1. Utopian Visions: The Soviet Experience through the Arts
Jan Plamper, Simon Huxtable

2. Week 12 Outline

3. Utopian Visions: Week 12
Thaw film of Khrushchev era, :

4. Utopian Visions: Week 12
Thaw film:
Introduction

5. Utopian Visions: Week 12
Thaw film:
Introduction
Theme: WW2

6. Utopian Visions: Week 12 Thaw film: Introduction Theme: WW2
Theme: Youth

7. Utopian Visions: Week 12 Thaw film: Introduction Theme: WW2
Theme: Youth
Genre: Comedy

8. Utopian Visions: Week 12 Thaw film: Introduction Theme: WW2
Theme: Youth
Genre: Comedy
Andrei Tarkovsky

9. Utopian Visions: Week 12 Thaw film: Introduction Theme: WW2
Theme: Youth
Genre: Comedy
Andrei Tarkovsky
Conclusion

10. (1) Introduction

11. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)

12. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas

13. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas
Relaxation of censorship, opening to West

14. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas
Relaxation of censorship, opening to West
Influences: Italian neorealism, French new wave (cinéma vérité), Polish school

15. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas
Relaxation of censorship, opening to West
Influences: Italian neorealism, French new wave (cinéma vérité), Polish school
Imported Western films

16. Re: Imported Western films
The Tarzan series alone, I daresay, did more for de-Stalinization than all Khrushchev’s speeches at the Twentieth Party Congress and after. One should take into account our latitudes, our buttoned-up, rigid, inhibited, winter-minded standards of public and private conduct, in order to appreciate the impact of a long-haired naked loner pursuing a blonde through the thick of a tropical rain forest with his chimpanzee version of Sancho Panza and lianas as means of transportation. Add to that the view of New York (in the last bit of the series that was played in Russia), with Tarzan jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge—and almost an entire generation’s opting out will become understandable.
Joseph Brodsky, “The Spoils of War,” in On Grief and Reason (New York, 1995), 8-9

17. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas
Relaxation of censorship, opening to West
Influences: Italian neorealism, French new wave (cinéma vérité), Polish school
Imported Western films
Truth and sincerity

18. (1) Introduction
‘Film hunger’ of late Stalinism (films 1951: 9; late 1950s: circa 100)
Expansion of film production and cinemas
Relaxation of censorship, opening to West
Influences: Italian neorealism, French new wave (cinéma vérité), Polish school
Imported Western films
Truth and sincerity
Individual rather than collective

19. (2) Theme: WW2

20. (2) Theme: WW2
War film of Stalin era ( ) Tale of a Real Man (1948, dir. Alexander Stolper)

21. (2) Theme: WW2
War film of Khrushchev era ( ) The Living and the Dead (1963, dir. Alexander Stolper)

22. (2) Theme: WW2
New Thaw aesthetic:

23. (2) Theme: WW2 New Thaw aesthetic:
Quasi documentary faces (dirt) and clothes (baggy)

24. (2) Theme: WW2 New Thaw aesthetic:
Quasi documentary faces (dirt) and clothes (baggy)
Fewer smiles

25. (2) Theme: WW2 New Thaw aesthetic:
Quasi documentary faces (dirt) and clothes (baggy)
Fewer smiles
Gaze no longer directed into distance

26. (2) Theme: WW2
Taboos broken:

27. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at

28. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at
Soviet POWs in German captivity shown

29. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at
Soviet POWs in German captivity shown
Scared, non-heroic behaviour of soldiers

30. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at
Soviet POWs in German captivity shown
Scared, non-heroic behaviour of soldiers
Unfaithful behaviour of wives on homefront hinted at

31. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at
Soviet POWs in German captivity shown
Scared, non-heroic behaviour of soldiers
Unfaithful behaviour of wives on homefront hinted at
Disabled veterans shown

32. (2) Theme: WW2 Taboos broken:
Negative effect of Stalin’s army purge hinted at
Soviet POWs in German captivity shown
Scared, non-heroic behaviour of soldiers
Unfaithful behaviour of wives on homefront hinted at
Disabled veterans shown
 In general, human cost of war shown (heroism has a price)

33. shift from spatiality (Stalin era)  temporality (Khrushchev era)
(2) Theme: WW2
shift from spatiality (Stalin era)  temporality (Khrushchev era)

34. (2) Theme: WW2
Spatiality in war film of Stalin era ( ) The Battle of Stalingrad (1949, dir. Vladimir Petrov)

35. (2) Theme: WW2 Temporality in war films of Khrushchev era (1953-64):
Fate of a Man (1959, dir. Sergei Bondarchuk) (3:00, flashback)
Ballad of a Soldier (1959, dir. Grigori Chukhrai)
The Cranes are Flying (1957, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov) (2:30, Kremlin clock)

36. (3) Theme: Youth

37. (3) Theme: Youth
 colours in Stalin-era film Bountiful Summer (1950, dir. Boris Barnet)

38. (3) Theme: Youth
 colours in Khrushchev-era film I walk around Moscow (1964, dir. Georgi Daneliya)

