quills. There is another effective moment when after the forgery Akaki

is sitting all

hunched over and

the pile of papers for copying grows in front of

completely hidden.

When he

finally

and head is

dispirited at his desk,

him

until his

reappears his face has lost any

signs of youth; he has become the disturbing clerk of Gogol's tale, who has never lived. In a tribute to the twenty-year-old Andrei Kostrichkin who played Akaki, Kozintsev wrote that he had not portrayed an old man so much as "a man without age, with dull eyes that expressed nothing, walking with small shuffling footsteps, his head will-lessly drooping" (98). The major fault of the first part of the film lies in the un-

12. B.

Eikhenbauni; "Literatura

istorii Lenfil'ma,

3:29-30.

kino/' Sovetskii ekran, no. 42 (1926), reprinted in Iz

i

Eikhenbaum was

13. Glubokii ekran, p. 81;

Vremia

i

of course specifically referring to silent film.

sovest', p. 294.

14. This account of Tynianov's intentions in his script for The Overcoat is endebted to Sepman, "Tynianov stsenarist," in Iz istorii Lenfil'ma, 3:51-77. Sepman gives a thorough account of Tynianov's film theory and its relation to Formalist literary theory and discusses his contribution to film in the early years of the LenfQm Studio. I.

—

201

The Space of Tragedy derworld characters. They are good in the way that the NEP villains in the first FEKS films are good, but they take us into a world of melodrama. In the second part of the film we are in a fantastic, waking

dream world.

15

For Kozintsev to read" (81).

It

at this

was

time

also a

(as later),

way

adaptation was a "lesson in

how

of challenging accepted conventions of

cinematography. "After the shots of The Overcoat a plastic cinematic abstraction" (110). The collaboration with Tynianov extended to one more film, SVD (1927), about one of the radical Decembrist groups. The challenge here was to make a historical film that was not a costume-drama illustration for a history textbook. The lessons of The Overcoat received further application in Kozintsev and

medium was no

Trauberg's next film, The

New Babylon

Second Empire and the

Paris

silent film to a

new

(1929),

about the collapse of the

Commune, which

took the

medium

of

wrote Kozintsev, "I oversaturation of space with people,

limit of expression. "Now,"

wanted something different: objects, motion. The night streets of Paris still lived in my memory. I wanted the town squares to move and change in shape as in the tragic poems of Maiakovsky; I wanted the bricks of the buildings to flow away and the streets to become floods" (110). Kozintsev was able to travel abroad with a group of Soviet filmmakers to gather material. The young directors he befriended in Paris helped with the shooting of

some

exterior scenes.

Back in Leningrad, Moskvin's extraordinary

camerawork gave Kozintsev what he wanted,

"a haunting, fantastic, fe-

smooth and an agitated, musical rhythm. The suggestions of sound in the visual rhythm were developed in the score Shostakovich wrote for live orchestral accompaniment (the first of a long series of collaborations between the two men). This remarkable film met with controversy. Soviet directors were supposed to be making films about girls driving tractors. The New Babylon was brought into the campaign against Formalism and artificiality. But naturalism was something Kozintsev was determined to avoid. Films had to "feel." He did not want characterless, static camera. "Was a change of subjects the only reason for taking the camera away from verish world" (112). In assembling the film Kozintsev strove for transitions

the film merchants?" 15.

The second

Art has

left

(109).

half of the film does in fact stand

out the "Nevsky Prospekt" section in

sons of length).

202

its

on

its

own; the Museum of Modern copy of the film (for rea-

circulating

The

Soviet Thirties:

Double Jeopardy of the Word

Kozintsev's experience of the thirties prepared tegrity of the classics, for

sound

him

to value the in-

films gave a bureaucratic apparatus,

ever fearful of nonprosaic meanings, opportunities for asserting con(1931) was Kozintsev and Trauberg's first sound film. The came from a newspaper story about a schoolteacher in a remote area who had got stranded in the snow and had to be rescued by trol.

Alone

idea for

it

airplane. In looking for a truly

remote location, Kozintsev traveled to a

untouched by the Revolution, deep in the Altaic region, at the end of several days journeying by cart and by horse. In the village lived a witch doctor. The rotting skin of a horse (stripped from a live animal) was hung by the village entrance to ward off evil spirits. After difficult shooting here and on Lake Baikal, the film crew returned to the studios in Leningrad where the sound work had to be done. The whole process of making the film taught Kozintsev several lessons. Simplifications and compromises had to be made because of the primplace

still

itiveness of the recording techniques. Moreover,

when

the witch

doctor faithfully reenacted his rituals and dances in the studio, his fearsomeness, which had been so striking in the

Words might be an inadequate

village,

vanished.

solution for artistic problems; the role

played by the central government in rescuing the heroine came out as a schematic abstraction. But quite apart from difficulties due to his own inexperience with sound film, Kozintsev found that he had to

contend with the

new

prevailing notion of real

life

as "smiles, songs

—

and dances, and a straight road to happiness" the very notion of rewhich the first part of the film, dealing with the teacher's education, had parodied (158). 16 It is worth noting that this cheerful view of life predated the promulgation of Socialist Realism; it was subseality

quently enshrined in that doctrine.

The idea

Majtim

about a representative dedicated Bolshevik, arose in conversations with friends about their experience for the

of the Revolution.

Party records.

The

It

trilogy,

led to a search for participants

narrative

and

mode was modeled on an

to a study of

adventure

tale.

Maxim's Youth, was held up by the vetting committee on the grounds that the story of the Revolution was not presented seriously enough. In this instance, Kozintsev and Trauberg

The

16.

script of the first film,

See also pp. 147-56 passim; Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 204-5.

203

The Space of Tragedy were able to secure approval when they resubmitted the script; which they had indeed revised but without taking any particular account of the criticisms. They tried to avoid the new easy naturalism in which all difficulties were solved by means of verbal explanations and the attention of the spectator was engaged by means of the topical theme of sabotage (thanks to Pyriev and Ermler sabotage was becoming one of the new conventions). The popular success of the first film of the trilogy after its release in late 1934 soon silenced the critics. Kozintsev was particularly pleased over this success. Film was the most popular of arts, and the Revolution the most popular of events (173, 174, 179). How immune could an artist in the thirties remain to the schematism implicit in Socialist Realist norms? Kozintsev knew that in the first film of the trilogy he was struggling against crude, sensational distortions of reality and against the attempts to drag cinema back to filmed theater. The success of the first film and the even greater success of the two succeeding ones prevented any questions. Later Kozintsev

was

willing to allow that the trilogy

was

lacking in truth.

"Something foreign to the original conception began to interfere with sequences in the following parts, sometimes as a barely noticeable nuance and sometimes in whole scenes with a different structure." The explanation he offers is partly a matter of form: "Evidently in looking for the elementary we mistook the primitive for it; the poetry disappeared, and caricature took the place of humor." But associated with this were questions of content and meaning: "The evaluations of many events of life and history were ready-made and we adopted them without second thought." In a 1951 note he explained the inadequacy of character development in the third part of the trilogy, Vyborg Side, by his failure to reread Dostoevsky. In the sixties when he worked on the restoration of Part 2, The Return ofMajcim (originally released in 1937), Kozintsev found that he could cut out great segments of dead, uncinematic dialogue

(179).

17

The Necessity of the All ties;

17.

Classics

production in Soviet studios was slowing down in the late thirStalin's taste presented a formidable practical

second-guessing See also Vremia

204

i

sovest', p. 128;

Sobranie sochinenii, 4:364.

Kozintsev:

and

artistic obstacle.

He devoted

A

The Retrospective View

long, difficult period in Kozintsev's artistic

life

Marx and then film. He was glad to contribute allowed to make the to the war was not effort in every way but was only allowed to make shorts and to edit news and documentary films. He and Trauberg made a film about the war, Plain People, but it was witheld from distribution and was rebegan.

three years to a script about Karl

leased only in 1956,

many years

after

completion. Kozintsev effectively

do not know who reedited it." Likewise he disowned Pirogov (1947) and Belinsky (1951), his first films without Trauberg as codirector. So much effort had to go into remaking the films that the original conceptions were lost (187). For artistic satisfaction he looked to the theater, with productions of King Lear at the Gorky Dramatic Theater in 1941 (revived after the outbreak of war with Germany) and of Othello at the Pushkin Academic Theater in 1943-1944). He spoke of disowned

it: "I

himself as a "theatrical contract-worker." .

I

He suffered an artistic and moral crisis, for which he specifically blamed the war and Nazism, although clearly Stalinism was a cause too. For illumination of his situation he looked to the classics and to the old questions about justice, truth, and mercy. "The new age had given these concepts a new living content: one could not forget Auschwitz, racism, Hiroshima, and the cult of the beast in man. The form was changed but the questions once called eternal were again contemporary

in nature" (189). In film the turn to the classics, including

Dostoevsky, shows

up

in the mutilated Plain People.

The scenes

of the

evacuation of a factory from the front line to Central Asia are out of Exodus. The central character, a woman driven into a state of amnesia by

modeled on Sonia

Crime and Punishment, 18 though this woman is not a prostitute. She has lost her memory but remains faithful to her husband, the factory director, from whom she has been separated. She shares in everyman's suffering and can only trust in the goodness of people. She is a gentler, more sentimental,

the stress of war,

more

is

in

easily restored Sonia. In Kozintsev's work, however, the real

came in 1956, when he produced Hamlet, which it had been difficult to stage in a culture ruled by Stalinists. Kozintsev intended the production (at the Pushkin Academic Theater) as a new form of agit-theater for an audience interested in the problem of a turning point

18. As observed in Ocherki (Moscow, 1956-61), 2:664.

istorii

sovetskogo kino, ed.

S.

Kalashnikov et

al.,

205

3 vols.

The Space of Tragedy thinking

man who

of opinion.

The

dared to counter the smoothly regulated current

interpretation stressed the

metaphor of the prison:

"Under an elegant, grandiloquent disguise lay a prison for thought and feeling." But even so, the theater was confining. He needed more space, more materials, more textures. "It seemed to me that cinema was closer than theater to the poetry of Shakespeare" (189-90). Suddenly, in delayed response to Stalin's death, the studios revived. All kinds of films were being approved and made, and old projects were being realized. The Cranes Are Flying, The House Where I Live, Quiet Flows the Don, The Forty-first were in production. The Lenfilm plans included an adaptation of Don Quijcote, and Kozintsev was asked to make it. The offer made sense, for in Russia the Spanish hidalgo had long been associated with the Prince of Denmark. "The work begun on the stage could be continued on the screen" (198). Cervantes, like Shakespeare, challenged the dogmas of an "age of iron" and explored man's nature. "Their free artistic investigation of life fused the everyday with the fantastic, expresssed philosophy by means of the grotesque, and turned clowning into wisdom." Their realism was not "sterile copying"; it gave "material form to the essence of things" (199). Moreover, Spanish culture had a distinctive presence in Russian life. Kozintsev's own experience of it began with his work on a production of Lope de Vega's Fuente Ovejuna in Kiev. In Petrograd he knew the paintings of Goya, El Greco, and Velasquez in the Hermitage. In the thirties the civil war in Spain gave meaning to a whole series of place names. In fact Kozintsev had first considered making a film of Cervantes'

novel at the time of the victory of the Falange

ideas played a part in the

Don

Quijcote

(200),

and

his early

he eventually made.

The film was in a real sense "both Spanish and Russian." Refugees from Franco's Spain living in Russia contributed their talents to the film. Members of a Spanish commune in the Crimea served as extras in the scenes where Sancho Panza appeared as governor; their "typically" Spanish faces were brought out in close-ups (elsewhere Spanish characters were played by actors from the Gypsy Theater). Alberto Sanchez, an emigre Spanish artist provided advice on setting and color (this film was Kozintsev's first in color). For help in conceiving Quixote, Kozintsev used Picasso's drawings (200, 215-17). And for the script he turned to Evgeni Shvarts, the Leningrad writer who had suffered much criticism for the lack of realism in his plays

and

loved the "poetic truth" of Shvarts's writings and

206

fairy tales.

Kozintsev

knew that he would

Kozintsev: feel at

The Retrospective View

home in Cervantes' fantastic world. Although Shvarts was ill and

he managed to complete the script (203-7). All in all, as Kozinsaw the film, it was meant to continue the life of the novel, not terminate it. Like Dostoevsky, he had turned to this novel for an answer to the questions: "What have you understood during your life on earth and what conclusions have you reached?" (199). "To preserve what I thought was most important in the book the 'conclusions about life' " Kozintsev wrote, "I had to give the images another form of exisdying,

tsev

—

—

tence, cinematic flesh" (203).

Henceforth, his work was devoted to the classics. The film of Hamlet

came out

in 1964, and that of Lear in 1971. Briefly, in 1965 he gave thought to a film of The Brothers Karamazov. Kozintsev's experience

memory of the

rev-

olutionary art of the twenties; his reading of the Russian classics

and

of the Revolution, the war, of Shakespeare

—

all

and

Stalinism; the living

were brought into

rethought the Russian tradition in

with other survivors of those years

art.

relation with

one another as he

He had a sense

of partnership

— Shostakovich, who composed the

music for his films, and Boris Pasternak, whose translations of Shakespeare he used. He was inspired by Akhmatova. He turned to critics

who had

also

been rethinking the

tradition. "Bakhtin's

book about

Dostoevsky," wrote Kozintsev, "seems to have played the major role in

my

conception of [King Lear]. This study made the genre of the film me. To wit: a carnival mystery play." 19 Bursov's Selfhood of Dostoevsky (1974) Kozintsev read before it was published. He discovclear to

ered Artaud, whose example inspired him with the conviction that years of isolation could not destroy the creative, subversive genius

He readily responded to the theater of the absurd of Samuel and Eugene Ionesco but had his own tradition to work in. "These authors are indeed known to me. But how much better known are the collisions of the tragic and the grotesque in Gogol and Dostoevsky, the experiments of Meierhold, the fusion of reality and the fantasof

art.

Beckett

tic in

the art of the twenties"

(230).

King Lear: A Dostoevskian Tragedy

new cinema to understand the complexity There was no going back to the "beautiful, invalu-

Kozintsev looked for a of

life

19.

and

Vremia

history.

i

sovest', p. 154.

207

The Space of Tragedy

we did then helps me in making a Shakespeare film. But I could not work now as I did then. The reason is not just that then film was silent and that afterwards sound came and the technique of montage changed. Much water has flowed under the bridge. And even more blood. The world has changed." 20 The film Hamlet (1964), based on Pasternak's translation, with music by Shostaable years" of pure cinema. "What

kovich and with the young Smoktunovsky in the

was

by foreign viewers

title role,

was a begin-

be distinctively Russian in its weight of experience. A reviewer's remark that it was a Brothers Karamazov from Elsinore was one of the influences that Kozintsev said took him to Dostoevsky, whom he had read but not thought about ning.

It

much till

felt

to

then.

Dostoevsky helped Kozintsev to relate his strivings in art in the years of revolutionary experiment to his present interest in Shakespeare.

The key

which "transand thoughtlessness of existence (byt onto another plane," that of the infinite space and time of tragedy. Through Dostoevsky, Kozintsev discovered something for which there had been litordinary life. Dostoevtle space in the enclosed court of Denmark lay in Dostoevsky' s notion of fantastic realism,

lated the triviality

)

21

—

might have little in common with Shakespeare's Britain, but the Russian sense of the tragic showed "the power of combining history and everyday life, terror and vulgarity, laughter and despair." In Gogol he could see the origins of fantastic realism. Thanks to his work on Lear and his reading of Dostoevsky, he understood what he had been reaching for in the FEKS production of Gogol's The Marriage and the film of "The Overcoat," namely, the space of tragedy. In the twenties he had not understood tragedy. Now he says about King Lear "In the very heart of the imagery there is a sense of a breaching of epochs, of time out of joint' {Hamlet) everything is charged with ordinary life [byt as with gunpowder, and if the world is not transformed sky's Petersburg

:

;

]

will blow up into the air, into the vastness of space, scatter as ashes, and the unrelenting black whirlwind of history will take its harvest from the charred earth." 22 Dostoevsky's realism was of the same kind; his townscapes expressed similar tension and disturbance. Related dislocations appeared in Meierhold's truck stages massed with characters in the 1926 production of The Inspector General. It was no acciit

20. Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 159. 21. Ibid., p. 61,

and see

22. Ibid., pp. 86, 100.

208

p. 83.

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

dent that Gordon Craig's famous production of Hamlet in 1911 had been mounted in Russia, at the Moscow Art Theater. "The chain was Tolstoi Dostoevsky Chekhov Stanisbeing established: Gogol lavsky." Meierhold arose from Stanislavsky and led to Bertolt Brecht. Behind Meierhold lay the fantastic realism of Gogol and Dostoevsky. Accordingly, "Dostoevsky determined and anticipated much in mod-

—

ern

art."

—

—

—

23

Such geniuses as Dostoevsky are not bothered by good taste, sentimelodrama; they are not afraid of the triviality and vulgarity of life. Dostoevsky's "tragic space" included street markets and dirty back alleys. These can be shown in film more readily than on stage because the former has "more space." 24 The "evangelical idyll" of Raskolnikov and Sonia at the end of Crime and Punishment is a part, but only a part, of that space. 25 The bathhouse in the penal settlement in Dostoevsky's House of the Dead is like the hovel in which Lear takes refuge from the storm: both are images of hell. Kozintsev quotes Dostoevsky: "If we are all together in the furnace it will be very like this mentality, or

place." This hell

forms part of the cinematic space of Kozintsev's film

tragedy of King Lear. In the hovel Lear becomes "indistinguishable

from everyman"; he shares the

common fate.

In the film interpretations King Lear

is

26

a tragedy about power,

whereas Don Quixote and Hamlet are tragedies about conscience. Kozintsev takes Lear's words about Cordelia's tears as crucial and recalls Ivan Karamazov's demand that the history of the state be measured against the tear of a child. Elsewhere he notes that children are a necessary part of Dostoevsky's world, again with reference to Cordelia. 27 But in the space of Dostoevskian tragedy the heros are

crowded by the vulgar, the poshliaki. There is "fantasmagoric vulgarity" Smerdiakov and Marmeladov and likewise in Edmund's supersti-

in

Oswald's

tion,

servility,

Cornwall's caddishness, Regan's meanness,

and

Goneril's shamelessness. Lear

tion

on a "main

23. Ibid., 24.

25.

point."

Two

is like

questions

Raskolnikov in his concentra-

move him: What

is real,

unac-

pp. 84, 86-87 138. i sovest', p. 144; Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 99, 143; Glubokii ekran, p. 195.

Vremia Vremia

;

i

sovest', p. 145.

The bathhouse is also linked for Kozintsev with the notion of the hell on earth of the concentration camps. See "Gogoliada," Is26. Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 175, 177, 178.

kusstvo kino, no. 7 (1974): 87. 27. "Gogoliada/' Iskusstvo kino, no. 6 (1974): 101, no. 8 (1975): 84; Prostranstvo tragedii,

p. 167.

209

The Space of Tragedy

commodated man, and is nobody guilty?

"In the

extreme form given to

these questions appears the fearlessness of thought." 28 Raskolnikov

and Lear in the hovel in the storm suffered through this transition. If Lear's questions have no answers, then Ivan Karamazov was right to say: "Our whole planet is a lie and rests on lying and mockery. And so even the laws are a lie and a vaudeville tried to pass

beyond

constraint,

of the Devil." 29 to a tramp faced with the everyday business of surwhat about the famous words, how are they to be spoken in such surroundings? An old man in rags gnaws at a frozen beet-top and incidentally answers a blindman who has recognized his

Lear

reduced

is

"But

vival.

— — — that he indeed a

voice is

is

—

king, every inch a king. Incidentally

— that

the heart of the matter." Dostoevsky supplies the link between

Shakespearean tragedy and FEKS theater; Kozintsev rediscovers himself as an eccentric artist: "The more unlikely the situation the more it must be played as an everyday occurrence this is the first law of eccentricity." In film, attention must be paid "not to the words themselves but to the circumstances in which they are spoken." On the stage words create the action, whereas on the screen "the lifelike surroundings are dynamic and can themselves become the action." The imaginative geography large scale and small of the film required enormous work. The external locations included a deserted area near the Sea of Azov and a wasteland created by the outpourings of ash from a power plant on the Baltic Sea. Kozintsev had been accused of lowering the tone of tragedy in Hamlet because cackling hens had been admitted into the courtyard at Elsinore. What had been an isolated instance in Hamlet became a principle in Lear: "Let hens cackle during the famous soliloquies. Long live hens and down with pathos." 30 Kozintsev had found his own form of tragedy, free from attachment to Eisenstein's notion of pathos. ^

—

—

—

28. Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 42, 41.

