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International Journal of Media and Information Literacy Issued since 2005 E-ISSN 2500-106X 2023. 8(1): 14-60
DOI: 10.13187/ijmil.2023.1.14 https://ijmil.cherkasgu.press
Theoretical Concepts of Film Studies in Cinema Art Journal: 1969-1985
Alexander Fedorov a , *
a Rostov State University of Economics, Russian Federation
Abstract
Authors' analysis of film studies concepts (in the context of the sociocultural and political situation, etc.) of the existence of the Cinema Art during the period of "stagnation" (1969-1985) showed that theoretical works on cinematic subjects during this period can be divided into the following types:
- theoretical articles written in support of the resolutions of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee on culture (including - cinematography), still defending the inviolability of socialist realism and Communist party in cinematography (V. Baskakov, A. Dubrovin, S. Freilich, A. Karaganov, I. Lisakovsky, L. Mamatova, V. Murian, V. Tolstykh, I. Weisfeld, R. Yurenev, V. Zhdan, etc.)
- Theoretical articles balancing ideological and professional approaches to cinema (S. Freilikh, E. Levin, K. Razlogov, I. Weisfeld, R. Yurenev, etc.);
- theoretical articles, discussions devoted mainly to professional problems: analysis of the theoretical heritage of the classics of Soviet cinema, directing, film dramaturgy, genres, the specifics of television, etc. (L. Anninsky, M. Bleiman, Y. Bogomolov, Y. Khanyutin, L. Kozlov, E. Levin, A. Tarkovsky, V. Shklovsky, A. Vartanov, I. Weisfeld, M. Yampolsky, M. Zak, and others);
- theoretical articles calling on the authorities to provide organizational transformations that would promote the intensive development of film studies as a science, the sociology of cinema, and film education (I. Weisfeld, E. Weizman, etc.).
- theoretical articles opposing bourgeois influences, contrasting them with communist ideology and class approaches (V. Baskakov, L. Melville, M. Shaternikova, V. Shestakov, etc.).
On the whole, the Cinema Art journal in 1969-1985, just as during the Thaw, was still within the typical model of a Soviet journal for the humanities, which, despite significant concessions to censorship and those in power, at least half of its total text tried to preserve its ability to engage in artistic analysis of the film process (unfortunately, this did not allow it even in minimal doses to criticize the flaws in the works of the most "bosses" influential Soviet screen artists of the time).
The journal was unable to maintain the thaw that was still strong even in the late 1960s and found itself largely in the ideological rut of Leonid Brezhnev's peak, although, paying tribute to Soviet propaganda, the journal was able to afford "in some narrow plazas" to publish meaningful discussions and important theoretical works.
Keywords: Cinema Art, film studies, theoretical concepts, cinematography.
1. Introduction
In studies by scholars (Andrew, 1976; 1984; Aristarco, 1951; Aronson, 2003; 2007; Balázs, 1935; Bazin, 1971; Bergan, 2006; Branigan, Buckland, 2015; Casetti, 1999; Demin, 1966; Eisenstein, 1939; 1940; 1964; Fedorov, 2017a,b; 2022a,b; Freilich, 2009; Gibson et al, 2000; Gledhill, Williams,
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: 1954alex@mail.ru (A. Fedorov)
2000; Hill, Gibson, 1998; Humm, 1997; Khrenov, 2006; 2011; Kuleshov, 1987; Lebedev, 1974; Lipkov, 1990; Lotman, 1973; 1992; 1994; Mast, Cohen, 1985; Metz, 1974; Razlogov, 1984; Sokolov, 2010; Stam, 2000; Villarejo, 2007; Weisfeld, 1983; Weizman, 1978; Zhdan, 1982 and others) have discussed film studies concepts many times. However, until now there has been no interdisciplinary comparative analysis of the evolution of theoretical aspects of film studies in the entire time interval of the existence of the Cinema Art journal (from 1931 to the present) in world science.
It is well known that theoretical concepts in film studies are fluid and often subject to fluctuating courses of political regimes. Hence it is understandable that the Soviet film studies literature (Lebedev, 1974; Weisfeld, 1983; Weizman, 1978; Zhdan, 1982, etc.) tended to exhibit communist-oriented ideological approaches. As for foreign scholars (Kenez, 1992; Lawton, 2004; Shaw, Youngblood, 2010; Shlapentokh, 1993; Strada, Troper, 1997; and others), their works on Soviet and Russian cinema focused primarily on the political and artistic aspects of cinema and rarely touched on theoretical film studies in the USSR and Russia (one of the few exceptions: Hill, 1960).
In our previous articles on theoretical concepts of film studies in the Cinema Art journal (Fedorov, Levitskaya, 2022a; Fedorov, Levitskaya, 2022b; Fedorov, Levitskaya, 2022c; Levitskaya, 2022), we investigated the period of the 1930s and early 1940s and 1945-1955. In this article we analyze the theoretical concepts of film studies in the Cinema Art journal during the "stagnation" period - from 1969 to 1985.
2. Materials and methods
The methodology of the research consists of the key philosophical provisions on the connection, interdependence and integrity of the phenomena of reality, the unity of the historical and social in knowledge; scientific, cinematological, sociocultural, cultural, hermeneutic, semiotic approaches, proposed in the works of leading scientists (Aristarco, 1951; Aronson, 2003; 2007; Bakhtin, 1996; Balazs, 1935; Bazin, 1971; Bessonov, 2012; Bibler, 1990; Buldakov, 2014; Casetti, 1999; Demin, 1966; Eco, 1975; 1976; Eisenstein, 1939; Eisenstein, 1940; Eisenstein, 1964; Gledhill, Williams, 2000; Hess, 1997; Hill, Gibson, 1998; Khrenov, 2006; 2011; Kuleshov, 1987; Lotman, 1973; Lotman, 1992; Lotman, 1994; Mast, Cohen, 1985; Metz, 1974; Razlogov, 1984; Sokolov, 2010; Stam, 2000; Villarejo, 2007 and others).
The project is based on the research content approach (identifying the content of the process under study taking into account the totality of its elements, the interaction between them, their nature, appeal to the facts, analysis and synthesis of theoretical conclusions, etc.), on the historical approach -consideration of the specific and historical development of the declared topic of the project.
Research methods: complex content analysis, comparative interdisciplinary analysis; theoretical research methods: classification, comparison, analogy, induction and deduction, abstraction and concretization, theoretical analysis and synthesis, generalization; empirical research methods: collection of information related to the project topic, comparative-historical and hermeneutical methods.
3. Discussion and results
In this article we will focus on the analysis of theoretical concepts of film studies in the Cinema Art journal during the "stagnation" period. (1969-1985), when the editors-in-chief of this journal were Lyudmila Pogozheva (1913-1989): 1969; Eugeny Surkov (1915-1988): 1969-1982; Armen Medvedev (1938-2022): 1982-1984; and Yury Cherepanov (born in 1937): 1984-1985.
In Table 1 we present statistical data reflecting the changes in the organizations for which the journal was published from 1969 to 1985, as well as the names of the editors-in-chief and the length of time they were in charge of the publication, and the number of articles on film theory in each year of the journal's publication.
Table 1. Journal Cinema Art (1969-1985): statistical data
Year of issue of the journal The organization whose organ was the journal Circulation (in thousand copies) Periodicity of the journal (numbers per year) Editor-in-chief Number of articles on film theory
Committee on Cinematography L. Pogozheva
1969 under the USSR Council of Ministers, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 33,3-35,5 12 № 1-4 E. Surkov № 5-12 15
1970 Committee on Cinematography under the USSR Council of Ministers, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 38,0-40,3 12 E. Surkov 13
1971 Committee on Cinematography under the USSR Council of Ministers, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 39,0-41,8 12 E. Surkov 22
1972 Committee on Cinematography under the USSR Council of Ministers, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (№ 1-8), State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography (№ 9-12), Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 39,6-42,7 12 E. Surkov 12
1973 State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 44,2-47,3 12 E. Surkov 11
1974 State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 47,8-48,8 12 E. Surkov 12
1975 State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 48,2-56,2 12 E. Surkov 18
State Committee Council of Ministers
1976 of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 50-63 12 E. Surkov 16
1977 State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 50-54 12 E.Surkov 13
1978 State Committee Council of Ministers of the USSR on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR (№ 1-7), USSR State Committee on Cinematography (№ 8-12), Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 54,0-56,8 12 E. Surkov 27
1979 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 56 12 E. Surkov 28
1980 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 56 12 E. Surkov 11
1981 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 56 12 E.Surkov 14
1982 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 56 12 E. Surkov № 1-6 A. Medvedev № 8-12 15
1983 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 52-56 12 A. Medvedev 14
USSR State
1984 Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 52 12 A. Medvedev № 1-10 Y. Cherepanov № 11-12 15
1985 USSR State Committee on Cinematography, Union of Cinematographers of the USSR 50-52 12 Y. Cherepanov 8
The circulation of the Cinema Art (still a monthly journal) from 1969 to 1985 ranged from 33,3 to 56,8 thousands copies. Until 1983 a tendency was observed towards a gradual increase in circulation, but then it began to decline somewhat and in 1985 stabilized at 50 thousands copies. The peak circulation of the journal (56.8 thousands copies) during this period was reached in 1978.
The frequency of theoretical articles published in the Cinema Art during the stagnation period ranged from a dozen to twenty-eight per year. Thus, 143 theoretical articles were published in the first decade of the journal's existence (1931-1941), 194 in the second (1945-1955), 220 in 1956-1968, and 264 in 1969-1985.
After the sharp criticism of the journal Cinema Art, launched by Ogonyok in late 1968, film critic Lyudmila Pogozheva (1913-1989) did not stay on as editor-in-chief for long: from May 1969 she was replaced by Evgeny Surkov (1915-1988), who managed to stay in this difficult position for 13 years, until June 1982.
Film critic N. Zorkaya (1924-2006) wrote of E. Surkov: "A talented, intelligent man with a good taste in film (which is not very often!) and education, he chose for himself the path of loyal, fervent and uninterrupted service to the regime. The regime was embodied for him by the Communist Party and for the Communist Party by the Central Committee (he had no respect for the state apparatus and the bureaucracy, though he himself was a chairman or a member of the State Cinema Collegium enrolled among the nomenclature). He was unselfish. He had no dacha and no car either - he was driven by a journalist. ... No, Surkov's love for authority was purely spiritual, not pragmatic in any way" (Zorkaya, 2021: 32).
Film critic Y. Bogomolov (1937-2023) believed that Surkov's "ideological meniality, expressed in the ability to present communist dogmas as imaginary theoretical constructs, coexisted... with an incredible creative pride. He was not a cynic in the vulgar sense. That is, he was a man who consciously halved his life: up to now it has been devoted to the service and maintenance of the regime, and from now on I myself, with my own tastes, my own views and preferences. That is, in the end, of course, halved. But not on purpose, not consciously, against my own will. ... And in this was his, Surkov, a specific drama. Apparently, he desired wholeness, integrity, absolute fusion with the Party of Lenin, he wanted to dissolve in the proletarian ideology. But it did not accept him, like a pond with a strong solution of salt; it pushed him out, and he tried to dive into its depths. And it did not work. As it turned out, Surkov lived a double life: at home he treasured Pasternak's autographs and proudly showed them to his rare guests; he loved well-written texts and talented pictures; he knew the price of conjunctural hackwork, while from his tribunes and in print he denounced, exposed and exposed revisionists of all stripes. Moreover, he did it in an especially perverted form - with taste, with passion, with conviction, sincerity and, sometimes, with talent. The Communist Party considered him its golden pen. But, strangely enough, it did not like him. He was an outsider to the Soviet party and official elite, although they used him. He was for her an agent in a hostile environment. I think that he felt, knew, understood and, perhaps, experienced it" (Bogomolov, 2001: 5).
Film critic V. Kichin agrees with Bogomolov's opinion: "Everyone knew very well under what double pressure this man lived. A brilliant mind, a charming orator, encyclopedically educated, Surkov understood that he was selling his soul to the devil, and this infuriated him, made him inadequate and unpredictable. He had to find clever words, broadcasting nonsense uttered by party bosses. He was angry at them and at himself, and because of this anger, he became a Jesuit, turning life into a torture - very often for those around him and always for himself. He was well aware of the value of the system. But he considered it unshakable and therefore confidently played by its
rules. "Do you think it will ever end? - he once asked me. - Believe me, it's enough for my lifetime and yours! One did not need to specify what "this" was" (Kichin, 2001: 12).
There is no doubt that Evgeny Surkov would have been able to remain successfully as editorin-chief of Cinema Art until the start of Perestroika, at least until 1986, but that was prevented by emigration to the West (in 1982) of his daughter, the film critic Olga Surkova. At the time, this was an occasion for taking "administrative measures" against the close relatives of the "fugitives". In July 1982, the Cinema Art was published only with a list of editorial board members, and a month later, film critic Armen Medvedev was appointed editor-in-chief.
It is hard to say what Cinema Art would have become had A. Medvedev (1938-2022) been at the head of this journal throughout the rest of the Soviet period. But he did not manage to prove himself significantly in this position, as already in the fall of 1984 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Main Screenplay and Editorial Board of USSR State Committee on Cinematography.
The theatrical and film critic Yuri Cherepanov had been editor-in-chief of the Cinema Art between November 1982 and 1986.
By the mid-1970s the editorial board of the Cinema Art consisted of 21 people. As before, many of them were well-known film directors (S. Gerasimov, R. Karmen, S. Yutkevich, A. Zguridi) and filmmakers. However, compared to the 1960s, there were roughly twice as many film critics and film scholars on the editorial board (nearly 50 %): E. Surkov (Editor-in-Chief) (1915-1988), N. Ignatyeva (Deputy Editor-in-Chief) (1923-2019), A. Medvedev (1938-2022) (deputy editor-in-chief), V. Baskakov (1921-1999), A. Karaganov (1915-2007), K. Paramonova (1916-2005), N. Savitsky (b. 1939), N. Sumenov (1938-2014) I. Weisfeld (1909-2003), and R. Yurenev (1912-2002).
During the whole period of "stagnation" the Cinema Art closely followed the anniversary dates (centennial of Lenin's birth, half-century of the USSR, 60 years of Soviet power, etc.).
Each issue of this journal published several articles about national cinema, written by film critics. Plus materials authored by directors, screenwriters and other cinematographers, scripts, and filmographies. In addition to the journal's traditional headings ("New Films", "Theory and History", "Interviews Between Shoots", "Abroad", "Screenplay", "Published About Cinematography", etc.) a whole series of ideological materials, sprinkled with quotations from speeches by the Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee L. Brezhnev, headings "Toward the 60th Anniversary of the Great October Revolution", "Modernity and the Screen", etc. Anniversary articles in the journal were often anonymous: apparently, not every film critic, even "superior", could afford to put his signature under such, for example, articles as "The Inspiring Care of the Party" or "The Unfading Light of October".
Of course, among these articles were also "author's" works. For example, V. Dmitriev's article "Humanism of the Socialist Revolution and Cinematography" (Dmitriev, 1977), a long, boring article stretching over two issues, replete with references from L. Brezhnev's "works", which stated with delight that "the cinema art of the Soviet country had become Communist Party art. Its socialist primogeniture was defined thanks to a choice made from the very beginning - together with the Communist party, with the revolution, with the people!" (Dmitriev, 1977: 8).
B. Pavlenok (1923-2012), Deputy Chairman of State Committee on Cinematography, in his Communist party-politicized article about the current cinema process of the anniversary year, though he praised L. Shepitko's outstanding film Ascent, he also praised such long-forgotten films with historical and revolutionary themes as Carriage from the South, The Siege, Red Earth, Red diplomatic couriers (Pavlenok, 1977: 6-14).
In this connection, film critic V. Golovskoy wrote that E. Surkov, editor-in-chief of Cinema Art, directed "his efforts at ensuring that the journal conforms to the Communist Party's present or future programs. Thus, while Surkov was editor, Cinema Art changed drastically, lost many contributors, no longer reflected what was actually happening in the world of cinema, and ceased to print objective evaluations of Soviet and foreign films. While internal political conditions were, indeed, becoming worse, Cinema Art ... served as an example of dogmatism and mindless politicking" (Golovskoy, 1984: 220).
But, in our opinion, this is too simplistic a view of this period of the journal Art of Cinema (and we will elaborate on a detailed analysis on the following pages). For example, in the 1970s, the journal wrote about such notable national films as L. Bykov's Aty-baty, Soldiers Were Going, V. Rubinchik's Wreath of Sonnets, L. Shepitko's Ascent, A. German's Twenty Days Without War, D. Asanova's The Key Without the Right to Transfer, G. Daneliya's Mimino, The Unfinished Piece for the Player Piano and The Slave of Love by N. Mikhalkov, Wounded by N. Gubenko, I Ask to
Speak by G. Panfilov, Joke by V. Menshov, Tale of How Tsar Peter Married Off a Moor by A. Mitta, Elder Son by V. Melnikov, Steppe by S. Bondarchuk, etc. But, alas, in those same 1970s this journal also published a subservient script for a documentary about L. Brezhnev, The Tale of a Communist, and unabashedly complimentary reviews of a very weak war drama, The Thought of Kovpak by T. Levchuk, about mediocre melodramas Earthly Love and Destiny by E. Matveev...
Theoretical Concepts of Film Studies in Cinema Art: 1956-1968
Politics and Ideology in Film Studies in the Stagnation Era (1969-1985)
Despite the authorities' harsh attack on the Cinema Art at the end of 1968, film critic Lyudmila Pogozheva (1913-1989) still managed to publish the first four issues of the 1969 issue before her dismissal as editor-in-chief.
At the beginning of this year, the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee issued a resolution "On Increasing the responsibility of the heads of press, radio, television, cinematography, culture and art institutions for the ideological and political level of published materials and repertoire" (7 January 1969) (Postanovlenie..., 1969).
In the light of the reaction to the events of the Prague Spring, this resolution once again reminded us that "in the situation of an intensified ideological struggle between socialism and capitalism, the ability of the press, literary and artistic workers to speak more acutely from the class and Communist party positions against any manifestations of bourgeois ideology, to actively and skillfully promote the communist ideals, the advantages of socialism, the Soviet way of life, to deeply analyze and expose various kinds of petty bourgeoisie, and to conduct a thorough analysis of their work, is of particular importance.
The Soviet Communist Party Central Committee went on to express concern that "individual authors, directors and directors departed from class criteria in evaluating and reporting on complex socio-political problems, facts and events, and sometimes became carriers of views alien to the ideology of socialist society. There are attempts to assess important periods in the history of the Communist Party and the state in a one-sided, subjective way, to criticize shortcomings not from the position of party and civic interest, but as outside observers, which is alien to the principles of socialist realism and party journalism... Some heads of publishing houses, press, radio, television, cultural and artistic institutions do not take proper measures to prevent the publication of ideologically erroneous works, do not work with authors, show pliability and politic" (Postanovlenie..., 1969). In the end, it obliged "heads of organizations and departments and editorial teams" to take responsibility for the ideological and political content of the published materials.
However, the discussion published in the first issue of the Cinema Art in 1969, framed in ideologically correct Marxist-Leninist and Socialist-Realist tones, did not help the editor's reputation at all.
This discussion involved film scholars and film critics L. Pogozheva (1913-1989), E. Gromov (1931-2005), G. Kapralov (1921-2010), A. Kukarkin (1916-1996), screenwriter M. Papava (19061975), philosophers E. Weitzman (1918-1977), N. Parsadanov, and others. In the course of the discussion, A. Kukarkin, for example, emphasized that the Marxist-Leninist "philosophical, aesthetic, and ... ethical concepts of personality are the most important watersheds in the modern ideological struggle. Both in the theoretical aspect and in artistic practice" (Concept..., 1969: 17).
I. Weisfeld's article "Mobilized by the Revolution and Called to It" (Weisfeld, 1969: 5-15) also looked like a direct response to the Resolution... (Postanovlenie..., 1969). I. Weisfeld (1909-2003) drew the journal's readers' attention to the fact that "there were cases in the practice of post-war Soviet cinema when the screen tried to vary the chronicles of Italian neorealism, the brutal naturalism of Japanese cinema, the nervous camera of Godard, the flashes of Fellini's fantasy, and the contradictions of Antonioni. Slowness and pithiness borrowed from Antonioni, quite organic to this artist, looked out of place in films of another social world, sometimes parodic. Godard's montage, torn from the ground on which it grew up, became a pretentious garment that barely covered the nakedness of its content. The experience of Soviet cinema rejects both aesthetic autarky and epigonicism" (Weisfeld, 1969: 11).
I. Weisfeld lamented that "there are still too many epigonic, sterile or simply inept pictures on the cinema and television screens. Instead of vehemently denouncing inexperience and helping unskilled but talented and promising artists, we have ineptitude, carelessness, narrow-mindedness, which are now and again presented as the specifics of our time, as the latest word in film-making", while it is necessary "to unite people in the struggle for a better social order. To convey the
pathetics of the socialist-communist transformation of society, just as the first post-October films told in the language of newly discovered art about the overthrow of the old world and the beginning of the construction of the new" (Weisfeld, 1969: 15).
In the spring of 1969, E. Surkov (1915-1988) was appointed editor-in-chief of the Cinema Art, under whose leadership the ideological component of the journal increased dramatically.
And since the USSR began to prepare for the celebration of the centennial of Lenin's birth (1870-1924), the journal began to publish in nearly every issue the Communist Party propaganda materials connected to the theoretical heritage and biography of the "leader of the world proletariat" and its implementation in Soviet cinema.
This large series of materials included, for example, philosopher V. Murian's article "On the Leninist Concept of the Person and the Collective and Our Film Problems" (Murian, 1969: 5-19), full of quotations from the collected works of V. Lenin and standard discourse on Communist Partyism and socialist realism, which argued that "the creative application and embodiment of Leninist ideas developed by aesthetic means is the most important merit and simultaneously the most important achievement of socialist art" (Murian, 1969: 19).
The philosopher A. Dubrovin (1930-1995) echoed him in reiterating that "the new social structure can win only when the struggling people are led by the working class and the vanguard of the working people - the mass revolutionary party, strong in its ideological and organizational unity" (Dubrovin, 1970: 7).
Based on Lenin's quotations, another philosopher, B. Kedrov (1903-1985), argued that cinema "is called upon to show dialectics on the screen, but to show it truly, not by substituting it for the sum of examples, which Lenin always objected to, but as the living soul of the MarxistLeninist doctrine. ... Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, refracted through the prism of the specificity of cinematography as a distinctive art, can be of enormous help to filmmakers in this interesting and important matter" (Kedrov, 1970: 94).
The philosopher K. Dolgov fully agreed with this propaganda approach and was convinced that "even such questions that are connected with cybernetics, semiotics, structuralism and other fields of human cognition that have emerged in comparatively recent times can only be correctly solved from the position of Lenin's theory of reflection" (Dolgov, 1970: 110).
Film scholar I. Weisfeld argued along similar lines, emphasizing that "Lenin analyzed the very essence of the complex dialectics of the relationship between the political struggle of the Communist Party to build a new society and the appropriation of the culture left behind by the old world, and he formulated the practical tasks of art masters after the October Revolution. This set the stage for the flowering of the new cinematography, for the formation of the masters of art of the socialist society. ... Lenin's thoughts specifically on cinema and cultural heritage, expressed half a century ago, remain with us as an immortal theoretical discovery, covering also the fields of the youngest arts and mass communication media - cinema and television" (Weisfeld, 1970: 122, 125).
In one of his following articles, I. Weisfeld returned to the propaganda theme, noting that "at the turn of the XXIV Soviet Communist Party Congress we can look back and say: Soviet film masters and their viewers are rightly proud of the creative, social discovery of our country -multinational Soviet film art, sanctified by the assimilation of the wonderful advanced artistic traditions of the peoples of the USSR" (Weisfeld, 1971: 71).
At the time of editor E. Surkov Cinema Art jouenal began to quote with increasing frequency not only the resolutions of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party and the writings of Lenin, but also the speeches of L. Brezhnev. Such quotations were, for example, the subject of film scholar L. Mamatova's (1935-1996) article "Internationalism Is Our Banner" (Mamatova 1970: 8-27). It pathologically reported that "L. I. Brezhnev reminded us that the Soviet Union is a mighty socialist power located on the vast territory of Europe and Asia. This imposes on our foreign policy activities a special responsibility... In the same light one should understand the responsible cultural mission of Soviet multinational cinema, which has a friendly, fraternal interest in the development of national cinematographs in countries that have taken the path of independence and freedom, the path of struggle against colonialism and racism" (Mamatova, 1970: 27).
Film scholar S. Freilich (1920-2005) developed film theory in a similar vein, arguing that "communist conviction and popularism become the philosophical essence of art, its realistic substance" (Freilich, 1978: 76-77). Philosopher V. Tolstykh (1929-2019), film scholar R. Yurenev (1912-2002), and other authors of the journal (Tolstykh, 1978: 3-20; Yurenev, 1981: 125-142) were not far behind him in this kind of approach.
Similar were the "theoretical" articles published in the Cinema Art for the 110th anniversary of V. Lenin's birth in 1980. Thus film scholar V. Zhdan (1913-1993), referring to L. Brezhnev, wrote that illuminated by the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, "the development of the method of socialist realism, the logic of its movement are conditioned not only by experience and the richest reserve of artistic means, but also by those new ideological and aesthetic tasks... And as the highest achievement of contemporary artistic progress, it has today become an international phenomenon that determines the path of work of the leading filmmakers of the world" (Zhdan, 1980: 29).
The stereotyped unequivocal praise of socialist realism was also characteristic of the philosopher I. Lisakovsky's (1934-2004) articles: "The artist's belonging to the school of socialist realism is determined not by his adherence to this or that artistic form, not by stylistics..., but primarily and necessarily by his understanding of the basic, decisive laws of life, which the Marxist-Leninist worldview provides" (Lisakovsky, 1982: 136).
It is important to note that this ideological position of the Cinema Art remained firmly established even in 1985, after Gorbachev came to power, when I. Lisakovsky insisted that the main criterion for judging the significance of any artistic work "was and remains the communist ideology and Communist party membership" (Lisakovsky, 1985: 128).
Throughout the years of the stagnation era, key theorists of the Cinema Art continued to struggle against bourgeois theoretical influence. A striking example here is an article by the philosopher A. Zis (1910-1997), where he once again drank against Western revisionists in the scientific sphere and in cinema (Zis, 1972: 74-90).
A very important ideological tool for the Cinema Art was the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" (Postanovlenie..., 1972) (to be discussed in detail below), the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party "On Further Improving Ideological, Political and Educational Work" (Postanovlenie..., 1979) and the Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and USSR Council of Ministers "On Improving Production and Show of Films for Children and Teenagers" (Postanovlenie..., 1984).
The Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers "On Measures for Further Improving the Ideological and Artistic Level of Films and Strengthening the Material and Technical Base of the Cinematography" (Postanovlenie..., 1984) writers and directors were reproached for seldom addressing socially important themes, and a number of films lacked dynamism, spectacular brightness, and appeal of a positive hero. It was also noted that there were "few feature films in the USSR that would expose the essence of modern imperialism and help expose the ideological enemy", so the Soviet cinematography should promote "the Leninist foreign policy of the USSR", actively expose the aggressive course of imperialism, increase "the vigilance of the Soviet people and its Armed Forces, actively contribute to the military-patriotic education" (Postanovlenie..., 1984). It was also required "to achieve growth of the Marxist-Leninist armament, the Communist Party principle and professional skill of the critics" (Postanovlenie..., 1984).
Understandably, the Cinema Art responded most attentively to each of these Resolutions, organizing "responses from filmmakers" and "workers," discussions, etc.
The journal also always responded to important political anniversaries and dates (of Soviet power, victory in the Great Patriotic War, etc.), key cinematic events (international and all-Union film festivals), and sporting events (the 1980 Olympics in Moscow).
Our analysis shows that while the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968-1969 and in Poland in the early 1980s had an impact on the political vector of ideological articles in Cinema Art, the "détente" policy of the 1970s had almost no effect on the ideological orientation of articles about foreign cinema, which essentially remained within the former framework of the "struggle against bourgeois influence" while supporting "progressive tendencies".
And although the mass Soviet press of the 1970s paid a fair amount of attention to condemning the dissident line of writer A. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2009) and Academician A. Sakharov (1921-1989), no mass letters from Soviet filmmakers directed against these opposition figures were published in the Cinema Art journal (in contrast to the second half of the 1930s, when the journal published many materials against "enemies of the people").
The death of L. Brezhnev (1906-1982) on November 10, 1982, and the subsequent short periods of rule of Y. Adropov (1914-1984) and K. Chernenko (1911-1985) and the first months of
M. Gorbachev's rule had no significant effect on the ideological orientation of the political materials published in Cinema Art from 1982 to 1985.
Theory and History of Cinematography
History of Soviet film classics
The period between 1969 and 1985 saw a continuation of the "thaw" policy line in the journal Cinema Art aimed at the rehabilitation of the Soviet film heritage of the 1920s, first and foremost the legacy of S. Eisenstein (1898-1948).
Thus film historian T. Selezneva, noting that "a number of theoretical provisions of Eisenstein were at one time subjected to criticism... To some extent this was explained by the very process of development of cinema - silent metaphorical cinema, whose principles were largely based on Eisenstein, at a certain stage came into conflict with the prose cinema which had gained advantages with the arrival of sound. Now, after many years, revisiting Eisenstein's works, it was necessary to assess them from a historical perspective; to understand their place in the general process of film theory development, what has retained relevance in them to the present day, what has become the property of history" (Selezneva, 1975: 117).
A detailed analysis of S. Eisenstein's work was devoted to a large work by V. Shklovsky, published in six issues of the Cinema Art (Shklovsky, 1971. 1: 116-128; 2: 140-152; 3: 121-143; 4: 128-150; 11: 128-157; 12: 78-103).
Film historian L. Mamatova (1935-1996) reminded readers of the journal that "the initial stages in the work of Vertov, Kozintsev and Trauberg were seen in certain works of the 1940s only as sad and harmful errors which could only be forgiven, if at all, given the artists' later merits for national cinematography. The refusal to embrace the process in all its diversity and complexity also led to simplified notions about the essence of socio-historical determinism of cinema" (Mamatova, 1975: 120), and further emphasized the importance of the legacy of S. Eisenstein (1898-1948) and L. Kuleshov (1899-1970).
Film director and scholar S. Yutkevich (1904-1985) pointed to the important contribution of V. Meerhold (1874-1940) to film directing theory, while film director L. Trauberg (1901-1990) recalled his own experience of cinema in the 1920s (Yutkevich 1975: 89-101; Trauberg 1975: 74-82).
Many Soviet film scholars during this period attempted to remind readers of the significance of the theoretical legacy of V. Pudovkin (1893-1953).
Thus I. Vaysfeld (1909-2003) believed that "the judgments of those Western critics who limit Pudovkin's contribution to the science of cinema to montage are one-sided. In his unfading works ... he considers the art of cinema as a whole (in connection with allied arts and literature) and directing as a system of aesthetic thinking and creative activity - in their dynamics. ... Films, books, and the life of the communist fighter Pudovkin belong to the art of cinema today, facing the future" (Weisfeld 1973: 30). Film scholars M. Vlasov (1932-2004), A. Karaganov (1915-2007), V. Shklovsky (1893-1984), and others agreed with this opinion (Vlasov, 1973: 31-41; Karaganov, 1973: Shklovsky, 1973: 51-56).
Film historian E. Levin (1935-1991) was convinced that "the outstanding merit of Pudovkin as a theorist consisted precisely in establishing the most important aesthetic regularity (a regularity of the general order, as Eisenstein would say); using the experience of the theater must go and goes in cinema not mechanically, but by understanding and developing the specificity of cinema art, simultaneously with developing its image system, with deepening into the nature of its artistic conditionally" (Levin, 1976: 116).
A film scholar L. Mamatova (1935-1996) even counted A. Lunacharsky among the classics of Soviet cinema, who, in her opinion, "did not abuse ready-made formulas: he persuaded artists that the partisanship of art is the highest manifestation of revolutionary ideality and the effectiveness of artistic creativity" (Mamatova 1975: 83).
Film scholar G. Maslovsky (1938-2001) turned to an analysis of the theoretical legacy of V. Shklovsky (1893-1984), in particular his "theory of defamiliarization", which attempted to "pass itself off as a system and as truth. In fact, it was and remains only a part of the truth and a partial result of the system of art. Theory ... grasped a simple but not easily attainable truth: the essence is not in the individual, even very productive parts, but in their interaction, in the system. And another, no less difficult to reach in practice: it is impossible to unravel a system without precise knowledge of its parts" (Maslovsky, 1983: 123).
Discussing the first volume of the "History of Soviet Cinema" devoted to the period of the 1920s, film historian E. Gromov (1931-2005) wrote that its authors "attempted to follow a
synthetic path, combining the conceptuality of the aesthetic approach to the history of cinema with a sociological and philosophical analysis of the material. They sought to provide a comprehensive picture of the development of cinema in the 1920's as an aesthetic phenomenon, taken in its formation and development. ... But the ideological struggle, as well as the struggle of factions, creative directions in the history of Soviet cinema of the first period, the book does not reflect fully enough. One gets the impression that cinema scholars seemingly do not dare yet to raise the study of cinema history to the level of those ideological problems which are not reflected in the works on literature or theater history, and above all, in connection with that fierce and very interesting creative struggle of various groups, schools and currents, which were filled with the 1920s" (Method... , 1972: 98-99).
Film scholar M. Vlasov (1932-2004) was even more radical in his critique of this collective work, asserting that "a serious flaw of the authors of this work ... is that the organizing and guiding activities of the Communist Party in the field of cinema have not yet been sufficiently reflected in their major work" (Metod... 1972: 100).
Of course, not only the Soviet film classics of the Great Silent Era, but also the cinema of the 1930s, were in the field of vision of the Soviet film scholars who published in the pages of the Cinema Art.
And here it seems surprising that F. Ermler's film The Great Citizen (1937-1939), imbued with the ideas of Stalinism and mass terror, was still perceived by some film critics as a striking positive example of film classics: "The most fully innovative, individual and social essence of the personality was revealed by Friedrich Ermler and his best work - the film The Great Citizen. A political film, not as an experiment, but as a successful experience, as an absolutely complete and harmonious image and story structure - this is what a picture of Ermler is like. We must say straight away that the ideological and aesthetic phenomenality of The Great Citizen has not been sufficiently realized by our art critics and our creative community. Ermler's film did not receive a sufficiently deep, comprehensive evaluation, and its traditions were not continued for a long time" (Shatsillo, 1969: 72).
Moreover, the film scholar S. Freilich (1920-2005), very much a rearrangement in the second half of the 1980s and early 1990s, argued strongly in 1971 that J. Raisman's "thawed" film Your Contemporary (1968) supposedly "continues the traditions of The Great Citizen. His principled discoveries in the fields of dramaturgy, directing and camerawork are part of today's experience of the publicist film. The image of Shakhov, a political fighter, remains imperishable despite some mistakes" (Freilich, 1971: 108-109).
