Page 40 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

EARLY RUSSIAN CINEMA: SOME OBSERVATIONS 21
that might have been filmed from our own repertoire, only the more
interesting ones that were suited to the conditions of cinema…. The actual
technique of adding sound did not worry us and we thought it would all be
easy and straightforward. Only time would prove how wrong we were:
mastering the art of accompanying speaking pictures turned out to be a
difficult matter, requiring a great deal of strenuous work…. I went to see
Khanzhonkov but I was not allowed to meet the great man himself. The
audience I was granted with his associates, Theodossiadis and Chardynin,
made me realise that there was no hope for me there. They both said that I
would need permission to be present at the filming and Chardynin added
unambiguously that they would scarcely give me permission because cinema
was a new art form ‘and it should not be sullied by any kind of nonsense like
stories and couplets’. 41

If Zhdanov’s account is reliable, Chardynin’s behaviour was quite in character with
the cinematic mores of the day: ‘outliving’ Zhdanov, he borrowed his idea. In any
case, Novitskaya’s reminiscences also deal with this notion:

When Chardynin was working for Khanzhonkov he had the idea of filming
talking pictures. He did a lot of work to that end. From the outset he filmed
himself, that is, he appeared in the picture and the cameraman [Boris]
Zavelev filmed him. He made two pictures: The Madman [Sumasshedshii],
based on verses by Apukhtin, and The Barge Haulers [Burlaki]. He scarcely
looked at them. He had very little time to travel from town to town. He
decided to involve me, his wife–Novitskaya is my stage name. My first film
was The Breath of Death [Dykhanie smerti]. He wrote the verses, it was shot
in a very beautiful outdoor setting and it had a greater public success than all
the others: Don Juan Punished [Nakazannyi Don-Zhuan], Scenes Like This
Are Unfamiliar [Vam takie stseny neznakomy], Dreams, Dreams, Where is
Your Fascination [Mechty, mechty, gde vasha prelest’] and Love Beyond the
Grave [Lyubov’ za grobom]. 42

Thus it was due to Chardynin’s efforts that in 1909 the genre of ‘film recitation’–
monologues in prose and verse, filmed and with sound added by a single actor–
emerged. Meanwhile Zhdanov and his acting friends were still looking for someone
who could help them realise a somewhat different project: a film involving several
people speaking with different voices. This genre of film show was called ‘speaking
pictures’.
Zhdanov turned to Drankov ‘and was pleasantly surprised at the simple
reception I received, which was so different from the ceremonies at
43
Khanzhonkov’s’. Drankov put his Moscow studio, where some dramatic
miniatures based on Chekhov had been filmed, at Zhdanov’s disposal.