29. Vremia i sovest', p. 168; Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 42. Some other notes elucidate what Kozintsev meant in saying: "Is no one guilty?" He was thinking about a world in which everyone is culpable (vinoven), but no one is found to be guilty (vinovat) and no one bears responsibility (the world that produced Auschwitz). See Vremia i sovest', pp. 143-44, i7i. The speech from Lear he had in mind was: "Plate sin with gold, /And the

strong lance of justice hurtless breaks; it.

/None does 30.

offend, none,

I

say,

Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 149, 43.

210

/Arm

it

in rags, a

none" (4.6.167-70).

pgymy's straw does pierce

— Cinematic Dostoevsky

The

filming of King Lear

made

Kozintsev aware of the cinematic

challenge of Dostoevsky. Eisenstein's interest in Dostoevsky had arisen

from his discovery of the individual (in Ivan the Terrible) and his subsequent study of the transformation of character according to the principles of "ecstatic"

art.

Kozintsev's discovery of the individual an-

He

said:

"The intricacy of montage form was combined with primitiveness as far as man was concerned. Even in short sequences one could see uncognisant faces and lifeless gestures." His discovery of Dostoevsky came long afterwards and was a ticipated Eisenstein's.

31

world of tragedy. world were also Time, process, and motion subject to fantastic realism. There could be tremendous telescoping of time or intensification of the instant. There were alternations from moments of result of his interest in spatial relationships in the in the tragic

intense concentration to pervasive chaos.

From

Kozintsev's standpoint, Eisenstein's characteristic analysis of

literature into

frame shots was not suited to what was essential in Dostown in his novels unfolds in rhythm with

toevsky: "The picture of the

the hero walking; a gesture appears to be continued by the street."

townscape

is

almost never

The

static.

and space seem

change into a unity of flowing subone another. Nothing no setting, no atmosphere, no ordinary life [byt] exists by itself, outside the spiritual world of the hero (or rather the author) in these novels. One may of course say that the town lives in man. There are no separate houses, thoughts, and feelings; there are only actions, impetuous interrupted actions. Relations develop not only between people, but between Footsteps, objects,

to

stance; elements of reality impetuously succeed

—

and people, lodgings and people, buildings and lodgings. This stretch out so much (in space and time); alleys abut in deadends; outer courtyards are like tunnels pulling in and expelling people. The topography of the town? A fever, an inflammation of the brain? Extraordinary summer heat, suffocatingly close air? What comes first, where lies the origin? The townscape is the confused and neglected story of an illness, and at the same time a chase from druggist to buildings is

why passageways

.

31. Glubokii ekran, p. 149.

.

.

Kozintsev wryly recalls an episode in Alma-Ata

when

was working with had eyes with a wonderful depth of feeling. Eisenstein urged Kozintsev to work with the actor, saying, "You will understand that for me there is nothing to do with them" (Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 30). Eisenstein suddenly noticed that an actor he

211

The Space of Tragedy medicine which no druggist on earth knows. and the functions of parts are disrupted; amidst the Haymarket booths and crowds a man demands: How can the distortion of life and the meaning of life be reconciled? The answer comes as an undifferentidruggist, in pursuit of a

Forms

.

.

.

shift,

ated hubbub, a roar, a faceless tumult. 32

At the time Kozintsev wrote this he had seen Pyriev's would-be nat;

and Kulidzhanov's Crime and Meek One, and Robert Wiene's Berlin Expressionist version of Crime and Punishment. He all but explicitly takes aim at Pyriev, declaring that the attempts to make uralistic adaptations of Dostoevsky;

Punishment, Batalov's Gambler, Borisov's

Dostoevsky a pupil in the naturalistic school are simply laughable. "Sometimes when Dostoevsky is produced here he is purged of filth.

The subject

of The Idiot on the screen is thus reduced to the verses of Mephistopheles about the power of lucre." 33 Wiene's Expressionist treatment (which did not extend to the actors) did not work either: "Man existed in one world, and the material world in another." The Expressionist film set; consisting of sloping townscapes and backdrops with intersecting planes painted on them, did not enter into the spiritual world of the author. As for the other Russian adaptations, they were simply too safe; Dostoevsky 's world was far more restless and disturbed: "If there are passing details, they hit the eye one after the other unnaturally distinct; if there are general outlines, then nothe dark of night, the grey of day, a blur, thing can be distinguished ;

—

gloom; no strokes or

lines."

Crowds

"swarm." In places the world

is

lose

human

the visual images: "Either there

is

They Sounds behave like

characteristics.

a mechanical one.

a deathly silence or noise, uproar,

disharmony. In the restaurant where Svidrigailov sits, there is not a minute's rest; the choir the orchestra, the shouts and knocking balls in the billiard room, the barrel organ and the street singer with her ;

sordid jingles

—

all

together at the

same

Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment

time." 34 is

not mentioned by

name

in

the published notes, but Kozintsev returns repeatedly to the crucial

dream of a horse (which Kulidzhanov was not afraid of extreme forms of expres-

significance of Raskolnikov's

had

omitted). "Russian art

sion, of

32.

an almost unbearable

effect

Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 80-81.

33. "Stanislavskii, Meierkhol'd," p. 115.

34. Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 81,

212

82-83.

—

just like the

unbearable de-

Kozintsev: scription of Raskolnikov's dream,

when

The Retrospective View the fallen horse

is

battered,

punched, kicked with boots, and then lashed with knouts. Six lashes of the knout across the eyes. Six lashes to the heart. This is how Russian belles-lettres wrote about untruth, inhumanity, absence of soul." This dream was in no sense "a film cliche, a copy of Fellini, a poor man's Kafka." Dostoevsky isn't hitting just the horse across the eyes but also

A

Dostoevsky film has to involve the viewer in the same way. In his world there is no room for the excuse: "I did not kill and I was against the killing, but I knew that they would be killed and did the reader.

not stop the

killing." 35

The Space of Tragedy the discussion of Raskolnikov's dream in the middle of a passage on Artaud, as if to suggest that the real tradition of Russian art had been carried on elsewhere. Kozintsev even supplies Artaud with a Russian lineage. He had acted in a production of Blok's Fairground Booth directed by George Pitoeff, who In

comes

had himself acted in Meierhold's production in prerevolutionary Russia. The translation Pitoeff used was by Guillaume Apollinaire, who was a friend of Meierhold in Paris in 1913. As for Soviet art, Kozintsev seems to suggest that it was in danger of succumbing to bourgeois respectability, with the classics all neatly tidied up and packaged. World War I European art became even more disturbed. Nothing returned to normal and the concept of a "norm" seemed an insult. Out of habit people spoke about progress and the blessings of civilization, though Dostoevsky had angrily written about the "Crystal Palaces" already in the previous century. If the right of living in them meant universal ab-

After

—

sence of soul meant driving the others, the majority, into convict bathhouses then the very least one could do was to stick out one's tongue and to grimace at the palaces. Tragedy in Dostoevsky often truned to grotesque scandal: tongues sticking out and grimaces. All so indecent that respectable people blushed with shame. These decencies, these bourgeois decencies (masks of respectability) are what Dostoevsky hated with white

—

rage. 36

The notion of the mask plays a part in Kozintsev's view of Dostoevmodern art. Dostoevsky conceals "sides of his spiritual world" behind masks and also uses them to reveal characteristics hidden deep in man. "He sees a being still hidden deep down, but hurries to sky and

35. Ibid., p. 195; 36.

Vremia

i

sovest', pp. 104, 142.

Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 194.

213

The Space of Tragedy

show

it

to everybody as

it

appears to him, excessively magnifying

it,

and demolishing its exterior." 37 In Dostoevsky's Gambler, Kozintsev sees "the masks of nations (fairground ones!) painted with

deriding

it,

simple hate." In contrast the Russians in this short novel are lacking in definition; the Russian narrator combines accents of the Underground

Man and

Raw Youth; he feels bruised and insignificant, yet dewho fully belong to society. "He wants to disturb their or-

the

spises those

make a face or a grimace and another Raskolnikov conducting an experiment. To render the carnival world experienced by the narrator "only a der, their system, their respectability, to stick out his tongue."

He

subjective exposition

is

is

possible; there

is

simply no objective one." The

1972 Lenfilm version of Dostoevsky's novel was too safe and respectable. 38

Dostoevsky's tragic space

was cinematic

in

its

magnitude and

dis-

turbance without being antithetical to theater. Kozintsev drew on his own theatrical experience to penetrate the levels and dislocations of

When Marmeladov, Captain Lebiadkin, and Smerdiakov shoved their vulgar mugs into the tragic action, they could be seen as "members of Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky's company in buffoon character-parts." Into their performances they introduced "variety turns, such as Smerdiakov's romance sung with guitar accompaniment, Captain Lebiadkin's verses, and Marmeladov's monologues, and also clown acts and stunts." Dostoevsky's prophetic ability to precipitate the absurd where history would take decades to unfold it came out of the play world of carnivals and clowns. "He prophesies just when he is fooling. There are different kinds of clairvoyance. The clairvoyance of foolery." 39 The basic tradition of Russian art connecting that space.

Gogol, Dostoevsky, Meierhold,

and Shostakovich was the idea

37. Kozintsev, "Gogoliada," Iskusstvo kino, no. 5 (1974): 106, no. 7 (1974): 86;

that "a

Vremia

i

sovest', p. 151. 38. Kozintsev, "Gogoliada," Iskusstvo kino, no. 6 (1974): 101.

Vremia i sovest', p. 151. This insight was probably suggested to him by the distinguished medievalist and philologist, Dmitri S. Likhachev, who once said to him: "In Dostoevsky's novels a special company is acting, with several character parts as in commedia dell arte. The narration is conducted by the author and the heroes, but a lexical 39.

analysis

shows

that the inner truth of the characters

Youth converses in the same

pounds the sensations

way

is

a relative one: Versilov in

as the devil in Brothers Karamazov; the

of the gambler;

however his

opportunity to have these feelings; they are utterly

life

ex-

experience does not give him the

unknown

to him. See the

end

Youth." (Kozintsev, "Goriashchii mug," Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 4 [1979]: 109.)

214

Raw

raw youth

of Raw

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

life gives an explosion, a catastrophe." There was without "filth," without excess. "The triviality and vulgarity made fantastic by Gogol were raised to tragedy by Dostoevsky. The hero of tragedy and the vulgar man were side by side. Not an ordinary, every-

clotting of ordinary

no

art

day vulgar man, but rather a fantasmagoric, time

lifelike

illusory

and

at the

same

one."

There was no art without demons. Kozintsev's times were right for understanding the tragic worlds of Meierhold and Dostoevsky. Meierhold at the end of the thirties (Kozintsev does not elaborate) "had pulled off the green wig worn by him in the production of The Forest in order to recant and supposedly reveal himself as a faithful pupil of Stanislavsky." 40 The public confession was proof that the tragic world Meierhold had sought to create in the theater was also the real one. "A sincere confession could lessen the guilt. And then the demons all could come out of him." But what was Meierhold that Meierholdery without Meierholdery, and what was Dostoevsky without Dostoevskery? For a definition of Dostoevskery (Dostoevshchina) Kozintsev re-

—

—

and at the same time rebellion; disruption and norms; God-seeking and God-fighting." The implication was that the arts, and above all film, were being stifled by caution and common sense and reliance on the safe and familiar. Naturalism was had long been a dead convention (preserved in Socialist Realism). It had no healing powers. The modem tradition, the tradition of Dostoevsky and Meierhold, relied on passion, intensity, recklessness, and rage for its moral conscience. 41 In retrospect Kozintsev could see that The Demons provided a model for the postrevolutionary period; for him the demons were more various and ambiguous than Ermler had imagined.

ferred to Bursov: "Humility

of conventional values

—

—

Demonic Tragedy work on King Lear, Kozintsev began a period of turmoil and exploration. As usual he was haunted by ideas not realAfter his intensive

40. "Stanislavskii, Meierkhol'd," p. 115.

Meierhold in Prostranstvo tragedii, p. pays a moving tribute to Eisenstein: "He called on neither muse nor angel to help with his art. I think that the demon in his blood was always restless." Kozintsev cites some of the sharp images in Strike and Potemkin. 41. "Gogoliada," 5:117. In a related discussion of

115, Kozintsev

215

The Space of Tragedy ized in the just completed film, while older, buried ideas and projects

He was tempted to make another Shakespearean film: The Tempest or As You Like It or All's Well That Ends Well. His new discovery of Dostoevsky sent him back to the Russian tradition; he considered films about Pushkin and his Little Tragedies and about Tolstoi's surfaced again.

final

and

escape and death, as well as a film for television about Dostoevsky works (apparently including the strikingly Slavophile

his short

sketch "Peasant Marei"). The big project he kept coming back to

was

"The Gogoliad," a film about Gogol and his characters in the Petersburg Sketches. Although Kozintsev did not complete a script for any of

and made no

he kept a running record of The selections from the workbooks which have been published by his widow, Valentina Kozintseva, are evidence of his use of the Dostoevskian space of tragedy to organize his ideas and to search for some possibility of renewal these projects

final decision,

his thoughts during this time of creative ferment.

or transcendence. 42

One reason for his difficulty in committing himself to a new project was his radical rethinking of the scope and significance of the tradition within which he worked. His notes are dotted with references to Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Khlebnikov, and Stravinsky. He responds generously to Vladimir Nabokov (despite the unkind obtuse reference to the film The Overcoat in Nabokov's book on Gogol). 43 He has a new sense of the Russian tradition, within which he is at home in a "circle of Petersburg art" with Gogol at the center, surrounded

hold, Akhmatova, Shostakovich, Pushkin,

The notes

by Blok, Meier-

and Dostoevsky. 44 This

is

his

The Tempest were published in "Iz neosushchestvennykh postaand those for the Pushkin and Tolstoi projects in Novyi mir, no. 5 (1974): 222-46. Many of the "Gogoliad" notes are included in Vremia i sovest', but most of the references here are to the fuller transcriptions offered by Valentina Kozintseva in the journal Iskusstvo kino, where they are grouped chronologically: 42.

for

novok," Iskusstvo kino, no. 8 (1975):83-98,

the notes for October 1969 to January 1971 in no. 5 (1974):103-23, those for May 1971 to January 1973 in no. 6 (1974):94-107, and the last notes, for January 1973, in no. 7 (1974): 83-109. The source for the information about the Dostoevsky film is B. Bursov in his introduction to other extracts from the workbooks, in "Golos bol'shogo khudozhnika," 11:199. 43. See, for "Iz

rabochikh

example, "Gogoliada,"

6:97; "Iz

neosushchestvennykh postanovok,"

tetradei," Iskusstvo kino, no. 7 (1976) :118; "Iz

rabochikh

tetradei,"

8:86, 89;

Neva, no.

11 (1973):202, 204; "Pushkin. Tolstoi," Novyi mir, no. 5 (1974):230, 240. 44. "Gogoliada," 5:107, 116. The list varies. In one note he mentions the director Sapunov. He inevitably mentions Andrei Bely in a few places but evidently did not feel very close to him.

216

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

which he is responsible. He is tormented by the idea that he may have squandered one inheritance and maybe a second one. In his youth he knew which tradition he wanted to inherit: Mack Sennett's mad capers, Feuillade's villains, and Lillian Gish's contrived yet enigmatic smile, along with "the magic of movie cameras and scissors and the marvels of music hall." That tradition was displayed in the posters pasted on the walls of the FEKS workshop. "That inheritance I, alas, instantly squandered, taking every kind of trick shot and imitating my favorite masks and roles. And then came the war and then much else. And there came crashing down on me the inheritance of thought coming out of suffering, from Shakespeare, Gogol, and Dostoevsky. Am I able and worthy to possess it?" 45 His Shakespeare films were his first attempts to show that he was worthy of this second inheritance. Kozintsev had long abandoned the desire to situate himself within "the cinematic American twentieth century." Behind him lay tradition, for

.

"the Russian nineteenth century, with

science of Russian

art."

all

.

.

of its unbearably heavy con-

46

His competing projects were closely connected with one another.

He was

dream powers of poetry with the powers of everything inimical to poetry." With his awareness that he was running out of time, he was interested in the figure of the artist. With his deepening moral conscience, he faced new questions: Should the artist renounce art, and if he does, what are his responsibilities? His own favorite art arose from a feeling of justice. "For geniuses this feeling is a passion. For Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostoevsky." Tolstoi and Gogol had both renounced their art the better to pursue justice. 47 Tolstoi was associated with Prospero because of the theme of renunciation and because both could be seen as Utopian visionaries. Tolstoi had been connected with Shakespeare in another way too, for though he had furiously denounced Shakespeare's Lear, Tolstoi was himself a second Lear. But Shakespeare was also connected with Pushkin: Kozintsev's film of The Tempest was going to show a "Pushkinian Shakespeare" after the "Dos-

with

interested in art as "the tragic grotesque collision of

reality,

of the

toevskian Shakespeare" of King Lear. ("We read Shakespeare not after

Beckett but after Pushkin's this

century

45. "Iz 46. 47.

— destroyed

rabochikh

Vremia Vremia

Little

the

Tragedies,

charm

which have forever

— or

of finished thought, idea,

tetradei," Neva, 11:209.

isovest', p. 35. isovest', pp. 117-18. See too, "Gogoliada," 5:112-13, 116, 6:97, 7:86, 98.

217

for

and

The Space of Tragedy

who

frankly and prophetically revealed himself in was linked to Gogol who showed himself in "The Portrait." The projects for The Tempest and the "Gogoliad" were also related: "Strange as it may seem Prospero's magic cloak is in some way

theme.") 48 Pushkin,

the Little Tragedies,

connected

me

with Akaki Akakievich's ideal of an overcoat." 49 Dostoevsky crops up everywhere. The first shot of Prospero would have called to mind Prince Myshkin, and the island over which he ruled would have resembled the ideal world glimpsed in the "Dream of the for

Funny Man." 50 Dostoevsky loomed beyond Pushkin's

Petersburg,

and

the notes for the Tolstoi project are peppered with references to Dos-

One enigmatic note

and Dostoevsky. 'The LegGrand Inquisitor.' " Another note mentions that Tolstoi read The Brothers Karamazov on the night of his escape. In the film there had to be a Smerdiakov, "the kind that sits in your soul." Kozintsev toevsky.

end

says: "Tolstoi

of the

reread the novel himself in order to find the right tension for the film.

The subject

had to be: "The great Russian idea about the allfire of which burned Gogol and then Dostoevsky and Tolstoi." 51 In the Gogol project the allusions and the whole conceptualization are Dostoevskian. What kept pulling Kozintsev back to the "Gogoliad" was, on the one hand, his sense that his real subject matter was the encounter between the Russian artist and his country and, on the other, his fascination with the question of Petersburg. "The main subject of the tales is this: the spiritual world of one man, the tragedy of the relations of this man and the Russian empire. He is shaken by the expanse of these of the film

connecting link of inner truth, in the

spaces, by the fascination of language, by the greatness of a thought

ungraspable in words, and by the meanness and squalor of

What kept him from committing himself to difficulty of the project.

the film

"The scale of the problem

is

reality."

was the enormous crushing: with the

.What imponderable have to answer Gogol's quesiton: 'Russia! tie is concealed between us?'" The film had to show "one other hero: the Russian language." There could be no silent Gogol, yet there was film

I

.

.

nothing to correspond to "the poetic and philosophic power of the Shakespearean sermon soliloquies." This admission is an interesting 48. "Iz

neosushchestvennykh postanovok,"

8:85; "Pushkin. Tolstoi/ 5:246;

pomnit', " Avrora, no. 9 (1975): 72. 49. "Gogoliada," 6:106, 7:98-99. 50. "Iz

neosushchestvennykh postanovok,"

51. "Pushkin. Tolstoi," 5:

218

237-39.

8: 85, 88.

"Imef

silu

Kozintsev:

one. Kozintsev's whole notion of spatial

The Retrospective View and dynamic

relations

and

conflicts had been transformed by Shakespeare and Dostoevsky. In a Shakespeare film the text of the play was redundant when the visual

and poetic space created with language could be expressed with the camera. But Kozintsev had relied on the dramatic text in depicting the conflicts and changing relationships of inner and outer space. In the Gogol film, in the absence of the soliloquies, Kozintsev had to find ways of revealing the conflicts and transformations through images. Just the task of delineating the different spaces, each with

own

its

dy-

namic rhythm, was enormous:

—

is not a character a student or an old man in world and who impinges on it, setting the word against force, power, and iron. The hero is the town and, behind it, like an apparition, the author with his varying countenance. Everything he wrote the start of a civilization, about action in man's soul is understandable: hastily founded in a swamp, from the Nevsky shopfronts, behind which extend the terrifying vast emptiness, the mountains of trivia, error, nonwhich have covered sense, wrong ideas, vulgarity, and meaninglessness the world. The Gogolesque structure is a cancerous cell, spreading everywhere and destroying the whole living organism. The organism disintegrates to the tune of vaudeville jingles, and a dance to which the whole world shakes. The ideas of the younger Verkhovensky.