I. Dubrovina's text, "The Moral Potential of the "Ordinary Hero"" (Dubrovina, 1977: 118-134), is probably one of the most unfortunate and banal articles in the 1970s on the history of cinema, where no lively idea could be discerned behind a series of timid discussions of film characters from the 1930s-1950s, shackled by censorship...
Theoretical Concepts
Talking about film theory, the philosopher I. Lisakovsky (1934-2004) wrote that although "terminological uniqueness in film theory has not yet passed from the category of desirable, familiarity with the literature of the past decade allows us to affirm that the majority of scholars and art practitioners call the artist's ideological and aesthetic approach to reality, his approach to the principles of selection, generalization and interpretation of vital material a method. The direction is usually understood as its "offshoots" - peculiar arms into which the general channel of a particular method can be divided" (Lisakovsky, 1983: 80).
The theoretical concepts of the film scholar I. Weisfeld (1909-2003) were also situated within the same Marxist-Leninist paradigm. He argued that "the method of Soviet cinematography made it possible from the first steps of its development to come close to solving a problem which we would formulate as follows: the search for an image equivalent to the political task, a new social function of film. Film was seen as a structure, as a new integrity, rather than as a collection of techniques adapted to one theme or another. If one analyzes from this point of view the first declarations of workshops and creative teams, the first attempts of analysis by the authors of the films they created, it appears that through the mosaic and sometimes confusion of judgments one can clearly see the desire to create a hitherto unknown film, to build unprecedented art; its ideas, the revolutionary reality it embodies, also require new, organically inherent to it form. In this pathos - social and aesthetic - the Communist Party position of the Soviet artist was and is expressed" (Weisfeld, 1973: 106).
In the 1970s, ideas of semiotics and structuralism began to penetrate the Soviet academic world quite widely. In this connection, the Cinema Art published an article by the prominent linguist and semiotician V. Ivanov (1929-2017), "On the Structural Approach to the Language of Cinema" (Ivanov, 1973: 97-109).
In this article V. Ivanov wrote that from the point of view of the general science of signs -semiotics - it is essential first of all to investigate how the signs of film language relate to the objects depicted. The meaning of a sign in the language of cinema (just as in ordinary language) may not coincide with the depicted object (Ivanov, 1973: 99).
B. Ivanov noted that even before C. Metz (1931-1993) that the main way of image creation in cinema is synecdoche (part instead of whole) had already been noted by S. Eisenstein about the close-up: "one private aspect of a particular situation becomes, thanks to the construction of the film, a sign of the whole situation" (Ivanov, 1973: 103).
The discussion of semiotic approaches in film theory was continued by film scholar E. Levin (1935-1991): "If we accept as incontestable truth the fact that a frame is a sign, then the frame system acts as a sign system, and since natural language is also such, then the frame system can be called a 'film language' and considered as a common semiotic object. This unfolding of the original axiom into a semiotic theorem is flawless from a formal-logical point of view. But what aesthetic reality does this theorem describe? The expressive frame in its multiple meanings is the negation of itself as a sign, the "removal" of signification as its opposite. The identification of artistic expressiveness and signification in the semiotic sense of the term destroys the specificity of the mise-en-scene and includes it in a nonartistic, non-aesthetic series. The mise-en-scene as a sign is aesthetically meaningless, and the system that operates with it describes not the film, but something outwardly similar to it" (Levin, 1973: 110, 113).
Arguing with V. Ivanov, Levin wrote that "of course everyone is free to interpret Eisenstein in his own way. But I am convinced that the general theory of cinematic expressiveness and cinematographicity which he created is a non-semiotic theory. Cinematographic expressiveness as a new, specific quality of the frame, and cinematographic quality as a new artistic quality of the montage are not reducible to expressiveness which can be identified by the laws of analogy with a different subject or object. Expressiveness and imagery are not exhausted by representativeness, but grow out of representativeness, act as its excess, and this excess does not fit in the framework of the sign" (Levin, 1973: 113).
Entering the discussion, cinematographer Y. Martynenko (1932-1985) noted that in the dispute V. Ivanov and E. Levin the polemicists "proceed from an implicit, but very distinctly felt conviction in the linguistic nature of the sign system of art, but between verbal language and cinema art one cannot place an equal sign, although art and language are related by the use of signs, systematicity, communicative function" (Martynenko, 1973: 150-151).
Y. Martynenko thought that E. Levin was very wary of semiotics because it was "formed in the stream of philosophical views alien to dialectical materialism" (Martynenko 1973: 155). But further asked the question: why, according to E. Levin, the cadre does not possess signification? And immediately answered it this way: "Because E. Levine interprets the concept of the sign in a very simplified way. ... it is wrong to put an equal sign between the measure of subjective transformation of an object and its aesthetic quality, the aesthetic is more complex than it is presented by E. Levin" (Martynenko, 1973: 156).
Further Y. Martynenko noted that E. Levin and V. Ivanov agree that "linguistic methodology is applicable to the analysis of 'standard', epigone films. Well, if the methods of semiotics would work in this limited field, it would also be useful... However, already the very notion of individualization and uniqueness presupposes a certain norm against which these "deviations" manifest themselves. Besides, the recurring features of, say, the organization of an artwork have long been investigated by the classical methods of traditional art history (for example, plot, plot and composition)" (Martynenko, 1973: 158).
As a result, Y. Martynenko concluded that "cinematography is a sign system, and the notion of a sign can take its proper place in art history analyses. But at the same time, we should seriously warn against hasty and naive attempts to identify the laws of art and language: theoretical clichés borrowed from other sciences and pasted on white spots of our ignorance very often only close rather than solve the problem, creating illusory hopes" (Martynenko 1973: 158-159).
Praising E. Levin's monograph "On the Artistic Unity of Film" (Levin, 1977), film critic G. Maslovsky (1938-2001) points out that in his theoretical concept "the structure of a film image
reproduces the structure of an expressive frame; in turn, the structure of composition is the reproduction of the structure of a film image; generally speaking, film extensively reproduces the specific properties of an expressive image: it tries to reflect an immediate reality, and at the same time it is a mediated aesthetic reality; film is the structure of a string. In other words, the nature of integrity on all levels, from the expressive frame to the film, is one" (Maslovsky, 1978: 120).
To some extent, this polemic was joined by an article by the film scholar A. Vartanov. Assessing film scholar L. Kozlov's (1933-2006) monograph (Kozlov, 1980), film critic A. Vartanov (1931-2019) wrote in the Cinema Art that "as a result of his multifaceted analysis the author draws an interesting conclusion, which he first formulated, about the internal verbal quality of cinema, about its quality, akin to verbal art and verbal expression (Kozlov, 1980: 167). This conclusion, which so far sounds more like an audacious hypothesis than a rigorously proven position, is based both on S. Eisenstein's visionary theoretical work and on the creative practice of Soviet cinema of the 1920s, and on the author's general aesthetic conception of cinema language. L. Kozlov rightly opposes those who build aesthetics of the screen on the basis of the absolute secondary character of cinematographic creativity in relation to literary creativity. This does not prevent him, however, from talking about the internal verbalism of screen images on a different, higher theoretical level. This hypothesis, in my opinion, is extremely fruitful and gives a new impetus, new material for our film studies" (Vartanov, 1983: 105).
Referring to the theory of film editing, film scholar M. Yampolsky stressed that "the formation of editing cannot be seen as some process that allows one to improve the way the film's narrative or deepen the psychology of its characters; one cannot see editing as an invention of constructivists who saw an analogy between assembling structures and gluing films together. Montage cannot be understood only as a certain global principle of the construction of film form or film content that permeates all the elements of the film from acting to mise-en-scene. Montage is first and foremost a film-specific way of organizing the space of the film, based on a change of points of view, and a formal basis for the inimitable cinematic structure of the spectacle. Since montage is a way of combining different points of view, we find the notion of "in-frame montage" unreasonable. However, the very notion of montage requires further deepening and analysis in the process of specific research into the history of cinema" (Yampolsky, 1982: 146).
Cinema of the 1970s-1980s was also examined from the theoretical perspective in the journal Cinema Art. For example, an article by the film scholar V. Dyachenko pointed out that in a number of films of the turn of the 1970s Soviet scriptwriters and directors, "mannerically juggling the details of life, behavior and psychology, have forgotten how to construct a whole in accordance with the laws of high truth, with the requirements of rhythmic architectonics dictated by meaning. The entourage of the background and the second-planar characters illegally seize our attention, while the main characters and the main themes recede like under the ice. Bad taste, conscious and unconscious quotations, untidy montage, mise en scène, playing with associations on the principle of "the woman remembered her brother-in-law and bought a rooster" (Diachenko, 1970: 26).
The Soviet cinema of those years was reproached for the fact that "the cinematographic gallery of characters of ... contemporaries in ... a number of pictures is not socially representative, or, as sociologists say, not representative of the many active social and psychological forms noted in our society... there were few energetic, actively thinking and acting heroes among the actors. On the contrary, all too often there were characters whose inner filling was all sorts of oddities and eccentricities. In many cases there is reason to believe that in this way the authors tried to relieve themselves of the obligation to explain the social genesis of the character and the direction of its development. As a consequence, the psychology and relationships of the characters are inevitably simplified. These shortcomings are compensated for with external expression, pathetics and hyperbolization, and sometimes with such a rambling, excited "expression" of style, which can be called aesthetic hysteria. Melodramatically emphasizing their sympathies and antipathies toward the characters, the authors in such pictures reduce the ideological and artistic impact of the work to one moral and didactic formula or another" (Diachenko, 1970: 34).
Analyzing Soviet cinematography of the turn of the 1970s, literary and film critic L. Anninsky (1934-2019) correctly noted that at this stage of cinema development "artistic diversity has been stripped of its earlier alternative rigidity. There is no longer a violent, unequivocal linear opposition between, say, intellectual cinematography with its "heavy problematics" and the frivolous brilliance of comedy, or between the "serious typology" of life studies and the "non-serious typology" of the same comedy. Fifteen years ago, ten years ago, the films which concentrated the process of
cinematic development were tagged with a single motto - introspection of the soul; everything that opposed depth and seriousness in cinema opposed the psychological intensity of such films... Now everything is mixed up... expanded, expanded" (Anninsky, 1971: 134).
"The new ethical version of man, - continued L. Anninsky, - may be submerged in the thickness of natural typology, may be elevated to the heights of refined intellectualism, or may be revealed in the plasticity of color, or in intraframe geometry, or in texture, or in pictorial toning... all what we would call the "formal side" of the frame - if we distract ourselves from the real version of the person behind this "form". ... three characteristic ribbons, three positions, three stylistic systems - in a word, three exemplary models, artistically revealing the man today: ... typological, intellectual, and plastic" (Anninsky, 1971: 135).
Film scholar M. Turovskaya (1924-2019) reminded us that "when all art, almost without exception, can be replicated in one form or another, and the gradients of perception - from the individual-aesthetic to the professional-expert, from the most naive and immediate to the pseudoexpert, in the spirit of Andersen's tale of the Naked King - become indefinitely great, then the quality of the work itself loses its immutability, and there is a need to mark it somehow. This process of transition to prestige value could be called the Naked King Effect. If the only unit of measurement for the autonomous arts was the work, then for the new era of technical arts -at least for today - the unit of measurement can be considered the name, the personality, rather than the individual work. And if an aura reveals no accidental vitality and an enviable capacity for regeneration, it gathers around a person, around a destiny, rather than around a thing, because a thing is replicable and often collective (a film, a television program), while a person is still unique and unrepeatable" (Turovskaya, 1980: 156).
Thinking about contemporary Soviet cinematography the sound engineer R. Kazarian complained that "in spite of the fact that the best achievements of contemporary cinema are characterized by a high culture of sound and visual synthesis, the theoretical ideas about the role of sound formation itself in the process of film formation remained somewhere at the level of the 1940s-1950s" (Kazarian 1982: 123).
Perhaps the most significant theoretical work published in the Cinema Art in 1969-1985 was film director A. Tarkovsky's (1932-1986) article "About the Film Image" (Tarkovsky, 1979: 80-93).
In it A. Tarkovsky argued that "the image is intended to express life itself, not the author's notions, considerations of life. It does not designate, does not symbolize life, but expresses it. The image reflects life, capturing its uniqueness. But what is typical then? How can uniqueness and uniqueness be correlated with the typical in art? The birth of the image is identical to the birth of the unique. The typical, pardon the paradox, is in direct dependence on the dissimilar, the singular, the individual contained in the image. The typical appears not at all where commonness and similarity of the phenomena are fixed, but where their dissimilarity, specificity, and particularity are revealed. By insisting on the individual, the general, as it were, is omitted and left beyond the limits of visual reproduction. The common, thus, acts as a reason for the existence of a certain unique phenomenon. ... All creativity is linked to the desire for simplicity, for the simplest possible way of expression. To strive for simplicity is to strive for the depth of the reproduction of life. But this is the most painful thing about creativity - the thirst to find the simplest form of expression, that is, one that is adequate to the truth being sought. Rhythm is the absolute dominant feature of the cinematographic image, expressing the flow of time within the frame. What the passage of time manifests, reveals itself in the behavior of the characters, in the representational interpretations, and in the sound, are merely incidental constituent elements which, theoretically speaking, may or may not be present... You can imagine a film without actors, without music, without scenery, without editing, but with a sense of time flowing through the frame. And that would be real cinematography" (Tarkovsky, 1979: 86-88).
A. Tarkovsky was convinced that the cinematographic "image is neither a construction nor a symbol ... but something indivisible, unicellular, amorphous. This is why we could speak of the bottomlessness of the image, of its principal unformalizability. As for montage, it is difficult to agree with the widespread misconception that montage is the main formative element of film. That the film is supposedly created at the editing table. Any art requires editing, assembling, fitting parts and pieces. We are not talking about what brings film closer to other genres of art, but about what makes it different. We want to understand the specificity of cinema and its image. And the cinematic image emerges during filming and exists only within the frame" (Tarkovsky, 1979: 88-89).
Cinema and the Spectator
Experiencing an acute shortage of theoretical articles written by professional film scholars, Cinema Art often resorted to the services of professional philosophers.
In the course of its theoretical analysis of the problem "Cinema and Audience" the editors repeatedly turned to articles by the philosopher M. Kagan (1921-2006), who reasonably wrote that "artistic perception is one of the most complex problems of the science of art. It is difficult, firstly, because this process runs in the depths of the human psyche and receives almost no external manifestations. Of course, the audience's laughter or explosion of applause are indicators of certain emotional movements of the audience, but it would be very naive to reduce the complex psychological process of perceiving a play or film to these movements. Of course, the spectator can give an account of his or her impressions of the film he or she has watched and even try to understand why he or she liked and disliked something in it, but here we are dealing not with perception itself, but with its analysis and a schematic description of its result" (Kagan, 1970: 98).
M. Kagan went on to draw a reasonable conclusion that artistic perception "is even more difficult for scientific study than the problem of artistic creativity, for the latter is fixed in one way or another - in sketches, sketches, rehearsal process, finally in the work itself, whereas perception of art remains buried in the depths of human psychology, running unaccountable even for the consciousness of the perceiving person. The problem of artistic perception is complex, secondly, because there is an extremely great influence of a whole ensemble of factors, the name of which is human individuality. It is well known how often even close people differ in their interpretation and evaluation of the same images and works and how, on the other hand, the perception of one and the same person changes depending on age, level of culture, artistic education, and, to a certain extent, on mood, even on physical state at the moment" (Kagan, 1970: 99).
At the same time, M. Kagan believed that the specificity of artistic information a) unlike scientific information, contains knowledge not about the objective laws of the real world, but about the meanings, meanings, values that the object has for the subject, nature for society, the world for man. This is what distinguishes it from documentary information, which contains information about factual, singular, actually existing; b) it absorbs subjective, social-group and intimate personal attitude to the reflected (cognized, depicted), characterizing not only the reflected object (natural or social), but also reflects the subject (individually unique personality of the artist or "collective personality" of the group of authors); c) has a two-layer psychological structure, having rational and emotional levels; d) is necessary for human.
And then, while still staying within the framework of Marxist-Leninist theory and somewhat polemicizing with the philosopher Y. Davydov (1929-2007) (Davydov, 1972: 141-158), M. Kagan argued that "the taste of the individual in socialist society, which obeys neither normative dogma nor anarchist arbitrariness, can and should be an adequate expression of freedom, the aesthetic 'sign' of human freedom in a related social world" (Kagan, 1981: 92).
Film scholar Y. Khanyutin (1929-1978) believed that "the need to fight for the viewer is the first and powerful factor determining the thematic quest, the stylistic features and genre structures of contemporary cinema. ... The problems facing Soviet cinematography today are extremely complex and varied. It must define its place in the system of socialist culture, in the system of contemporary mass communications which pretend to occupy the viewer's time, attention and thoughts. He should oppose himself to the products of mass culture sporadically entering the cinema circle, he should strive to ensure that his works actively support the best qualities of man" (Khanyutin, 1976: 36).
Film sociologist M. Zhabsky further drew attention to the characteristic trend of the early 1980s - the rejuvenation of the actual audience (this trend, as we know, continued later in the 21st century), but at the same time noted that this phenomenon for understandable reasons contributes to a decrease in the overall aesthetic level of the film audience (Zhabsky, 1982: 39).
