Page 205 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

186 MAKING SENSE OF EARLY SOVIET SOUND
immediate priority here is to pursue the legacy of the silent period into the early
years of sound.

FIRST STEPS IN SOUND
The long period of anticipation was followed by an equally long and gradual
transition to ‘full sound’. The first public cinema to be re-equipped for sound, the
Khudozhestvennyi [Artistic] in Moscow, opened in March 1930 and the rate of
conversion continued to be slow, especially in the countryside. While the need for
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silent production remained, sound production was correspondingly limited. Three
more or less distinct, though overlapping, phases can be distinguished within the
first period, 1930—2:

(a) Demonstration pieces–in addition to the earliest short items which were
grouped into three Compilation Sound Programmes [Zvukovye sbornye
programmy], demonstration films included a direct-sound report on a political
trial, Thirteen Days, and a documentary on a collective farm, One of Many,
complete with animal sounds!
(b) Post-synchronisation–the practice of dubbing already-completed silent films
with ‘artificial’ soundtracks began early with The Earth Thirsts and Alone and
continued with the refurbishment of primitive soundtracks.
(c) Full sound production–The Plan for Great Works, Room’s compilation on
aspects of the Five Year Plan, and The Path to Life are generally regarded as
the first ‘full sound’ features intended for general release, closely followed by
Enthusiasm, The Golden Mountains and Ivan.

Alongside these phases there are traces of ‘sound’ thinking and construction in a
number of silent productions dating from 1928—9 to their final disappearance in
1935—6.
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From a preliminary survey of some of the lesser-known films of this
transitional period, what is striking is not the sporadic evidence of sound/ image
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counterpoint, but of the deeper ‘structuring impact of the verbal’ and of a wide
range of responses to the challenge of ‘outer speech’. These are manifested in a
number of thematic devices and rhetorical strategies which f focus attention on the
novelty of sound and specifically on the new dimension of audible speech. Below
are five examples of this ‘thematisation’: two of ‘parapraxis’, in Freud’s sense of a
symptomatic error or bungled action; two of the ‘delay’ occasioned by translation
between languages functioning as a cognitive metaphor; and one of ‘miscueing’
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used to create complex extra-narrative associations.