In the "Gogoliad" the hero exile

— who

is

alien to the

.

.

.

—

This reference to Verkhovensky, the character from Dostoevsky's apparently political

and fundamentally tragic novel The Demons

is

an

in-

dication of the magnitude of the "Gogoliad" project. 52

As Kozintsev studied the

layers of reality in Gogol's space

characters performing in them, he evsky. Kozintsev started

mony"

of Gogol

by noting

and the

made fuller and fuller use

of Dosto-

"the restraint, classicism

and har-

compared with Dostoevsky

(relatively speaking).

early notes retrace familiar ground: Gogol's Petersburg

is

Some

also Dostoev-

dream about a horse measure of the necessary artistic intensity; Kozintsev had to avoid "the idiotic rhythm of adaptations, which have nothing to do sky's;

the six lashes of the knout in Raskolnikov's

are a

with Gogol's ecstasy." One note registers the kind of insight that becomes increasingly important in his conception of the film. In one of Gogol's tales there

and a

life

is

"not only a physiological sketch but also a parable

of a saint. Strange, almost like the strata of

52. "Gogoliada," 5:108-9,

116-17, 7:85,

The Brothers

96, 99.

219

The Space of Tragedy Karamazov." The different layers and modulations in Gogol provide a basis for the many critical interpretations Bakhtin's, based on carnival laughter; Belinsky's, on denunciation of serfdom; Eikenbaum's, on the miracle of language. The "Gogoliad" sets out to overcome the "closed harmonic form" of Gogol's works before Dead Souls. Kozintsev struggles to break through "to the vast tragic space of the quest, the spiritual wanderings, the road to Calvary of a soul. A Russian soul of course." Instead of composition he needs a "dynamic shifting of outlooks on reality." He needs "excess." The problem of penetrating Gogol's congruous form was comparable to the challenge of overcom-

—

ing theatrical rhetoric in the Shakespeare films. "The form

is

a

dynamite charge placed under the everyday world, an explosion, a disintegration of all that supposed unity, perfection, and 'reality' into innumerable cells in conflict." 53 Dostoevsky in his work developed hints provided by Gogol and thus provides guidance to the structure and dynamics of Gogol's world. The Nevsky Prospekt in Gogol is just as exaggerated and filled with visions and fantasies as the German watering place in The Gambler or London in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. The same furious hatred for civilization appears in both authors' urban scenes. "The de-

—

London is shattering this is where a film director must The convicts' bathhouse." The bathhouse in The House of the Dead is an image of hell for which there has to be an equivalent in Gogol. 54 The tragic in Gogol's world does not lie in "the pathos, the sweep, and the strength of a gesture or a phrase, but in the impossibility of scrambling out of the 'mire of pettiness.'" One contrasting stratum lies in romantic dreams and starry skies, but this is poorly realscription of

leam.

Cf.

ized in Gogol. 55 Kozintsev suddenly senses that the contrast he needs

may

lie

in nature in a different sense

"boundless open space and free

— nature as freedom, nature as

will."

He turns

to Dostoevsky for a

corresponding image of the mire of pettiness: "What 53. Ibid., 5:119, 104, 111, 105, 114, 7:102, 91

is

needed is a

(and see p. 90 for an even fuller

cor-

list

of

— Belinsky, Briussov, Merezhkovsky, Rozanov, Eikhenbaum, Nabokov — and the Romantic, the Symbolist, the of interpretations — Gogol as the interpreters

reli-

critical realist,

gious mystic, the source of sian literature

is

54. Ibid., 6:101.

all

a reaction). A note on the

Russian

same page

the hell of civilization, of the soul of the order, in the

St. Pet.

55. Ibid., 6:102.

220

literature,

convict prison)."

and the writer

says: "The

man

against

whom

all

Rus-

image of the convict bathhouse,' of

of civilization (banished through the social

Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

ridor into which doors open, like the stairs and doors in Crime and Punishment" In another note he again refers to Dostoevsky for an explanation of the significance of landscape or townscape for which he is

reaching: (Regarding Dostoevsky: the landscape is not a background for the action but rather a motive of action). For Gogol the landscape is even less of a background or a geographic locale for the action. The landscape if one can speak about this concept with regard to the author of Dead Souls is one of the conflicting terms of the dialectic of life: the vastness, the absolute incommensurability of the space of Russia (and of the earth as a whole) and the smallness, pettiness, narrowness, and insignificance of

—

—

man's pursuits. 56

The inhabitants and forces of the "Gogoliad" world are essentially Dostoevskian. Prince Myshkin offers one clue to the character of Piskarev (in "Nevsky Prospekt"); Ordynov (from The Landlady) provides a second one. But Ordynov adds "rebellion of the soul" to Piskarev, and therefore the "Gogoliad" also needs Akaki, the hero of "The Overcoat,"

who

as a

dead

man

is

so menacing.

The Utopian

projects

and

revolu-

tionary programs in The Devils point to the forces of disintegration in Gogol's world. "Dostoevsky's jumbles

come out

of Gogol's climaxes."

Dostoevsky's mass scandal scenes are related to the feverish turmoil

town in Dead Souls once Chichikov's seBoth men's visions are related to all those "images of final upheaval social madness, medieval ecstasies, mass repentances, imminent expectation of the Last Judgment, and even the frenzied that overtakes the provincial cret is out.

—

whirling and careering of 'dark Christianity'

— the

secrets of whips,

Old Believers, and self-immolation (V. Rozanov)." Kozintsev now follows Dostoevsky in conceiving Gogol's world as one where a simple story becomes an awful tragedy written by a colossal demon, where the obverse of gray reality is a carnival world in which the impossible becomes possible. "The fantasmagoric Gogol was shown by Meierhold 57

Government Inspector' and by us in The Overcoat." The tragic Gogol had never been shown. In Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband and "Another Man's Wife and The Husband under the Bed" farcical situations are raised into the dimension of extreme, unbearable humiliain 'The

56. Ibid., 7:94. 57. Ibid., 7:85, 96,

103-5, 108, 6:94.

221

a

The Space of Tragedy Dynamic transitions and transformations in Dostoevsky as in Gogol are brought about by "inscribing" the world of the carnival in the space of tragedy. 58

tion.

Transition

and transformation

are also matters of perception

—

character's perception or the author's. Dostoevsky's

The Double, The Landlady, The Gambler provide examples of worlds where the distinctions between reality and fantasy are lost. 59 From the start it was Kozintsev's intention that Gogol should be a principal hero of the film, not Gogol the man but Gogol the "self" ilichnosf). "The subject must not be The Nose' or 'The Portrait' but instead the self of Gogol tragic, awesome, prophetic above all prophetic! in laughter and horror rather than in blood." 60 Bursov had produced a "study in novel-form" (roman-issledovanie) about the self of Dostoevsky; Kozintsev was struggling to produce a "study in script-form" (stsenarii-issledovanie) about

—

the self of Gogol. 61 Kozintsev

who had

—

—

came

someone whose world could be under-

to see Gogol not just as

influenced Dostoevsky and

stood through Dostoevsky but more specifically as a prototype of the

underground man. Gogol thought of

art as a

"dream about the king-

dom of heaven," as a "higher truth, a spiritual cleansing from filth." But then Gogol awoke. "In some way he was the first prototype of the human underground' in a different way of course, in complexity rather than in duality, but then who knows what roles he marked for himself in the dirty dog-eared plays abodf deals and career moves."

—

Gogol had to be discovered in the multiplicity of his faces and in the contradictions between his life and his masks. 62 Several times Kozintsev realized that he was falling into the trap of translating narrative tales into an ordinary, consecutive time scheme, instead of creating a unique, "freakish" spiritual world.

ten about "space sky,

and time"

in Gogol. Finally,

he found that his task was not

matic exposition but to create

dynamic medium." 63

After

He had

forgot-

with the help of Dostoev-

to write a script or to seek a dra-

"a tragic

he grasped

and tragic-grotesque poem in a this, the difficulties were still

58. Ibid., 5:110-11, 6:101-5, 7:103-4.

and on transitions, see 6:105, 7:99. See too Vremia isovest', p. 176: "One excellent statement about Russian literature (Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Ostrovsky) is: It stands on blood and prophesy.'" 59. Ibid., 6:101-2, 60. Ibid., 5:122.

61. "Gogoliada," 7:86. 62. Ibid., p. 89. 63. Ibid., p. 83,

222

and see

p. 99, 5:122, 6:105.

— Kozintsev:

The Retrospective View

enormous. The more fully Gogol described a character, the more elusive the character became. The accumulation of details led to greater indefiniteness rather than to clarity; the apparently solid matter tended to become chimerical and phantasmal (Kozintsev recalled that Mikhail Chekhov had known how to perform these elusive, chimerical characters). 64 Moreover, in trying to discover Gogol's spiritual world,

Kozintsev faced the further problem that Gogol had tried to conceal

and to throw his friends, readers, and censors off the track; sometimes Gogol had even managed to hide his intentions from himself. Kozintsev had to find how "to reproduce the process of creation, to show on the screen the movements of thought, the pressure his intentions

left along the way in mirrors moments in the unfolding of a single self, show the heroes arising and becoming re-

of feeling, the author's changing features

— the characters who

reflect

fate." He wanted to and then dissolving in the consciousness

a single ality

of the author.

The

solu-

problems lay in lenses, in rhythm, in a musical structure, in dynamic variations of color (for technical solutions and models Kozintsev looked to Hitchcock and his favorite, Fellini, and as far afield as West Side Story and Medium Cool). 65 He needed gray inarticulateness contrasting with moments of brilliant and mysterious illumination and leading to a fiery consummation. He did not want "the beauties of old St. Petersburg, the little bridges and empire houses." He tions to his

needed cold empty space, blinding street lanterns, rushing carriages, and "important personages sprawling in padded chairs and things suddenly emerging right under your nose." 66 The strata in Gogol's space ranged from the demonic and chaotic and the farcical and coarse, on one side, to the ideal and beautiful and the spiritual and mystical, on the other, with the Petersburg poverty, hunger, injustice, and harsh climate in the middle and, encompassing the extremes, visions of a holocaust and a paradise 67 Gogol overcame the sense of imminent cataclysm in this world through laughter but above all through language, through "the power of Russian speech

64. Ibid., 7:98.

literary

men

Likewise Dostoevsky's descriptions (Kozintsev specifically mentions the

in the capital in

The Demons) led

ness of the phenomenon." Vremia

i

to "total indefiniteness

and

ineluctable-

sovest', p. 16.

65. Ibid., 5:108, 116, 122, 6:97, 105, 7:98. 66. Ibid., 5:109, 7:87.

ending

"From Kafka these structures

— Russian, lashed out with

will decisively differ in their

suffering, anger, terror" (7:87).

67. Ibid., 5:119, 7:87.

223

The Space of Tragedy Gogol's positive hero." Kozintsev

needed cinematic equivalents of

He looked for visual and dynamic expressions of "the collisions of elements; giving gigantic metaphors and philosophico-poetic constructs." 69 As cinematic resolutions were found for Gogol's linguistic miracles, the whole "space of language" in Gogol was articulated and transformed. There were places where Gogol shifted aside his heroes' masks and spoke for them "in his own voice, with his own structure of speech, thought, and feeling." The final speech of the hero of "The Diary of .a Madman" was these linguistic modulations and transitions.68

an example: "Save me! Take me! Give me a troika of horses fast as the wind! Take your seat, coachman; ring, bell; whirl away, horses, and carry me away from this world!" Kozintsev knew that it was absurd to identify an author with a character, but like Bursov in his study of Dostoevsky, he was alert for moments when the author spoke from behind the mask. These revelations and the masks form part of Gogol's moving self. "My aim is to recreate and continue in a new century this movement of his, the whistle of his knout: to get on the road! to get underway! That's the essence, the road!" 70 At the same time, Gogol's crowded everyday world was strangely lifeless: "Everything has the appearance of activity, but nothing happens: hollow words, meaningless movements, everything colorless, everything wound up for a fixed time." The chaos of hollow words, meaningless phrases, and noise was partr of the space of language. 71 Gogol's attempt to save his soul appeared as an attempt to preserve "the true weight and measure of the word" when he was surrounded by "the hell of the living promiscuity of the word." The significance of Gogol's concern with the trivial and the absurd was easier to appreciate in the aftermath of "the nonsense in the Munich beerhall." In one scene the Russian language would have been drowned out by dance music and a babel of tongues; throughout there would have been a accounts for his temptation an inner monologue (ibid., p. 112). But this he recognized was more suita television film about Pushkin ("Pushkin. Tolstoi/' 5:224) or about Dostoevsky

68. Ibid., 5:120. His difficulty in finding these equivalents

to voice-over

able for

—

(Tz rabochikh tetradei," Neva, 11:199). 69. "Gogoliada," 7:99. 70. Ibid., 5:105-6, 7:86.

meant to him he which has risen

—

out, to suffer

it

in

also Kozintsev's

a hidden cry,

it

own. Regarding what the film

some kind

of suffering? rage? delight?

my throat, and — thank God! — here is

through again

71. Ibid., 7:84.

224

The shout was

said: "Is

.

.

.

And

to free myself

from

it"

the opportunity to shout (6:94).

it

Kozintsev: "flood of information; as with the dio." 72 In

The Retrospective View

modem curse of the ever-playing ra-

the film notes the space of language

structure as the visual space with

its

is

as

dynamic

in

its

different planes of being: "In the

whole sound-series, dialogue will be but a part of the whole fabric, and the hand-organ of Nozdrev, amplified into hyperbole, will be no less Gogolesque than the characteristic nonrealistic figures of speech of the characters. Russia and its expanse will sound and speak; Gogol will speak." 73 himself, his fate and the masks he put on Stories by and about Gogol were to be interwoven. Eventually "the impossible happens, the utterly implausible is absolute truth, and the unraveling of the story cannot be separated from the fate of the author; everything is consumed and turned to ashes." Kozintsev finally imagined a visual, dynamic, and acoustic medium sweeping enough to present the fate of a Russian artist, together with that "tragic incompatibility of poetry and civilization which determined so much in the history of Russian literature." 74 Gogol overcame the temptation to prostitute his talent but was faced with the two other temptations of loquacity and silence. "What won out was the ever-present danger for silence." 75 The film would rescue Gogol from the regreat writers ductive readings given by both realists and symbolists and would show him as the writer and historian and prophet he really was:

—

—

He was,

like Dostoevsky, a prophet. Inspiration seizes a writer. Sometimes can be put in another way: conscience torments him. The torment of the word is the torment of conscience.

this

Immobility: petrefaction, hibernation.

mula

And

a furious rush.

Is this

the for-

of Russia?

The wholeness

of faith

and absolute

truth are

theater. This "absolute," ascetic truth

may

what Gogol expected

of the

lead to madness, to starvation

and death, to the renunciation of art as a mortal sin since it is concerned with the false lives of the soulless and satiated in the land of slavery and hunger. Without absolute truth there is no [Stanislavsky] system, just as

72. Ibid., 5:112, 6:96, 7:94, 107. 73. Ibid., 7:85. In one scene the town had to be audible not visible (6:100). Two sound worlds had to be heard: "disorderly everyday sound" and "music penetrating the soul" (7:103). Regarding the "space of language," see Vremia isovest', p. 90. 74. "Gogoliada," 7:97, 5:120. 75. Ibid., 5:121, 7:100.

225

The Space of Tragedy is no "system" for Gogol, for Dostoevsky (the joy imminent epileptic fit), and for Tolstoi's escape.

there

of the sense of

an

—

Genre realism is a danger at every step. The direction one of the main ones is the tragic power of everything vulgar, the demonism of everyday

—

reality.

A premonition

of the mass scandals and loud disorders of Dostoevsky is needed in Gogol the fantastic overflowing of trivia {poshlost across the boundary of the real. 76

—

)

The remarkable

film Kozintsev

imagined would have expressed the

"Russian apocalyptic consciousness: power, the kingdom of falsehood." The measures of intensity of the "Gogoliad" were Goya's vam-

sense of impending cataclysm, Dostoevsky's vision of

pires, Pushkin's

Russia possessed by demons, and of course Gogol's

own work and life.

"I clearly see an artist who is seized with horror at what he has written, at the unbearable reality of the horror of which he has given so like a

portrayal, as

And

if

the prince of darkness himself has guided his hand.

so he hurls himself away from the capital; before

him

bearable and inconceivable vastness of his native land.

is

the un-

And some-

in the north he hews out a hermitage and remains in solitude in the midst of the quiet of the emptiness, with his thoughts about God." 77

where

—

The Russian Tradition Writing specifically of King Lear, Kozintsev distinguised good film-

making from hackwork: To make a film does not mean to go at a set time to a special place (a rehearsal room or studio) in order to work with a specially gathered collective made up of people with different specialties. It means to live several years under the blinding influence of the Shakespearean picture of life, which at first you see only faintly, with a few features, sky)

—

although the principle thing

you

76. Ibid., 6:95, 7:83, 86, 88. 77. Ibid., 5:115-16.

226

— the

all-connecting idea' (Dostoev-

receive as of the greatest importance.

And

every day

—

ev-

Kozintsev: erythingyou

see, hear, read,

bringing out this idea

and

and learn

The Retrospective View

— convinces you of the necessity of

of making this picture of life into

one that

really

exists.

Otherwise

A

classic

and

it is

was destroyed when everything

clear, the

tions

a journeyman's job, office work. 78

problems

were good

all

in

it

seemed "ready-made and fine edi-

neatly formulated." Schools

at destroying

them. Cultured film directors were a

hazard. The adaptation of a literary work to film was too often treated as a task for the Ministry of Transport: "conveying goods from

one

place to another, from the pages of a book onto the screen, keeping a

proper check of the inventory." Bitingly Kozintsev says: "A film adaptais as absurd as a sculpture tion in the usual sense it has for us modeled from Rembrandt's Return of the Prodigal Son" Attempts to package the classics were laughably contradictory and unclear. Understanding could begin only from a sense of confusion. "We are naive to think that we interpret Shakespeare. An absurd formulation of the question. It is he that interpreted us, and not the other way round." Thus Kozintsev did not adapt Shakespeare, but rather adapted himself to Shakespeare, whose understanding of life in every time was far more "contemporary" and "relevant" than anyone's partial, transitory understanding of Shakespeare's world. 79 To adapt is "to continue life in another time and another spiritual world." Only a man with a significant inner world or space can do this. "Another man's world blends with yours. Of course, this world could not be an alien one or you could not begin." Only an artist who can read can make a significant film out of a book. The ability to read depends in part on a man's experience of life. The thoughts Kozintsev finds in literature are thoughts he has "suffered" as well. "The art of Shakespeare, Gogol, and Dostoevsky raised the layers of ideas and unresolvable contradictions from the depths of time far better than I could do myself." The creative artist in Kozintsev is driven to imagine and embody these ideas and feelings in film. "The author opened my eyes and named that which I was powerless to name. Then you begin to see and not to read. A visual motion begins within the text; the text is concentrated more and more tightly. Then I can begin the film." 80

—

78.

—

Prostranstvo tragedii, p. 46.

79. "Gogoliada," 7:90;

80.

Vremia

i

Vremia i sovest', pp. 46, 33- 34, 72, 190, 208.

139, 205.

sovest', pp.

227

The Space of Tragedy For Kozintsev the experience of film depended on experience of the world and vice versa. Film was not simply a self-reflexive medium, not simply an instrument of liberation, even if classics had to be liberated from ideological straitjackets. Film was involved above all with understanding and conscience and, consequently, with responsibility, jusand action. From the standpoint of critics, arguing their way out

tice,

from the hegemony of corporate capitalism, his moral pursuit might seem narrow, and the urgency of his concern ill considered. It is, however, a concern that underlies the whole Russian tradition of art. Kozintsev carried

on the

tradition of the Russian intelligentsia, a class

distinguished by memory. "Some were bold, others cautious. But there

was

a

norm of human behavior, which they did not violate. They could it. They remembered where they came from." Kozintsev's 81

not violate writings

What

is

and

films suggest a criterion to apply to

any

film adaptation:

the intensity of the filmmaker's moral concern? 82

Kozintsev had special reasons for turning to the classics: only they were adequate to his experience of the times, to which he had a responsibility to bear witness. "The director's work or adaptation is a testimony:

I

assert that

all

this took place like this before

my eyes, as

I

re-

member, for me and the people around me. The movie camera is a means of witnessing, of documentary confirmation: see, this can even be shot on film." In his acceptance of this responsibility he echoes Akhmatova in the remarkable Foreword to her poem Requiem. Kozintsev found that he might excise some scenes of excessive Socialist Realist protestation from The Return ofMsQcim, but he could not exorcise his past. From Dostoevsky's Demons he learned that he had to redeem his excesses and vulgarities by inscribing them in the space of tragedy. In general, when working on any film, he found that he could learn more from books than from other films. From Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov, he learned "shame for aesthetic self-indulgence." He was able to see that reliance on Shakespearean texts could hamper his further development as a film artist, for he knew what significant achievement in theater, film, and literature meant, and he understood this because of the Russian tradition within which he worked and which he was committed to redirecting onto its true path. He spoke about the incredible happiness he could feel over a book when he was trying to 81. "Goriashchii mig," 4:109. 82. Vremia i sovest, p. 139. In Kozintsev's opinion, Kurosawa's version of The passed this double test. See Prostranstvo tragedii, pp. 10-11.

