Page 227 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

208 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
film, so in the wider context the political leadership was to inspire and, if
necessary, intervene:

The leader of our Party and our country, the leader of the World Revolution,
Comrade Stalin, devotes a great deal of attention to art and finds the time to
watch our best films, to correct their errors, to talk to our masters and
indicate the direction that each of them should take. 72

The principal source of inspiration for Soviet film-makers was to be the collected
observations of Stalin on cinema:

If only we were to collect all the theoretical riches of Joseph Vissarionovich’s
remarks on cinema, what a critical weapon we should have for the further
development not just of cinema but of the whole front of Soviet arts. 73

It is somewhat difficult to take this at least of Shumyatsky’s statements seriously.
When in 1939 the historian Nikolai Lebedev edited a collection entitled The Party
on Cinema he managed to fill only 4 of its 142 pages with quotations from Stalin
and most of them can be traced back either to Lenin or, more particularly, to
74
Trotsky. One such seminal contribution to Soviet film theory is usually attributed
to Stalin’s remark at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927:
I think that it might be possible to begin the gradual abolition of vodka by
introducing instead of vodka such sources of revenue as radio and cinema. 75

But the idea undoubtedly derives from an article by Trotsky which appeared in
Pravda on 12 July 1923 under the heading ‘Vodka, the Church and Cinema’. 76
However, although this notion might conceivably have inspired some artists to
creative endeavour, it hardly provided any clear indication of precisely what was
required. For this film-makers had to look to Shumyatsky rather than Stalin.
Shumyatsky was particularly concerned to provide Soviet cinema audiences
with a greater degree of variety in their staple diet:

We need genres that are infused with optimism, with the mobilising
emotions, with cheerfulness, joie-de-vivre and laughter. Genres that provide
us with the maximum opportunity to demonstrate the best Bolshevik
traditions: an implacable attitude to opportunism, with tenacity, initiative,
skill and a Bolshevik scale of work. 77

He urged a concentration on three genres: drama, comedy and, perhaps
somewhat surprisingly, fairy tales. He was especially interested in developing these
last two. Of comedy he wrote, in a chapter entitled ‘The Battle for New Genres’: