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Soviet and Russian Blockbusters: A Question of Genre?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Birgit Beumers
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Abstract

In this introduction, Birgit Beumers explains the concept of the blockbuster, examining its emergence within the context of political upheavals in Soviet history. She then discusses the relation of the blockbuster to the question of genre and defines the blockbuster as a genre film, which follows certain conventions and thereby cradles the spectator in a (false) security. Beumers closes with a chronological survey of popular Soviet films that provides the context for the remaining articles in this forum.

Type
Focus
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , Fall 2003 , pp. 441 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2003

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References

1 Konigsberg, Ira, The Complete Film Dictionary, 2d ed. (London, 1997), 36 Google Scholar, and Bawden, Liz-Anne, ed., The Oxford Companion to Film (Oxford, 1976), 76 Google Scholar.

2 A blockbuster film has a release pattern of saturation (as opposed to wide or limited), opening in 390 plus screens in Russia (3,275 screens in 770 cinemas in the United Kingdom).

3 For films released after 1940, Segida, Miroslava and Zemlianukhin, Sergei, Domashniaiasinemateka: Otechestvennoe kino, 1918-1996 (Moscow, 1996)Google Scholar provide data on the number of spectators and, occasionally, the number of copies. The charts compiled from this catalogue are available on http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura/plus/prokatl.html and prokat2.html (last consulted 15 May 2003) and are sorted by year and by absolute number of viewers. Kudriavtsev, Sergei has compiled “Chempiony sovetskogo kinoprokata” from the same source in Svoe kino (Moscow, 1998), 410–43Google Scholar, ranking on the basis of number of viewers.

4 Schatz, Thomas, Hollywood Genres (Boston, 1981), 31 Google Scholar.

5 Kudriavtsev’s list gives the numbers of viewers. Since there were fewer cinemas and cinema-goers in the 1940s dian in the 1980s, this list gives an inaccurate view of popularity. The list of annual leaders is available from the site http://www.bris.ac.uk/kinokultura and is more helpful in determining popularity in any given year.

6 Sergei Livnev cited in Larsen, Susan, “In Search of an Audience: The New Russian Cinema of Reconciliation,” in Barker, Adele Marie, ed., Consuming Russia: Popular Culture,Sex, and Society since Gorbachev (Durham, 1999), 197 Google Scholar.

7 Grant, Barry Keith, “Introduction,” Film Genre Reader (Austin, 1986), xi Google Scholar.

8 Stam, Robert, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford, 2000), 27 Google Scholar.

9 Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale (Bloomington, 1958)Google Scholar.

10 For example Vladimir MotyY’s Beloesolntsepustyni (White sun of the desert, 1969), Sergei and Georgii Vasil'ev’s Chapaev (1934), or Nikita Mikhalkov’s Svoi sredi chuzhikh,chvzhoi sredi svoikh (At home among strangers, a stranger at home, 1974).

11 Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 29.

12 V.Dubitskaia, “Rossiiskii videorynok” (DoubleD survey, unpublished, Moscow, 1994). The percentages indicate priorities of factors determining the choice of films and thus do not add up to 100.

13 Dubitskaia, “Rossiiskii videorynok“; see also Birgit Beumers, , “Cinemarket, or the Russian Film Industry in ‘Mission Possible,’“ Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 5 (1999): 871–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Dubitskaia, “Rossiiskii videorynok.”

15 Venzher, Natal'ia, “Massovoe zritel’skoe ozhidaniia v otnoshenii otechestvennogo kino,” Rossiiskaia kinematografiia 1999 (Moscow, n.d.), 113 Google Scholar.

16 Based on Gallup Media in Moscow, published in the quarterly Kinoprotsess (Information Bulletin of the Department of Cinematography of the Ministry of Culture), chief editor Viacheslav Shmyrov, issues 1999-2002.

17 See Taylor, Richard, The Battleship Potemkin: TheFilm Companion (London, 2000), 65–67 Google Scholar; Youngblood, Denise, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the1930s (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 5 Google Scholar; Stites, Richard, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment andSociety since 1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 55–56 Google Scholar.

18 Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, 73.

19 Graffy, Julian, Bed and Sofa: TheFilm Companion (London, 2001), 93 Google Scholar.

20 These and other highly popular movies of the 1920s have been discussed in Youngblood’s seminal study on this topic, Movies for the Masses.

21 Ibid., 30

22 Ibid., 20.

23 Turovskaia, Maia, “I. A. Pyr'ev i ego muzykal'nye komedii: K probleme zhanra,” Kinovedcheskie zapiski 1 (1988): 111–46Google Scholar; Propp, Vladimir, Morphology of the Folktale (Bloomington, 1958)Google Scholar.