228

Idiot

Kozintsev:

imagine ately

it

in film

and about

when he saw the

The Retrospective View

his readiness to torment himself passion-

results.

A film

adaptation was "a ticket without

winning number." 83 The intensity of his search all-connecting idea"

and of his exploration

for the "Dostoevskian

of the Dostoevskian space

of tragedy in his last years gave unity to his artistic

work spanning the

years of revolutionary experiment, commitment, and growing consciousness. 83.

Vremia

i

sovest',

pp.

10, 34, 144.

229

Demonological

Tradition

is

sometimes a detour, the redemption of tradition another

detour. For the grandchildren of the revolutionary years, the excitements

and the excesses and terror of the thirties belong to history is a freedom to go straight to the classics a matter of life and death." In a world dominated by the threat of nu-

of the twenties

and "as

to

dreams. Disinheritance 1

clear holocaust, the proliferation of "Third World" wars, the dangers of

fanaticism, Dostoevsky has a

new

significance: "Over the past quarter-

most relevant work of Dostoevsky 's and indeed of all the classics in the world has proved to be The Demons."2 Iuri Kariakin, author of the acclaimed stage version of Crime and Punishment, has been publishing his ideas for a film of The Demons in a range of publications. Elem Klimov, the director involved with the project, has said that his most profound dream is to make this film. One of the basic ideas of Kariakin and Klimov s adaptation is "to disclose the ultimate limits of the forces of evil and the limitlessness of the forces of good, and most important, the limitlessness of the forces of resistance to evil." The demons in the title are an artistic image of the confusion of good and evil; in addition they are both men and the possessors of men. They are the radical left (whom Kariakin notes were criticized and condemned by Marx and Engels) and the bourgeoisie and also, as Kariakin puts it, the censors and the radical right, people like Mikhail Katkov and Konstantin Pobedon-

century the

ostsev,

who

hottest,'

contrived to suppress the publication of the chapter with Sta-

vrogin's confession to Tikhon, the unofficial, unsanctioned holy

1.

Iuri Kariakin, "Lish" nachinaiu," Literaturnoe

2.

Kariakin,

3.

"Lish'

obozrenie, no. 11 (1981): 47.

"Zachem khroniker v 'Besakh,'" Literaturnoe obozrenie, no. 4 nachinaiu," pp. 38, 43; "Zachem khroniker v Besakh, p. 73.

230

man. 3

"

(1981): 72.

Demonological

The characters

in the novel are possessed.

work

Dostoevskv too

is

possessed.

purge himself' the victory w hich comes finally and transiently in the Pushkin speech is one of the tone and style and deletions rather than of new ideas. Some men are however beyond salradicals at both extremes the "underground' Kariakin sees in his

a continuing struggle to

—

—

vation.

Dostoevskv in his

mode

is

prophetic not only in his \ision of

e\il in

our time but also

hundred years ago Dostoevsky our disasters and related them in

of narration: "More than a

eaught our rh\"thms guessed many of almost our language transforming a mass-information

would say

into an artistic

method." One of Kariakin's

to the role of the narrator or 'chronicler recalls

had claimed

—

for reasons of his

paign against The Demons

*

medium

articles is

as

we

devoted

he cam-

in this novel. In 1935 Gorky,

own perhaps

as part of his

— that the 'chronicler" was the most important

of its characters. For Kariakin this is a true insight. The narrator is more than a distancing de\ice without which Dostoevksy might not even have described a political movement that was repugnant to him. The narrator ;

particularly deserves attention because of the range of modes of 'chronicl-

used

ing"

imagine and present the impending disaster: sensational

to

journalism the history "chronicles* of Shakespeare the record of the end of the world in the Book of Revelations. The aim of Dostoevskv s artistic method, Kariakin notes is to involve his readers, to convert them through the Word. Kariakin gives several specific hints about the proposed film. Its narration and rhythms will belong to the tele\ision age along with the indifference of the masses to the accumulating reports of war and disaster and their excitement over trivia. The film will seek to overcome this indifference to engage the spectators to interact with them to change them

Eisenstein

we

Dostoevskv

recall,

stressed the central role of the spectator

sense of the catastrophe to which the world

s

.

is

heading

could be conveyed in flashes forward to present scenes of disaster. Karia-

on

kin recalls one he witnessed

a

peace mission

to

Kampuchea

boys playing football proscribed under Pol Pot beside a

man

skulls

and bones. Kariakin

finds the sense of

pit filled

— two

with hu-

imminent catastrophe

everywhere in Dostoevskv. He wrote from the verge of being and not being

and

his love of

life

came from knowledge of that verge. Kariakin sees the Meek One" 'Just five minutes just all of five minas urgent and general in its import a \varning of the

—

conclusion of the 'The utes too late 4.

.* .

.

—

'Zachem khroniker

5. Ibid.,

\

Besakh

'

p. "5

p. 78.

231

The Space of Tragedy no way touched Kampuchea, Kariakin heard one voice speaking from beyond the verge, that of his guide, who kept mechanically repeating: "I had seven brothers and sisters, a father and mother. All were killed. I too was almost killed. But now I feel good because we have a very good government." 6 This voice seems destined to find a place in the film. The conclusion Kariakin seeks to emphasize is not Stravrogin's hanging himself or old Verkhovensky on the road, babbling in French to the peasants. It is young Verkhovensky at the station with Erkel (the terrible murderer who loves his mother);7 Verkhovensky goes into hiding but will reemerge and gather suicide of mankind, something the film adaptations in on). In

new followers like

Erkel.

and Klimov (and Dostoevsky) see evil as limited and ultimately comic, and maybe therefore vulnerable. The possible triumph of good will be a matter of light and rhythm. The film will probably be in color. "I long thought of Dostoevsky as though I was watching a black-and-white film, and then it turned out he had his own unrepeatable spectrum." 8 Kariakin

In publishing his ideas Kariakin has benefited from certain institutional developments in recent years. In reaction to the demands of the militaryindustrial sector for Russian labor, Russian "village" writers and others have been licensed to resume the nineteenth-century quest for the People and to voice their concern over the Russian "Word." The same opportunities do not exist in the smaller film medium (Vaslli Shukshin was an ex-

ceptional "village voice" in film). Less conventional films are of the national republics of the USSR, but

it is

made in some

in the Russian FSSR, in

that the making of the film of The Demons will be decided. meantime demons with a Slavic accent are whispering at and beyond the "periphery." In Poland, Andrej Wajda is filming The Demons.

Moscow, In the

In London, Iuri Liubimov, working with English actors, has fulfilled his

dream

The Demons to the stage. A film of Liubimov's producbeen made by Zed, Ltd., for broadcasting on the small screen. Liu-

of bringing

tion has

bimov's interpretation restores to Dostoevsky's text Stavrogin's attempted confession to the elder, Tikhon and emphasizes the deaf and blind ob-

tuseness of liberals.

6. Ibid., p. 83. 7.

"Lich' nachinaiu," p. 40.

8. Ibid., p. 35.

232

Conclusion

on artistic achievement in the Soviet Union are difand correspondingly, the achievements wider than people in the West like to imagine. Artists there (and indeed elsewhere) are not engaged in a simple struggle with ideology. The ideological constraints are often made or accepted by the artists themselves and are often internalized. The real barriers may have a great deal to do with

The

constraints

ferent,

personal

rivalries

Realism, in

disguised as ideological differences. Rising Socialist

which the sense

of struggle

was

still alive,

could accommo-

date both Roshal's revolutionary Dostoevsky and Ermler's counterrevolutionary Dostoevsky, despite the heightened expressionistic images of the one

and the nervously probing camerawork

of the other.

The

ambiguities of Shklovsky's revolutionary dialectics were, however,

excluded, along with his Formalist devices, which questioned the cer-

But as film was increasingly dominated by jour(in consequence of which, production virtually dried up), Socialist Realism came to mean broad, simple characterization, a simulated everyday static reality without dark spots, and celebration of joyful revolutionary myths. There was no space for adaptations of Dostoevsky's works, which had been virtually suppressed. In the relative freedom of the war years Eisenstein turned his attention to tragic heroes and found that to understand his work on Ivan

tainties of experience.

neymen who

catered to Stalin's tastes

the Terrible he had to look to Dostoevsky's characters, who are inwardly divided and who, so to speak, become their own punishment in a world from which a punishing fate has been removed. He con-

233

Conclusion

Karamozov which was to explore and division; punishment, transference, and redemption, and which was to be the fullest realization yet of his dream of an art of pathos. In the event, Eisenstein's plan was realized in very different form by a man who lived in his shadow, Pyriev, who sought to ceived an adaptation of The Brothers

the images of identity

prove that he could make Eisenstein's film establishment, Pyriev

had

films.

For all his influence in the

to wait for Stalin's death, after

which

Dostoevsky began to reemerge as a major Russian classic. Pyriev appropriated Dostoevsky thematically as a critical realist, that is to say, a

man who saw the

evils of his

lutionary resolution of these

time without seeing the

evils,

and

stylistically as

way to

the revo-

a naturalist of the

coming from the theater with actors whose main aim life and with stage sets creating a quick impression of "Old Russia," with its grime and charm and all. Pyriev's model for the Soviet filmmakers' Dostoevsky has been dominant until derivative kind,

is

to give

an

illusion of ordinary

recently (even

if

Pyriev's followers

now take their cameras out onto the

The relaxations of the 1960s and shown that the model is inherently unstable; in partic-

streets for their Petersburg shots.).

1970s have also ular, the

inner world of Raskolnikov presented by Kulidzhanov threat-

model with all but overwhelming stress from within. From without, the model has been challenged by demands that Socialist Realist film take a truly revolutionary leap and incorporate Dostoevsky 's distinctively modern tragic sense. The Demons, covertly adapted by Ermler in The Great Citizen and a powerful player in the imaginations of people in the 1930s, has emerged as the work that a Socialist ens the

official

Realism adequate to our time has to confront. Dostoevsky 's task within and without the mainline Soviet tradition of adaptation is to subvert it.

Of

all

the authors of nineteenth-century classics, he

do this. The ideological constraints on Soviet those of the Hollywood directors revealed

is

best equipped

to

artists

have parallels with

us by the Cahiers du cinnew meanings. One way of describing Kulidzhanov's work in Crime and Punishment might be to say that it shows that the conventions of naturalism are instruments of repression. Pyriev's adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov

ema. Established conventions are

made

to

to bear

can be seen as an encoded autobiographical confession subverting the ideology to which he subscribes (and indeed which he helped to make). Ermler's use of an encoded model from The Demons to explain the purges amounts to a confession of the inadequacy of the available 234

Conclusion

The suppression

political explanations.

suspect that there

is

of Nasty Story leads

one

to

a subversive satirical message, artistic or political,

be deciphered in it. The flaw of these sorts of analyses is that they do not distinguish between films that are interesting only as case studies of the mediations of ideology and films that in addition signifito

cantly imagine Dostoevsky.

and Kozintsev

Some filmmakers

— have

— notably Shklovsky,

Eis-

imagined Dostoevsky, but in their film writings rather than in the films they were able to make. Through them Dostoevsky is part of the living tradition of Russian art; they, like him and with him, were rethinking the dominant ideology of the society not simply to dismiss his sense of society on the brink, the strange experiments with life and the cults that are part of the fabric of enstein,

his novels, the frontier that sia."

is

significantly

a perpetual part of his "Petersburg Rus-

At the same time, through them Dostoevsky's genius

is

revealed

extending beyond the word and the concept into the visual imagination;

he

is

a "seer" in

more than

a prophetic sense. Reality

and

film

have caught up with Dostoevsky. If Socialist Realism grasped this, it might overcome both the provincialism of vision which has long threatened it and the recent hope that slick packaging for the international market is the solution it needs.

235

APPENDIX A

The Tragic Universe of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible

Eisenstein's work notes for Ivan the Terrible show his movement toward a tragic vision in terms of which his developing interest in Dostoevsky can be understood. His work on the Ivan trilogy was deliberate; ordered; and controlled and yet depended on discovery; intuition; and spontaneity. His art was fully imaginative at all stages. Starting from an intuition of certain key characters, scenes, and themes, Eisenstein struggled to draw out the meanings in them; to find the life of images and characters, to bringout interconnections and to make the whole dynamic pattern explicit. The image for the proposed film round which the others crystallized was, as it happened, one of Ivan repenting and confessing before a fresco of The Last Judgment ("A Corner within the Cathedral" in the screenplay). The very deliberate, system1

2

atic;

multidimensional; but only half-completed plotting of Ivan's part

in the

first

much

as planning

of the extracts it.

below was a way of eliciting

In any event; this schedule

was

his character as still

only a pre-

liminary stage. All kinds of developments of his character and scenes

came 1.

in other notes as in the ones about ;

Fedor BasmanoV; which took

See volume 6 of Eisenstein, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 6

vols.

(Moscow, 1964-71). The

following selections are translated here: the systematic inquiry into Ivan (pp. 46063), and the thoughts on Fedor Basmanov (pp. 503-13). The last of these notes (from May

were made

weeks before the shooting of the film was scheduled to begin. ibid., p. 548. Ivor Montagu and Herbert Marshall's edition of the Screenplay (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962) illuminates Eisenstein's process of creation, although the critical view argued by Montagu begs some important questions. 1942) 2.

just

See the editorial note,

237

Appendix the form of a diary of Eisenstein's thoughts. All the notes suggest

the imagined screenplay

was constantly

how

and changing. The Eisenstein drawings and sketches evolving

same creative process continued in and with particular intensity and concentration during the shooting (his drafts for a book on direction in Volume 4 of his works warn that only the crucial points in the composition should be worked out and that the director must leave himself open for all the "by-products" of reality). At the same time, new constraints arose which could stimulate as well as restrict him in his imagination of the film, as is indicated by his comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the actor playing Fedor. Montage of course was the ultimate creative act. Here, unfortunately, a purely negative constraint operated on Part 2 of the film, where Eisenstein made some major amputations when he bowed to political necessity and tried to rescue his creation. The work notes show that the murder of the Kolychevs was meant to be a particularly brutal scene, but in the version of the film that

we

have, the brutality

has disappeared; moreover, the editing in this scene ward. All in

all,

is

signally

awk-

were

clear

in Eisenstein's creative process certain things

and given from the rate clearer.

One

start;

other things had to be

made

of the lesser things Eisenstein

was

clear or at

any

initially clear

about was the nature of German dictatorship and its analogies with the ideals pursued by the oprichnik Staden and by the boiars. One of the major themes he had to make clearer was the nature of Ivan's edinovlastie, or autocracy (single power), which was to lead to repentance. In the process of explicating it, he moved from a notion of Ivan's history which was still fundamentally dialectical to one that was tragic (and close to the world of Dostoevsky with its dualistic, divided characters and its doubles and with, moreover, its carnivalistic role-playing and its modulations of experience into heavenly or infernal spheres).

November 1941 Eisenstein could

still say: "The theme of autocracy two aspects: One as autocrat and One as solitary. The former gives the theme of government power (progressive at the given historical stage) the political theme of the film. The other gives the personal theme, the psychological theme of the film. Here lies the compositional unity of the personal and the social, the psychological and the political." 3 According to this view, the film deals

In

(edinovlastie) is resolved in

—

3.

Izbrannye proizvedeniia, 6:548-49.

238

Appendix with the personal cost paid by a man with historical vision; his sufferings are certainly historically determined (even his solitude could be that)

and may

also be individual

and accidental

(his lack of

judgment

of people close to him). But over the next few months, in Eisenstein's

on the oprichniks (of whom Fedor Basmanov prime example), he moves from a view of their (perhaps inevitable) further reflections

torical role as agents of intrigue

and

violent oppression to the

is

a

his-

more

fundamental tragedy of absolutism. Obviously the oprichniks are corrupted by the huge power given to them (which had to be given them in the historical situation), but more interestingly, in a society based on total subordination to the will of One, no man who is an agent of the sovereign will can fully trust another (or himself for that matter). Ivan himself is constrained to

show ambiguity or duality in his attitude

to the people.

On one hand, he is

on the

he

other,

will

necessary. (In the static"

impose

full

a poet

his will

who believes in their wisdom;

on them by

force

and

deceit

if

"pathos" of this film, with the continual "ex-

development of its particular subject,

it

ancitipates the scope of

Kozintsev's Lear, although Kozintsev was unwilling or unable to recog-

Mutual suspicion governs the relations of the sovereign's the oprichniks. Mere thoughts are dangerous. Ivan tests Vladimir and condemns him to death not for anything he has done but for something he might do (as evidenced by his willingness to wear the tsar's symbols of authority). No conscience can ever be pure enough. Fedor Basmanov is hopelessly compromised by his loyalty to two fathers. The whole society rests on confession, which is always incomplete and inadequate. Correspondingly, betrayal becomes the dominant image of the film; implicit in betrayal is self-betrayal. Ivan recalls (and illuminates) Ermler's The Great Citizen. Eisenstein moreover has a sense, lacking in Ermler, of the perversion of the person under absolutism. Fedor seeks to be more than a son to Ivan; only if he is Ivan's wife can he sufficiently identify with the ruler's will. Maliuta will be Ivan's friend, but only if he is his only friend. (Perhaps Ermler sensed this problem and deliberately ignored it; the private, personal sphere is absent or silent in his film.) Throughout Eisenstein's notes there are meanings that remain to be fully explicated; this sense of ambiguity finds its way into the two surviving Ivan films, and is one nize

this.)

chief agents

—

source of their imaginative power. Eisenstein in his art of film Ivan in his art of state: in both there tion. Eisenstein's film

is

a dualism of poetry

and

tragedy was visionary and deliberate.

It

is like

calculaalso

239

was

Appendix (and

and liberating in that its exploration of the realm of depended on (and excites) the free imagination. Part 3 might conceivably have shown that catharsis was possible, but perhaps is)

subversive

necessity just

could only have developed into the synthetic self-enclosure Eisenstein feared. Betrayal (Eisenstein's trauma?) threatens to engulf the historical vision of Russia's Renaissance prince in the dark leveling it

flood of primitive thought.

Eisenstein understood

how

suicidally

dangerous his conception of

IVAN Scene Prologue

Year 1538

8

I

1543

What He

Age

13

Is

Doing

Witnesses the death of the

The

poisoned Glinskaia and the killing of Telepnev. For the first time hears "Take him!"

his character are disclosed.

Him!"

is

Receives the ambassadors.

Build

up

Wants

—

to speak

1543

13

Disclosure of the Image

roots of formation of

The ongoing theme "Take introduced. of anger, explod-

The

little

eagle

is

aroused.

ing in the next scene with

is

the arrest of Shuisky.

prevented.

Ill

Plot Function

Expresses his views on

Ivan's first outburst.

Heatedly leaps ahead of

government

Verification of the unex-

himself with the phrase:

in the

form of

childish, straight-

still

forward truth

(cf.

Khol-

stomer on property). Is

subjected to the boiars'

mockery.

The final degree of mockery: Shuisky puts his foot on the bed the impulse for the

—

first

pected efficiency of the

"Take him!" Sees the effect

Grand-Princely machine

and stands

(automatic execution of

ground. Lapse into bewil-

extreme orders). Deduction of the scheme for action from the total

derment

situation in

all

three

this

(characteristic

of the future

theme

of

—by Anastasia's

doubts coffin

and

in the repen-

tance scene).

scenes.

"Take him!"

Reactions of

on

fast

Final decision.

fear, fin[al]

decision.

Wedding

Wedd(ing] feast

1547

1547

17

17

Espouses tsardom. Sets forth the program of

Beginnings of

autocracy (edinoderzhavie)

duction of the grounds for

Raises everyone against

opposition of

himself.

(feudal, clerical, foreign).

Celebrates. (First meeting

Establishes the closeness

His ability to deal with the

with Maliuta.) Releases Kolychev. Encounters the

and the people. The march on Kazan is

people. A "demagogue" in a

240

flicts

all

the con-

in the script. Intro-

of Ivan

all

groups

Ivan's "tricks:" his

—the

inverse reaction

greater the resistance feels,

he

the stronger his

forward

drive.

good and the

politician's

—

—— Appendix

Ivan was. In January 1944 in a letter to Tynianov (which

was never sent

because Tynianov's death intervened) Eisenstein wrote about his struggles to show "the tragic inevitability of the coincidence of autocracy and solitude." He added: "You yourself will understand that this is off

just

what

and

in the film!" 4

4. Iuri

lator of

in the very first place they are trying to 'replace' in the script

Tynianov: Sbornik (Moscow, 1966), pp. 177-78. The version given by the transEisenstein (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 238, is

Yon Barna,

garbled.