The philosopher E. Weizman (1918-1977) wrote that "the sociology of cinema is concerned with analyzing film production, film distribution and filmmaking, analyzing the ways and principles of film management, the economic and financial sides, etc. In addition, sociological analysis of cinema will obviously include the problems of popular science film in terms of its place in systems of social activity, say, in terms of the interaction between science and society. Sociology of art in the proper sense of the word, and thus sociology of cinema as art, is, in our view, primarily interested in the range of questions concerning how the human world in all its socio-historical, natural and personal diversity enters cinema. The problem of sociology is the discovery of the real
'presence' of the world in a film production, however autonomous it may seem, however 'autonomous' its structure may be" (Weizman, 1972: 89). A group of problems is important here: the artist and the medium, a sociological analysis of the creative process and its result (the film/artwork), and a study of art communication (Weizman, 1972: 90-91, 94).
Ten years later, film sociologist M. Zhabsky reminded readers of the journal that "as a social phenomenon, the film audience exists as if in two hypostases. Firstly, it represents that part of the population which is familiar ... to cinematography. ... This is the so-called potential audience. Second, we are dealing with an actual audience: it is defined by the number of film visits and estimated by the arithmetic of tickets sold" (Zhabsky, 1982: 29).
An article by film sociologist D. Dondurei (1947-2017) correctly points out that "there is no ideal audience that can always perceive 'true art' adequately, and as sociological research shows, there is a clear, constant and ever-repeating division of viewers into groups. Some, with this or that degree of approximation, read the program of the work set by its creators, deciphering the artistic "code" of its understanding. Others demonstrate a type of perception that experts consider inadequate to the author's intent. ... What does such a viewer see in this or that film? How to understand the origins, motives and results of such "non-professional" perception of art and how to evaluate them correctly? Can such perception, with all its differences from the "true", "prepared" perception, be nonetheless self-valuable and artistic in its own way? Or do we face another, negative, second-rate pole of this same "true" and "adequate" perception? These are questions that require special reflection and research" (Dondurei, 1977: 79).
The questions, you must agree, are not easy, and few people today are likely to be able to answer them unambiguously.
Another of Dondurei's theses was as follows: "Nowadays, making a film that would draw audiences from all cultural backgrounds and social groups, that would bring together in one room the most sophisticated connoisseurs of art and those who happened to drop in at the theater for no reason at all, would be a very difficult task. The audience of cinematography is stratified, differentiated into different "sub-audiences". To please all at once is a great art" (Dondurei, 1977: 60).
Here, however, the words "at present" are somewhat disconcerting. Had there not been this stratification before (in the 1950s and 1960s, for example)? But on the whole, D. Dondurei was right that "there is probably such a way. For example, the production of multi-layered, multi-oriented films like Napoleon Cake, which could be read by different social groups in such a way that some would see in them a profound grasp of reality, others an interesting plot "from life", and still others, say, lyrical digressions by the authors. Hence the special structures of plot collisions, the inclusion of special "viewer interest" themes, the "double accounting" of the artistic structure of the film, and the like. Such a compact, albeit extremely complex, way will ensure, under contemporary conditions of the social functioning of the picture, its box office and at the same time its artistic prestige" (Dondurei, 1977: 60).
It is as if this was written about V. Menshov's melodrama Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears (1979), which had not yet been made...
Film scholar I. Weisfeld (1909-2003) approached the subject of cinema and its audience from the perspective of the need for mass film education, rightly stressing that "rejecting the monopoly of the visual, as well as an unwillingness to admit its penetration into all pores of our life, we cannot fail to realize that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation in the ways of knowing the world, and consequently in the methods and techniques of education and training both in higher education, and in primary and secondary schools. There is no escaping this. The essence of transformation is in combinations, syntheses of written and literary and visual perception. Film as a means of aesthetic and moral education gradually enters into the daily life of school life" (Weisfeld, 1974: 148).
On Problems of Film Criticism and Film Studies
Articles on theoretical problems of film criticism in the Cinema Art journal, as in the previous post-war decades, addressed both the history and the present stage of film criticism as a science.
Film scholar E. Levin (1935-1991), analyzing V. Shklovsky's book "Over 40 Years. Articles on Film" (Shklovsky, 1965), he recalled what he believed to be Shklovsky's erroneous statement: "The new form is not to express new content, but to replace the old form, which has already lost its artistry" (Shklovsky, 1925: 27). "Indeed, Shklovsky's assertion exposes at least two contradictions of the concept that cannot be resolved within it. Contradiction one. Artistic form, as it was
understood by the Society for the Study of Poetic Language, should not change, develop, become morally obsolete, for it is the sum of techniques. But the history of art shows the contrary. The second contradiction. For Society for the Study of Poetic Language, the form of a work of art, taken by itself, is its artistry. But then the moral deterioration of form must be accompanied by a loss of its artistry. But all forms in art, even archaic forms such as heroic epics or ancient tragedy, retain their artistic qualities for us. How can this be explained? The formal school offered no convincing answer: it understood form and artistry narrowly" (Levin, 1970: 107-108).
On the other hand, E. Levin praised V. Shklovsky for "realizing that 'assemblage of attractions' in theory and practice was the negation of a predetermined form identical with a certain content. This point must be emphasized because it was not sufficiently taken into account, which repeatedly led to a superficial interpretation of Eisenstein's pioneering searches: they were declared formalistic, blasphemous in relation to the classical heritage. Meanwhile, the "montage of attractions" was a crisis - in the productive sense of the word - realization of the undeniable fact that the artistic form is not indifferent to the content and that the new content cannot be conveniently packaged in the usual forms of pre-revolutionary art. The decisive, extreme rejection of the old form proclaimed by the "montage of attractions" was the beginning of its natural transformation, which joined the general flow of the search for new means of expression and new imagery" (Levin, 1970: 115).
At the turn of the 1970s, the Cinema Art turned to an analysis of the subject and method of film studies (Zvonicek, 1970: 127-144).
Film scholar S. Zvonicek insisted that "the subject of film studies is film as a medium. ... we have abandoned the artificial limitation of the subject of film studies to works of film art" (Zvonicek, 1970: 134), and among the methods of film studies he singled out compilation, comparative (as a scientist has to deal with labor-intensive research works of comparative nature, drawing parallels between cinema and literature, cinema and theater, cinema and music, cinema and the fine arts)" (Zvonicek, 1970: 135). "The next place in the hierarchy of methods, -S. Zvonicek wrote, - is occupied by the method that has the right to be called 'exact', for even the most abstract reasoning would have to rely on statistical facts. The question of quantity and its relationship to quality very often falls within the field of view of the film critic. The use of statistics is considered a matter of course in film distribution and commerce. Similarly, statistics are necessary for the reasoning of the film sociologist" (Zvonicek, 1970: 136).
He also recalled that "the individual disciplines of art history - aesthetics, sociology, history, economics - transfer their already established method to cinema as well. They impose on it their experience, their traditions, the rich literature that fills libraries. In addition, many film scholars have studied in the workshops of theater, literature, and fine art. ... Masters of desk research belong to the past: such a complex phenomenon as cinematography can be grasped from a scientific standpoint only with a broad method and the combined forces of a group of scholars studying a selected problem in various aspects" (Zvonicek, 1970: 143).
However, this kind of theoretical approaches of S. Zvonicek was criticized by the philosopher E. Weizman (1918-1977), who disagreed with the fact that "the range of issues of film studies affects only the theory of communication and mass culture because this approach is one-sided. It diminishes the significance of cinema as an artistic creation, as a kind of artistic activity. ... It would be a delusion to dissolve the art of cinema into the general means of mass communication and powerful influence on the masses without seeing its figurative, aesthetic nature, without seeing its role in the creation of artistic values which, for us, actively help transform society and man on communist principles, while in the bourgeois world they can be means of defamation of personality" (Weizman, 1972: 84).
That said, E. Weizman was against "reducing criticism to a mere sociological analysis of the content of a work perceived as a mere cast of reality, circumventing the complex mediations that lie between life and art and give rise to the singularity of artistic form, of artistic expression because one cannot ignore the process of birth of artistic truth, different from mere imitation of life, from crude naturalism" (Weizman, 1975: 94).
At the same time, E. Weizman emphasized that "the sociology of cinema significantly expands traditional film studies, because the researcher here inevitably encounters a number of phenomena essentially important in the context of problems of a general sociological and general cultural nature. And these problems are primarily ideological. It is no accident that theorists of anti-communism are stubbornly trying to separate the art of our society from socialist society itself.
... Therefore, literary and art criticism, and film criticism in particular, must have its own special connections with the sociology of art. After all, criticism plays a kind of direct mediator between the artist, on the one hand, and the spectator, on the other, between the phenomenon of art - the work - and a living, complex, multifaceted and contradictory life, in some ways always wider and more boundless than this phenomenon" (Weizman, 1975: 97, 103).
Quite acute for those times the problems of film studies were posed in the article of film critic V. Dyachenko: "Is it surprising that there is simply no unified theory of cinema (analog of literature theory)? "Most of the questions of cinema art" and "questions of film dramaturgy" surprisingly arise and are still being addressed separately. To be perfectly frank, most of both come down to general aesthetic questions, illustrated only with cinematic material. For many specific and extremely important problems of cinematic practice, however, cinematic theory has not yet been approached. What, for example, is known about the essence and regularities of cinematic rhythm? There is not even a coherent definition. And is it even possible to imagine a more special and more important "question of cinema"? Thus, it has to be stated that the theoretical foundations of the most important art (with the exception of general aesthetic ones) are weak and have no pioneering influence on the development of cinema art" (Diachenko, 1971: 19).
The philosopher N. Parsadanov argued in his article in favor of the union of film criticism and aesthetic theory (Parsadanov, 1971: 11-15). He argued, however, that this kind of alliance would be fruitful only if "the influence of Marxist-Leninist methodology as a whole, the influence of the fundamental principles of revolutionary philosophy and the ideology of socialist humanism on art criticism were strengthened. ... This also contains the guarantee against the dangers of taste, subjectivism, and group predilections, which often appear under the banner of the struggle for principles. Blunt categorical evaluations and schematism of far-fetched constructs presented as true principles are in their essence the opposite of it. Behind them, they hide a theoretical inconsistency and methodological helplessness. Far from the principles of Marxist-Leninist analysis of art are all vagueness and vagueness of critical judgments, the avoidance of clear and precise positions in relation to the artistic phenomena in question" (Parsadanov, 1971: 11-12).
The film critic G. Kapralov (1921-2010) was also very Marxist-Leninist in his theoretical approaches, emphasizing that individual successes in film studies "cannot conceal the serious backlog between theory and film-making, especially in the development of such central problems as questions of socialist realism, Communist Party and folk art, which are still often interpreted in a simplistic, dogmatic way, without regard for the richness of Soviet art, the variety of its forms and styles. The sporadicity of the appearance of theoretical works devoted sometimes only to one aspect or stylistic feature of contemporary film, one direction or another, sometimes leads to the fact that such a work suddenly becomes, like a lone tree in the steppe, the only point on which all eyes are focused. As a result, a private problem covered in a book inappropriately begins to claim a broader significance" (Kapralov, 1971: 17).
At the same time G. Kapralov was convinced that "a talented critic goes as if next to the artist, and the throes of creativity pass through his soul as well. The epithet "artistic", which we add to the name of a critic engaged in the analysis of art phenomena, signifies, in our opinion, not only the object of research, but also something essential that concerns the characteristic of the critic's own work. The critic is also an artist, only the genre of his work is somewhat different, more nakedly corrected by analytical, thought. A critic is neither a detractor nor a toastmaster. To think together with an artist, to help him or her not to lose sight of the broader horizon of life and art, to go with him or her internally, as it were, along the artist's creative path, and to prompt and design the right continuation of the path where the artist stopped, stumbled or failed to see the way ahead - what a noble and lofty task! ... Soviet cinema art has a faithful Party compass. And the Soviet critic - artist and citizen - considers himself 'mobilized and summoned' on the great front of the creation of communist culture" (Kapralov, 1971: 17-18, 20).
I. Weisfeld also agreed with G. Kapralov: "Criticism is art, and a critic is supposed to have the same impression, emotionality, perspicacity, creative temperament, and ideological conviction as the film-maker. Criticism is a polygenre, just like cinema itself: a study, a note, an essay, a commentary (for TV and radio), a feuilleton, a parody... There is one difference: criticism, at its very source, is a science. Science in action, in constant reconnaissance by battle" (Weisfeld, 1971: 80).
In a similar vein, philosopher and film critic V. Kudin (1925-2018) argued about the tasks of film studies and film criticism, emphasizing that "serious sociological research, generalization and analysis of facts can give the critic a real scientific basis in his judgments and conclusions. And only
by relying on them can the film critic successfully fulfill another part of his task: to actively assist the creative search of the artist. A serious discussion of the aesthetic qualities of film, of its poetics, and again, of course, in the broad ideological and political context of the problems and concerns of the contemporary artist. And without this it is difficult to talk about the serious impact of a critical discourse on the viewer and on the film process. ... Solving these problems means moving forward with the development of the method of socialist realism. Conversely, only by focusing the attention of the entire collective of film critics on current issues of the method of socialist realism can we tangibly contribute to increasing the ideological efficacy of our cinema" (Kudin, 1971: 78-79).
V. Zhdan (1913-1993) also believed that "for film studies (including theory and criticism) an important task continues to be strengthening the scientific, consistent approach to the facts of film history and theory, their precise and clear comprehension from Leninist Party positions. It is primarily a question of the Marxist-Leninist methodological equipment of film criticism" (Zhdan,
1971: 103).
M. Zak (1929-2011) argued along similar lines, insisting that film criticism, in order to become "effective, scientifically authoritative, must rise to a nationwide, genuinely Communist Party point of view on everything that is subject to our analysis, must take place in the bright light of our personal Party conscience for our common cause" (Zak, 1971: 107).
E. Bondareva (1922-2011), L. Roshal (1936-2010), R. Sobolev (1926-1991), and other Soviet film scholars (Bondareva, 1971: 10-14; Roshal, 1971: 14-18; Sobolev, 1971: 109-111) were in agreement with them.
Film critic K. Scherbakov was more specific in his article based on the current practice of film criticism, emphasizing that there are still "few articles and feuilletons, few rejoinders devoted to films that knowingly fail, even shoddy ones. Probably, the reasoning goes something like this: "Well, it's obvious, it's beyond art, is it worth wasting gunpowder, breaking lances..." And so the film, the failure of which is visible to the naked eye, quietly goes on all the screens with complete silence of the press. And the viewer, especially those who are not sophisticated in critical and cinematic subtleties, has a reasonable feeling that the critics treat this film if not favorably, then at least tolerantly. Needless to say, this tolerance is inappropriate, even if it exists only in the perception of a certain part of the audience. ...To say nothing of the fact that the filmmakers themselves may have the impression that their productions are, as a rule, beyond criticism. An impression that must be nipped in the bud and debunked" (Shcherbakov 1971: 22).
It is worth noting here that this discussion of cinema studies and criticism unfolded in 1971, before the publication of the Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" (Postanovlenie..., 1972). Thus, Editor-in-Chief E. Surkov (1915-1988) successfully played a bit ahead of the curve.
The Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee "On Literary and Art Criticism" noted that "many articles, reviews, and critiques are superficial, lacking philosophical and aesthetic quality, and testify to an inability to relate the phenomena of art to life. Up to now, criticism still displays a conciliatory attitude toward ideological and artistic marriage, subjectivism, budding and group predilections. ... Criticism is still not active and consistent enough in asserting the revolutionary, humanistic ideals of the art of socialist realism, in exposing the reactionary essence of bourgeois 'mass culture' and decadent movements, in combating various kinds of nonMarxist views on literature and art and revisionist aesthetic concepts" (Postanovlenie... , 1972). It was therefore proposed not only to overcome these shortcomings, but also to "fully promote the strengthening of the Leninist principles of the party and the people, the fight for the high ideological and aesthetic level of Soviet art, to consistently oppose bourgeois ideology" (Postanovlenie... , 1972).
And since the December 1971 Plenum of the Union of Soviet Cinematographers had been dedicated to the current situation and tasks of film criticism in light of the decisions of the XXIV Soviet Communist Party's Congress, the film critic A. Karaganov, reflecting the decisions of this Plenum, noted that "in obligation and duty of our country's only thick film Cinema Art journal is supposed to be not only a social and political and critical, but also a theoretical organ of Soviet cinematography. However, the theory section occupies a negligible place on its pages. It sometimes publishes articles on sociology and film history, but hardly any theoretical articles at all. The journal does not publish any problematic annual reviews of contemporary cinema, which is also unfortunate because the very genre of these reviews would have demanded a closer connection between criticism and theory, to move more resolutely from the evaluation of individual works to
an understanding of the cinematic process..... Naturally, for theoretical work or theoretical
deepening of criticism, it is not enough to have the appropriate inclinations and skills - one must be able and willing to think in terms of art as a whole, in terms of our complex century, bearing in mind the development of Soviet society, the fate of the revolution, the struggle of ideas and social forces in the modern world. It is much more difficult and bothersome than choosing a film to one's liking and concentrating on examining its plot or stylistic peculiarities. But fruitful qualitative changes and achievements await criticism precisely on the path of mastering a scientific methodology of analysis, on the path of an organic connection of the social, ideological and aesthetic approach to film, of social, ideological and aesthetic criteria in its evaluation" (Karaganov, 1972: 8).
And it must be said that even after this, admittedly quite harsh criticism, E. Surkov, editorin-chief of the Cinema Art, managed to keep his chair for another decade. I think this was due in part to the discussion he had organized in advance in 1971 about film studies and film criticism.
