Early Soviet Cinema- Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda

by David C. Gillespie

Early Soviet Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda examines the aesthetics of Soviet cinema during its "golden age" of the 1920s, against a background of cultural ferment and the construction of a new socialist society. Separate chapters are devoted to the work of Sergei Eisenstein, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga Vertov and Alexander Dovzhenko. Other major directors are also discussed at length. David Gillespie places primary focus on the text, with analysis concentrating on the artistic qualities, rather than the political implications, of each film. The result is not only a discussion of each director's contribution to the "golden age" and to world cinema but also an exploration of their own distinctive poetics.

Genres: Film

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Leonhard Euler]

This was interesting to read; it looks at silent soviet cinema by examining its five most major directors (Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov & Dovzhenko) and it does a nice job of detailing their individual ideologies and aesthetic approaches to propaganda, despite some minor factual errors (e.g. Dovzhenko didn't follow Love's Berries with Zvenigora). I would have also liked a bit of a closer look at their careers in the 1930s and 40s, an era that Gillespie passes off as one where Soviet filmmakers didn't have any artistic control over their product. But it does what it does well.