The Thread of Intention

Development of the Image

Inner Content of the Scene

Ivan's original traumas:

Psychologically individual

A

poison, the boiars' in-

(justification of all the

child.

trigues

and

quarrels, the

Character Trait nervous, frightened

distinctive traits of Ivan).

cruelty of reprisals.

To take part

in events.

A timid,

frightened

changing to

of the boiars' actions.

ness of himself as Gr[and]

faint

The

boy

Sense of the wrongness

future

Grand Prince

awakens.

aware-

Prince.

Rebellion against every-

thing oppressing

him

in

childhood (the contempt for

him on the

contempt

throne, the

for his ideas,

the boiars' attitude to his

mother, tion of

etc.)

all

Concentra-

this into a pro-

gram with the goal be tsar

"I

will

Owing

to

an external

impulse, change to a con-

Final disclosure of the set

Decisiveness. Doubts after

of givens of his character

the act. Immediate action

sciousness of strength

(Vorschlag of the whole

(but also the other kind).

and

future picture).

A

to decisive, direct

action. Conceptualization

hint of the "forceful

breakthrough."

of action in his program.

Typical inverse reaction

with

Evstafi,

church

with the

lands).

(absolute)."

Undiplomatic exact expo-

Publicly visible forging

"Sporting"

sition of his intentions.

of irreconcilability as

fight. Insufficient

Some whiplash

resistance grows. Here

(the

within the scene. Later

relation to the

from scene to scene.

the license of the

against

judicious discretion

is

always characteristic of him.

tricky in a

caution same, for instance], in

Basmanovs; Starit-

skys, etc.)

Of the two boiars

and

forces: the

and the people

instinctively

chooses the

Ivan grows into a popular

leader

and

director of

popular passions

"Demagogue." Inventiveness. Self-mastery.

Introduces the

241

trait

of

Appendix IVAN Scene

Year

Age

What He

common narod].

Is

Doing

Plot Function

people [chernyi

Subdues the crowd.

brought

in.

Beginning of

the Ivan-Philip thread.

In the fight with the Tartars turns their weapons against

them

(figuratively)

Disclosure of the Image sense. His ability quickly to orient himself and to find a

way

]

out (the Tartars).

and

—a dagger).

concretely

Kazan

1552

22

Takes Kazan. Conflict with Kurbsky in three stages.

fight against feudal [inter-

Notices Basmanov.

ests].

program with Vassian's teaching. Formulates the problem of

conflict

Bolsters his

Final base for

waging the

Beginning of the with Kurbsky.

Development of the demaAn opposer of inexpedient and pur-

gogic theme.

poseless cruelty. Correct

discernment of people (Basmanov, Maliuta) and deployment of them.

destroying the boiars'

power.

Extremity in regard to serious guilt (the blast) but also farsightedness (the

gunners). Illness

1553

23

He is ill; implores the boiars

Undergoes a

to take the oath to Dmitri,

of derogation, including a

exalted than personal

moment of personal hatred

autocracy.

i.e.,

to the autocracy.

new portion

Ivan's idea is

more

in the repressions. With

own hands gives Kurbsky the opportunity

his

to escape.

Fedor Basmanov Fedor bothers me. An unworked-out line. "As usual" [in Engl.] I pass over the whole role in my thoughts (most often from end to beginning the Edgar Poe tradition). With a "roving flight" or rather some kind of Wunschel rute [sic] you pass over scenes and tap them to find where a character is hollow or unresonant. And so there is a possible place, a blank spot, where something can be put. Sometimes these "loose ends" [Engl.] have been

—

instinctively

One such 242

left.

place:

Basmanov's chamber.

Appendix

The Thread

Development of the Image

of Intention

Inner Content of the Scene

short-sightedness about

people. Enlists the people

on

his side.

Character Trait

To use each

his nearest entourage.

episode for realization of

Kurbsky here and

his program.

Lithuania. Evstafi, Philip,

later in

Basmanov, Vlad[imir] Andr[eevich]. Does not

mistake the overall vision, but mistakes people at close range.

Purposeless cruelty

Final consolidation so

that

he may carry out

stupidity.

his

is

a

Widening

"demagogic" mastery.

plans

Simultaneous attentiveness to popular wisdom.

Extreme temperament: in the executions

mercy

and

in

{Vorspiel for the

executions at Lobnoe mesto [Headfall Ring].)

To build up the principle of autocracy beyond the limits of his

He

is

ready for any

self-

derogation so that the

own

principle

may

Shortsightedness in

Self-mastery despite the

regard to Kurbsky.

volcano of passions

triumph.

his bed).

biography.

The in the

flauntingly dressed .

.

.

So, here something But what?

What

Fedka here spins not only in the scene but

structure of the play.

is

is

possible

.

.

.

Fedka's theme?

Of course, the theme of choice between two Alexei,

and the

There

is

an

sovereign, Ivan.

overall tragic

The action must There

is

fathers: the regular one,

denouement

of the conflict (the end).

"build up" [Engl.]

love for Ivan (the eyes filled with tears during the confes-

sion).

243

(in

Appendix

A

N.B.

must be defined from a

line

dot. (aren't

you and

I

bound

together by another man's blood, spilled blood; the jealousy over Vladimir; the tears of pity for Ivan; the readiness to cut down a

friend

—

And

Evstafi

—

at the first suspicion).

the tragic conclusion, a Vorspiel on the same theme

so, for

is

needed.

And what is

surprising! There is already a Vorspiel: it was done intuialmost as a decoration ornamenting another theme in the same scene. It needs only to be developed. tively*

Two

were put down to trace the "inner atmosphere" where there is a rather strong element of "Man is a wolf to man," where "the bonds of friendship till death" do not exist, where "Today a friend, tomorrow an enemy" is a constant characteristic of relationships, for relations which rest on blackmail, deals, bribes, or three

traits

of the oprichnina,

—

his notes are overflowing with it). see Staden Fedka wants to jot down Staden's boastful "confession" about the scale of his plundering of Novgorod. Without turning or looking back, Staden (who knows what Fedka is doing because he knows the customary behavior so well) speaks over his shoulder, telling him not to do this, for he, Staden, holds Basmanetc. (on this

ov's father in his

But

fist!

was introduced

This

now

it

just for the wolfish atmosphere. appears as an absolutely correct, intuitively introduced

theme.

faithful outline of the

What

is it?

Already a Vorspiel of the fall of the Basmanov son: primo:

Fedor does not denounce Staden and sec. does not denounce him to for he covers his (natural) father, that is, Ivan (his sovereign-father) he betrays the sovereign-father (and his interests) for the interests of :

.

.

.

the "physical father."

That

is,

already here in this scene, Fedor violates the "sacredness" of

the oprichniks' oath

.

— "... not to show indulgence to anyone for anything, whether for .

.

the sake of kin or property ...

To execute without

.

.

.

hesitation

and delay every order

of the tsar,

regardless of the person, ," etc. and mother same line of concealment from the tsar, which in the conclusion grows into the monumental guilt of Fedor, who has been

regardless of father

And along

tempted by his father. It remains to emphasize of the father.

244

.

.

.

the

this as a betrayal of the

oath in the interests

— Appendix This

is

easy:

Staden who is "squeezing" Fedor with his blackmailing threat, mocks him, ironizing, ironically quoting the oath "And how ..." (siehe oben), etc.

At the level of revenge rather than blackmail, Demian denounces

and destroys

—

the Basmanovs. "To Demian, too, misforGood: he himself dies by Staden's hand tune may occur. ..." Ironic: the "misfortune" with Demian occurs when for Basmanov it is

pointless

—

and

useless,

when

it

is

too

late.

There remains only to take in the ironic meaning, to give to Staden some lines paraphrasing in some way "Better late than never" when he seizes Demian. It is convenient, to garble the proverb (Staden does this in his notes, where instead of "without grease you won't travel" he gives a long paraphrase involving the need to grease a frying pan so that the cakes won't bum!) "... It is

It is

if you want a and burn (!!!)..."

necessary to grease the frying pan

wise the cake

(

!

J

will stick

(

!

!

)

interesting that "greasing,"

cake, other-

from the image of lubricating a

cart,

which must be lubricated so that you can travel, is transferred by Staden to a cake and frying pan! by means of oil for lubricating and

— variation — simply an amusing change — instead

for cooking!

A late

first

— "Better a

is

of:

"Better

than never" little bit

later

than never."

But the idea will be sharper if the direct sense of the whole situation brought into the garbling of the proverb and is used in creating the

formal absurdity of inversion: "Better too late than never"

whole philosophic trend What matters in all this?

gives a

— "which

of mind" [Engl.].

Fedor embodies the common sin of "their wavering from their dread oath" (Ivan says this later); for the sake of the father, of kin, he betrays the sovereign-father. Thus from an illustrative and decorative scene, the oprichniks' oath develops through Fedor's story into the theme of the sacredness of the oath of allegiance to the tsar ("which as a theme" [Engl.] is a good one

What matters

the oprichnina —

is

that here

for the present day).

Staden ironically teases Fedor with his squeezes him.

Good: the spy and

traitor

Staden

own

"principles" as

he

cites the "sacred" text of the oath.

245

It

Appendix have the same ironic sound in the playing as when this scoundrel writes in his notes: "Those who were oprichniks in the service of the Grand Prince swore to their sovereign by God and by the Holy Cross. will

These same were punished by God, and not by the sovereign. But what

is

simply "great"

[Engl.] is that at

when he says to Fedor: own father you did not spare. How

..."

the end Ivan inverts the

situation

"Your

defend me?" But in fact Fedor spared his

own

father,

then

will

you spare and

and betrayed the

tsar.

"Good!" [Engl.]

—

can now probably be made perfectly sharp someone aim of the thought is not quite clear it has been around for a long time, the Staden-Fedor idea has been built on

(This phrase

said that the in the script

—

just now.) It

turns out als Beiprodukt that Staden

is

the

"evil

genius" of the

Basmanov family. M[ay]b[e] this can be

made something

deliberate instead of a "ca-

Basmanovs, father and son (for the father it existed before, for the son it has just now come about). Then what will be good the "fool" can include this in Staden's "instructions" (by the way, that is a complete blank spot so far!). There will be a fairly good repetition of the theme of the disintegration of Ivan's entourage owing to the interference of strangers. (The ambassador about Kurbsky in the Assumption Cathedral). And what is really quite good is that Lithuanian-Germans do this utterly Germanically Fascistically operating on each individual characterby sual" coincidence involving the

—

—

—

—

istic:

Kurbsky's vanity,

Basmanov father's greed as a base for dynastic appetite, Basmanov son's love for his father. (Somewhere there has to be an attempt on Maliuta which does not succeed!!!) That is, what is "typical" [Engl.] in the work of Germans who are able (were able) to use each contradiction in the countries against which they went to war (the Opposition here, the tie of Edward and Mrs. Simpson in England, etc. etc.) In the words of the fool this can be given in somewhat generalized the the

—

form: (and in light of this the text of his conversation with Elizabeth

needs to be reexamined!) as a "method." In this form this can be magnificently juxtaposed with losophy" (with Basmanov by Anastasia's corpse), which 246

Ivan's "phiis

still

not

—

.

—

— Appendix

ready and "awaits" a theme rather than

facts.

"And there

we

have

it"

[Engl.].

Here

is

where boundaries can be set, in the juxtaposition of the Ivan and the German dictatorship thread. (N.B. the poli-

the Terrible thread tics of

unleashed appetites: Evrosinia's ideal of the boiars'

tsar!

Give

German "a bit" [Engl.] of a sermon about the unleashing of instincts and appetites the dark element, the worse (the whole philosophy from Staden to Hitler!) and let Ivan listen to the better, which exists in the

—

the people.

A stake on the luminous instinct of the people (that is on what at the Lobnoe mesto [Headfall Ring] he later staked "as open challenge" [Engl.])

Elevate the scene so that

it is

not a "process" of casuistry but the

great process of asking the popular soul. For Basmanov "and he ought to propose it" [Engl.] it is a trick. For Ivan it is a trial (introduced by the scene with Vassian at Ka-

—

zan)

— "the voice of the people

Basmanov is not

is

the voice of God."

of this stature;

he

frightened by this style of put-

is

ting the question.

He

a mechanic of political intrigue, unlike Ivan

is

who

is

a "poet of

the idea of the State" (Kavelin, 19th c).

He

—

begs that it not be followed, as soon as he scope in Ivan's thought. Ivan says that only with the force given into his hands by the people is it worth creating the state, etc. Compositionally this means over and above all combinations (the public knows, the public does not know, the public sees the mechasees

after giving the idea

its

nism, the public does not see the mechanism, the public the

trick, etc.)

in

sec-

— "what

If

the people

If

the people

If

the people

.

.

.

.

.

.

will the

is

the suspense between the

— And the theme of the oath:

people say?"

.

the finale. If the people does not will represent the great deed.)

The enthusiasm of his entourage. Of the entourage, which should have Ivan for fear of this is

first

.

And

Ivan

caught by

and

the open. (Incidentally, this

ond parts

is

there results a magnificent "challenge" [Engl.] here

— then even so quand meme

fallen

on their knees

I

in front of

trial.

not afraid: his program

is

pure and popular [narodna] (good 247

Appendix have Basmanov cast Fedor on his knees: "Beg the tsar not to destroy En passant Ivan is touched by Fedor, and here sympathy for Fedor is born). Of course, it is "great" [Engl.] that the trick at the Alexandrov Domain grows here to tragic pathos [. By the way I had a nagging itch because at the end of the first part there was no tempo, such as there to

himself, not to destroy the deed!"

.

was

.]

second part. seems as though the end of the

in the

Now

it

first

part

— but

is

no

less elevat-

according to the inner course of theme and character, whereas the end of the second depends on brandishing all external ing

means! Maliuta's function here?

Does he

resist?

Beg? I

think not: he prepares a screenlll So that

lapses, Ivan shall

still

be

if

the

"mad

fancy" col-

tsar.

Terrific!

(Think of a way.) In principle this

is terrific,

for Maliuta is Ivan's

second

half.

(Sancho Panza during Ivan's Don Quixotish outings!) Despite all the "idealism" about the divine judgment of the people,

demagogue, and moreover uses all the fruits of his sally: when he settles with the boiars [. That is en grand the same as what Ivan does in a few lines with Philip promises him the right to "bemoan" but hastens to exterminate the necessary boiars, so that the priest may not intercede: The Ivan

is

also a

nothing restrains him

.

.]

—

"Maliuta

traits" in Ivan!

And of course after the play

this,

that

is

conversation with Philip he must openly dis-

directly say to

none other than Maliuta

— "Hurry up,

so that the priest does not intercede! ("great" here the combination of the "greatness" and "shrewdness" [Engl.] of Ivan). [One paragraph in the original Russian edition omitted here] Think up Maliuta's "screen."

all

Let

him own up

to Ivan.

Ivan's fury.

—

Then laughter. Where should this scene be? Well, of course, at the

ders Maliuta to "hurry."

248

moment when after dismissing Philip,

Ivan or-

Appendix

Now it

very important to characterize the

is

first

who

are executed

as thoroughly vicious.

Who are

they?

the Kolychevs? (Ivan did execute four Kolychevs, after which, historically, our Kolychev became Metropolitan Philip, after first going to the Solovetsky Monastery.) Somewhat monstrous, of course! Surely

.

.

.

then: he the youngest — the — of the Kolychev race was constantly tortured because respect was unclear) — Philip hides him in the very jaws of the lion

What would be not bad last

for Evstafi

is

Evstafi in

(I

this

race"

—

indeed my confession kept referring to a certain "cursed from the very beginning. 5

himself

why

—

make this race the Kolychevs? (Incidentally, the remark that Evstafi was hidden in the lion's jaw I had wanted to use previously and independently.) Thus there is a chance of a pretty good little scene. So,

not

A freshly appointed

spiritual [guardian].

"Shock" [Engl.] of Evstafi after the Kolychevs' execution,

here the nonobservance or avoidance of the promise to Philip

is

read as a shock, or rather: simply the "shock" of an "angel" seeing the executions. M[ay]b[e], a scene with Evstafi and Maliuta. Ivan's "spiritual [guardian]"

uta does not

let Evstafi

and

Ivan's "corporeal [guardian]." Mali-

stop the "punishing"

arm

raised above the

Kolychevs.

Tourjours preservant Vincognitto, Evstafi as a sprig of the Kolychevs.

Not a "corporeal [guardian]" but a "fleshly one" [plotnik, which also means "a carpenter"]: about the flesh of the tsar and the tsardom. I worry and the great body of the ship of state, I, like a carpenter, help to build... M[ay]b[e] in the scene a la Repin in St. Nicholas Preventing the Exe-

cution tries to restrain Maliuta

(in

the courtyard!)

— with a rather

dif-

ferent outcome. ("I

wonder"

[Engl.]

— have

I

already burst beyond the frame of the

conceivable and possible? Have

way through

or out? Or

is

I

already climbed into a forest with no

there

still

a rational germ here???? delir-

ium???)

5.

Evstafi

disappeared from

this section

three parts instead of two; however he

when

Eisenstein decided to

was supposed

to

be seen in Part

make 3.

249

a film in

.

Appendix "I

am the spiritual [guardian] of the tsar!" I am the corporeal; fleshly one. For you he is the slave of God, I am assigned to worry about the flesh of Tsar Ivan and about the

And but

body of the tsardom. N.B. A play on words

—

manner: "oprichniki kromeshniki" [i.e., fiends]. For the time being it is crude. Sharpen the words, and then it won't be crude. Evstafi stands alone in the courtyard out in Good: after his failure the storm among the decapitated bodies! Very good: Ivan comes down to him. Embraces him and covers him with his fur jacket (as with a priestly vestment!) and leads him through in Kurbsky's

—

the storm. Consoles him:

"To build the State

The

tsar's

is

business

is

not

like reciting

heavy

a prayer.

." .

.

Evstafi cries.

In the turbulent storm both cross the courtyard into the chambers.

human"

("Very good, very

And

[Engl.])

leading Evstafi, Ivan says to Maliuta:

"Do your deed, Maliuta, don't

loiter."

(Of course, the execution of the Kolychevs

is

a splendid Ansporn for

Philip's sally!)

Later Maliuta deals with the Chokhovs.

The scene with

Maliuta.

Menacingly Maliuta's eyes follow

Philip.

"Why did you give the priest that right?" Ivan: To be able to settle with him. No! Rather than Ivan, Maliuta: he

is

Maliuta himself answer Ivan's question.

let

Ivan asks what happens

pursued

.

.

.

.

.

when

.

.

.

Smiling, Ivan looks at him.

Maliuta understands. Goes

off.

Ivan in darkness:

"With the power given to

me by the people,

Maliuta pauses. Stammers.

"What

if

the people

Comes

do

it."

back.

had not summoned you back

as tsar?

." .

.

Ivan thinks.

"What

if

they had

summoned Vladmimir?"

Thoughtfully he raises his head. Maliuta answers for him: "You would have returned anyway." Ivan, cunningly: "But what they hadn't

250

let

me

into

Moscow?"

if

— Appendix Maliuta:

"Two regiments of Streltsy were standing ready.

Vladimir they would have removed.

You they would have installed Ivan turns on him angrily.

..."

Sees Maliuta's eyes like a dog's, endlessly devoted. ;

Laughs a good laugh. Strokes Maliuta's neck.

Maliuta hurries out. Ivan hurries to the secret window.

From

the secret

Along the

stairs

window Ivan

sees:

and passageways the boiars pushed etc.

are dragged.

In the courtyard they are

[Omission to p. 510 of the original] Vladimir's Feast 1. Fedor dances in a sarafan. [M]ay[b][e] only with a mask in his hands and with appropriate minauderies although this is less good: all in white, like the ghost of Anastasia, the former near one amongst this is more frightful and the black oprichniks, the present near ones N.B. Of course Anastasia should come floating toward Fedor nasty warnend after which Ivan in a white mask and in a white sarafan puts Vladimir to the test!!! "Anyhow" [Engl.] something can be hammered out here!

— —

.

.

;

.

—

2.

Jealousy over Vladimir.

3.

Not bad m[ay]b[e] ;

subject: "choose"

which

to

have a conflict with the father here on the

father

is

nearest to you.

Constantly watches for Ivan's safety (notices Peter;

4.

etc.)

ready to pull Volynets to pieces. Does not understand Ivan's maneuver.

5. Is

[Omission. Text continues from p. 511]: "In the main an oprichnik lieutenant and this

—

The drama

is

built

on

prompt; observant;

is

quite appropriate.

his necessary function: a splendid; businesslike;

faithful;

model oprichnik

— an

indicative; regular

oprichnik.