24 These popular “Stalinist” musicals have been discussed in scholarly articles: Turovskaya, Maya, “The Tastes of Soviet Moviegoers during the 1930s,” in Lahusen, Thomas, with Kuperman, Gene, ed., Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika (Durham, 1993)Google Scholar, and Turovskaia, , “I. A. Pyr'ev i ego muzykal'nye komedii“; Evgenii Dobrenko, “Muzyka vmesto sumbura: Narodnost’ kak problema muzykal'noi kinokomedii stalinskoi epokhi,” Revue desEtudes slaves 67, nos. 2 -3 (1995): 407–33Google Scholar; Dobrenko, , “The Russia We Acquired: Russian Classics, the Stalinist Cinema, and the Past from the Revolutionary Perspective,” trans. Bliss, Liv, Russian Studies in Literature 37, no. 4 (Fall 2001): 61–91 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Richard, “But Eastward, Look, the Land Is Brighter: Towards a Topography of Utopia in the Stalinist Musical,” in Holmes, Diana and Smith, Alison, eds., 100 Years of European Cinema: Entertainment orIdeology'? (Manchester, 2000), 11–26 Google Scholar; Taylor, , “A ‘Cinema for the Millions': Soviet Socialist Realism and the Problem of Film Comedy,” Journal ofContemporary History 18 (1983): 439– 61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Maria Enzensberger, ‘“We Were Born to Turn a Fairy Tale into Reality’: Grigori Alexandrov’s The Radiant Path,” in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and SovietCinema (London, 1993), 97-108.

25 Stites, Russian Popular Culture,llS: Between 1942 and 1945, 70 feature films were released, of which 48 were war movies and the rest largely historical films.

26 Istrebiteli (The fighters, 1940) by Eduard Pentslin attracted 27 million viewers with its tale about two schoolmates who became fighter pilots, starring the popular singer Mark Bernes. Ivan Pyr'ev’s V shesl’ chasov vechera posle voiny (At 6 p.m., after the war, 1944) attracted 26 million people with a story of a loving couple, reunited after the war despite the soldier’s loss of a limb. An adaptation of Aleksandr Ostrovskii’s play Bez viny vinovatye (Guilty without guilt) directed by Vladimir Petrov in 1945 and Aleksandr Ptushko’s children’s film Kamennyi tsvetok (Stone flower, 1946) dominated the charts in the respective years of their release. Podvig razvedchika (The secret agent, 1947) by Boris Barnet pulled 23 million to the cinemas with a plot about underground activity against Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime. Sergei Gerasimov’s Molodaia gvardiia (The young guard, 1948) about the underground fight against fascism attracted 40 million people. Konstantin Iudin’s anti-fascist Smelye liudi (Brave people, 1950) brought 41 million viewers to the cinemas. Vladimir Braun’s Vmirnyedni (In peaceful days, 1951) alludes to the blissful state of peace, although the film presents the heroic aftermath of an accident on board a Soviet submarine; 23.5 million viewers saw it.

27 Aleksandrov’s Vstrecha naEl'be (The meeting on the Elbe, 1949), Mikhail Romm’s Sekretnaia missiia (Secret mission, 1950), and Mikhail Kalatozov’s Zagovor obrechennykh (The conspiracy of the doomed, 1950) all attracted approximately 20 million viewers.

28 Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying attracted 28 million viewers and was awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes in 1958; Grigorii Chukhrai’s The Forty-First, presented in Cannes in 1957, was seen by 25 million viewers; his Ballad of a Soldier had 30 million viewers and appeared in Cannes in 1960; Stolper’s Living and Dead attracted 41 million viewers; and Rostotskii’s But the Damns Here Are So Quiet drew 66 million viewers.

29 The four-film series of War and Peace attracted 58, 36, 21, and 20 million viewers, respectively. Only the first film ranked in first place in 1966; the remaining three films ranked ninth or below in 1967, when Gaidai’s Kavkazskaia plennitsa Hi novye prikliucheniiaShurika (The captive of the Caucasus or die new adventures of Shurik, 1966) reached first place in the charts.

30 For example, Vysotskii appeared in Evgenii Karelov’s Sluzhili dva tovarishcha (Two comrades were serving, 1968), 22 million viewers; Aleksandr Mitta’s Skazpro to, kak tsar Petrarapa zhenil (How Tsar Peter married off his moor, 1976), 33 million; Georgii Iungval'd- Khil'kevich’s Opasnye gastroli (Dangerous tours, 1969), 37 million; and in the television series Mesto vstrechi izmenit’ nel'zia (The meeting place cannot be changed, 1979), and Malen'kie tragedii (Little tragedies, 1979).

31 Stites, Russian Popular Culture, 173.

32 Other examples include Vadim Abdrashitov’s Pliumbum, Hi opasnaia igra (Plumbum, or a dangerous game, 1986), Karen Shakhnazarov’s Kur'er (The messenger boy, 1986), Ogorodnikov’s, Valerii Vzlomshchik (Burglar, 1986)Google Scholar, Petr Todorovskii’s Interdevochka (Inter-girl, 1989), Aleksandr Proshkin’s Kholodnoe leto 53ego (Cold summer of 53, 1988), Rashid Nugmanov’s Igla (The needle, 1988).

33 Beumers, “Cinemarket.“