Page 26 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

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Early Russian cinema: some
observations
Yuri Tsivian

A first encounter with early Russian cinema usually raises several puzzling
questions. More often than not these questions are of the same kind: they concern
the distinguishing features of the Russian film style that set it apart from the
generally accepted practice of the 1910s. There is some sense in dwelling on these
features, both to disperse doubt in the audience’s mind and to understand the link
between ‘Russian style’ in cinema and certain characteristics of Russian culture.

RUSSIAN ENDINGS
In 1918 two cinema publications, one Russian and one American, made an
identical observation independently of one another. The Moving Picture World,
after viewing a batch of Russian pictures that had just arrived in the USA,
confirmed the view of its own correspondent:

As was pointed out in the first and favourable review of these films in The
Moving Picture World, the tragic note is frequently sounded; this is in
marked contrast to prevailing American methods. The Russian films, in
other words, incline to what has been termed ‘the inevitable ending’ rather than
an idealized or happy ending. That was the thing that gave the reviewers
some slight shivers of apprehension as to the reception that might be
accorded these films by our public. 1

At the same time the Moscow Kino-gazeta was informing its readers:

‘All’s well that ends well!’ This is the guiding principle of foreign cinema. But
Russian cinema stubbornly refuses to accept this and goes its own way.
Here it’s ‘All’s well that ends badly’–we need tragic endings. 2

The Russian audience’s need for tragic endings was so insistent that in 1914 when
Yakov Protazanov made Drama by Telephone [Drama u telefona], a Russian
remake of Griffith’s The Lonely Villa [USA, 1909], he had to change the ending:
the husband was not in time to rescue his wife and came home to find her dead
body–she had been killed by burglars. In 1918 Protazanov none the less tried to