Page 90 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY 71
making profits that were reinvested in the company’s expanded production
schedule. Mezhrabpom concentrated on making big-budget entertainment films in
such genres as comedy and science fiction, and it consistently outperformed other
Russian companies at the box office. Typical of Mezhrabpom’s commercial
programming were the works of director Yakov Protazanov, such as the comedy
The Three Millions Trial [Protsess o trekh millionakh, 1926], which starred the
popular comedian Igor Ilyinsky, and the expensive science-fiction film Aelita
[1924], with its elaborate, futuristic sets and costumes. And Mezhrabpom’s horror
melodrama The Bear’s Wedding [Medvezh’ya svad’ba, 1926], to cite another
example, emerged as one of the USSR’s premier box-office successes of the 1920s.
To advance the commercial performance of such films, Mezhrabpom became the
first Soviet film organisation to establish a publicity department, which
aggressively promoted Mezhrabpom productions. And the company made a move
towards vertical integration as well, acquiring three of the USSR’s largest
commercial theatres, Koloss and Temp in Moscow and Gigant in Leningrad; these
profitable first-run houses brought the company an average daily return of 8,900
roubles. 29
Such aggressive commercialism led to occasional charges of ‘NEPism’, or
profiteering under NEP. But Lunacharsky realised that profitable commercial
activity was precisely what the whole industry needed to increase production, and
Mezhrabpom’s record became the envy of Goskino and other film companies.
Mezhrabpom raised its annual production levels from four features and eight
documentaries to sixteen features and twenty-three documentaries within five
years. This impressive record owed much to the generous terms of the company’s
WIR investors who demanded no significant concessions from the USSR since
they functioned precisely to assist Soviet development. 30
Other Russian film companies had to accumulate capital without the aid of such
benefactors. Ultimately foreign trade, not foreign investment, proved to be the
most expeditious route for the rest of the industry, and in 1922 Lenin and
Lunacharsky devised an ingenious trading scheme which significantly advanced
the industry’s growth. Lenin ordered the Commissariat of Foreign Trade to import
large numbers of films into the USSR. The films were to provide Soviet
commercial theatres with the product needed to begin generating revenues which
could then be ploughed back into domestic production. All Soviet theatres were
starving for product: the dearth of new feature-length productions meant that pre-
Revolutionary Russian films and tattered prints of pre-blockade foreign films often
were theatre managers’ only feature attractions. New foreign imports, if marketed
properly, could satisfy pent-up demand and provide income to be passed on to
domestic producers. 31
In issuing his importation directive, Lenin helped establish the developmental
agenda that would last throughout the period of capital accumulation. His decree
specified that imported films would be exploited as much for revenue as for
popular diversion, and he mandated that imports were to be exhibited in
conjunction with the educational and propaganda shorts that Russian studios were