Also in 1972, another resolution of the Soviet communist Party Central Committee was published, this time "On measures for the further development of Soviet cinematography," which noted that the screens "often see films which do not meet the ideological and aesthetic criteria of Soviet art and the increased demands of the audience. Cinematography lacks depth in the artistic reflection of the most important processes of modernity. Not everything is done to show the economic, social and cultural transformations carried out by the Soviet people under the leadership of the Party, to depict important social changes taking place in the life of the working class, the collective farm peasantry and the intelligentsia, the struggle of the Party and the people for an organic connection of the achievements of the scientific and technological revolution with the advantages of the socialist system" (Postanovlenie..., 1972).
For this reason, the director S. Gerasimov (1906-1985), basing himself on both these Resolutions at once, reminded us that "it is by no means an exhaustive task for the critics to give a general characterization of this or that artistic phenomenon. It is necessary to see a work in the broad context of historical and contemporary phenomena in literature and art, and of the reality they reflect. ... Aware of the importance of Soviet cinema in the national struggle for communism, and fully aware of the tremendous tasks that this entails for film criticism and film theory, filmmakers are entitled to expect both a demanding attitude toward their work and a careful and friendly attitude toward it from their critics" (Gerasimov, 1975: 2-3).
S. Gerasimov further noted: "The creation of the Scientific Research Institute of the Theory and History of Cinematography should be regarded as an important event. The Institute is called upon to become the center of Communist Party cinematographic science, to unite and lead the creative research work of a large group of scientists and assist in the training of new scientific cadres" (Gerasimov, 1975: 7).
The film scholar V. Baskakov (1921—1999), appointed director of this research institute, turned to his favorite subject and pointed out that one should not "forget that the bourgeoisie and its ideologists make extensive use of the screen for their own purposes, trying to instill myths about the prosperity of capitalism in various parts of the world or to distract the mass consciousness from the real processes taking place in the world today by means of complicated camouflage. To this end, the most subtle, most complex means are used: left-wing extremist slogans, pseudo-revolutionaryism, bourgeoisness masquerading as anti-bourgeoisness. All of this must be seen, understood, and evaluated" (Baskakov, 1975: 91).
And in his article "The Cinema Art of Socialist Realism and the Falsifications of 'Sovietologists'" V. Baskakov, as always, clearly refuted the opinions of bourgeois film critics: "Whatever our ideological opponents say, whatever "models" of the history of Soviet cinema they construct, however cunningly they try to confuse the question of the ongoing progressive development of Soviet cinema, they will not succeed in replacing truth with lies, they will not succeed in covering up their true intentions and plans with "scientific" toga" (Baskakov, 1977: 52).
In 1976, the editorial board of the journal Art of Cinema decided to hold another discussion on the methodological problems of film studies and film criticism (Method..., 1976), in which film scholars V. Baskakov (1921-1999), V. Bozhovich (1932-2021), N. Gornitskaya (1921-2005), E. Gromov (1931-2005), L. Kozlov (1933-2006), E. Levin (1935-1991), L. Mamatova (1935-1996), Y. Martynenko (1932-1985), K. Razlogov (1946-2021), V. Sokolov (1927-1999), E. Surkov (19151988), M. Turovskaya (1924-2019), Y. Khanyutin (1929-1978), D. Shatsillo, V. Shestakov (19352023), I. Weisfeld (1909-2003), R. Yurenev (1912-2002), philosophers M. Kagan (1921-2006),
A. Novikov (1936-2022), N. Parsadanov (1922-1985), etc.
As part of this discussion, film historian I. Weisfeld noted that, in his opinion, "an alliance of film studies, philosophy, and sociology will be fruitful only when each of the fields of knowledge does not diminish its goals and its "subject matter". This is all the more necessary to remember that inconsistency in defining the boundaries and subject matter of research is not a rare phenomenon in our theoretical literature" (Weisfeld, 1976: 55).
Filosopher M. Kagan insisted that "the prospect of the development of the scientific study of art consists precisely in rising from its one-sided study by the methods of art history disciplines to its systematic study by an ensemble of methods of different sciences" (Kagan, 1976: 75).
Opposing M. Kagan, E. Gromov believed that "on the general theoretical plane it is necessary to clearly understand that the main method of studying art is aesthetic and art history methods adequate to the object of study. These methods should be improved and enriched, but not at the expense of losing their own specificity. ... Information theory, even when supported by philosophical and aesthetic analysis, proves unable to grasp the specificity of art" (Gromov, 1976: 60).
Film scholar E. Levin (1935-1991) emphasized that "the object of cinema history as a science can be considered the cinematographic process as a whole, that is cinema as art, as an area of culture and spiritual life of society, as a social and aesthetic phenomenon - in its development and diverse connections with other areas of culture and social life. A complete study of the cinema process requires the combined efforts of scholars from various fields, especially art historians, cultural historians, sociologists, and psychologists; however, a film critic should be well-versed in all of these fields in order to participate equally in the complex study of the film process. The subject of the history of cinema as a science is the regularities of the development of cinema as art, the laws of aesthetics, taken in their development and ultimately conditioned by the laws of social life. The object and the subject of science are thus organically linked. The subject highlights its specificity in the phenomenon under study. I find the methodology of historical-typological analysis of social and aesthetic phenomena productive and promising. Such a method today no longer needs to overcome external obstacles, since it is not accompanied by the ominous shadow of comparativism and the grimaces of flat structuralism; it can deal with its own internal problems" (Levin, 1976: 82-83).
Film scholar N. Gornitskaya (1921-2005) recognized the systemic approach as the most promising for studying the history of cinema: "this approach will allow us to cover in the unity of opposites the triad: production-creative activity - film - spectator, which in the traditional approach was usually disconnected" (Gornitskaya, 1976: 80).
Film scholar R. Yurenev (1912-2002) expressed his disagreement with the fact that "philosophers and sociologists divide art criticism and the very process of art criticism into levels, aspects, methods, and slices so diligently. ... In a genuine art historian who wishes to know and describe the development of art, all these methods merge, alternate, coexist. And further suggested that instead of all these "levels," we should recall Eisenstein's principle of "polyphonic description" of the development of cinematic art. What does polyphonic mean? It does not at all mean that in an orchestra all instruments play in turn or sound simultaneously. It means that the artist chooses from the arsenal of representational means those means which he needs at the given moment, chooses and uses them for the solution of this or that ideological and artistic problem. ... Art historian should also be able to master this polyphony. ... The work of a film critic consists of three stages. The first stage is watching, the second stage is writing, and the third stage is printing. And at all these 'levels' we have many difficulties" (Yurenev, 1976: 98-99).
V. Kuznetsova (and, in our opinion, quite rightly) drew the discussion participants' attention to the fact that "if we attract the sociocultural context to study the history of cinema, then, obviously, we are entitled to set ourselves the opposite task as well - to use film as a means of studying the history of Soviet society. After all, film, perhaps even to a greater extent than a novel or a play, is an invaluable source primarily for studying public consciousness, social emotions, for understanding the ways of social and moral progress, finally, for judging what was the appearance, the way of life at this or that period of history, how the world looked when its features were sought to be captured by a movie camera. The second essential point ... is the need to study not individual outstanding films, but the cinematic flow, that is, the totality of film production of the period. Studying individual films, as well as studying individual directors in isolation, leads inevitably to one-sidedness, to a loss of a sense of context and, consequently, to a shift in criteria. We often treat the film stream with undeserved neglect. But it is, after all, where there is a
quantitative accumulation of the new, which precedes the qualitative leap that takes place in the best films" (Kuznetsova, 1976: 92).
Y. Khanjutin (1929-1978) stressed that "one of the most important methodological problems is considered now the problem of forecasting the development of cinema art in accordance with and in connection with the movement of our entire socialist culture" (Khanyutin, 1976: 98).
Somewhat separate from the discussion was the "looking ahead" opinion of K. Razlogov (1946-2021), who emphasized the importance of studying the place of audiovisual communication media (in particular cinematography and cinema art) in the system of culture: "This problem must be considered from the perspective of sociology, paying particular attention to the radical difference in development trends under capitalism and socialism. That is why I cannot agree with the idea expressed here that film studies must be only art history. Since cinema is a means of communication whose functions are by no means limited to artistic production, film scholars are faced with the task of investigating the whole multitude of real (and possible) forms of use not only of cinema, but also of television, videotapes, holography, and other means of audiovisual communication. This problematic is the focus of a large number of contradictions that we often encounter, but are unable to overcome them because we remain in the grip of only art-historical notions" (Razlogov, 1976: 92).
Of course, the participants of the discussion could not ignore the attitude of film studies to foreign cinema. V. Shestakov (1935-2023) believed that "it is necessary to study the links between foreign cinema and philosophy, including various fashionable Western philosophical concepts. One should not underestimate the influence of Freudism, existentialism and neo-Freudism on contemporary cinema. We should not forget other currents either. Unfortunately, we have few works devoted to analyzing the connection between idealist philosophy and bourgeois cinematography" (Shestakov, 1976: 81). This thesis was supported by V. Baskakov, N. Parsadanov and others.
Strange as it may seem, the most conservative and ideologically stereotypical statement of the future active "perestroika" fighter against all negative phenomena in Soviet cinematography was that of film critic L. Mamatova (1935—1996), who reminded only that "the internal core of the formation of multinational Soviet cinematography was the formation of the socialist realism method. Meanwhile, the theory of socialist realism itself was far from being fully developed in our cinematography. Some of its provisions, scattered in monographs and articles, were yet to be summarized in a fundamental work" (Mamatova, 1976: 88).
In 1977, the editors of the Cinema Art decided to mark the fifth anniversary of the Soviet communist Party Central Committee Resolution "On Literary and Artistic Criticism" (Postanovlenie..., 1972). Without any reference to the publications of specific film critics, the editorial article on the occasion asserted the following: "But how many reviews are published (in Cinema Art as well) where successes are overrated and failures are passed over in silence or only timidly pointed out. Group critique, amicable critique, is successfully dying out, but still, now and then, an article appears which owes its appearance only to the vagaries of the critic's taste and which is in no way adjusted to the general ideological and artistic reference points in our art, and which is not correlated with the tasks that our time and party have set before us" (Kritika..., 1977: 7).
Then a discussion about the role of film criticism in contemporary society unfolded on the pages of the journal. Answers from film critics-in-chief (V. Baskakov, V. Zhdan, A. Karaganov) were filled with standard phrases about socialist realism, ideological struggle, etc. True, A. Karaganov (1915-2007) correctly pointed out that "film critics often write about films without taking into account how these films look, what actual "harvest" of thoughts and feelings they gather in the audience" (Poiski..., 1977: 16).
Film historian A. Krasinsky noted that "looking through the press, you can come across quite a few reviews and articles in which a high evaluation of a particular film is made solely on the basis of the importance and relevance of the subject matter. In such cases, the very low artistic level of the film is not taken into account" (Poiski..., 1977: 17). This was, in our opinion, a fair statement, and many reviews in the Cinema Art of the period 1969-1985 could serve as an example of this.
The boldest text about Soviet film criticism was written by film critic Y. Khanyutin (19291978), reasonably asserting that "our criticism is still rather toothless. To be more exact, critical courage can be seen, but more and more on minor pictures by minor directors, or, better, on foreign ones. ... And if you don't like the leading director's picture, you'd better turn a blind eye, keep silent - otherwise you'll get into trouble!" (Poiski..., 1977: 25).
Yes, Soviet film critics, whether in the 1960s or 1970s, had to select their material and personalities carefully in order to hold their discussions. Is it conceivable, for example, that a discussion of principle could have arisen in the 1970s in the Cinema Art about the films A Story about a Communist or A Thought about Kovpak? The question, again, is rhetorical.
Part of the theoretical material of the Cinema Art was devoted to the analysis of foreign film studies approaches.
For example, film historian R. Yurenev (1912—2002) analyzed the film studies views of S. Kracauer, believing that his position, viewing art as a reflection of reality, convinced "of the possibility of influencing human society through art, is close to the Marxist understanding of the essence and tasks of art" (Yurenev, 1972: 135). While "the idealistic, subjectivist position of most modern foreign art theorists leads them to assert the freedom of the artist from life, the independence of art from reality. Kracauer ... basically approaches the materialist position, asserts realism in art, although he understands it, in our view, in a somewhat limited way. In his view, modern bourgeois society is characterized by the impoverishment of man's inner world and modern man's alienation from his surrounding life, and cinema, with its ability to make the invisible visible, can bring man back to the real world, to material reality. This is what makes cinema a socially significant factor. And in this we can agree with Kracauer" (Yurenev, 1972: 138).
Yurenev lamented, however, that Kracauer "cannot rise to the Leninist theory of reflection, which teaches that reflection is by no means adequate to the reflected, that the creative process is a reflection of the world in the subjective consciousness of the artist, which seeks not to mirror "disinterested" copying, but to reveal the essence, to reveal the characteristic or unique features of reality. The artist in the creative act organizes, directs, connects the phenomena of reality in order to achieve certain goals" (Yurenev, 1972: 143).
Analysing the works of Western film scholars (Seton, 1952; Seydor, 1973-1974) devoted to S. Eisenstein, film scholar L. Kozlov (1933-2006) ironically noted that "the idea of Eisenstein as a lone genius, a martyr of the Soviet regime, a vulgar Freudian, etc., has gained a certain following with Seton" (Kozlov, 1975: 155). But in contrast to Mary Seton's sabotage, which tendentiously opposed Eisenstein to Soviet society, P. Seydor, on the contrary, leads a direct attack on Eisenstein's work as an example of art that connected itself with the socialist revolution and Soviet social life. The proposed concept is most succinctly expressed in the following words about The Battleship Potemkin: "...The film turns out to be a skillfully concocted political caricature which passes itself off as an epic poem. In other words, Eisenstein is not a real artist at all, but only an imitator, posing as a representative of true art in his films that distort reality for the purposes of political propaganda"" (Kozlov, 1975: 159).
The conclusion of L. Kozlov's conclusion was expected for the film scholar who at the time stood on the positions of Soviet ideology: „to understand Eisenstein's method, to agree with it or at least recognize its positive aesthetic value among other values, the viewer and critic, as it appears, must have some qualities of worldview, which Paul Seydor completely lacks. For the aesthetics professed by Seydor is the aesthetics of non-interference in the course of life, in natural and social reality, in its status quo, understood in a bourgeois and protective spirit. This is a protective aesthetic, let us call things by their proper names at once" (Kozlov, 1975: 160).
In an article by the film scholar M. Yampolsky with the characteristic title "Dead ends of psychoanalytic structuralism. Western film studies between semiotics and Freudianism" (Yampolsky, 1979: 92-111) argued that „semiotics of cinema, which established itself as a leading film theory in France in the mid-1960s, has become a thing of the past, giving way to a structural-psychoanalytic theory of cinema. ... Metz's book "The Speech of Cinema" (1971) summed up both areas of research. It has been clearly proven that cinema does not operate with its own specific signs, but borrows its sign material from the socialized and symbolized reality around us" (Yampolsky, 1979: 92).
As for bourgeois aesthetics' appeal to Freudism, it was, according to M. Yampolsky, "associated with a deep disappointment in the possibilities of rational comprehension of the essence of art, with an interpretation of art itself as an irrational formation within culture. At the same time, Freudianism offers a kind of scientific methodology for analyzing those "stumbling blocks" that cannot be dissected by the traditional methods of art history. Scientific methodology for the study of the irrational and was attracted as a panacea for the disease that has struck cinematic semiotics" (Yampolsky, 1979: 92).
M. Yampolsky later noted that C. Metz (1931-1993), infatuated with Freudism, false philosophical and methodological preconditions led ... away from the real cinematotheory to which he had made a considerable contribution (Yampolsky, 1979: 96), and studies by French structuralists "show that Freudian theory is not applicable to the study of cinematography, that the application of psychoanalytic theory to art in its pure, unprocessed form is unproductive" (Yampolsky, 1979: 111).
As we remember, by the mid-1970s, the so-called "détente" policy gained strength in relations between the USSR and the West, which made international contacts more accessible. However, cinematographer N. Savitsky, citing the speeches of L. Brezhnev, wrote: "Today, in the conditions of the strengthening unity of the fraternal socialist countries and the consolidation of forces for peace, democracy, social justice and freedom of peoples, the ideologists of the bourgeois world are more active than before in their attempts to protect the foundations of the system built on the exploitation of man by man. It is not only in politics that anti-communism is being intensively introduced; penetrating virtually every sphere of social life in capitalist countries, it is also affecting culture, since artistic creation, oriented in this way, is a means of spreading bourgeois ideology and of treating public opinion in a spirit of hostility to socialism. Our ideological opponents skillfully use the press, radio, television, and cinema controlled by them for reactionary anti-socialist propaganda" (Savitsky, 1976: 113).
Somewhat separate in this series of articles on Western film studies was the work of film scholar S. Toroptsev, "On the Recipes of Anti-Sovietism. On Maoist "criticism" of socialist cinema" (Toroptsev, 1976: 149-160), which analyzed film studies published in the then People's Republic of China very negatively.
On Popular Science Cinematography
Not as often as in previous years, but consistently, the Cinema Art published theoretical articles on popular-scientific cinema.
E. Weizman (1918-1977) and L. Gurova believed that "the ideological role of popular-science cinema is extremely increasing, for it now reflects not only the development of science itself, but also the social strategy of a developed socialist society, and reflects the political aspect of science. The social function of popular-science cinema, it seems, cannot be reduced to mere information. One of its most important functions in the modern world, its special social load is the construction of a "bridge" bringing science closer to the general public. And here the authors of the article saw certain dangers for the development of popular science films, because "some authors, out of fear that the viewer will get "bored," resort to comedic techniques... that are completely alien to the content. Others make the inaccessible accessible with an extraordinary ease, resorting to cheap illustrativeness" (Weizman, Gurova, 1973: 168-169).