BasmanoV; the gist

father; is a

"master of the oprichnik order/' an ideolo-

and theoretician; a custodian

And

Maliuta

is

—

and of purity in theory. and a doggishly faithful imple-

of the laws

a true "ideal of purity"

ment of embodiment of the idea of the oprichnina in practice, but maybe he does not need to be overloaded. The one thing that perhaps still needs working on is the problem of the two fathers, p[ar] ex[emple] moving away from his father to Ivan. ;

251

Appendix His father's jealousy. Tragic return at the end. And what if in the chamber scene Fedor condemns his father's cupidity a condemnation in-

—

jected into

him by

disinterested" will

own

his

father!

Then "he himself taught him

be

to

do some good work.

At the same time there is the betrayal of the tsar. If this is gone into then although he condemns the father he still protects him. [Omission. Text continues, still on p. 511.] The Last Touches for Fedor N.B. Pray God, may this be the last work on the images and roles! Altogether.

23

May

1942

—

Kuznetsov the actor] came to me yesterday on the day before the try out of Fedor in oprichnik costume went very well. We went over the [

role in rough. I

have long known that there

filled.

avoided.

He must

one small gap

in the role.

It

has to be

which has

between Ivan and Fedor must and F[edor] together. From morning I have been thinking.

scene between

Fedor

is

to

be

love him.

The father and son

A

is

Let us dig: Ivan's relation to him! Verfluchtl That

relationship

ring.

I[van]

an Ersatz Anastasia.

In a "historical"

and "factual" sense. is what is needed.

In the moral one

In a crudely rakish

mask and

way

this motif

has long been sketched

in:

the

sarafan partly recall Anastasia!

Also in a heightened way: the eyes of the dead Anastasia are closed, of them Fedor's eyes glow in the dark. Another very sharp Ersatz scene is needed. Fedor must be the bearer of the same absolute purity

and instead

child," the dovelikeness

— which Ivan uses

— "the

lips of a

to "check" himself against

in Anastasia.

Ersatz Ersatz: the scene must be in Anastasia's chamber. Above the empty bed, preserved perfectly intact after her death. With the same arc or nimbus of icon lamps, in the center of which she is no more. The prayer about the cup, which I have always called the repentance, of course comes here! Therefore, it must be connected with the beginning of the executions.

252

— Appendix But ... in the search for the "rare" (very rare) place in the script this happens to be one of the few. After the "blow" [Engl.] from Maliuta (about the plebiscite) Ivan runs to Anastasia.

"May "It

cup be spared me/' he

this

may not/'

says

.

.

.

says.

Fedor!

Ivan turns round.

"Anyways cups

now are more

often used for poison.

." .

.

Ivan jumps.

Looks. In front of the icon stands a cup.

"Poisoned

.

/'

.

.

he whispers. Shouts: "They poisoned my own dove?!" tormented me because of its absence. Ivan writes epistles, and not to have it was bad.)

(This motif also

about this in his Ivan is about to have a Fedor grabs him. Looks into Ivan's eyes. "Be strong"

A good

.

.

fit.

.

"shift" [Engl.]:

these words formerly belonged to Maliuta!

"Her words!" "I

will

"My

be her for you!"

son!"

Kisses

him on the

lips,

and

lets

him

go.

Fedor whispers: "Father

." .

.

Ivan shouts: "We'll

make

the traitors pay for Anastasia's blood!"

and

N.B. Fedor's eyes

Evstafi's

—

just like

Edgar and

Edmund

side old Lear!

Rushes

off with

Fedor.

A secret passage to the window. He opens the window,

etc.

(Where the frescoes of the soldiers

And now Ivan

is

are.)

different in his behavior with Maliuta.

Grimly he looks past Maliuta. "Too few

," .

.

.

he

says.

Maliuta draws himself up.

"Too few! There will be more, Ivan Vasilievich!"

A reverse

intonation for everything.

Evstafi creeps

up 253

along-

Appendix [Ivan] picks

him up with compassion,

but says

"The

tsar's

business

the monastery's

To build the (N.B This

is

one thing

is

another.

state is not like reciting a prayer!"

removes somewhat the

sniffly

scene with Evstafi on the

steps.)

Now

it is

straightened out: the executions are an act of Ivan's

With Maliuta's hands. soning of Anastasia

is

will.

seems good. And the impulse from the poigood, and the "farsightedness" of Fedka's dove(It

eyes about the poisoning. Fedor is "strong" when he is "unearthly" and with the scoundrel Kuznetsov [the actor] this works out for his countenance. As soon as he gets down to "business" he collapses [kachuritsia]. As soon as he gets into the petty side of the struggle, he does not come off. like

At the Hall of the Oprichniks

— inner disquiet in Ivan

based the unease of the father and also of Fedor

(on this

is

at the feast in Alex-

[androv] Dom[ain].

down" from an "unearthly" height is costume on him, instead of Anastasia's higher functions in him! (Quite possible that something happened in between. "The line of

The

sign of Fedor's "climb

Anastasia's

Vautrin suppressing the line of Seraphital" [Engl.])

Kuznetsov in a black

kaftan,

with dark hair stuck on and with his

blue eyes, has a purely "esoteric" appearance (Seraphite!); resembles Botticelli's

Giuliano Medici!

N.B. All in

all,

so to speak, "God has rewarded

working out

It is

Ivan calls to

life

well.

the oprichnina.

The oprichnina becomes a

live,

independent

But

it

(All

three: Alexei, Maliuta, Fedor.)

It

me with a little scene!"

force.

presses Ivan.

begins to push Ivan.

Tears away from Ivan's hands. It

wants

And

to direct Ivan

Ivan takes

Does not

them

and order him about.

in harness.

give in.

Breaks them.

Does not

let

anybody order him about.

(The line of doubts and repentance has worked out

254

well.)

APPENDIX B

Eisenstein's Notes for

a "Chapter on Dostoevsky"

Eisenstein conceived his large study "Method" in considerable de-

Many

and notes intended by him for and assembled by the Eisenstein scholar, Naum Kleiman in Moscow. Eisenstein's "Chapter on dostoevsky," dated Alma-Ata, 5 January 1943, which has recently emerged, opens with tantalizing indirectness: tail.

his

work

scattered pieces, fragments,

are being painstakingly identified

1

Rubens lived in luxury. To the highly placed customers and admirers of received, he in no way wished to yield in splendor. P. P.

his talents

whom

he

There follows the tale of the picture of Saint Christopher commissioned by the Archers' Confraternity of Antwerp. Instead of a picture,

Rubens produced a

triptych,

which

cost

them more and was

perhaps Rubens' witty solution to financial

What have we instead of the traditional bearded man ing the ford with,

on

his shoulders, a

little

thus,

difficulties.

Christ,

in the legend, cross-

who takes

the opportu-

nity to christen his bearer.

We have: On the left

— the Virgin Mary, with the

visible fruits of the

Annunciation,

visiting Elizabeth. 1.

The

selections of the fragmentary "Chapter

on Dostoevsky" translated herein

are

kept in the Eisenstein Archives at TsGALI under these classifications: F 1923: 1-1390, pp. 1-3; 2-205, pp. 30-32; 2-235, pp. 10-19; 2-255, pp. 10-19.

255

Appendix

On

the right the elder Simeon, holding in his arms the

newborn

divine

child at the circumcision.

And finally, in the middle, we see the grand composition of one of the masterpieces of world painting the famous Antwerp Descent from the Cross, from the brush of P. P. Rubens.

—

In the triptych the picture of Saint Christopher

is

consigned to the

outer face of one of the leaves. The connection between

all

these pic-

— Christ bearer. A similarly metaphoric imagination linking the concrete wtih the abEisenstein also finds in the name "Antwerp" — to throw a hand.

tures

is

the metaphor suggested by "Christopher"

stract It is,

to take a further leap, basic to Dostoevsky's art:

In

from

The

Idiot

Dostoevsky gives a shattering description of the Descent

the Cross from the brush of Holbein.

When

I

reread The Brothers Karamazov, and in particular the interro-

gation of Dmitri in Mokroe, for

Cross was constantly on

my

some reason Rubens' Descent from

mind.

the

without understanding quite why, I found that I was not thinking about the actual Descent from the Cross but rather about the story I told above. For I was rereading The Brothers Karamazov not just with the simple absorption of a reader but also with the cunning design to uncover something of the craft of the master, with which Dostoevsky beguiles his Later, at first

reader.

Mokroe cropped up.

And then more. And I believe in one

area I uncovered something of the means of action Dostoevsky uses. This was then worked into a general idea. Confirmation came from certain overall principles of the author's work. All that remains to do is to set this forth. This I shall now proceed to do.

With the

same

on Dostoevsky" breaks off. Fortunately Eisenwere developed at length in notes written at about

the "Chapter

this,

stein's ideas for

it

time, in the

first

week

of January 1943.

Eisenstein devotes considerable space in a series of fragmentary

notes to the metapho ricjstr^^

and

plores in particular a recurring triadic principle of composition.

—

ex-

The

metaphoric principle also extends to the theme the Christian idea of transference of guilt, which itself has origins in primitive, sensuous thought.

256

— Appendix Metaphor of situation. The Chapter "The Prosecutor Catches Dmitri" tion Dmitri is stripped naked (searched). (a)

(VI).

After the interroga-

In essence the physically elemental after the metaphoric "stripping" marvelously motivated by the search. The "shameful/' which he cannot admit to in his "three ordeals" here amounts to "removing his socks, which was actually painful, for they were very unclean, and his underwear too, and now everyone had seen it" (his nails, etc.).

The peasants look at him. Someone else's suit of clothes, "humiliatingly Caroline Spurgeon on Macbeth. 2 Dmitri's turbulent nature is held in pincers in the whole scene of his ordeals. Mr. Kalganov is sorry, "that is, he is not sorry about his clothes but about this whole affair." (el mismo). tight."

"In a stranger's clothes he felt utterly disgraced" (a repetition of the gradual slipping during the interrogation from a position of social equality with the authorities, with whom he was acquainted, to a position where "if I am a wolf, then track me down like a wolf").

The question about the money pouch. "I ripped apart the pouch and with it my dream saying, /

"I

of going to Katia

and

am a scoundrel, but not a thief."

metaphoric accessories.

Great: the

metaphor of gesture

the metaphor of mise-en-scene the metaphor of accessories the metaphor of situation etc.

Tearing his guts apart first about the disgrace over the 1 Vz thousand rubles and Katia and then about the pouch (the cap, the thread, the needle,

can he sew, etc.) Note that even

(1)

"Mokroe" [wet] unloads with rain "as from a bucket"

at

end of the examination; (2) when the outpourings of Dmitri's soul stop and with the last request for Gruchenka; (3) the "Mokroe affair." the

"Thank you, Agrafena Aleksandrovna, for keeping up my spirits. The upsurge of feeling about the infant. the fact, (3) His sudden surprise that under his head was a pillow. 1 a metaphor of raising'; 3 a physiological metaphor. (1) (2)

2

—

—

—

(Dostoevsky's triadic process?) 2. Two quotations from Caroline Spurgeon's Shakespeare's Imagery and What It Tells Us (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961) are of some relevance here: "Macbeth is constantly represented symbolically as the wearer of robes not belonging to him," and "Few simple things harmless in themselves have such a curiously humiliating and

—

degrading for

him"

effect as the spectacle of a

—

notably small

man

enveloped in a coat

far too big

(pp. 189, 324).

257

—

.

Appendix The same with the In Lear everything

(b)

3 brothers! is

woven together: the kingdom chopped up a body is cut up lacerating comparisons

is

Shak.: Sich durchdringend

In Dostoevsky: consecutively.

The same triadism

.

.

in these three sisters in accepting suffering, in im-

posing "punishment" on themselves. They too "punish" themselves according to the same triadic phased scheme. Lise squeezes her fingers with a door (she is "vile, vile"). Grushenka in the glory of metaphoric transference into action, bow-

—

down before Alesha,

ing

Katerina Ivanovna

testimony in the

first .

—

.

The vulgar

.

who

is

to his feet.

is

in her

scene.

trial

Devil

punishment on her "reputation"

inflicting

an Auswuchs of Smerdiakov and a phase of Ivan, we again have the phased

himself a phase of Smerdiakov. Hence

triad:

Smerdiakov Ivan Devil

Christ with his big role in Dostoevsky

is identical in function to a metahe transfers to himself the sin of mankind. ("There is something in this the striking element of this mechanism" [Engl.].) Ubertragung in psychoanalysis. What's good too is the rebellion in order to suffer oneself Don't want it. The Ubertragung in the words of the staff-captain, "I don't want a good boy." Note the theme of "transference" in the Ivan-Smerdiakov pair. Ivan wants to transfer the deed to another (c)

phor

—

(Dmitri). (At night

on the

stairs,

"Am

I

vile?"

and Alesha's

positive reply to

Ivan's question).

Smerdiakov wants to transfer the responsibility for the deed to Dmitri. Dmitri in the monologue about the "infant" will guiltlessly take the punishment for everyone (Christ de bordel).

An

(d)

exchange, as doppelte Ubertragung.

The "admission" of Smerdiakov that he was just an accessory, and the true, "principal" murderer was Ivan. "Listen: did you kill by yourself? Without my brother or with my brother?" "I

as

it

did the killing with you alone, with you alone, and Dmitri Federovich

happens

is

unguilty

." .

.

Thought and action are one and the same, one and the same reality, one and the same sin. According to Christian dogmatics and primitive /

logic!

.

N.B.

.

A

.

detail of genius. In saying

258

goodbye

/

to Ivan

/

Smerdiakov asks to

Appendix see the

money one last time

.

.

.

(Indeed, he

is

also parting with

sequently emerges). With the three thousand rubles the

life,

as sub-

"sin" is physically

transferred to Ivan after being philosophically transferred to

him by Smer-

diakov's words, (e)

Ivan, Alesha, Dmitri:

In opposition to the Europeanness (Ivan) ciples" (Alesha) of his brothers, sia.

.

.

he

and the

"populist prin-

(Dmitri) represents elemental Rus-

.

With a lowering of discharge from the

intellect to the affective to the

elemental.

To pass from the method of writing to the dramatic structure. The actual dramatism of the judicial error has to do with the collision of the earthly, material, animal, elemental plane and the moral and metaphoric plane.

One long

section of the notes discusses the peculiar form of Dosto-

evsky's tragic vision.

which

On one

for Eisenstein

hand, it lacks an image of punishing fate, appears to be one of the basic structures of the

primitive world of sensuous thought.

On the other, it is transformed by

a metaphoric and metonymic vision taking a particular form deriving from the Christian notion of the transference of guilt. This, however, is shaped by Dostoevsky's basic trauma, the gap between God and man, connected with the dualisms of body and spirit, body and mind (Eisenstein

comes

to see Dostoevsky's basic artistic structure as dualistic

rather than triadic). In primitive thought these dualisms do not exist.

Eisenstein seems to suggest that Dostoevsky's insistent painful dual-

ism excites (and maybe releases) a structure of

which dualism might be overcome. Eisenstein starts by telling the story

of

affective

thought in

one of the sources of The It is based on a meton-

Brothers Karamazov, Balzac's L'Auberge rouge.

ymy of situation used by Dostoevsky for the story of Dmitri. Two young surgeons share a room in an inn with a rich manufacturer. One of them, Prosper Magnan is tempted to kill the man for his money; he

overcomes the temptation. But when he wakes up in the morning the evidence is all against Prosper, who is found

man has been killed. The

guilty of conspiracy in the crime. "This

and Smerdiakov

is

almost the story of Dmitri

and even more like the and Ivan Karamazov in regard to the question of a crime committed in thought." But what is different in the Balzac story is the sense of a "fatal combination of circumstances," and "hand of in regard to the judicial trial

story of Smerdiakov

God," a "punishing Fate."

259

— Appendix

The

selections that follow

conform

for the

most part

to the order of

the original, with considerable elisions.

On fate: How is

we

suddenly have a sense of higher being that takes "retribution" for the crime and demands "an eye for an eye." For this reason: the fact both in the way the features of the situation

this

it

that

rational, logical materialists

mythological "something/' a

terrible, irrational

—

in the way the metonymy or metaphor.

are artistically sorted out into the formula of

and

event actually unfolds

—

fits

The event or situation unfolds not only according to its own logic of development, but also according to poetic tropes. The simultaneous presence of the murder evidence and of the innocent man. The transfer of suspicion from one surgeon to the other. Our apprehension is suddenly caught up in the characteristic world of complex, primitive thinking. It is put in the presence of phenomena from which logical distinction is removed. Two surgeons. A surgeon in place of a surgeon. The fact that they are different surgeons (and in the given situation opposite surgeons, guilty and unguilty) drops out. Differentiation

is

not yet operative.

The

juxtaposition in the story takes place according to formulas inherent in the undifferentiated form of reflection, which are called prelogi.

.

.

because they precede the analryic art of logic and are characteristic of complex, sensuous, ancient thinking. This prescription of archiac thought, acting according to necessary law (perhaps just a conditioned reflex) immediately transposes the whole structure of our apprehension: we are absorbed in sensuous emotional apprehension instead of logical consideration. We cry, laugh, grow frightened, and experience a printed fiction with all cal

the vividness of a real event.

We have undertaken the first shift. We see a dead letter in living fashion. With the printed text we have done the same as an early "animist" we

—

have

made

reed,

an oak,

it

human and fire

animated, just as they and thunder. .

.

made human

the sun, a

.

For an "animist" the first coincidences he saw were bound to seem the result of a manlike will. An act coinciding with a misfortune to the transgressor was fused with it in a sense of a rational bearer of retribution. One could go even further and say that the first functions, such as the cult of the Vedas and the notion of retribution coming out of revenge go very far back to the presensuous, not to say prepsychological stage of existence, in the sphere of simple physiological reaction, as stages of the simple physical, mechanical law about the equality of action and reaction, for bodies whose equilibrium is disturbed and which seek its resto.

—

260

—

.

.

Appendix ration.

vine

And

so the theme of revenge and punishment is at first made dibeyond individual man thus in deeply primitive

—

— something

mythology we have the expulsion from paradise for transgression, the stories of Oedipus and Orestes, Kriemhild's revenge, the ring of the Nibelungs.

—

Likewise it is deeply embedded in personified situations as regards both individualization and also the method of depiction for instance, in the sources of the themes of Elizabethan and pre-Elizabethan drama. One way or another, an "attraction" to the sense of Fate, with a pleasant tingling along the spine, is almost inevitable in such metonymic or metaphoric situations.

—

.

.

.

Fateless tragedy:

Why, despite the existence

of conditions giving rise to the sense of Fate, sense not arise from The Brothers Karamozov despite its situations of almost antique tragedy? Whereas the image of Retribution arises with unsimulated ease even in

does

this

a superficial retelling of Honore de Balzac's L'Auberge rouge? This

is

Fate

is

'!

no accidenV. the implacable antique Moira, unforgiving Retribution, Furies

on a guilty man with the implacability of a court commissioner acting on the formula "an eye for an eye." Or the Old Testament Jehovah, who knows no mediating redeemer and can only make return for sins and demand an eye for an eye. As images they are outside Dostoevsky's poetics. taking vengeance

For Fate grows dim where there ingly takes on,

who

is

a Redeemer, a Redeemer

willingly transfers to himself the guilt

and

who

will-

sin of the

world.

And so in Dostoevsky's hands the theme of Fate in the combination of circumstances drops out from Balzac's plot line. The emphasis is not on Fate, but rather on the situation of transference on the figure of transon metaphor as the means of expression for everything, from litference tle to big: the system of expressive means of this work is constructed from

—

—

the whole

down

This system sky

is

to the smallest particular.

a pattern from the psychological mainspring of Dostoev-

— the problem of Christian redemption —

this

cornerstone and core

of Christian dogmatics.

Hence the novel

is

a magnificent confirmation of my conjectures about

the possibility of speaking about the metaphor of situation, the metaphor of the story, the

metaphor of the represented

The metaphor of the Karamazov there

objects.

story:

fate and so because of this absence of a punishing fate all the characters without exception are compelled to punish themselves

In

is

no sense of punishing .

.

.

.

—

.

Appendix In doing this they suffer the most terrible torments. The prescription for these sufferings Dostoevsky formulates himself in "The Grand Inquisitor"

when he

speaks about the freedom of decision and choice as the most burden and praises service to an elder as a liberation from the horror of libre arbitre. The absence of the punishing Fate might seem the greatest blessing, just as freedom might seem the greatest blessing, but for Dostoevsky it is at the same time the source of what is most fearful for man. The escape appears to be the elder. Transfer everything to him. Obey him unreservedly and irrevocably. And only after this transfer will life be terrible

.

.

.

bearable (endurable).

Dostoevsky 's trauma: The problem of the transference .

.

.

the act of redemption

The prosecutor

is

of guilt

and

of the transference of

also Dostoevski's trauma.

explodes in fury at the defense lawyer speak about the "crucified lover of man" "in opposition to the whole Orthodox Church, calling unto Him 'Thou art our at Dmitri's trial

—

for allowing himself to "

God .

