Page 141 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

122 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
three months at a cost of only 40,000 roubles, whereas Vertov’s documentary A
Sixth Part of the World [Shestaya chast’ mira, 1926] had taken nineteen months
and 130,000 roubles. 70
Protazanov’s heirs have recognised what many of his contemporaries did not–
that he was a director of the first magnitude. Protazanov has been honoured with
two editions of Aleinikov’s Festschrift, by Arlazorov’s biography, and by favourable
71
notices in all the standard film histories. The attitude of this succeeding
generation towards Protazanov is exemplified by N.M.Zorkaya, who has stated:

Without institutes and surveys, he empathised with the viewer and
unerringly knew what would work on the screen and what the public would
like….
Then, they often complained about the level of his pictures. Oh, if it were
possible to reach the Protazanovian level in all of today’s screen productions! 72

Protazanov gave a great deal to Soviet cinema, but the influence was very much
reciprocal. Speculation on what he might have accomplished if he had remained in
the West is beside the point. Back home, Protazanov, though past his first youth,
continued to mature as a director and enjoyed a long and fruitful career in the
movies. Despite the fact that his work was not obviously influenced by the
experiments of his younger contemporaries, I would suggest that the impact of the
ferment of the ‘Golden Age’ of Soviet cinema is visible in his best films and that it
is not coincidental that his outstanding pictures–Don Diego and Pelageya, The
Forty-First and The White Eagle–happened to be those on subjects closely
reflecting the issues and concerns of Soviet society in the 1920s.