The authors of the article believed that popular science films should captivate "in equal measure by the force of logic and emotional intensity, for to assimilate the foundations of MarxistLeninist philosophy means not only to perceive its principles intellectually; it also means to 'take into the soul', emotionally absorb the worldview of this philosophy, to attune oneself to the dialectics of its vision" (Weizman, Gurova, 1973: 182). "Why are we so timid to move away from the stamps of illustrativeness and so rarely turn to live film experimentation, a search in which the author-populist himself participates?" the same authors further asked (Weizman, Gurova, 1976: 54).
In a similar vein, the screenwriters V. Kuznetsov (1931—2014) and E. Zagdansky (1919—1997) (Kuznetsov, 1975: 115-129; Zagdansky, 1975: 23-35).
Film scholar Y. Khanyutin (1929—1978) distinguished between two main directions in which cinema was going, developing the problem of the scientific and technological revolution and man: "First, these are works directly reflecting the present situation - the ever-changing and increasingly complex relationship between man and technology in the modern world. And secondly they are films trying to look into the future, trying to comprehend the consequences of the scientific and technological revolution. ... And here "the different artistic tradition and historical experience naturally led to the fact that in the major fundamental points socialist art fundamentally diverged from the Western in its appraisal of scientific and technological progress and its influence on mankind. It opposed pessimism and doubt, hope and faith in the benefit of scientific and technological development. To the irresponsible or even malicious "mad professor" - the scientist who does his work with a sense of high social responsibility. To the assertion of the inexhaustibility of evil inherent in human nature, to the fear of manipulation of his personality - to the belief in the power and height of the human spirit, in the possibility of building a society where "the free
development of each is a condition for the free development of all" (Khanyutin, 1975: 85, 101).
Literary and film scholar B. Runin (1912-1994) suggested that "some relevant scientific ideas were somehow refracted in the very structure of cinema and acquired here an unexpected but convincing obviousness. For example, it was immediately clear that by dissecting motion into separate frames, cinema had expanded the cognitive possibilities of both art and science. The filmmaker gained the magical ability to stretch, compress, stop, or even reverse time as he saw fit. The scientist has thus acquired an irreplaceable means of research of dynamic processes of the most diverse nature" (Runin, 1974: 9).
Film scholar V. Troyanovsky analyzed the limits and possibilities of playful means in popular science films (Troyanovsky, 1977: 130-143). In one of his following articles, he emphasized that "as recently as twenty to twenty-five years ago, popular science cinema could be content with simply increasing the amount of information in the system of communication between science and society. During this period, popular science film could, on occasion, become the only, easily accessible source of information on various matters of science and technology for millions of people. Today due to the rapid development of popular science literature, lecture propaganda, expansion of informative programs on TV the demand for popular scientific information is satisfied in quantitative terms. ... Under these conditions, it seems that the only guarantee of the survival of popular science is its individuality, its unique properties, its special specific qualities of information which no other communication means can give" (Troyanovsky, 1982: 119).
But in general, the approach to popular-scientific cinematography in the USSR from 19691985 was ideologized. For example, screenwriter and cinematographer Y. Yaropolov emphasized that "in scientific cinema there are no secondary tasks and it is important, when solving them, to see before ourselves the great goal that the Communist Party has set before us" (Yaropolov, 1974: 74).
Theoretical articles about documentary films
Approximately the same amount of theoretical articles about documentary filmmaking were published in the Cinema Art journal.
In his article L. Roshal (1936-2010), a film critic and screenwriter, analyzed the importance of hidden camera shots for documentary films: "Simultaneous shooting is one of the most serious means of cinematic reflection on reality and a truly publicistic influence on the viewer. But because of its relative newness, its apparent youth, this means is still far from being mastered. The mighty variety of its possibilities, of which we simply do not yet know everything, has not been fully grasped and tested. Therefore, "production costs" are inevitable. However, even today we can talk about certain accumulations of ways of impact, of figurative comprehension of life by means of synchronous shooting. And among them, the effect discussed in this article - the hidden cinematic image effect - plays a rather important role" (Roshal, 1976: 98).
L. Roshal also drew attention to the changing functions of intraframe information: "this concerns both the archival frame and the frame shot by the cameraman for a modern picture, the tendency to regard the frame as a kind of symbol, an illustration that can be mounted under this or that author's message. As a result, the diversity of information within the frame-and there is no doubt that the vast majority of shots are ambiguous in meaning-is reduced to an illustrative minimum. To the use of what lies on the surface, what catches the eye at a quick glance. If we talk about another trend, which is increasingly making itself known today, I would formulate it very simply: not to look, but to consider. Not to look at life, but to consider it in the most detailed way. ... In this case, the frame ceases to be an illustrative sign, a more or less cold cast of reality, for the author's thought will not be supported by the frame, but will be born by it" (Roshal, 1969: 71).
V. Kantorovich (1901-1977) argued that "the theory (and practice) of frame prolongation, as if it were necessarily inherent in the fiction-documentary film (and not in the intermediate stages of the search for an image), ... is false. In fact, it confuses the cards: information cinema outwardly acquires signs of artistry (incomplete); the directors of art-documentary cinema receive a kind of absolution when they present their half-finished products to the viewer" (Kantorovich, 1975: 99).
Theoretical articles about television
In his theoretical reflections on television, film scholar I. Weisfeld (1909-2003) lamented that the "photographic" view of cinema empirically migrated to television and "settled down" there. "... For example, when a performance is filmed in a theater "just for fun," naively believing that it is as close to the object as possible, to the authenticity of art. ... In such cases, there is a monotony of rhythm, a dullness of mise en scène that does not fit into the miniscreen of television, and, in the
end, a dissimilarity with theatrical reality" (Weisfeld, 1976: 132).
Film scholar R. Yurenev (1912—2002), in general, believed that cinema and television are one art, "the only thing cinema does not possess is immediacy, that is, the possibility of conveying events as they happen, as they are happening. This is a tremendous and most interesting opportunity. ... But this mode of information has not yet become an expressive means of art. All of the most sensational television reports only became art once they have been interpreted and placed in an ideological and artistic context by means of publicistic documentaries. But having become an element of art, they lost their "immediacy"" (Yurenev 1983: 110).
Film scholar S. Bezklubenko, on the contrary, tried to emphasize television specificity: "the presence of the human being in the field of view of television helps not just to depict the drama of the event, but also to dramatize the process of depiction itself, to create a dramatic effect with the help of the image, while remaining within the limits of fact, not fiction. A human being, living and non-fictional, of flesh and blood, introduced directly into the process of depicting the event, offers television amazing, unlimited possibilities. After all, being a part, a witness, a participant and a creator of the events that television shows, he at the same time embraces the whole world in which the events shown are only a drop in the sea" (Bezklubenko, 1970: 100).
Theoretical articles on foreign cinema
As before, one of the leading tasks of film theory in the Cinema Art was a sharp criticism of bourgeois cinematography.
The philosopher K. Dolgov wrote that "the crisis of capitalist society and its philosophical and aesthetic consciousness is quite explicitly demonstrated in contemporary cinema... It is no accident that many critics note the close connection between contemporary cinema and bourgeois philosophy and aesthetics" (Dolgov, 1974: 89), and here "a kind of 'anti-aesthetic' and 'anti-art' have appeared which see their goal in the affirmation of the ugly. It is a revolt of artists against the social system in which they are imprisoned and confined. But it is just another romantic illusion of overcoming inevitable contradictions. In the end, this kind of revolt is like a total thermonuclear war, in which both the hated society and the individual himself perish. Socialist art, like society itself, sets very real goals for the individual and gives him pure and honest means. It gives precise class principles in the struggle for the affirmation of a classless society and Man" (Dolgov, 1969: 58).
The philosopher I. Lisakovsky (1934—2004) believed that "the tasks of criticism and film studies of contemporary Western cinema would be much simpler if there were only 'unambiguous' artists whose work belonged only to the bourgeois or only to the democratic and socialist traditions. The reality, alas, is much more complicated. ... Analysis shows how complexly various ideological, philosophical and aesthetic influences are intertwined in the works of many major Western cinematographers, how close they neighbor, how much elements of bourgeois culture, bourgeois worldview and outlook, and democratic and progressive culture interpenetrate (and fight!)" (Lisakovsky, 1979: 113).
At the same time, I. Lisakovsky reminded the journals' readers that "there are certainly not many such cases. Movies with all the details of perfectly authentic, recognizable ("as in life!") situations and characters, unequivocally propagating and defending bourgeois values and alien to any kind of formalistic twists - these are the lion's share of commercial film production -few people today would call them realistic" (Lisakovsky, 1979: 114).
Film scholar V. Baskakov (1921-1999) once again reminded us that "the Western screen today largely accumulates the ideological phenomena that are characteristic of bourgeois ideology as a whole: extreme forms of anticommunism, propaganda-hardened myths about the inexhaustible possibilities of 'free' society, traditional and new philosophical idealistic currents (existentialism, Freudism, neofreudism), and leftist extremist and Maoist tendencies. However, it would be insufficient to consider bourgeois cinema only as a means of open propaganda or to fill a 'social vacuum. Under the influence of the changes which have taken place in the world and the growing ideological influence of the forces of socialism and communism on the masses, bourgeois propagandists and film masters are compelled to abandon templates and clichés, to employ elaborate camouflage, to disguise their true aims and to modify certain proven techniques of manipulating public consciousness. A frontal politicization of bourgeois cinema took place. ... The nature of the detective, historical, comedy films that had once formed the basis of the bourgeois film conveyor and film distribution has changed dramatically - the owners of the film business and their directors began to include political issues in the structure of these cinema spectacles, wanting to "renew" obsolete genres and attract to cinemas and television screens
viewers who had long lost interest in standard commercial products" (Baskakov, 1975: 104).
Noting that "bourgeois cinema is an essential part of bourgeois mass culture", V. Baskakov believed that "the question of mass in relation to cinema is complex and multivalent. ... It is known that the methodology of bourgeois film theory regards any work addressed to the mass viewer as a product of 'consumer society'. And only phenomena with features of elitism in their structure (manifested in a complicated form or specific content) bourgeois science is ready to evaluate as works of art" (Baskakov, 1975: 102).
V. Baskakov wrote that "mass, in the sense of quantitative distribution of screen art phenomenon, is by no means evidence of the reactionary or progressive nature of a work. We need completely different criteria, and the main criterion is the ideological and artistic essence of the work. The above said, however, does not mean that we should lubricate the problem of reactionary bourgeois "mass culture". It is precisely because of its accessibility and mass appeal that cinema is widely used by those who finance it in their class interests. With the help of cinema and television in recent decades, monopolistic capital and its propaganda apparatus manage to actively influence the public consciousness, flooding cinema and television screens with products designed either to distract viewers from the pressing problems of life or to direct their consciousness in a predetermined direction" (Baskakov, 1975: 103).
Besides, V. Baskakov believed that "in bourgeois cinematography... an interpenetration, a kind of diffusion of stylistic and genre trends, their merging into a certain 'averaged', universal style, designed for all main categories of viewers if possible, is increasingly making itself felt. ... The interpenetration of the tendencies of elitist and mass art testifies once again to the social and ideological commonality of these varieties of bourgeois artistic culture" (Baskakov, 1975: 104).
V. Baskakov also noted that Western "theories of "deconstruction", "sexual revolution," and "destructive" art in practice lead just to submission, apathy, and a "frenzied" fascination with archibourgeois fashion trends. There are many examples of this not only in theory, but also in the work of other masters of Western cinema" (Baskakov, 1979: 90).
Film scholar K. Razlogov (1946-2021) used a similar approach to Western cinema in the 1970s, when he referred to a "vivid example of development that paradoxically combined the retention of the most traditional and outmoded principles of bourgeois ideology with a metamorphosis of 'avant-gardism' that gradually merged with the commercial film production system, borrowing at times the most extreme forms of 'mass culture. If before cinematic experiments almost never appeared on the wide screen, now belonging to the "vanguard" has become one of the keys to box office success, sometimes quite significant. Commercialization ... as well as the paradoxical integration of avant-garde artistic experiment by distribution, are curious phenomena in contemporary bourgeois culture" (Razlogov, 1975: 106).
Here K. Razlogov rather convincingly traced new tendencies in the development of the language of Western cinema: "polyphony in a wide variety of forms (a combination of chronicle and play scenes; "collages" of quotations - plastic, titre and text; sound and visual counterpoint), and the juxtaposition of ethnographic material with modern forms of its transmission" (Razlogov, 1975: 106).
However, the conclusions at the end of K. Razlogov's article were quite ideologically stereotypical: "The development of a methodology based on the principle of historicism that makes it possible to use data from recent history, sociology and aesthetics to investigate the controversial processes that determine the evolution of Western cinema art is essential to the development of cinema science. Only by mastering the entire arsenal of the methods of Marxist science will film studies be able to solve the most difficult problems posed by the ideological struggle in the modern world, in one of the sharpest sections of which are figures of literature and art, and among them are film scholars and film critics" (Razlogov, 1975: 119).
K. Razlogov also argued that "the "counterculture," proclaimed both as a slogan and as a result of the broad anti-imperialist movement that swept virtually all developed capitalist countries in the 1960s, was a rather influential ideological and political and artistic current. However, from the Marxist point of view, the "counterculture" made a double substitution: the class struggle was replaced by the generational conflict, and social transformation was replaced by cultural confrontation" (Razlogov, 1978: 137-138).
The weaknesses of the "counterculture," according to K. Razlogov, were "particularly evident when attempts are made to consider from its perspective the main issues of the time, the issues of class struggle, social revolution, and the prospects for restructuring society" (Razlogov, 1978: 139). At the same time, "neoconservatism," whose influence has affected both the foreign policy actions
... of the American administration and the recently unfolding anti-socialist and anti-Soviet campaign (in England and especially in the United States), has also affected the sphere of culture, since it manifests itself (as a result of manipulation of mass consciousness) as a movement that is more emotional than rational" (Razlogov, 1978: 141). And here "permissiveness in the 'counterculture' is replaced by a wave of 'neo-romanticism,' represented, for example, by the painting Love Story (1970), which reveals the specific mechanisms of turning ostentatious humanity into the preaching of class peace. The attention to personal life in the wave of the 'counterreformation' becomes an escape from modernity into the realm of 'eternal' feelings'" (Razlogov, 1978: 149).
Film scholar L. Melville was theorizing about the aesthetics of Western "underground" and "parallel" cinema during these years, emphasizing the ideological tossing and turning of the radical left, the attempts to reorient them" and the "new left" (Melville, 1976: 143; 1980: 146).
Film scholar V. Shestakov (1935-2023) is in general agreement with the theoretical approaches of V. Baskakov, K. Razlogov and L. Melville. He emphasizes that American cinema in the 1970s was actively seeking "new means of influencing the audience, ... offering the viewer -far more often than had been the case before - not only purely entertaining standard productions, but also releasing films with serious, in particular political content, which entailed quite sharp criticism of certain phenomena of capitalist reality. However ... its essence, its ideological orientation remain the same and are invariably consistent with the goals of propaganda of Americanism, defense of the capitalist order and the bourgeois way of life" (Shestakov, 1976: 126).
Film critic I. Weisfeld (1909—2003) pointed out to readers of the Cinema Art that while the US "Hayes Code prohibited the showing of some aspects of intimate life on the screen, placed restrictions on sexual improvisations on the screen, the demands that have replaced it insist on the opposite - on the obligatory showing of sexual scenes and episodes, even if they have no direct connection with the logic of the events depicted. Let us note, by the way, that this was the basis for the phenomenal symbiosis that became known as "politico-sexual film": some episodes narrate political events and interpret contemporary political problems (sometimes in a fashionable anarchist or Maoist spirit), while others follow the "sexual revolution" style" (Waisfeld, 1973: 106-107).
The journalist A. Mikhalevich (1907—1973), sharply criticizing the harmful influences of bourgeois and "Czechoslovak revisionist cinema," reminded readers that until recently this kind of critic of bourgeois cinema was pretended by the film critic V. Matusevich, who "even willingly helped... Matusevich even willingly helped him to study Scandinavian cinema. He received lengthy business trips and responded to all this by fleeing to Scandinavia, choosing the fate of a menial job at a money-bag" (Mikhalevich, 1969: 58). And further, in his critical fervor A. Mikhalevich even rebuked director S. Gerasimov for his soft-heartedness towards the Western world, which he showed in The Journalist (Mikhalevich, 1969: 60).
Analyzing the book of film historian J. Markulan (1920-1978) "Foreign Film Detective. The Experience of Studying a Genre of Bourgeois Mass Culture" (Markulan, 1975), I. Weisfeld wrote that the term "mass culture" in the sense given to this concept by aesthetic reaction and commercial film production reflects only part of reality. But in cinema and, in particular, in the film detective, Lenin's idea of two national cultures-bourgeois and democratic-is embodied (Waisfeld, 1978: 29).
Culturologist S. Mozhnyagun (1914-1977) in his article turned to the study of "Bondiana" as a phenomenon of "mass culture" (Mozhnyagun, 1972: 146-160), concluding that "James Bond is a myth with the help of which they try to give historical significance to the activity of Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain's servants, and in this way "the bourgeoisie tries to control the masses, to manipulate their consciousness, it tries to turn them into a crowd of philistines for this very purpose. One of the means of this manipulation is "mass culture," which does not at all meet the spiritual needs of the masses, because it fools them. It meets the needs of the bourgeoisie, which, together with obedient directors, created the "Bondiana," expressing in it with the help of explicit temptations its secret thoughts" (Mozhnyagun 1972: 160).