.

.

The "God-Man" and the

"lover of

man" were stuck

as irreconcilable

contradictions in the soul of the author, just as they were utterly irrecon-

whom the author endowed with the greatest number of autobiographical traits. The God-man does not work out. For this God is insufficiently human in allowing the inhuman horror with which the world of Dostoevcilable in the soul of Ivan,

.

.

.

heroes is surrounded. These concepts cannot fuse into one. And in a marvelous way, throughout the novel, with the exception of the main nodal metaphors embodying the theme, the entire action, all plot moves, all situations, invariably are not constructed from a fusion of the two senses into one, as if thought were spirit. The ununified God-man seems to shape the method of telling. The psychological and the material or physical series do not penetrate one another, do not substitute for one another, but unfold alongside nj)f> an—-~ other, each in its own way repeating an abstract thought, expressing it in two consecutive unmerging series. Thus a duality of form is devised for the exposition of that which is trisky's

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

adic in essence.

An abstract thesis-idea and two

consecutive interpretations: at the level

and in elemental physiological action. Unlike Pushkin with his sunny pantheism, other authors, having been traumatized at some point, are always attached to one "favorite" means of of psychological transference

.

.

.

expression out of the storehouse of structures in primitive thought. For Pushkin the triadic expressive structure [in an excerpt from "Pol-

262

Appendix

—

—

tava"] is but one transient means among hundreds of others by which he could utterly unerringly convey the continuous brillance of his

poetic intention.

Not so with Dostoevsky, for whom almost tormentingly one and the same structure the same given in the Pushkin excerpt ^ppqarfc flgfli™ and again, penetrating the heavy and dirty body of the dark Karamazov

—

—

'

4

tragedy.

As with an iron ball on a chain, dragged behind the leg of a convict, after each soaring psychological flash the same theme is dragged back to matter,

to physiology, to fact.

The reader cries out within himself with excitement just as the cherubim cry aloud in "The Grand Inquisitor") for his task of inner collaboration as coauthor amounts to "unifying" the disconnected series of the author. That which reflected the trauma of division within Dostoevsky in the method of exposition burned and lacerated him emotionally as a man, and endowed him with the matchless power of his favorite literary device. (

—

Eisenstein's

work on

Ivan the Terrible led

him

to Dostoevsky be-

cause of the problem of the dual, tragically divid^^^racter and the problem of total metaphoric art. Another indication of the closeness of the two men's ideas comes~ih some remarks made in the context of the notes for the Dostoevsky chapter. Eisenstein's discussion of the

and of the thematic and structural The Brothers Karamazov puts him in mind of an

structures of primitive thought

uses of metaphor in

incident of transference in the

novel by

Mark Twain).

life

of Ivan the Terrible (and also of a

Eisenstein's carnivalistic uses of transference of

banquet scene at the culmination of Part 2 of his film doubtedly connected with this biographical episode.

roles in the

—

is

un-

The Prince and the Pauper with the exchange and transference of and the king's son is not funny. (This theme touches on one of the most profoundly mysterious situaof social positions, serf and lord, in ceremonies, of the tions of exchange in historical and sexes through transvestism in saturnalias, and indeed political cases the mysterious story of Ivan the Terrible and the little Tartar ruler Simeon Bekbulatovich, who for a time substituted for the Tsar is a theme in itof All Russia on the throne. This "necessity" of exchange self infinitely interesting; it touches not only on the ambivalence of primitive thought, transposed into situation, behavior and action, but also for it is intersects with the question of metaphor in the same sense charged with a dual transference-exchange of situation).

functions of the pauper

—

—

—

—

—

—

263

Appendix

end Eisenstein kept being brought back to Dostoevsky. The made him aware of a fundamental dualism in Russian history, represented by Joseph Volokolamsk, who saw the church as a state, on the one hand, and by the unworldly Elder Nil Sorsky, on the other. Eisenstein recognized an analogous dualism in The Brothers Karamazov in the persons of The Grand Inquisitor and In the

work

of Ivan the Terrible

Father Zosima. 3 This Dostoevskian dualism appears as the

final histor-

determinant of Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, of which he would have had to take account in Part 3 of the film or, failing that, in his subsequent work.

ical

3.

Eisenstein, Yo: Ich selbst

1:112.

264

Memoiren, 2

vols. (Berlin, D.D.R.: Henschelverlag, 1984),

Bibliographical Note

Dostoevsky in Soviet Film

A sensible introduction to the subject is offered by Liudmilla P. Pogozheva in her short (forty-eight-page) book, Proizvedeniia Dostoevskogo na sovetskom ekrane (Moscow, 1971). Her critical framework is largely internal, serving to relate the film adaptations she discusses, although she beHouse of the Dead (not strictly an adaptation) and concludes with an examination of Zavadsky's production of "Petersburg Dreams," based on Crime and Punishment, at the Mossovet Theater. She returns to the subject in a chapter of Jz dnevnika kinokritika (Moscow, 1978), in which she considers some foreign adaptations and offers a vigorous defence of Pyriev's adaptations. Pogozheva's other critical and scholarly writings on film over many years reflect a scholarly interest in Dos-

gins with the 1932 film

toevsky. Bilinkis'

Ia.

articles,

"Ekrannye otrazheniia Dostoevskogo," Iskusstvo

kino, no. 11 (1971): 56-71, (1970):

and

"V mire Dostoevskogo," Iskusstvo kino, no. 12

36-47, reveal a sensibility educated in both literature and film. The

same cannot be

said for Ulan A. Gural'nik's essentially descriptive ac-

counts of the Dostoevsky communicated to mass audiences through the film

medium, Russkaia

literatura

na sovetskom ekrane: Ekranizatsiia kak

literaturovedcheskaia problema (Moscow, 1968).

VGIK, Trudy, 6 (Moscow, 1973)

is

a special issue on film and literature,

with useful chapters on the Soviet films of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. The chapter on Dostoevsky in Kniga sporit sfil'mom, ed. V.

S.

sists of

Beliaev, A. V. Macheret,

a long article on The

and

Idiot,

R. F. Dmitrieva, (Moscow, 1973) conby Ivan Pyriev (reprinted in his collected

265

Bibliographical Note

works) and a short one by Mikhail Ulianov, the actor plete The Brothers Karamazov.

who helped to com-

Printed editing scripts of the (released) Dostoevsky films starting with Petersburg Night are deposited in the major film libraries (at VGIK and the

Union of Cinematographers). Shklovsky's typescripts of House of the Dead are deposited at the VGIK Library. For reviews and discussions of individual Dostoevsky films, see the periodical Iskusstvo kino and the annual compilation (or sbornik) Ekran, esp. Ekran, 1966-67 ed. Valeri Golovskoi (Moscow, 1967) and Ekran, 1968-69, ed. M. Dolinsky and S. Chertok (Moscow, 1969).

Historical

The

and

Critical Studies of Soviet

starting place

is

Film

Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet

Film (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973). There are of individual films

and trends

Kalashnikov, N. A. Lebedev,

many useful

discussions

in Ocherki istorii sovetskogo kino, ed. Iu.

L. P.

Pogozheva,

R. N. Iurenev, 3 vols.

S.

(Moscow,

1959-61); and in Istoriia sovetskogo kino, 4 vols. (Moscow, 1969-73, issued by the Institut istorii iskusstv, Moscow. Mira and Antonin Liehm, The Most Important Art: Eastern European

Film after 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), tive about recent developments in Soviet film.

is

informa-

Lenfilm Studio, in cooperation with the Leningrad State Institute of Theater, Music,

the series Iz

on the vol.

and Cinematography, has published

istorii Lenfil'ma.

archival material in

Especially useful are vol. 2(Leningrad, 1970)

twenties, vol. 3 (Leningrad, 1972)

4 (Leningrad, 1975) on the

on the twenties and

thirties,

and

thirties.

A broad knowledge of film in American and in Western and Eastern Europe underlies A. Garbicz and

J.

Klinowski, Cinema, the Magic Vehicle:

Journey One (Metuchen, NJ.: Scarecrow Press,

1975).

Dostoevsky

The new standard

edition of Dostoevsky's writings, Polnoe sobranie

sochinenii, ed. V. G. Bazanov, G.

M. Fridlender,

et

al.,

30 vols,

(in

progress,

Leningrad, 1972- ), and the useful collection of principal works, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. L. P.

Grossman

with valuable editorial and

266

et

al.,

10 vols. (Moscow, 1956-58), are

critical material.

filled

Bibliographical Note

The

Soviet critics

who

for different reasons are important for

standing Dostoevsky's position in Soviet film include

Karamazovery" and "More on Karamazovery"

(his

Maxim

under-

Gorky, "On

1913 articles conven-

M. Dostoevskii v russkoi kritike [Moscow, 1956]); Mikhail Bakhtin, Problemy poetiki Dostoevskgo (1929; rev. ed. Moscow, 1963) and in English translation, Problems of Dostoevsky's iently available in A. A. Belkina, ed., F.

Poetics (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1973); Boris Bursov, Lichnost' Dostoevskogo:

Roman-issledovanie (Leningrad, 1974); Iuri Kariakin, nikova (Moscow, 1976); Viktor Shklovsky,

skom (Moscow,

1957);

and

Iuri

Za

i

Samoobman

protiv:

Tynianov, "Dostoevskii

Raskol-

Zametki o Dostoevi

Gogol','

'

Arkhaisty

novatory (Leningrad, 1929). See too Leonid Grossman, Dostoevskii (2nd

Moscow,

1966).

Useful background

is

provided by Vladimir Seduro, Dostoyevski

and

Dostoevski's

Image

in

(New

in

Rus-

Columbia University Press, Russia Today (Belmont, Mass.: Christo-

sian Literary Criticism, 1846-1956 1957),

i

ed.;

York:

pher, 1975).

The non-Soviet

criticism

ulsky, Dostoevskii (Paris:

used

in this study includes Konstantin

YMCA Press,

Princeton University Press, 1967);

Moch-

M. Minihan (Princeton: and Michael Holquist, Dostoevsky and 1947), trans.

the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).

Socialist

Realism

Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press,

1982), deals

with Socialist Realism in

its literary

aspects.

267

.

Filmography

Russian, Privately Produced 1910

The Idiot (Khanzhonkov Co., 430 m.). Dir. Petr Chardynin; cam. Louis Forestier. Crime and Punishment (Gaumont Co., Moscow studio, 197 m.). Seen. Vasili Goncharov, Makarova; dir. Goncharov; cam. Alphonse Winkler. Scene with Sonia (A. Goncharova) and

1911

Marmeladov's Tale (Globus Co., in Khanzhonkov studio, 325 m.). A synchronized "kino-declamation" from Crime and Punishment, recorded by V. S. Niglov. Crime and Punishment (Drankov and Taldykin Co., 3 reels, 1250 m.). Seen, and dir. I. Vronsky; cam. Nikolai Kozlovsky.

Raskolnikov

1913

(V.

Krivtsov).

Raskolnikov (Pavel Orlenov),

Porfiri (Vronsky),

Sonia (M. Ne-

Marmeladov (V. Zimovoi), pawnbroker (N. Vasilistudent Razumikhin (K. Magarin), Romanova (T. Kuz-

sterova), eva),

mina),

Romanov

(E.

Dorois), plasterer (M. Barazhko).

Crime and Punishment. Synchronized monologue and scene with Raskolnikov and Sonia (Pavel Orlenov and G. L.

1914?

Koroleva)

The Brothers Karamazov (Taldykin and Co., 5 reels, 1700 m.). Seen, and dir. V. Turzhansky; cam. Nikolai Kozlovsky. Fedor Karamazov (I. Pokrovsky), Dmitri (A. Michurin), Ivan

1915

(F.

Dobrynin), Alesha

(V.

Popov),

Col.

Verkhovtsev (M.

Massin), Ekaterina Ivanovna (N. Chernova), Grushenka

Shevchenko), Smerdiakov the novel.

268

(A.

Popov).

A

(F.

"kino-illustration" of

Filmography Nikolai Stavrogin (The m.). Seen,

and

dir.

Demons)

(I.

Ermoliev Co., 6

2200

reels,

Iakov Protazanov; cam. Evgeni Slavinsky;

des. Nikolai Suvorov. Stavrogin (Ivan Mozhukhin), Liza (Lidia

Ryndina), Shatov

(A. Ivonin),

kovsky), Stepan Verkhovensky skaia),

1916

1918/19

Dasha

(V.

(N. Panov),

Varvara (N. Rutkov-

Orlova), Capt. Lebiadkin

(I.

Talanov), Maria

(M. Sakhnovskaia), Gaganov (Bystrov), Fedka (P. Baksheev). The Insulted and Injured (Svetoten Studio, Kiev, 7 reels). Seen. S. Pisarev; dir. Iosif Soifer; cam. V. Wurm; des. M. Mikhailov. Cast: S. Kuznetsov, Andreev, Pavlenko, and others from the Solovtsov Theater. Ilia Murin, based on The Landlady (D. Kharitonov Co., 1290 m.). Dir. Petr Chardynin; Murin (G. Sarmatov), Katerina (M. Goricheva), Ordynov (O. Runich). The Meek One (Khanzhonkov, 5 reels). Seen, and dir. Olga Rakhmanova; cam. A. Ryllo; des. O. Amosova. Husband (N.

Rybnikov), wife

Efimovich

neighbor (A.

1923

Petr Verkhovensky (Petr Star-

(L.

(E.

(V.

Rogovskaia), aunt

Polevoi), Iulia

(E.

Shchastlivtseva), Col.

Samsonova

(E.

Krasovskaia),

Kulganek), Lukeria (N. Krylova), captain

Rostovtseva), Captain

Bezumnov

(P.

Knorr).

wife

s

From A

Writ-

er's Notebook for 1876. Raskolnikow (Crime and Punishment) (Neumann Prod., Berlin, 3168 m.). Seen, and dir. Robert Wiene; cam. Willy Gold-

berger; des. Andrei Andreev. Raskolnikov (Grigori Khmara), Porfiri (Pavel Pavlov),

Marmeladov

(Mikail Tarkhanov), Sonia

(Maria Germanova), with Maria Kryzhanovskaia, Elizaveta Skulskaia, Alia Tarasova,

and others from the Moscow Art

Theater.

Soviet Productions

1932

House of the Dead (Mezhrabpomfilm, 2500 sound). Seen. Viktor Shklovsky;

dir. V.

m., Tagefon

Fedorov; cam. Vasili

Pronin; des. Vladimir Egorov; mus. V. Kriukov; historical adviser

M.

V.

Babenchikov. Dostoevsky (Nikolai Khmelev), Po-

bedonostsev belt

(N.

(Nikita Podgorny), Nikolai

Radin),

Uspensky

(V.

I,

(N. Vitovtov),

Kovrigin),

Dub-

Petrashevsky

(Shklovsky).

269

Filmography Petersburg Night (Moskinokombinat, 2893

1934

fima Roshal, Vera Stroeva;

dir. Grigori

Dmitri Feldman; des. Iosif Shpinel,

m.). Seen. Sera-

Roshal, Stroeva; cam.

mus. Dmitri

P. Beitner;

Kabalevsky. Egor Efimov (Boris Dobronravov), Schultz (Anatoli

Goriunov), Nastenka (Ksenia Tarasova), landowner (Lev

Grushenka (Liubov Orlova), student (Ivan Doronin). Acknowledged sources in Netochka Nezvanova and "White Fenin),

Nights."

The Great

1939

Citizen, Part 2 (Lenfilm, 3640 m.). Seen. Mikhail

Bleiman, Mikhail Bolshintsev, Fridrikh Ermler;

dir.

Ermler;

cam. Arkadi Kaltsaty; des. Semen Menken, M. Krotkin; mus. Dmitri Shostakovich. Cast: Nikolai Bogoliubov, Oleg Zhakov, Ivan Bersenev, Iuri Tolubeev, Zoia Fedorova, Boris Poslavsky.

The

1958

Unacknowledged source The Demons. Idiot, Part 1,

Nastasia Filippovna (Mosfilm, 3395 m.).

and dir. Ivan Pyriev; cam. Valentin Pavlov; des. Stalen Volkov; mus. N. Kruikov; ed. N. Kulganek. Prince Myshkin Seen,

(Iuri Iakovlev),

Nastasia Filippovna (Iulia Borisova), Ivolgin

(Nikita Podgorny),

Rogozhin

(L.

Parkhomenko), Aglaia

(R.

Maksimova).

White Nights (Mosfilm, 2655

1959

m.). Seen,

and

dir.

Ivan Pyriev;

cam. Valentin Pavlov; des. Stalen Volkov; mus. Alexander Glazunov, Alexander Skriabin, Sergei Rachmaninov. Nastenka (Liudmilla Marchenko) Dreamer (Oleg Strizhenov). The Meek One (Lenfilm, 1970 m.). Seen. Alexander Borisov, Akiba Gol'burt; dir. Borisov; cam. Dmitri Meskhiev; des. B. Manevich, B. Kropachev; mus. L. Prigozhin. Meek One (Iia Sawina), pawnbroker (A. Popov) Lukeria (Vera Kuznetsova), Efimovich (P. Krymov). Nasty Story (Mosfilm, 2795 m., not released). Seen, and dir. Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov; cam. Anatoli Kuznet;

1960

,

1965

mus. Nikolai Karetnikov. General Pralinsky (E. EvstigPseldonymov (V. Sergachev), Bride (L. Nikishchikina), Pseldonymov's mother (Z. Fedorova). sov;

neev),

1966

Uncle's

and

Dream (Mosfilm 2353 ;

L. Vil vovskoi; dir.

m.). Seen.

Konstantin Voinov

Konstantin Voinov; cam. Georgi Ku-

prianov; mus. R. Ledenev. Prince (Sergei Martinson), Moskaleva (Lidia Smirnova), Zina

1968-69

m. Part 270

(Zhanna Prokhorenko). \, 2803 m. Part

Brothers Karamazov (Mosfilm, Part 3,

;

2,

2512

2601 m. in the big-screen versions). Seen, and

dir.

.

Filmography Ivan Pyriev (Part 3

dir.

Mikhail Ulianov and

Kirill Lavrov);

cam. Sergei Voronsky; des. Stalen Volkov; mus. Isaak Shvarts. Fedor (Mark Prudkin) Dmitri (Mikhail Ulianov), Ivan (Kirill Lavrov), Smerdiakov (Valentin Nikulin), Grushenka (Lionella Pyrieva), Alesha (Andrei Miagkov), Liza (Svetlana Korkoshko). Crime and Punishment (Gorky Studio, Part 1, 3074 m., Part 2, 2981 m.). Seen. Nilolai Figurovsky and Lev Kulidzhanov, dir. Kulidzhanov; cam. Viacheslav Shumsky; des. P. Pashkevich; ;

1970

mus. Mikhail

Ziv.

Raskolnikov (Georgi Taratorkin),

Porfiri

(Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Svidrigailov (Efim Kopelian), Katerina Ivanovna (Maia Bulgakova), Sonia (Tatiana Bedova),

1972

Dunia (Viktoria Fedorova). The Gambler (Lenfilm and Barrandov, Czechoslovakia). Seen. M. Ol'shevsky; dir. Aleksei Batalov; cam. D. Mesikhiev; lit.

adv. Ulan Gural'nik. Aleksei (Nikolai Burliaev), Polina (Ta-

tiana Ivanova),

(Vsevolod

Grieux

1980

Babushka

(Vasili Livanov),

Twenty-si^c

Days

(Liubov' Dobrozhanskaia), General

Blanche

Kuznetsov),

in the Life

Seen. V. Vladimirov

(Itka

Zelenegorska),

De

Astley (Alexander Kaidanovsky)

and

P.

ofDostoevsky (Mosfilm, 2259

m.).

Finn; dir. Alexander Zarkhi; cam.

Vladimir Klimov; des. Liudmilla Kusakova; mus. Irakei Gabeli. Dostoevsky (Anatoli Solonitsyn),

Anna

Snitkina (Ev-

genia Simonova), Polina (Eva Shikul'ska).

271

Index

Akhmatova, Anna,

Requiem, 228

195, 216,

Alov, Alexander, 166-67, 174.

See also

Nasty Story in film Artaud, Antonin, 207, 213 Art

and

ideology, 66,

Kozintsev's projects

Otsep's Der

Alexandrov, Grigori, 22-23, 47

for,

207, 218

Morder Dimitri Karamasoff,

126 Pyriev's adaptation, 111, 117-19, 121, 126, 271, illus. X, XI, XII

234-35

Shklovsky's use

of,

39

challenges to ideology: of the classics, Cervantes,

Chernyshevsky, Nikolai, What

Formalism, 25 demonic art, 75, 79-80, illus. VIII, IX, XVI,

Ermler as Party-line

and

Don

204-7, of Dostoevsky, 9-10,

211-15, 235; of eccentrism, 174, of 95, 215, 226, 239,

Be

Crime and Punishment

in film, 268, 269,

271

XVII

59-60

artist,

17, 179, 191, 215, 226,

early adaptations

113-

237-38,

illus.

