Page 207 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

188 MAKING SENSE OF EARLY SOVIET SOUND

Figure 22 The Deserter [1933]; Pudovkin’s first, experimental sound film.

gramophone as its ‘central character’, The Mechanical Traitor, made use of this
novel ‘thematisation’ of mechanically reproduced sound. 56

Translation
The need for translation between languages was, on one level, an inevitable
realistic consequence of sound films involving speakers of different nationalities.
But this new problem of communication could also serve as a means of
‘defamiliarising’ by delaying what would otherwise be naturalistic dialogue. Again, I
give two instances.

3
The Deserter [1933] is the story of how a German workers’ leader, Renn, is
selected to go on an exchange visit to the USSR after his comrades have