Page 33 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

14 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
But it was not only the Russian films made as ‘film stories’ that were judged from
the standpoint of this paradoxical aesthetic doctrine. In 1916 we find a typical
critical formulation in a review of the film His Eyes [Ego glaza], which was
consistent with the Russian style:

The scenes that are devoid of traditional cinematic movement produce a
great impression. 24

Sometimes even foreign films, which had apparently fallen behind Russian
cinema, were treated in the same way. Hence the condescending review in
Proektor in 1916 devoted to the American film which was released in Russia as
The Slave of Profit [Raba nazhivy]:

As far as the whole pace of the action is concerned, neither the director nor
the cast have managed to capture that slow tempo that is so common in the
Russian feature-film play. The actors are still too fidgety, as the Americans
are wont to be; their acting still derives largely from the superficial, from
objects and facts rather than from experiences and emotions. 25

What in practice were the ideas behind the ‘Russian style’? Genetically speaking,
the aesthetics of immobility can be traced back to two sources: the psychological
pauses of the Moscow Art Theatre and the acting style of Danish and Italian cinema.
When they met in Russian cinema these sources transformed one another: the
operatic posturing of the Italian diva acquired psychological motivation, while the
acoustic and intonational pauses of the Moscow Art Theatre–the so-called
‘Chekhov’ style, which was far from presupposing a slow tempo on stage–found its
plastic equivalent on the screen. That gave rise to the minimalist technique of the
Russian film actor, which was dictated inter alia by the style of film direction. As
one of the manifestos of the ‘Russian style’ stated:

In the world of the screen, where everything is counted in metres, the actor’s
struggle for the freedom to act has led to a battle for long (in terms of
metres) scenes or, more accurately, for ‘full’ scenes, to use Olga
Gzovskaya’s marvellous expression. A ‘full’ scene is one in which the actor
is given the opportunity to depict in stage terms a specific spiritual
experience, no matter how many metres it takes. The ‘full’ scene involves a
complete rejection of the usual hurried tempo of the film drama. Instead of a
rapidly changing kaleidoscope of images, it aspires to rivet the attention of the
audience on to a single image…. This may sound like a paradox for the art of
cinema (which derives its name from the Greek word for ‘movement’) but
the involvement of our best actors in cinema will lead to the slowest possible
tempo…. Each and every one of our best film actors has his or her own style
of mime: Mosjoukine has his steely hypnotised look; Gzovskaya has a gentle,
endlessly varying lyrical ‘face’; Maximov has his nervous tension and