39. (3) Theme: Youth k

40. (3) Theme: Youth
 body movement/language in Khrushchev-era film: influence of James Dean, Elvis Presley et al. Amphibian Man (1962, dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov/Gennadi Kazansky) (40:20:00)

41. (3) Theme: Youth
Family and its metaphors:

42. (3) Theme: Youth Family and its metaphors:
Nuclear family (instead of Stalinist big family)

43. (3) Theme: Youth

44. (3) Theme: Youth

45. (3) Theme: Youth Family and its metaphors:
Nuclear family (instead of Stalinist big family)
Dislocation, loss or crippling of biological fathers

46. The House I Live In (1957, dir. Lev Kulidzhanov/Yakov Segel) (1:30:00)

47. (3) Theme: Youth Family and its metaphors:
Nuclear family (instead of Stalinist big family)
Dislocation, loss or crippling of biological fathers
Strong, ambiguous female heroines (e.g. Nadezhda Petrukhina in Wings, 1966, dir. Larisa Shepitko,

48. (3) Theme: Youth
Soviet sixties cinema can only stage the reunion with the father or husband or lover as an imaginary act, a wish fulfillment, a projection. Their fragmented narratives can no longer tell a straightforward story because the building blocks of those stories are shot through with holes. So instead they give us a perpetual present, a youth that will never grow old, and a long farewell to what can never be brought back.
Lilya Kaganovsky, ‘Postmemory, Countermemory: Soviet Cinema of the 1960s’, in The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World, ed. Anne Gorsuch/Diane Koenker (Bloomington, 2013), 248.

49. (4) Genre: Comedy

50. (4) Genre: Comedy
Carnival Night (1956, dir. Eldar Riazanov)  49 million viewers

51. Contrast: Stalin-era Comedy
Shining Path (1940, dir. Grigori Alexandrov) (1:25:00)

52. (4) Genre: Comedy
Characteristics of Khrushchev-era comedy:

53. (4) Genre: Comedy Characteristics of Khrushchev-era comedy:
Private happiness over collective, state-governed happiness

54. (4) Genre: Comedy Characteristics of Khrushchev-era comedy:
Private happiness over collective, state-governed happiness
Parody of officialdom, bureaucrats

55. (4) Genre: Comedy Characteristics of Khrushchev-era comedy:
Private happiness over collective, state-governed happiness
Parody of officialdom, bureaucrats
Criticism of living conditions (e.g. lack of privacy)

56. (5) Andrei Tarkovsky

57. (5) Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86)
Emigrated 1982

58. (5) Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86)
Emigrated 1982
Seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), The Sacrifice (1986)

59. (5) Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-86)
Emigrated 1982
Seven feature films: Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Andrei Rublev (1966), Solaris (1972), The Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983), The Sacrifice (1986)
Developed own highly symbolic film language (‘Tarkovskian’)

61. Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Ivan without a childhood, dead Ivan

62. Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Ivan without childhood, dead Ivan
Ivan with childhood, dreaming Ivan

63. Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Tarkovsky on time: ‘Cinema, like no other art, widens, enhances and concentrates a person’s experience—and not only enhances it but makes it longer, significantly longer…What is the essence of the director’s work? We could define it as sculpting in time…The film-maker, from a “lump of time” made up of an enormous, solid cluster of living facts, cuts off and discards whatever he does not need, leaving only what is to be an element of the finished film, what will prove to be integral to the cinematic image’.

64. Ivan’s Childhood (1962)
Ivan without childhood, dead Ivan
Ivan with childhood, dreaming Ivan
No more heroes, violence of war brutalises even Red Army soldiers

65. Tarkovsky Visual Teaser

66. (6) Conclusion

67. (6) Conclusion
Generation gap between those raised on 1930s Stalin-era films and those on 1950s Thaw films

68. (6) Conclusion
Generation gap between those raised on 1930s Stalin-era films and those on 1950s Thaw films
Thaw films encapsulate contradictions of Khrushchev era:

69. (6) Conclusion
Generation gap between those raised on 1930s Stalin-era films and those on 1950s Thaw films
Thaw films encapsulate contradictions of Khrushchev era: coming to terms with Stalinist past but not really (Khrushchev’s own complicity remains taboo)

70. (6) Conclusion
Generation gap between those raised on 1930s Stalin-era films and those on 1950s Thaw films
Thaw films encapsulate contradictions of Khrushchev era: coming to terms with Stalinist past but not really (Khrushchev’s own complicity remains taboo); new freedoms but only to a certain point

71. (6) Conclusion
Generation gap between those raised on 1930s Stalin-era films and those on 1950s Thaw films
Thaw films encapsulate contradictions of Khrushchev era: coming to terms with Stalinist past but not really (Khrushchev’s own complicity remains taboo); new freedoms but only to a certain point; critiquing communism but only in order to salvage it

72. Coda
 Return of sadomasochism in Perestroika (Gorbachev era, ) Asthenic Syndrome (1989, dir. Kira Muratova)