Page 242 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

NOTES 223
3
INTOLERANCE AND THE SOVIETS: A HISTORICAL
INVESTIGATION
Vance Kepley, Jr

1 S.M.Eisenstein [Eizenshtein] ‘Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today’, in: Film Form,
pp. 195—255; Pudovkin, pp. 47 et passim; L.V.Kuleshov, ‘David Griffith and Charlie
Chaplin’, in: Levaco, pp. 144—5. For other Soviet acknowledgements see:
S.I.Yutkevich, ‘Griffit i ego aktëry’ [Griffith and His Actors’], in O kinoiskusstve [On
Cinema Art] (Moscow: 1962), pp. 154—72; and Leonid Trauberg’s letter to Griffith, 7
September 1936, in the Griffith Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
2 See:I.Barry, D.W.Griffith: American Film Master (Nev/York:1965), p.26; and S.Stern,
The Soviet Directors’ Debt to D.W.Griffith’, Films in Review, vol. 7, no. 5 (May
1956), pp. 203—9. In the standard English-language history of Soviet cinema, Jay
Leyda (Leyda, p. 143) even goes so far as to claim that, in the wake of the
introduction of Intolerance into the Soviet Union, no important film made in the
USSR for the next decade ‘was to be completely outside Intolerance’s sphere of
influence’.
3 See: D.Bordwell, ‘The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Cinema’, Cinema Journal,
vol. 11, no. 2 (Spring 1972), pp. 9—17; and G.Huaco, The Sociology of Film Art (New
York: 1965), pp. 347—9.
4 ’Amerikanshchina’, Kino-Fot, no. 1 (25—31 August 1922), pp. 14—15; ‘Americanitis’ in
Levaco, p. 128; ‘Americanism’, FF, pp. 72—3. For a detailed discussion of the detektiv
and its evolution in the hands of the Soviets, see: V. Revich, ‘Soratniki Zorge’ [‘Sorge’s
Advisers’], in: M.Dolinskii and S.Chertok (eds), Ekran 1968—1969 (Moscow: 1969),
pp. 139—44; and S.Yutkevich et al. (eds), Kinoslovar’ v dvukh tomakh [Cinema
Dictionary in 2 vols] (Moscow: 1966), vol. 1, cols 447—8.
5 Pudovkin interview with Jeanne Gauzner, cited in Leyda, p. 150.
6 Marchand and Weinstein, p. 42.
7 Conflicting accounts of this survive. Leyda (p. 142, n. 2) reports that distributor
Jacques Cibrario was commissioned to persuade Griffith to work in the USSR.
Journalist George MacAdam claims that a Soviet emissary named Joseph Malkin
extended the invitation (‘Our New Art for Export’, New York Times, 13 April 1924,
sec. 4, p. 2).
8 S.P.Hill, ‘Kuleshov–Prophet Without Honor?’, Film Culture, no. 44 (Spring 1967),
pp. 8,21. See above, ch. 2, n. 35.
9 D.Vertov, Stat’i. Dnevniki. Zamysli [Articles. Diaries. Projects] (ed.: S.V.
Drobashenko) (Moscow: 1966), p. 116; A. Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye: The Writings of
Dziga Vertov (trans. K. O’Brien) (Berkeley, Calif.: 1984), p. 94.
10 S.Ginzburg, Kinematografiya dorevolyutsionnoi Rossii [The Cinema of Pre-
Revolutionary Russia] (Moscow: 1963), pp. 273—4. Cf. the discussion by Yuri Tsivian,
p. 7 this volume.
11 For examples of widely read histories that repeat the legend, see: Leyda, p. 142; and
G.Mast, A Short History of the Movies (New York: 1971), p. 190.
12 Ginzburg, p. 212.
13 ibid., p. 213, n. 1. Cibrario was to become an infamous figure in the annals of Soviet
film when he later swindled the Soviets on an equipment deal.