XIV

See also Fantastic Realism, Kozintsev, Grigori: "Gogoliad," Naturalism, Socialist

Is to

Done?, 171

illusions of the "actors' film,"

XI, XII,

Quixote, 206, 207, 245

Realism and Tragedy

of, 19,

268, 269

Eisenstein's single-shot exercise, 86,

103-4, 180

Kulidzhanov's adaptation, 154, 155, 178-89, 234, 271 challenge to naturalism

in,

180-81,

187-89, 234

Kozintsev on, 212-13 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 153-54

and carnivalism, 92, 173, on "The Meek One," 157 polyphonic theories Balzac,

Honore

religious 187,

of, 27,

207-20

91-92

de, 254, 259, 261

Belinsky, Vissarion, 30, 220;

in,

Smoktunovsky's subversive role in, 183-84, 234, illus. XIV Wiene's Raskolnikow, 100, 212, illus. XV

The Demons in film, 268-69, 270 hidden screen life, 10, 19-21, 35,

Blok, Alexander, 216

Brothers Karamazov in

film, 268,

271

Eisenstein's ideas on, 83-84, 86-87, 97,

233-34

184

on Ivan the

Terrible, 91

101, 110, 155,

dimension missing

Shklovsky on, 179-83

54-57, Kariakin

65, 70, 71,

and Klimov's

48,

75-76, 234 project,

230-32

Kozintsev's "Gogoliad," 219-20

273

Index The Demons

Kozintsev on, 211, 212; as a

(cont.)

Liubimov's television

film,

model

232

Protazanov's Nikolai Stavrogin, 19-20, 27,

Wajda's

268-69

The Demons, 56-57; Eisenstein on

232

film,

carnivalism and, 95, Gorky's

See also Ermler, Fridrikh: The Great Citizen, House of the Dead in film,

and Roshal,

Grigori: Petersburg

Kozintsev on carnivalism and tragedy, 219, 221, 226; as

Dostoevsky:

demands on

ble of the

Gadarene swine,

22,

35-36,

39, 56, 80,

"The Double," 171

The Gambler,

commonplace, 104 metaphoric and metonymic images, 100-102, 256-64 realism, "fantastic" and "in a higher

156, 161-63, 176-77,

220, 222

inverse

House of the Dead,

28, 35, 37, 163, 164,

220

The

Idiot, 30;

Eisenstein

sense," 10, 17, 98-99, 112, 156-57,

sual imagination

162, 174, 188

Ippolit as a

and Russian

montage image, 102 visionary imagination of, 10, 104-7

The Landlady,

See also Bakhtin

"The

vi-

104, 107-10;

for Eisen-

109-10;

man

in, 65,

114

Meek

221, 222, 269

One," 156-60, 231-32,

Bakhtin on, 157; Eisenstein on,

political fortunes:

against,

24-26

157-60

counterrevolutionary interpretation

of,

"Nasty Story," 154, 166, 171-72, 175

Netochka Nezvanova, 47-48, 54-55,

3-37, 44, 75, 233

political

model

problem of the good

total

mythologization

on deep

of,

stein's artistic suicide,

tradition, 118, 191,

214-16, 264

campaigns

15, 20,

35

215-26, 228

52-58

transcendence

85

of, 28, 31, 53,

171, 231

revolutionary interpretation

of,

54-

Notes from the Underground, 170-71, 213, 214 "Peasant Marei," 216

Poor Folk,

233

taming

of

75-77, 80, 195, 215, 228, and para-

the reader as coauthor,

262-63 demonism, 18,

56,

model

Stalinist experience, 21, 65,

literary techniques:

of,

criti-

cisms of, 18, 79; Kariakin on contemporary relevance of, 230-32;

Night

and

for interpretation of the

present, 189

of,

112-20, 123-24, 155-66,

98, 170-71, 173 White Nights, 47-48, 54-55, 115-16

174-77, 181-89, 208-14

works:

"Another Man's Wife and the Hus-

band under the

Bed," 219-21

Brothers Karamazov: buffoonery 126; Eisenstein

in,

on the meta-

of,

model

101-2, 256-64; as a of Russian history, 264;

scene used by Shklovsky, 39 Crime and Punishment, 31, 34, 37, 164; Eisenstein on, 89, 103-4;

274

FEKS, 170-71, 193, 195-202, 210, 217; and Dostoevsky, 170, 172-74, 208;

and

phoric and metonymic conception

Eccentrism:

Eisenstein, 196

See also Kozintsev, Grigori Ehrenburg, Ilia, 195 Eikhenbaum, Boris, 28, 200-201, 220 Eisenstein, Sergei, 11, 22, 33, 60, 83-110,

161,

193, 233, 235

and

agitprop, 59

Index

on carnivalism

in

pathos development in,

101, 256-64, illus. XVII;

Eisenstein, Sergei (cont.)

The Demons, 95

and

ecstatic

94-96, 237-54; Pyriev's attempt

dates of his reading of Dostoevsky, 86,

make Eisenstein's Ivan, and Shklovsky's script for

89

to

Dostoevskian characters as models for his

life,

87-88, 107-10

and Dostoevski's

dualistic

Tarich's film, 24; tragic dualism

model

of

in,

Russian history, 264

and Dostoevsky's

tragic

88-91, 238-41, 263

Ermler, Fridrikh, 59-80, 195, 233

dualism and

"pathetic" unity, 89-91, 238, 263

and Dostoevsky's visual artistry, 85, 102-7 and Ermler's Greaf Citizen, 78, 239 film treatment of Crime and Punishment scene, 86, 103-4 film treatment of Idiot scene,

103-7

and and and and

Bolshevism, 59-61, 66, 75 Dostoevsky, 61, 65, 75-76

Experimental Film Workshop, 61 problem of the good man, 61-65

works:

Fragment of an Empire, 64-65 The Great Citizen: as an adaptation of The Demons, 69, 70, 75 - 77, 234,

intention to film Brothers Karamazov,

270;

83-84, 86-87, 102-3, 234 (see also

demonism

illus. VIII, IX;

Brothers Karamazov in film) Kozintsev and, 194, 196, 210, 211, 214,

of, 78;

inadequacies

criticism 68,

opinion

101, 259-61, illus. XVI

239,

of, 77, 80;

and

59, 65, 122; self-

and denunciation

71-72,

in,

75, 239; Shklovsky's

of,

77-78

Katka's Reinette Apples 62-63 ,

63-64

Parisian Cobbler,

Expressionism,

XVII

in, 75, 77,

Eisenstein's opinion

Moscow trials,

239

on Pyriev, 81, 83, 87, 107 and Roshal and Stroeva's Petersburg Night, 48-49, 57-58 metaphor in, 93, 100-101, 256-64, illus.

metonymy in,

126;

121, illus.

36, 40, 48, 49,

II,

52-53, 57,

XV

V, VI,

mise-en-scene viewed as film language, 103

and myth, 106-7, 260-63 on pathos and ecstasy, 93-96, 239 and polyphony, 91-92 and Socialist Realism, 9, 96-97 tragic vision of, 89, 91, 96, 237-54 trauma and, 85, 107-8, 110, 259, 262-

Fantastic realism:

and Dostoevsky,

IX, X, XVI, XVII,

works: Alexander Nevsky,

49, 89,

96, 239, illus.

XVIII

illus. XIX,

XX

See also Tragedy, demonic Fedorov, Vasili, 22-46

97

Battleship Potemkin, 92, 93, 98-99,

attack

on Shklovsky, 45

distortions of Shklovsky's script,

101 Ivan the Terrible, 49, 83, 86, 88-89, 110, 155, 194, 211, 233, 237-54,

255-64,

illus. XVI, XVII, XVIII;

nivalism fession

98-99, 137, 151,

Kozintsev and Dostoevsky, 208-15,

219-26,

63

10,

156-57, 162, 174, 188 Eisenstein and Ermler, 75,

in,

and

Formalists:

95-96, 154, 263; con-

attacks on, 23-25, 121, 200-202, 233

betrayal

and "material," 10-11 See also House of the Dead in film and

243, 248-54; 95, 239, 243,

car-

33-38 See also House of the Dead in film

in, 237, 239,

homosexual theme, 252-53; Ivan as

"fallen angel," 91;

metaphor

Shklovsky, Viktor in,

Freud, Sigmund, 85, 104, 107-8

275

Index Gadarene swine, parable The Gambler in film:

of, 15, 20,

35

ality,

Batalov's adaptation, 155-56, 161-63, 175, 271;

Book of Job

opinion

tsev's

of,

inadequacies of in face of a demonic

in, 163,

Kozin-

176-77, 212, 214

Zarkhi's TWenfy-s/'x Days in the Life of

and nationalism, 50-52 and national minorities, 25, 30, 40 and Party line, 59-60, 74-77 power struggles and the control of meaning, 22-24, 83-84, 155-56

Dostoevsky, 163-66, 175, 271; mis-

use of literature as biography 164-66

in,

and public social

Gogol, Nikolai, 196, 227

"The Overcoat," 170, 172-73, 198-99 Gorky, Maxim, 125

114

Zhdanov campaigns, 26, 28 See also Art and ideology and

effect of Stavro-

Socialist

Realism

The

Idiot in film, 268, 270

Chardynin's adaptation

on dangerous hypnotic

of, 18, 19,

115,

268 Eisenstein's mise-en-geste of the

gin, 18

The Demons and The Brothers Karamazov viewed as Dostoevsky's best

der scene,

87,

mur-

104-7, 155

Kozintsev's projected references

218

to,

Kurosawa's Hakuchi, 115, 228

novels, 18, 79

Fedor Karamazov seen as central Dosto-

Fyriev's adaptation, 11-12, 113-15, 126,

evskian character, 17-18, 111, 127,

circumstances of his decision to

129

make

the film, 87, 107, 125, Kozin-

tsev's

assessment

Fedor Karamazov and Ivan the Terrible, 18, 83-84 on the narrator of The Demons, 231

and

confessions, 72, 75, 77

determinism and the good man,

65,

Dead Souls, 220, 221 "Diary of a Madman," 224 and Kozintsev's "Gogoliad," 215-26

re-

77-80

of,

218

Iurenev, Rostislav, 111, 125 Iutkevich, Sergei, 59, 196

Socialist Realism, 18

Kabalevsky, Dmitri, 49

House of the Dead in film, 9, 22-46, 269 The Demons as framing device, 20-21, 35,

36 20, 23, 24, 28, 33, 38, 45,

in, illus.

230-32

Khlebnikov, Velemir, 216 Klimov, Elem, 230-32 Kozintsev, Grigori, 11, 60, 193-229, 235

II, III

and misuse of literature as biography, 164

raw naturalism

in, 35, illus.

Shklovsky's script versions

IV of,

36-38 theme of national minorities

27-34,

on adaptation, 206-7, 228-29 and agitprop, 59 and Bakhtin's carnivalism, 207, 221 "Brothers Karamazov" film project 207,

in, 25, 36,

and Utopian

socialism, 25-27, 30,

36-

of,

221-22

cooperation with Trauberg, 196-205

The Demons as a model

40 37, 41,

The

Kirov, Sergei, 67-77, 121

I

melodrama and expressionism

34, 37,

67, 71; his edition of

Kariakin, Iuri, 179,

and Formalism, illus.

Kamenev, Sergei, Demons, 79

80,

for Stalinism,

215

and Dostoevsky's cinematic town-

43

scapes, 211-12, 221 Ideology, Marxist-Leninist 22,

54-55, 68-77

276

and

Stalinist, 9,

and Dostoevsky's demonic 195, 198

tragedy, 21,

Index Meierhold, 48,

Kozintsev, Grigori (cont.)

and

207-8, 213-15,

90, 188, 196,

221; Meierholdery

Eisenstein, 194, 196, 210, 211, 214,

and demons, 215

Moscow Art Theater:

239

and FEKS, 170-75, 193-202, 208-10 and Nazism and Stalinism, 195, 205, 224 "Peasant Marei" film project

and voices

216

of,

of the Russian tradition, 154,

226-29

215,

naturalistic tradition 90,

113-14, 188,

Mozhukhin,

Alone, 203

18-20, 61,

63,

XV

The Brothers Karamazov of (1910), 17-18 Nikolai Stavrogin of (1913), 17-20

Moscow trials,

works:

of,

illus. X, XI, XII,

59, 65, 77,

79-80, 121

Ivan, 19

Campaigns of Oktiabrina, 197 Devil's Wheel, 197

Don

Nabokov, Vladimir, 216, 220 Nasty Story in film, 270 Alov and Naumov's adaptation, 154, 155-56, 167-70, 175

206-7 215-26

Quixote, 194,

"Gogoliad,"

Hamlet, 194, 207-10, a "Brothers Karamazov from Elsinore," 208

carnivalism and, 173-74

King Lear, 194, 207-15, 239; framing Dostoevskian questions, 148, 149,

209-10

Maxim

nesses due to

weak-

"failure" to

193, 202

The Overcoat, 170-72,

193, 198-202,

234-35,

illus. X, XI, XII, XIII,

XIV

and Gorky, 18 and Moscow Art Theater, 18-20, 52, 55 tradition challenged by Kulidzhanov, 187-89

221 Plain People, 205;

and Sonia

in

Crime

and Punishment, 205 Nikita,

tradition criticized

by Kozintsev,

195,

198, 202

raw naturalism, 35, 134, 170, 174, illus. IV See also Art and ideology and Socialist

174

Kuleshov, Lev:

By

mainstream tradition of adaptation 155, 158-60, 162-63, 175, 202, 204,

reread

Dostoevsky, 204

Krushchev,

as

in film, 10, 84, 112, 115-17, 151, 153,

trilogy, 69, 193, 228;

New Babylon,

Naturalism:

the Law, 29; the Brothers

Karamazov

scene in Shklovsky's script, 39 Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West

Realism

Naumov, Vladimir, 154

Kulidzhanov, Lev, 151, 178-89, 212-13,

See also Nasty Story in film Nemirovich-Danchenko, Vladimir, 17-20 Netochka Nezvanova in film. See Roshal,

234 Kurosawa, Akira, 103, 115, 155, 228

Nikolai Stavrogin, 268-69

the

Land of the Bolsheviks,

in

112, 197

Grigori: Petersburg Night

See also The Demons in film Lermontov, Mikhail,

28, 40,

222

Likhachev, Dmitri, 214

Liubimov,

Iuri, 179,

Orlenov, Pavel, 19, 269

232 "Peasant Marei" in film: Kozintsev's pro-

Mandelstam, Osip, 216 Mardzhanov, Konstantin, 196 The Meek One in film, 269, 270 Borisov's adaptation, 155-60, 212, 270;

Kozintsev on, 177

Bresson

s

adaptation, 160-61

ject,

216

Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 230, illus.

25, 108, 132,

II

Prokofiev, Sergei, 89, 94

Protazanov, Iakov, 19-20, 268-69

Pudovkin, Vsevolod,

22,

193

277

Index Pushkin, Alexander, 28, 42, 85, 88

Shakespeare,

on prophetic art of, 94; on freedom from trauma of, 108, 262-

Eisenstein

Eisenstein

63

207-10,

on King Lear and Karamazov, on Macbeth and Karama-

253, 258;

Kozintsev on significance

of,

216-19,

222, 224, 226 Pyriev, Ivan, 11-29,

49-50, 111-29,

153-54, 155, 178, 234

perament

of, 84,

N.,

Grigori: King

Lear

172

Shklovsky, Viktor, 11, 22-46, 233, 235

117, 124, 127-29,

234

as actor, 25

on

adaptation, 162

his art of biography, 28, 33, 37

Eisenstein's views on, 81, 83, 121, 125,

129

on Dostoevsky's

and

pre-

post-Siberian

writing, 171

and Meierhold, 113 on the profundity of Dostoevsky's characters, 120

with Eisenstein, 83-84, 87, 107, 125-26 Socialist Realist impasse, 119-20 rivalry

113, 122-23,

Stalin's

zov, 257 See also Kozintsev,

Shchedrin,

Dostoevskian and Karamazovian tem-

support

for,

122

works:

Dostoevsky scene in By the Law, 39

on fascism and imperialism, 29 on Formalism in film, 24, 32-33 House of the Dead scripts of, 27-34, 36-38 use of metaphor, 31 use of metonymy, 29, 31 criticism:

The Brothers Karamazov, 111-12, 117-18, 126-29,

The Government

illus. X, XI, XII

Idiot,

on Ermler's Great Citizen, 77-78 on Kulidzhanov's Crime and Punishment, 179, 183

Official 120, 121, 124;

Shklovsky's contribution, 24, 121

The

61, 86, 91, 191,

216-19, 226-27, 231, 257

11-12, 114-15, 125-26,

Kozintsev's opinion

of,

212

The Party Card, 121-23, 124 The Pig-Girl and the Shepherd, The Rich Bride, 81, 123

123

81,

on Pyriev's White Nights, 116 on Roshal and Stroeva's Petersburg Night, 55, 57-58 See also House of the Dead in film Shostakovich, Dmitri, 75, 89, 193, 208, 214 Shpinel,

White Nights, 111-12, 115-16, 126

Iosif, 49, illus.

V

Shumiatsky, Boris, 83 Socialist Realism:

Repin,

Ilia,

95,

249

Ermler's definition

Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, 95

fantastic

Roshal, Grigori: film

VIII,

work with Vera

Stroeva, 47-58, 195,

233; Eisenstein's views on,

Petersburg Night,

47,

48-49

49-58, 270,

illus. V,

VI as alternative

model

of Socialist Real-

ism, 21, 48, 49, 52-53, Eisenstein's assessment

Shklovsky's assessment

57-58

of,

57-58

Netochka Nezvanova, 54-55; White Nights, 54-55 Vasili, 220,

278

221

79-90,

illus. VII,

IX

and Gorky, 18 moral didactic

tradition, 65

and Moscow Art Theater, 18, 52, illus. X naturalistic and critical realist encapsulation of the past in, 112-13,

polyphonic challenge

sources: in The Demons, 51, 55-57; in

Rozanov,

of,

158-60, 162-63, 175

58

of, 55,

67

of,

dimension

in

96-97 Pyriev's model

of, 84,

to,

by Eisenstein,

111, 121-23, 175,

illus. X, XIII

revolutionary

myth and, 54-55, 204

Roshal and Stroeva's expressionis-

Index Socialist

Realism

tic

model

illus. V,

Kozintsev on fantastic realism and, 208

icont.) of, 48, 49,

52-54, 56, 58,

without

61,

fate, 259,

261-62

to his

work with Kozintsev, 193

Trotsky and Trotskyism,

269

Sound film experiments, 22-23, 27-28, 41-42,

in film, 206, 208-10, 219-26,

Trauberg, Leonid, 196-205, his testimony

Naturalism Soifer, Iosif, 19,

of,

228-29

and Stalinist myths, 74-77 See also Art and ideology and

Stalin.

space

VI

37,

65-66, 97, 125, 203

See Ideology, Marxist-Leninist and

79-80,

Tsvetaeva, Marina, 216

Turgenev, Ivan, Tynianov,

Stalinist

67, 72, 74,

83

Iuri,

10, 104 200-201, 240-41

Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 61, 63, 92, 209, 215, 225.

See also

Moscow Art Theater

Stravinsky, Igor, 216 Stroeva, Vera.

The Uncle's Dream

in film, 270-71; Voi-

nov's inept adaptation

See Roshal, Grigori

Utopian socialism, 25-27, White Nights in

Tarich, Iuri:

Shklovsky's script for Wings of a Serf, 24

work with, 112 Theater and film, 19-20, 48, 113-14, 188-89, 196-99, 208-14 Pyriev's

Tolstoi, Leo, 28, 61, 94, 108, 216-18, 226

of,

30,

174-75

36-37, 43

film:

Pyriev's adaptation

of,

11-12, 115-16,

270 Shklovsky's

comments

See also Roshal,

on, 116, 128

Grigori: Petersburg

Night

Tragedy:

demonic, 80, 215-26, 239 dualism and fragmentation

Zamiatin, Evgeni, 197 of,

in Dosto-

evsky and Eisenstein, 89-91, 238, 263, illus. XVI, XVII

Zarkhi, Alexander, 174, 270-71. See also

The Gambler

in film

Zaslavsky, David, 26, 79

279

—

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publicatibn Data Laiy, N.

M.

(Nikita M.)

Dostoevsky and Soviet

film.

"Filmography": p. Bibliography: p.

Includes index. 1.

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 1821-1881

Soviet

Union

— History.

3.

—

Film adaptations. 2. Moving-pictures Moving-picture plays History and criticism. I.

—

Tide. 891.73'3 PG3328.Z7F564 1986 ISBN 0-8014-1882-8 (alk. paper)

86-11561