Page 246 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

NOTES 227
Union, 1 January 1930, p. 8; A.V. Troyanovskii and R.I. Eliyazarov, Izuchenie kino-
zritelya [The Study of the Cinema Audience] (Moscow: 1928), pp. 39—43.
43 The figures are from E. Lemberg, Kinopromyshlennost’ SSSR [The Cinema
Industry of the USSR] (Moscow: 1930), appendix 4, n.p.
44 ibid., p. 71.
45 Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 15 March 1932, p. 142; ibid., January 1935, p.
8.
46 New York Times, 31 July 1927, sec. 7, p. 2; N. Lebedev (ed.), Lenin, Stalin, partiya o
kino [Lenin, Stalin, the Party on Cinema] (Moscow: 1939), p. 56.
47 Economic Review of the Soviet Union, January 1930, p. 8.
48 Hill, p. 21; Lemberg, p. 47.
49 Vladimirtseva and Sandler, vol. 1, p. 32; Economic Review of the Soviet Union, 1
January 1929, p. 17; ibid., 15 March 1932, p. 143; Carr, vol. 10, pp. 705—16.
50 Hill, p. 21.
51 wish to thank Betty Kepley for her advice and assistance.
5
DOWN TO EARTH: AELITA RELOCATED
Ian Christie
1 ‘O literature, revolyutsii, entropii i prochem’ [On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and
Other Matters], in: Pisateli ob iskussive i o sebe [Writers on Art and on Themselves]
(Moscow: 1924), translated in M. Ginsburg (ed. and trans.), A Soviet Heretic: Essays
by Yevgeny Zamyatin (Chicago: 1970), p. 109.
2 High Treason [Great Britain, 1929], directed by Maurice Elvey, and Things to Come
[Great Britain, 1936], directed by William Cameron Menzies, are typical of the many
science-fiction and fantasy films widely reputed–in the absence of frequent screenings
–to be less impressive in dramatic terms than their striking publicity stills. Another
instance, closer to the case of Aelita, is Harry Lachman’s Dante’s Inferno [USA,
1935] from which only stills of the final ‘Hell’ sequence, uncharacteristic of the film as
a whole, are ever reproduced.
3 See, for example, C.Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New Haven, Conn.: 1983), p.
292, and J.Milner, Russian Revolutionary Art (London: 1979), p. 64. Both of these
use a number of Aelita stills and reach different verdicts on the ‘Martian’ decor, but fail
to make clear that it features as a dream. Similarly D. Albrecht, Designing Dreams:
Modern Architecture in the Movies (London: 1987), describes the film as ‘a science-
fiction fantasy set mainly on Mars’ (p. 52); and D.Elliott, New Worlds: Russian Art
and Society, 1900—1937(London: 1986), refers to ‘a Soviet expedition to Mars’ in a
section headed ‘Visions of the future’ (p. 99). Typical of the synoptic surveys that
describe the film as an expedition to Mars is D.Menville and R.Reginald, Things to
Come: An Illustrated History of the Science-Fiction Film (New York: 1977), p. 29.
One of the few general cinema histories to describe Aellta accurately and discuss it
sympathetically is E. Rhode, A History of the Cinema from its Origins to 1970
(London: 1976), pp. 115—16.
4 The most famous contemporary attacks were by Kuleshov, himself a former art
director in the pre-Revolutionary cinema. For instance, ‘Pryamoi put’.
(Diskussionno)’ [A Straight Path (Ideas for Discussion)], Kino-gazeta, no. 48 (25