In our view, the most original theoretical work published by Cinema Art journal on the subject of foreign cinema in the 1970s was K. Razlogov's article "The Mechanism of Success" (Razlogov, 1973: 141-149), devoted to a detailed analysis of the book and film phenomenon Love Story (USA, 1970).
In this article K. Razlogov reasonably argued that, "deprived of aesthetic value and essentially anti-realistic, the film and the novel, when examined closely, turn out to be crammed with all kinds
of realities, both artistic (that is, referring to related moments in other works) and life-like facts of American reality itself, but given in a very specific treatment that permits even an opposite reading of one and the same detail. Therefore, a consistent close analysis of the various "levels" of the film will help to illustrate how the use of familiar stereotypes of the consciousness of the "average American" allows, on the one hand, to avoid any certainty and detailed detail in the treatment of the material, and, on the other, to create the full illusion of the authenticity and vitality of the depicted" (Razlogov, 1973: 143). K. Razlogov believed that "the manipulation of the audience's perception begins as soon as it is set to a certain genre. The final in the prologue, the only deviation from chronology, is organically accompanying the genre of melodrama... because it is only this that gives the idyll the necessary tinge of bitterness" (Razlogov 1973: 143).
K. Razlogov goes deeper into the structure of Love Story, pointing out that it "may be perceived in two ways, also as a denunciation of young people's morals...: by skirting the actual crisis problems of contemporary America with a maximal obscuring of the author's attitude to events; this enables an infinite variety of interpretations (often to opposite conclusions), thereby giving satisfaction to almost any audience. The moral issues, artificially brought to the fore, are only part of the "model" of American society that Love Story offers. The second, social aspect is approached through questions of religion. ... Oliver's prayer of the "godless man" is meant to reveal the precariousness of atheism's position. In Segal's painting, the death of an innocent young woman, which for another religious artist (to mention Bergman) would have aroused doubts about justice or about the very existence of God, turns out to be proof of the inviolability of faith" (Razlogov, 1973: 143-144).
Further on, K. Razlogov has pointed out that "the national structure of American society also receives a dissected "reflection" in the film. The proposed solution is simple enough: in a country where almost all inhabitants are aliens, differing from one another only by the time and method of immigration, the equality of nations is officially considered an established fact. And so the film makes no direct connection between nationality and position in society (although this is not denied), so the viewer is left to assume that no national problems seem to exist in the United States. ... The next level of opposition between the heroes, which is class in itself, is given in the form of a difference in material well-being (the authors of the film, like the US ruling circles, do not recognize any other criteria for distinguishing them). ... It is characteristic that, having refused his father's help, young Barrett nevertheless achieves his own - relative - prosperity, immediately placing him on a par with the other 'self-made men' - 'people who made themselves' - the classic myth of capitalist America" (Razlogov, 1973: 144-145).
In the conclusion of his article, Razlogov concluded that Love Story touched the "sore spots" of "American society (crisis of bourgeois morality, national and property inequality, youth rebellion, etc.), depriving them of their conflictual essence and "proving" that they are easily resolvable within the "common welfare", except, of course, for unforeseen illnesses. Of course, he did not touch directly on the most pressing issues and extreme situations (the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, etc.). ... [Which] demonstrates once again that we should not underestimate the power of ideological "myths" if all means are mobilized to create an illusion-an illusion of relevance, an illusion of progressiveness, an illusion of rebellion and an illusion of well-being, and ultimately an illusion of love... from traditional genre techniques to the stereotypes of "mass culture," the technical possibilities of cinema, and the advertising power of the press and television" (Razlogov, 1973: 149).
A notable event within the framework of analysis of foreign cinematography in the Cinema Art journal was E. Surkov's article "Andrzej Wajda: What Next?" (Surkov, 1981: 147-154), in which the journal's editor-in-chief expressed his sincere concern about the fact that Polish director A. Wajda (1926-2016) at the turn of the 1980s had become close to the opposition Solidarity movement. Film critic A. Medvedev draws attention to the fact that Surkov "concealed" his authorship from readers of the journal when publishing this article: "At the very last moment, he removed his name and published the article as an editorial. That is, he passed his own off as our common" (Medvedev, 2011: 111). This article was not discussed in the journal, but was widely discussed in the "backstage" of the film industry in the USSR, mostly provoking a negative reaction from admirers of A. Wajda's work.
4. Conclusion
Our analysis of film studies concepts (in the context of the sociocultural and political situation, etc.) of the existence of the Cinema Art during the period of "stagnation" (1969-1985)
showed that theoretical works on cinematic subjects during this period can be divided into the following types:
- theoretical articles written in support of the resolutions of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee on culture (including - cinematography), still defending the inviolability of socialist realism and Communist party in cinematography (V. Baskakov, A. Dubrovin, S. Freilich, A. Karaganov, I. Lisakovsky, L. Mamatova, V. Murian, V. Tolstykh, I. Weisfeld, R. Yurenev, V. Zhdan, etc.)
- Theoretical articles balancing ideological and professional approaches to cinema (S. Freilikh, E. Levin, K. Razlogov, I. Weisfeld, R. Yurenev, etc.);
- theoretical articles, discussions devoted mainly to professional problems: analysis of the theoretical heritage of the classics of Soviet cinema, directing, film dramaturgy, genres, the specifics of television, etc. (L. Anninsky, M. Bleiman, Y. Bogomolov, Y. Khanyutin, L. Kozlov, E. Levin, A. Tarkovsky, V. Shklovsky, A. Vartanov, I. Weisfeld, M. Yampolsky, M. Zak, and others);
- theoretical articles calling on the authorities to provide organizational transformations that would promote the intensive development of film studies as a science, the sociology of cinema, and film education (I. Weisfeld, E. Weizman, etc.).
- theoretical articles opposing bourgeois influences, contrasting them with communist ideology and class approaches (V. Baskakov, L. Melville, M. Shaternikova, V. Shestakov, etc.).
On the whole, the Cinema Art journal in 1969-1985, just as during the Thaw, was still within the typical model of a Soviet journal for the humanities, which, despite significant concessions to censorship and those in power, at least half of its total text tried to preserve its ability to engage in artistic analysis of the film process (unfortunately, this did not allow it even in minimal doses to criticize the flaws in the works of the most "bosses" influential Soviet screen artists of the time).
The journal was unable to maintain the thaw that was still strong even in the late 1960s and found itself largely in the ideological rut of Leonid Brezhnev's peak, although, paying tribute to Soviet propaganda, the journal was able to afford "in some narrow plazas" to publish meaningful discussions and important theoretical works.
5. Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, project No. 22-28-00317) at Rostov State University of Economics. Project theme: "Evolution of theoretical film studies concepts in the 'Cinema Art' journal (1931-2021)". Head of the project is Professor A.V. Fedorov.
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Bogomolov, 1978b - Bogomolov, Y. (1978). Tavtologiya i inoskazanie [Tautology and allegories]. Iskusstvo Kino. 2: 80-90. [in Russian]
Bogomolov, 1979 - Bogomolov, Y. (1979). O chem napisana i o chem ne napisana stat'ya [What is written and what is not written about]. Iskusstvo Kino. 12: 89-95. [in Russian]
Bogomolov, 2001 - Bogomolov, Y. (2001). My byli umnee zhurnala, chto nepravil'no [We were smarter than the journal, which is wrong]. Iskusstvo kino. 2: 5-7.
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Fedorov, 2017b - Fedorov, A. (2017). Sovetskij kinematograf v zerkale zhurnala 'Iskusstvo kino' (na primere nomerov yubilejnogo 1967 goda) [Soviet cinematography in the mirror of the journal Cinema Art (on the example of the anniversary issues of 1967)]. Media Education. 3: 143159. [in Russian]
Fedorov, 2022a - Fedorov, A. (2022). Soviet cinema in the mirror of Crocodile magazine. Media Education. 18(3): 356-369. DOI: 10.13187/me.2022.3.356
Fedorov, 2022b - Fedorov, A. (2022). Theoretical concepts of film studies in the Cinema Art journal during the perestroika era: 1986-1991. Media Education. 18(4): 574-599. DOI: 10.13187/me.2022.4.574
Fedorov, Levitskaya, 2022a - Fedorov, A., Levitskaya, A. (2022). Theoretical concepts of film studies in the Cinema Art journal in the first decade (1931-1941) of its existence. Media Education. 18(2): 169-220. DOI: 10.13187/me.2022.2.169
Fedorov, Levitskaya, 2022b - Fedorov, A., Levitskaya, A. (2022). Theoretical concepts of film studies in Cinema Art journal in the first post-soviet years: 1992-2000. International Journal of Media and Information Literacy. 7(2): 355-397. DOI: 10.13187/ijmil.2022.2.355
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Freilich, 1971 - Freilich, S. (1971). Lico geroya [The Face of the hero]. Iskusstvo Kino. 4: 94-109. [in Russian]
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Freilich, 1974 - Freilich, S. (1974). Pole dejstviya geroya [The hero's field of action]. Iskusstvo Kino. 1974. 4: 62-73. [in Russian]
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Freilich, 1978 - Freilich, S. (1978). O dialektike razvitiya socialisticheskogo kino [On dialectics of socialist cinema development]. Iskusstvo Kino. 2: 65-77. [in Russian]
Freilich, 1980 - Freilich, S. (1980). Temy dlya razmyshleniya [Topics for reflection]. Iskusstvo Kino. 9: 100-108. [in Russian]
Freilich, 1981 - Freilich, S. (1981). Etyudy o stile [Etudes on style]. Iskusstvo Kino. 1981. 9: 92-99. 1983. 1: 70-84. 3: 81-100. [in Russian]
Freilich, 2009 - Freilich, S.I. (2009). Teoriya kino. Ot Ejzenshtejna do Tarkovskogo [Movie Theory. From Eisenstein to Tarkovsky]. Moscow. [in Russian]
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Kantorovich, 1975 - Kantorovich, V. (1975). Aktual'nye paralleli. Dokumentalizm v kino i literature [Actual parallels. Documentalism in cinema and literature]. Iskusstvo Kino. 10: 82-99. [in Russian]
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Karaganov, 1972 - Karaganov, A. (1972). Kritika - fil'my - zhizn' [Criticism - film - life]. Iskusstvo Kino. 4: 1-22. [in Russian]
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Karaganov, 1982 - Karaganov, A. (1982). Dvizhushchayasya estetika [Moving aesthetics]. Iskusstvo Kino. 2: 13-20. [in Russian]
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Khanyutin, 1977a - Khanyutin, Y. (1977). Son razuma. Mifologiya zapadnoj fantastiki [The Dream of reason. Mythology of Western SF]. Iskusstvo Kino. 9: 126-150. [in Russian]
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Kino..., 1977 - Kinovedy i kinokritiki otvechayut na voprosy "Iskusstvo kino" [Film critics and film historians answer the questions of Cinema Art]. Iskusstvo Kino. 1977. 2: 9-28. [in Russian]
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Kovalov, 2009 - Kovalov, O. (2009). Istoriya zhurnala "Iskusstvo kino" [History of the Cinema Art journal]. Seance. 13.08.2009. [Electronic resource]. URL: https://seance.ru/ articles/zhivoy-zhurnal/
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Kozlov, 1978 - Kozlov, L. (1978). O zhanrovyh obshchnostyah i osobennostyah [On genre commonalities and peculiarities]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 120-135. [in Russian]
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Kozlov, 1983 - Kozlov, L. (1983). Kino i TV: nekotorye aspekty vzaimodejstviya [Cinema and TV: Some aspects of interaction]. Iskusstvo Kino. 6: 103-113. [in Russian]
Kritika..., 1977 - Kritika pered novymi rubezhami [Criticism before the new frontiers]. Iskusstvo Kino. 1977. 2: 3-8. [in Russian]
Kuchukhidze, 1979 - Kuchukhidze, I. (1979). "Vse ispytyvajte, a horoshee uderzhivajte..." ["Test everything, and keep the good..."]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 112-119. [in Russian]
Kudin, 1971 - Kudin, V. (1971). "Vysokij plan myshleniya..." ["The high plane of thinking..."]. Iskusstvo Kino. 9: 77-80. [in Russian]
Kuleshov, 1987 - Kuleshov, L.V. (1987). Sobranie sochinenij [Collected works], Vol. 1. Moscow. [in Russian]
Kuznetsov, 1975 - Kuznetsov, V. (1975). Ot fil'ma-fakta - k fil'mu-issledovaniyu [From fact-film to research-film]. Iskusstvo Kino. 9: 115-129. [in Russian]
Kuznetsova, 1976 - Kuznetsova, V. (1976). Metodologicheskie problemy sovetskogo kinovedeniya [Methodological problems of Soviet film studies]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 91-93. [in Russian]
Lawton, 2004 - Lawton, A. (2004). Imaging Russia 2000. Films and Facts. Washington, DC: New Academia Publishing.
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Levin, 1973 - Levin, E. (1973). S ptich'ego poleta, ili Ob odnoj semioticheskoj aberracii [From the bird's eye, or about one semiotic aberration]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 110-120. [in Russian]
Levin, 1976a - Levin, E. (1976). Metodologicheskie problemy sovetskogo kinovedeniya [Methodological problems of soviet film studies]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 82-85. [in Russian]
Levin, 1976b - Levin, E. (1976). Vchityvayas' v Pudovkina [Reading in Pudovkin]. Iskusstvo Kino. 10: 102-118. [in Russian]
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Levin, 1978 - Levin, E. (1978). Vremya i stil'. K tipologii stilej sovetskogo kino [Time and style. To the typology of styles of Soviet cinema]. Iskusstvo Kino. 12: 73-82. [in Russian]
Levin, 1979 - Levin, E. (1979). Uvidet' vovremya! [To see in time!]. Iskusstvo Kino. 12: 101-110. [in Russian]
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Levin, 1982 - Levin, E. (1982). Vremya eposa. K metodologii istoriko-tipologicheskogo analiza zhanra [Time of the epic. To the Methodology of historical and typological analysis of the genre]. Iskusstvo Kino. 8: 136-152. [in Russian]
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Lipkov, 1978 - Lipkov, A. (1978). Vse kraski palitry [All colors of the palette]. Iskusstvo Kino. 6. [in Russian]
Lipkov, 1990 - Lipkov, A.I. (1990). Problemy hudozhestvennogo vozdejstviya: princip attrakciona [The Problems of artistic influence: the attraction principle]. [in Russian].
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Lisakovsky, 1982 - Lisakovsky, I. (1982). Nash metod — nashi vozmozhnosti. Neskol'ko zametok o tvorcheskih problemah socialisticheskogo realizma [Our method is our possibilities. Some notes on the creative problems of socialist realism]. Iskusstvo Kino. 8: 128-136. [in Russian]
Lisakovsky, 1983 - Lisakovsky, I. (1983). Metod i napravlenie: chto za terminami? [Method and direction: What's behind the terms?]. Iskusstvo Kino. 4: 79-88. [in Russian]
Lisakovsky, 1985 - Lisakovsky, I. (1985). Skazat' i pokazat'. O yazyke kino, ego ob"emah i funkciyah [To say and show. O language of cinema, its volumes and functions]. Iskusstvo Kino. 3: 82-93. 4: 118-128. [in Russian]
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Lotman, 1992 - Lotman, Y.M. (1992). Stat'i po semiotike i topologii kul'tury [Articles on semiotics and topology of culture]. Vol.1. In: Izbrannye stat'i [Selected articles]. Tallin. [in Russian] Lotman, Tsivjan, 1994 - Lotman, Y.M., Tsivjan, J.G. (1994). Dialog s ekranom [Dialog with the Screen]. Tallin. [in Russian]
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Mamatova, 1975a - Mamatova, L. (1975). Lunacharskij i razvitie sovetskogo kinoiskusstva [Lunacharsky and the development of Soviet cinema art]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 72-88. [in Russian]
Mamatova, 1975b - Mamatova, L. (1975). Process i skhema [Process and scheme]. Iskusstvo Kino. 1: 118-138. [in Russian]
Mamatova, 1976 - Mamatova, L. (1976). Metodologicheskie problemy sovetskogo kinovedeniya [Methodological problems of Soviet film stusies]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 88-91. [in Russian]
Mamatova, 1979 - Mamatova, L. (1979). Gruzinskoe kino: k probleme tradicij [Georgian cinema: To the problem of traditions]. Iskusstvo Kino. 12: 76-89. [in Russian]
Markulan, 1975 - Markulan, Y. (1975). Zarubezhnyj kinodetektiv. Opyt izucheniya odnogo iz zhanrov burzhuaznoj massovoj kul'tury [The Foreign film detective. Experience of studying one of the genres of bourgeois mass culture]. Leningrad. [in Russian]
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Mast, Cohen, 1985 - Mast, G., Cohen, M. (eds.) (1985). Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Melville, 1976 - Melville, L. (1976). Ot bitnikov k "novym levym". Evolyuciya estetiki "podpol'nogo" kino [From beatniks to the "new left". The Evolution of the aesthetics of "underground" cinema]. Iskusstvo Kino. 10: 142-151. [in Russian]
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Murian, 1969 - Murian, V. (1969). O leninskoj koncepcii lichnosti i kollektiva i nashih kinoproblemah [On Lenin's concept of personality and collective and our cinema problems Iskusstvo Kino. 12: 5-19. [in Russian]
Nikolaev, 1969 - Nikolaev, D. (1969). U smekha svoi zakony [Laughter has its own laws]. Iskusstvo Kino. 6: 19-36. [in Russian]
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Parsadanov, 1976 - Parsadanov, N. (1976). Metodologicheskie problemy sovetskogo kinovedeniya [Methodological problems of Soviet film studies]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 93-96. [in Russian]
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Postanovlenie., 1982 - Postanovlenie Plenuma CK KPSS "O tvorcheskih svyazyah literaturno-hudozhestvennyh zhurnalov s praktikoj kommunisticheskogo stroitel'stva" [Resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of Soviet Communist party "On the creative links of literary and art journals with the practice of communist construction"]. 1982. 23.07.1982. [in Russian]
Postanovlenie., 1982 - Postanovlenie Soveta Ministrov RSFSR "Ob uluchshenii proizvodstva i pokaza kinofil'mov dlya detej i podrostkov v RSFSR" [Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Federal Socialist Republic "On Improving the Production and Screening of Films for Children and Teenagers in the Russian Federal Socialist Republic"]. 1982. 20.01.1982. [in Russian]
Postanovlenie., 1984 - Postanovlenie CK KPSS i Soveta Ministrov SSSR "O merah po dal'nejshemu povysheniyu idejno-hudozhestvennogo urovnya kinofil'mov i ukrepleniyu material'no-tekhnicheskoj bazy kinematografii" [Resolution of the Central Committee of Soviet Communist party and the USSR Council of Ministers "On measures to further improve the
ideological and artistic level of films and to strengthen the material and technical base of the cinematography"]. 1984. 19.04.1984. [in Russian]
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Zhdan, 1972 - Zhdan, V. (1972). Vvedenie v estetiku fil'ma [Introduction to the aesthetics of film]. Moscow. [in Russian]
Zhdan, 1980 - Zhdan, V. (1980). Vysokaya pravda metoda [High truth of the method]. Iskusstvo Kino. 3: 14-29. [in Russian]
Zhdan, 1982 - Zhdan, V.N. (1982). Estetika fil'ma [The aesthetics of the film]. Moscow. [in Russian]
Zimmer, 1974 - Zimmer, C. (1974). Cinema et politiqe. Paris: Editions Seghers. Zis, 1972 - Zis, A. (1972). Epigony burzhuaznoj estetiki [Epigones of bourgeois aesthetics]. Iskusstvo Kino. 10: 74-90. [in Russian]
Zorkaya, 1983 - Zorkaya, N. (1983). "Iskusstvo prinadlezhit narodu". Kruglyj stol "Iskusstvo kino". ["Art belongs to the people." Round Table in Cinema Art]. Iskusstvo Kino. 2: 30-33. [in Russian]
Zorkaya, 2001 - Zorkaya, N. (2001). 70-e. Hitroumnye gody [The 1970s. Artful years]. Iskusstvo kino. 1: 31-35.
