Page 43 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

24 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
The film reciter’s repertoire was rarely renewed. When the copies they owned had
worn out the artistes preferred to film a new version of the same subject: the
negative apparently remained at the disposal of the manufacturer. The opposite
also happened: a film would pass to new performers. Sometimes the travelling
troupes of ‘film reciters’ would buy an ordinary silent film and manage to ‘add
sound’ to it. Hence Zhdanov’s troupe appeared with Chardynin’s Dead Souls
[Mertvye dushi, 1909], in which, to the reciters’ astonishment, the screen actors
apparently spoke Gogol’s actual lines. There were rumours that a gypsy camp had
hired the film Gypsy Romances [Tsyganskie romansy, 1914], featuring the
celebrated singer M.Vavich, and were organising fake concerts.
In 1913, when Edison’s ‘Kinetophone’ and Gaumont’s ‘Film Parlant’ were being
shown in Moscow and Petersburg to the accompaniment of a big advertising
campaign, the film reciters, who were in control of the provinces, exploited the
general interest in this new invention:

Apart from textual accompaniment to the pictures in our repertoire, we have
often, at the request of cinema owners and for a special fee, illustrated other
pictures in the programme with sounds and noises, depicting the roar of a
fire, dogs barking, cocks crowing, motor car horns, and so on. Many owners,
who advertise our performances as some kind of miracle, have asked us to
enter behind screens and leave unnoticed by the audience, so as to enhance
the ‘miracle’ and the mystery of the effect. 49

Some reciters, on the other hand, tried to exploit the effect of their presence.
Novitskaya recalls:

The audience was bewildered. What was happening? Was someone speaking
or was there some equipment behind the screen? Even though on the
hoardings it said that the actress Novitskaya was performing. Then I left
Moscow for the provinces and there the confusion was even greater. You
can’t imagine it. They often asked the director to bring me out from behind
the screen and put me on display. Only then were they convinced that it was
an actress, and not a machine, speaking. I received invitations from all four
corners of Russia and travelled across almost the entire country. I was in
both large and small towns; I was in Kharkov, Kiev, Riga, Odessa. I was in
remote places like Kutais. I travelled for almost three years with the pictures.
I had my own manager who signed the contracts. 50

STAGE-SCREEN HYBRIDS
We need to mention another unusual genre in Russian cinema: stage-screen
hybrids.
As was the case with the first experiments in film recitation, the combination of
screen action with action on stage was not a Russian invention. However, as in the