Page 234 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

BORIS SHUMYATSKY AND SOVIET CINEMA IN THE 1930S 215

Cine-City was only one part of the Shumyatsky Commission’s plan to revitalise
Soviet cinema but it was the focal point. While the production from existing studios
was to be increased to 120—50 films a year through reorganisation, reconstruction
and modernisation, 107 the bulk of the expansion in production was to be
concentrated in the Crimea. Cine-City was to provide the necessary capacity to
produce 200 films a year. 108 Its internal organisation was supposed to adapt the
best of American practice and serve as a model for the other smaller studios.
Cine-City was to consist of four studios, each sharing certain common facilities
and employing, by December 1940, around 10,000 people. 109 Each of the four
studios was to be composed of ten artistic production units (Kh. P.O. or
khudozhestvenno-proizvoidstvennye ob”edineniya) and each of these units was to
comprise five filming groups (s”emochnye gruppy). Each unit was to be headed by
a producer (or prodyusser–even the word was imported from Hollywood), whose
function was to relieve the director and his creative workforce of the administrative
and organisational burdens that had apparently ‘hindered his creative
development’: 110

The producer must know everything that is going on in his filming groups, he
must organise them and direct them towards their work, he must free the
director from the functions that are not properly his and must render him
every possible assistance in realising his creative potential…. The producer
has an enormous responsibility: he must represent the interests of the entire
studio. 111

There is an echo of the artistic production units in the creative units present in
Soviet studios today through which veteran directors transmit their experience and
expertise to the younger generation. A base for the filming expeditions that
Shumyatsky so deprecated was constructed on the Crimean site but the rest of the
project for a ‘Soviet Hollywood’ never progressed beyond the planning stage.
One reason for this was undoubtedly the enormous expense: the plans
envisaged that construction costs would reach almost 400 million roubles for the
period 1936—40. 112 Another reason was that Shumyatsky, like so many others at
the time, was slipping gradually from Stalin’s favour and his ‘Soviet Hollywood’
113
became an albatross around his neck. Actions spoke louder than words and
Shumyatsky had in the final analysis failed to produce the goods or, more precisely
in this instance, the films. The production statistics were not refuted: 114
The financial, technical and political difficulties of Soviet cinema, many of which
were beyond Shumyatsky’s control, were disregarded, the enormous burden of