Page 23 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

4 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
of broader historical patterns. It resonates also upon our conventional overall view
of the period that he discusses.
The purpose of Inside the Film Factory is then to open new doors, not to close
existing ones. It is no part of our intention to set up a new orthodoxy in place of the
one that we find desperately wanting. That is why this volume encompasses a
variety of approaches, a variety of materials and a variety of authors, as we hope
will the Routledge Soviet Cinema Series as a whole. It nevertheless behoves
reformers, in cinema history as elsewhere, to offer at least some indication of the
areas towards which they think future efforts should be directed.
One of the most important gaps in the literature on Soviet cinema, or indeed
any cinema, in any language is the absence of a thoroughly researched economic
history of the industry. In the Soviet instance, this would throw valuable light on
the day-to-day workings of the administrative machine and on the constraints that
helped to shape policy towards production, distribution and exhibition. It would
also illuminate the nature of the relationship between commercial and ideological
considerations–including the international dimensions–in the policy-making
process and clarify the impact of organisational changes on the kind of films made.
Finally, it would help us to understand more precisely the role of the studio and its
own administrative hierarchy in the actual process of film production and the ways
in which that role has changed from the 1920s to the present day.
There is also a place for a series of monographs examining the roles of
particular individuals in the history of Soviet cinema. Readers may wonder why
there is scarcely a mention of Eisenstein or his films in the present volume. They
may rest assured that it is no part of our intention to devalue his contribution; on
the contrary, a volume based on papers given at the 1988 Oxford Eisenstein
Conference is in hand under the working title Eisenstein Rediscovered, which
explores fresh perspectives on this crucial figure. There is indeed also a need for
re-examination of other key figures in the canon– Pudovkin, Vertov and Kuleshov
–and an even more pressing need for an investigation of those film-makers outside
the established canon, such as Barnet, Protazanov and Medvedkin, or the FEKS
group [Fabrika ekstsentricheskogo aktëra (Factory of the Eccentric Actor)], where
our own paths first crossed. But the greatest need is simply to broaden the agenda
–and not just in the Soviet context–so that we come to consider the history of
cinema not just as the history of film directors but as the interactive history of all
the individuals involved: directors, scriptwriters, cameramen, actors, designers,
studio administrators, politicians–and of individuals who at various times
performed more than one of these functions.
There is, for instance, no full study in any language of the role played in Soviet
cinema by the man who supervised its first decade, Anatoli Lunacharsky, the
People’s Commissar for Enlightenment, whose wife, Nataliya Rozenel, was a
popular film actress in the 1920s and who himself scripted a number of films,
including the horror hit The Bear’s Wedding in 1925. Even a close examination of
his scripts and of the films made from them might well provide us with a valuable
new perspective on what was expected officially from Soviet cinema in the early