Page 59 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

40 INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY
picturesque theatricality of life that is characteristic of the beggar at the
church door [etc., etc.]. 31

The pages of Kino-gazeta carried two other articles that were to have considerable
significance later: the article ‘The Screen and Rhythm’ by Anna Lee (the pen-name
of Anna Zaitseva-Selivanova, the future wife of Pudovkin) and Kuleshov’s article
‘The Art of Cinema’, which contained Kuleshov’s first reflections on montage.
Turkin, as the ‘leader’ of the newspaper, was the ‘godfather’ of both. The two
articles are almost the first Dalcrozian declarations in film theory. Anna Lee begins
her piece with an almost word-for-word repetition of Volkonsky:

It is necessary for our intuition, our taste, our heart, our intellect–for
everything, everything to merge, to vibrate and to blend harmoniously with
the tasks of the artist. This is only possible when the symbols, the signs
through which he wants us to read his artistic intentions are rhythmically
realised…. It is only when he is armed with a knowledge of rhythm, especially
screen rhythm, that the actor, like a singer who has mastered the musical
sol-fa, will be able to do battle with any element of chance, ‘for no two things
are more hostile to one another than art and chance’ (Volkonsky). 32

Anna Lee sensed the need to find a cinematographic equivalent to the rhythm of
the actor but she did not contemplate montage. Her solution looked extremely
naive:

The actor performs and simultaneously the camera (cameraman) operates,
like a metronome establishing a certain tempo. The unit of speed of the
performing actor does not correspond to the unit of speed of the camera in
operation and this causes arrhythmia…. But, if we add to this a third rhythm,
that of the projector and the theatre, the result will be rhythmic inarticulacy. 33

Anna Lee proposes to find a ‘coefficient of movement’, a ‘general constant’, an
‘amalgamating unit’ that would help to synchronise the three rhythms. Anna Lee’s
line of thought is very interesting: the new anthropology of the actor urgently
requires the discovery of a rhythmic law of cinema and it is to be found in the
natural ‘metronome’ of cinema, the cranking of the camera, the potential
‘rhythmiciser’ of the choreography of cinema. It is no accident that the article
states: ‘The grotesque results of dancing [on the screen], even when performed by
professionals, confirm and underline the absence of rhythm from the screen.’ 34
Kuleshov’s article was written before Anna Lee’s piece. But it contains a direct
response to ‘The Screen and Rhythm’. In this article the problem of montage and
rhythm was still in the background. It is evident that they did not completely
preoccupy Kuleshov because the major part of the article (like his 1917 articles in
Vestnik kinematografii) was devoted to the problems of the art of set decoration.