As Lenin said, “of all the kinds of arts, the most important for us is cinema.” Images could get through to people’s consciousness in a way that words could not. They could also sell in a way that words could not. The ability of a film to influence the minds of its audience in Russia was far greater than in America, simply because there was less noise in the marketplace. Ernst did not set out to sell an ideology—he did not really have one—but he used ideology to sell the films he produced.