Zvonicek, 1970 - Zvonicek, S. (1970). Predmet i metod kinovedeniya [The subject and method of film studies]. Iskusstvo Kino. 11: 127-144. [in Russian]
Appendix
Key dates and events relevant to the historical, political, economic, ideological, sociocultural, and cinematic context in which Cinema Art journal was published in 1969-1985.
1969
January 7: Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee Secretariat "On increasing the responsibility of the heads of the press, radio, television, cinematography, cultural and art institutions for the ideological and political level of the published materials and repertoire".
January 16: In Prague, one student performs self-immolation as a protest against the introduction of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia.
January 20: R. Nixon (1913-1994), who won the elections, officially replaced L. Johnson (1908-1973) as president of the USA.
January 22: In Moscow, a junior lieutenant V. Ilyin made an unsuccessful attempt on the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev (19061982).
March 2-15: Soviet-Chinese border armed conflict on Damansky Island.
April 15: The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts awards an Oscar to the Soviet film War and Peace (directed by S. Bondarchuk) as the best foreign film of the year.
April 17: A. Dubcek (1921-1992) is removed as first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. G. Husak (1913-1991) is elected as the new first secretary.
April 28: the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970) of France.
April 28: A. Dubcek is elected president of the Czechoslovak National Assembly.
May: The film Andrei Rublev (directed by A. Tarkovsky) is awarded the FIPRESCI Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival.
May: The Communist journal (#9, 1969) published an article against the film "The Sixth of July" (screenwriter M. Shatrov, director J. Karasik).
June 15: Georges Pompidou (1911-1974) is elected president of France.
July 7-22: Moscow International Film Festival. Gold prizes: Let's wait until Monday (USSR, directed by S. Rostotsky), Lucia (Cuba, directed by U. Solas, Serafino (Italy-France, directed by P. Germi).
July 20-21: The landing of U.S. astronauts on the moon.
August: The USSR celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Soviet cinematography.
September 25-26: Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia removes A. Dubcek supporters from state posts, cancels a number of decisions taken in July-August 1968 by the Czechoslovak leadership and the Extraordinary XIV Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.
October 15: A. Dubcek is deprived of his position as Chairman of the Czechoslovak National Assembly.
November 4: A. Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the USSR Union of Writers.
November 17: after an inspection by the People's Control Committee, V. Surin (1906-1994), director of the Mosflm studio, is relieved of his post. N. Sizov (1916-1996) was appointed the new director of Mosflm.
November 24: The USSR and the United States ratified the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
1970
March 19: Open letter by Academician A. Sakharov (1921-1989) demanding democratization of the USSR.
March 28: Ogonyok magazine publishes an article by the historian N. Savinchenko and A. Shirokov "On the film The Sixth of July", which finally dashed the hope of awarding the Lenin Prize for this movie.
April 22: USSR solemnly celebrated the centenary of the birth of V. Lenin (1870-1924).
May 12-22: All-Union Film Festival (Minsk).
October 8: writer A. Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) is declared the Nobel Prize winner for literature.
October 15: Aeroflot plane hijacking from the USSR to Turkey (hijackers and murderers of flight attendant N. Kurchenko: father and son Brazinskas).
October 24: S. Allende (1908-1973) is elected president of Chile.
December 13: Increase in prices of meat and other food products initiated unrest and the resignation of the country's leadership in Poland.
December 17: The culmination of workers' protests in Poland.
1971
March 30 - April 9: XXIV Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.
May 11-13: II Congress of Soviet Cinematographers.
June 29 - July 2: The Fifth Congress of Soviet Writers.
July 20-August 3: Moscow International Film Festival. Golden prizes: The White Bird with a Black Mark (USSR, directed by Y. Ilyenko), The Confession of the Commissioner of Police to the Prosecutor of the Republic (Italy, director D. Damiani), Live Today, Die Tomorrow (Japan, director K. Shindo).
1972
January 21: Resolution of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party "On literary and artistic criticism".
February 22-29: All-Union Film Festival (Tbilisi).
August 2: The Soviet Communist Party Central Committee decree "On measures for further development of the Soviet cinematography".
August 4: Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR on reorganization of the Cinematography Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers (USSR Cinematography Committee) into the Union-Republic State Cinematography Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers (USSR Goskino).
December 30: The USSR celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.
1973
April: All-Union Film Festival (Alma-Ata).
June 18-25: Leonid Brezhnev's visit to the USA, signing a number of agreements.
May 27: The USSR joined the World (Geneva) Copyright Convention.
July 3: Opening of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki).
July 10-23: IFF in Moscow. Gold prizes: That Sweet Word - Freedom! (USSR, director V. Zalakevicius), Love (Bulgaria, director L. Staikov), Oklahoma Crude (USA, director S. Kramer).
August 29:
1974
January 4: Resolution of the Secretariat of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee "On the exposure of the anti-Soviet campaign of bourgeois propaganda in connection with the publication of A. Solzhenitsyn's book Gulag Archipelago.
February 13: writer A. Solzhenitsyn was deported from the USSR.
April 12-19: All-Union Film Festival (Baku).
May 19: V. Giscard d'Estaing (1926-2020) is elected president of France.
July 3: U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to the USSR. The treaty limiting underground nuclear tests is signed.
July 15-19: the docking of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft.
August 9: As a result of the Watergate scandal, President R. Nixon (1913-1994) resigns. Vice-President Gerald Ford (1913-2006) becomes president of the United States.
October 24: Soviet Minister of Culture E. Furtseva (1910-1974) commits suicide.
November 23-24: U.S. President G. Ford's visit to the USSR.
1975
January 15: the USSR withdrew from a trade treaty with the U.S., protesting the statements of the U.S. Congress on the subject of Jewish emigration.
April 18-25: All-Union Film Festival (Kishinev).
April 30: The end of the Vietnam War.
May 9: The USSR celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
July 10-23: Moscow International Film Festival. Gold prizes: Dersu Uzala (USSR-Japan, directed by A. Kurosawa), Promised Land (Poland, directed by A. Wajda), We So Loved Each Other (Italy, directed by E. Scola).
August 1: the USSR together with 35 other countries signs the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki.
October 9: One of the most active Russian dissidents, Academician A. Sakharov (1921-1989) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
1976
February 24 - March 5: the XXV Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.
April 18-25: All-Union film festival (Frunze).
May 11-13: III Congress of Cinematographers of the USSR.
May 28: The USSR and the USA sign a treaty on the prohibition of underground nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes with a yield of more than 150 kilotons.
21-25 June: The Sixth Congress of Soviet Writers.
October 12: Decree of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee "On work with creative young people".
1977
January 20: U.S. President J. Carter took office.
May 19-26: All-Union Film Festival (Riga).
July 7-21: Moscow International Film Festival. Golden prizes: Mimino (USSR, directed by G. Danelia), The Fifth Seal (Hungary, directed by Z. Fabri), Weekend (Spain, directed by J.-A. Bardem).
October 4: Opening of the Belgrade Conference to oversee implementation of decisions of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
October 7: The Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopts the Constitution (Basic Law) of the USSR.
November 7: The sixtieth anniversary of the 1917 Revolution is solemnly celebrated in the USSR.
1978
April 17: coup d'etat in Afghanistan, supported by the USSR.
May 5-13: All-Union Film Festival (Yerevan).
July 5: By decree of the USSR Supreme Soviet the State Committee on Cinematography (Goskino USSR) was transformed to the State Committee on Cinematography (Goskino USSR).
1979
May 6: Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee "On further improvement of ideological, political and educational work".
May 11-20: All-Union film festival (Ashkhabad).
June 18: The USSR and the United States concluded a treaty on limiting strategic offensive
arms.
August 14-28: Moscow International Film Festival. Gold prizes: Christ Stopped at Eboli (Italy-France, directed by F. Rosi), Seven Days in January (Spain-France, directed by J.-A. Bardem), Amator (Poland, directed by K. Kieslowski).
August: the USSR celebrated the 60th anniversary of Soviet cinematography.
September 16: The second coup d'etat in Afghanistan, again supported by the USSR.
December 16-17: Soviet troops enter Afghanistan.
1980
January 3: U.S. President J. Carter postpones ratification of the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (START II) due to Soviet troops' entry into Afghanistan.
January 4: U.S. President J. Carter announces that he is curtailing ties with the USSR and intends to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
January 22: Academician A. Sakharov is exiled to Gorky. By the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR he was deprived of the title of thrice Hero of Socialist Labor and by
the decree of the USSR Council of Ministers - of the title of laureate of the Stalin (1953) and Lenin (1956) prizes.
April 8-15: All-Union Film Festival (Dushanbe).
April 22: The USSR solemnly celebrated 110 years since the birth of V. Lenin (1870-1924).
July 19 - August 3: the XXII Summer Olympic Games in Moscow.
July 25: death of actor and bard V. Vysotsky (1938-1980).
August 14: strike in Poland at the Gdansk Shipyard, start of the Solidarity mass movement and mass strikes.
August 20: The resumption of jamming of BBC, DW and Voice of America broadcasts on Soviet territory.
November: World oil prices reach their highest peak in the Soviet era ($41 per barrel).
1981
January 20: R. Reagan (1911-2004) takes office as president of the United States.
February 23-March 3: The 26th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.
March 27: Poland's largest national warning strike in history, involving about 13 million people.
March 27: The USSR declares the Polish Solidarity trade union a counterrevolutionary organization.
March 31: The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts awards the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of the Year to the Soviet film Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears (directed by V. Menshov).
April 24: U.S. President R. Reagan lifted the embargo on grain shipments to the USSR.
May 13: Political film directed by A. Wajda, Man of Iron, which supported the Solidarity movement, received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.
May: All-Union Film Festival (Vilnius).
May 19-21, 1981: IV Congress of Filmmakers of the USSR.
May 21: After winning the elections, François Mitterrand (1916-1996) takes office as President of France.
June 30 - July 3: The Seventh Congress of Soviet Writers.
July 7-21: Moscow International Film Festival. Gold prizes: Tehran 43 (USSR-France-Switzerland, directed by A. Alov, V. Naumov), The Squeezed Man (Brazil, directed by J.B. di Andrade), The Wasted Field (Vietnam, directed by N. Hong Shen).
October 27: Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party "On Improving the Production and Screening of Films for Children and Teenagers".
November 20: The USSR signed contracts for the supply of natural gas from Siberia to Western European countries.
December 13: Chairman of the Polish Council of Ministers W. Jaruzelski (1923-2014) declared martial law in Poland. Beginning of mass arrests and restrictions of civil and trade union rights in Poland.
December 29: U.S. President R. Reagan's statement concerning the inadmissibility of Soviet interference in Poland and the announcement of new U.S. sanctions against the USSR.
1982
January 20: Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Russian Soviet Socialist Federative Republic "On Improving the Production and Screening of Films for Children and Teenagers".
January 23: The signing of the contract between the USSR and France for the supply of Siberian gas.
April 12-22: All-Union film festival (Tallinn).
July 23: Resolution of the Plenum of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee "On the creative links of literary and art magazines with the practice of communist construction".
November 10: Death of L. Brezhnev (1906-1982), general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
November 12: Y. Andropov (1914-1984) elected for the post of general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee,
November 13: U.S. President R. Reagan repeals the sanctions he imposed in connection with the events in Poland.
December 30: The USSR solemnly celebrated its sixtieth birthday.
1983
May 17-26: All-Union Film Festival (Leningrad).
June: Resolution of the Plenum of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee "Topical Issues of Ideological, Mass-Political Work of the Party".
July 4-6: a visit to the USSR by Chancellor G. Kohl (1930-2017).
July 20: the Polish government announced the end of martial law and an amnesty for political prisoners.
July 7-21: Moscow International Festival. Gold prizes: Vassa (USSR, directed by G. Panfilov), Amok (Morocco-Guinea-Senegal, directed by S. Ben Barca), Alcino and the Condor (Nicaragua-Cuba-Mexico-Costa Rico, directed by M. Littin).
August 20: U.S. President R. Reagan imposed a ban on shipments of pipeline construction equipment to the USSR.
September 1: a South Korean passenger plane is shot down by a Soviet fighter jet.
November 18: a Soviet plane is seized in Georgia with the purpose of hijacking it abroad. Among those who unsuccessfully tried to hijack the plane was the young actor G. Kobakhidze (1962-1984, shot 3.10.1984), son of the famous Soviet director M. Kobakhidze (1939-2019), who directed the films Wedding and Umbrella. Shortly before that G. Kobakhidze had played one of the roles in Abuladze's yet-to-be-released film Repentance (the episodes with his participation were removed from the final version of the film and the role was given to another actor).
November 24: Y. Andropov issued a statement against the deployment of Pershing-2 missiles in Europe and cancelled the moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
1984
January 17: A conference on disarmament in Europe opened in Stockholm.
February 9: death of Y. Andropov (1914-1984), General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee.
February 13: K. Chernenko (1911-1985) becomes General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee.
April 19: Resolution of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers "On measures for further improvement of the ideological and artistic level of films and strengthening of the material and technical basis of the cinematography".
May 8: The USSR's statement on the boycott of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
May 7-16: All-Union Film Festival (Kiev).
June 21-23: French President François Mitterrand visits the USSR.
June 29: the USSR protested against the U.S. military program "Star Wars".
July 10: at a press conference in Milan, filmmaker A. Tarkovsky (1932-1986) announces that he has decided to remain in the West. Also present at this press conference was theater director Y. Lyubimov (1917-2014), who was soon stripped of his Soviet citizenship and also remained in the West.
December 15-21: visit of Politburo of Soviet Communist Party Central Committee member M. Gorbachev to Great Britain, his meeting with Prime Minister M. Thatcher (1925-2013).
1985
March 10: death of K. Chernenko (1911-1985), General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
March 11: the Plenum of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee elected M. Gorbachev (1931-2022) as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee.
March 12: the resumption of the negotiations on arms limitation in Geneva.
April 20: M. Gorbachev put forward the slogan of "acceleration" (raising industry and the welfare of the population in the foreseeable short term, including at the expense of the cooperative movement).
May 9: The USSR celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.
May 16: Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On Intensifying the Fight against Drunkenness", beginning of the anti-alcohol campaign, which raised the price of alcohol by 45 % and reduced its production (including the destruction of vineyards), intensified samovanivir (which in turn led to a shortage of sugar); simultaneously began increasing the life span of the USSR population and there was a slight decrease in crimes committed under the influence of alcohol.
May 13-20: All-Union film festival (Minsk).
June 28-July 12: Moscow International Film Festival. Golden prizes: Come and See (USSR, directed by E. Klimov), A Soldier's Story (USA, directed by N. Jewison), The End of Nine (Greece, directed by H. Chopahas).
July 14: In Schengen (Luxembourg), seven Western European countries sign the Schengen Agreement.
July 30: M. Gorbachev announces a unilateral moratorium on nuclear explosions by the USSR.
19-21 November: U.S. President R. Reagan and General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party M. Gorbachev met in Geneva.
December: B. Yeltsin (1931-2007) is appointed First Secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party.
