Page 191 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

172 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
postcard from Paris to say they’ve extended the distribution contract
with our Sovexportfilm for another five or ten years. According to our
representatives, it’s been shown in a programme with Chaplin’s Modern
Times [USA, 1936]. For me, of course, it’s a really marvellous and great
reward to be seen alongside Chaplin, to be compared to him. A difficult
film has stood the test of time. It is a difficult film in the sense that it was
difficult to put two epochs together. It was unconvincing…. No, it was
convincing throughout, both at the beginning when Khmyr was trying to
be a kulak and later on when his wife turned him into a real man.
Question: May I ask which Chaplin and Keaton films you had seen then?
Answer: I got to know Chaplin a bit later. It was after Okhlopkov
and I had gone our separate ways that I saw Chaplin’s The Kid [USA,
1921], The Pilgrim [USA, 1923], and a few of his early comedies. I’ve
forgotten their names now.
I think that I’d already seen The Gold Rush [USA, 1925] by then.
When I saw it on the screen I realised straightaway that it’s difficult to
make a comedy and it’s something you have to learn. It’s true that I’d
gained considerable comic experience in theatre. That’s why I was now
writing things like the conference of horses or things for other variety
acts that we put on in the evenings and that made people laugh a lot. If
people laughed, that meant it was good. If they didn’t laugh, you had to
rework it. This theatre of mine served as a good creative laboratory so
that, when I started making films, I knew the secrets of making people
laugh. After I’d seen Chaplin and Harold Lloyd I saw Buster Keaton’s
The Three Ages and Our Hospitality [both USA, 1923], both of which I
liked a great deal.
But it was Harold Lloyd who interested me more than anyone else.
This may be because the first American comedy that I ever saw was
Grandma’s Boy [USA, 1922]. I watched it and realised straightaway that
directing comedy films was very difficult. Then I decided to learn, to
teach myself. I watched this Harold Lloyd picture, went home and spent
four days writing out the script because I could remember every shot,
what happened where, which stunts were used. Then I began to analyse
which gags had provoked the greatest laughter, which had passed
without provoking a reaction, what had struck me most forcefully and
what had left me unmoved, what hadn’t aroused my emotions. As I
recall, I worked like this for four days. I’d written out the script, recorded
everything. I’d remembered it so clearly.
Then I went and watched the film again. This second viewing
revealed the film’s secret. I began to realise why particular gags were
used. The film is full of gags. Of all American comedies (at least for me,
but there’s a lot I haven’t seen) this Harold Lloyd comedy seemed the
richest in its gags. One comic sequence ends and straight away, without
a break, you start to laugh at another gag. It went from laugh to laugh