Page 125 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

106 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
Moscow’s infant film industry was centred in the merchant district around
Pyatnitskaya Street. Although it was dominated by foreigners, Russian
entrepreneurs were involved as well, and in 1907 Protazanov went to work for the
Russian-armed ‘Gloria’ film studio as an interpreter for a Spanish ‘cameraman’
who knew French (Protazanov’s language of expertise) about as well as he knew
how to operate a movie camera. ‘Gloria’ quickly failed, and Protazanov offered his
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services to the more established concern of Thiemann & Reinhardt. He again
worked as an interpreter for the cameraman, this time an Italian, who did not
speak French but, unlike the Spaniard, did know his business. Protazanov quickly
learned all aspects of movie-making as Thiemann & Reinhardt’s jack-of-all-trades.
In 1909, he began writing scripts and acting in small parts, and in 1911, when he
married the sister of ‘Gloria’s’ former owner, Thiemann raised his salary from fifty
to eighty roubles a month. His ‘break’ came in 1911, when he dashed off a script
called A Convict’s Song [Pesn’ katorzhanina], which he sold to Thiemann for twenty-
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five roubles. The film, Protazanov’s directional début, was a rousing success. As
a result Protazanov found himself promoted to director and earning 400 roubles a
month.
The production practices that Protazanov developed in his pre-Revolutionary
career and continued in the Soviet period reflect early developments in the Russian
industry. Perhaps most important was the close relationship that existed between
Russian theatre and cinema. Many early Russian movie directors came to cinema
from theatre–Vladimir Gardin (with whom Protazanov had frequently
collaborated), Pyotr Chardynin and Yevgeni Bauer, to name only a few. Similarly,
actors and set designers moved from theatre to film and back, depending on where
the jobs were. Throughout his long career in the movies, Protazanov preferred to
use actors with theatre training and to hire production personnel he had known in
the pre-Revolutionary cinema. In the Soviet period, where breaking with the past in
general and the theatre in particular was part of the radical credo, this proved an
especially sore point.
Protazanov enjoyed an excellent working relationship with actors, was an astute
judge of talent, and cast his pictures well. His ability to attract actors of the stature
of Ivan Mosjoukine [Mozzhukhin], Nataliya Lisenko, Vera Kralli, Olga Gzovskaya
and Vladimir Maximov doubtless contributed to the popularity of his pre-
Revolutionary movies with a public which had heard of these stars but could not
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afford to attend the theatre. He did not depend exclusively on established names,
however, and gave Olga Preobrazhenskaya, then a little-known actress from the
provincial stage deemed ‘too old’ for major roles, the chance that made her a
star. 16
Protazanov came to be known for his screen adaptations of famous literary
works. The film industry has since its earliest days turned to print literature as a
handy source for proven story-lines. In the Russian cinema, adapting ‘great works’
to the screen was especially popular, since the classics lent an aura of
respectability to a form of entertainment that might otherwise have been a shade
too vulgar for the bourgeois audiences the studios hoped to attract. (In Russia, as