Page 243 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

224 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
14 V.Listov (ed.), ‘Prolog k Neterpimosti’ [The prologue to Intolerance], Iz istorii kino 9
(Moscow: 1974). p. 189.
15 ibid.
16 Izvestiya, 27 May 1919. p. 4.
17 E.Kartseva (ed.), ‘Amerikanskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [American Silent
Films in Soviet Distribution], Kino i vremya 1 (Moscow: 1960), p. 193.
18 The appearance of Intolerance in the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a period
in which foreign films dominated Soviet screens. For catalogues of foreign films
appearing in the USSR in the 1920s, see: Kartseva, pp. 193—225; Yu. Greidung (ed.),
‘Frantsuzskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [French Silent Films in Soviet
Distribution], Kino i vremya 4 (Moscow: 1965), pp. 348—79; and N.Egorova (ed.),
‘Nemetskie nemye fil’my v sovetskom prokate’ [German Silent Films in Soviet
Distribution], ibid., pp. 380—476.
19 Listov, p. 189.
20 ibid., p. 191.
21 Pravda, 29 May 1921, p. 4.
22 The screening was even delayed to allow the Cinema Committee to prepare multi-
language texts of the prologue for the delegates (Listov, p. 191). This was all in
keeping with the policies of internationalism of the pre-Stalinist Soviet Union. In the
same vein as the Intolerance prologue, for instance, Glebov Putilovsky and his
Petrograd Cinema Committee published a photographic history of the October
Revolution for workers and radicals in Western Europe and America. The book was
supposed to demonstrate the utility of the ‘new international language of picture facts’
(Fotoocherk po istorii Velikoi oktyabr‘skoi revolyutsii, 1917—1920 [A Photographic
Essay on the History of the Great October Revolution, 1917—20] (Petrograd: n.d.)).
23 Listov, pp. 189—90.
24 ibid., p. 190.
25 ibid.
26 ibid.
27 ibid.
28 ibid., p. 191.
29 Playbill for Intolerance, from the Griffith Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New
York.
30 Film Form, p. 243.
31 I am indebted to Professor Steven P.Hill of the University of Illinois and to Professor
Russell Merritt of the University of Wisconsin for their advice and assistance.
32 This translation by Richard Taylor is based on a draft by Betty and Vance Kepley of:
N.N.Glebov-Putilovskii, Prolog k kinospektaklyu ‘Neterpimost” [Prologue to the Film
Show Intolerance] (Petrograd: 1921), reproduced in Listov, pp. 189—91.
33 This anachronism is in the original Russian text.

4
THE ORIGINS OF SOVIET CINEMA: A STUDY IN INDUSTRY
DEVELOPMENT
Vance Kepley, Jr