ABRAM ROOM: DECORATEUR

A thesis submitted to the faculty of 34? ... ^ San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of * K k The Requirements for The Degree

Master of Arts In

Cinema Studies

by Pavel Koshukov San Francisco, California August 2018 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

I certify that I have read Abram Room: Decorateur by Pavel Koshukov,

and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree: Master of Arts in Cinema Studies

at San Francisco State University.

Steven Kovacs, Ph.D., M.A., B.A.

Professor of Cinema

Associate Professor of Cinema ABRAM ROOM: DECORATEUR

Pavel Koshukov

San Francisco, California

2018

Most think of early Soviet Cinema in terms of its montage directors like Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, who used editing in creative ways to express their ideas. Yet, there was one director, Abram Room, who used expressive mise- en-scene, rather than editing, as his method of revolutionary art. This study will look at Room as a decorateur filmmaker. The term, traditionally, has a negative connotation that describes directors only interested in the superficial prettiness of their films through mise- en-scene. Such criticism was applied to Room by his contemporaries and historians. What this paper aims to achieve is to look at Room’s early career to reveal that his mise- en-scene becomes part of the action, interacting with the characters to reveal their psychological states, becoming the physical representation of the films’ themes.

I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this thesis.

Chair, Thesis Committee Date TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction...... 1

Early Career...... 6

Traitor...... 10

Bed and Sofa...... 15

Ghost That Never Returns...... 26

Strict Youth...... 34

Conclusion...... 49

Images...... 52

Notes 56 Introduction

In his essay Canons and Careers, Ian Christie writes about “The Five” a reference to the early leading Soviet film directors of the 1920s. Christie states that the term “The

Five” appeared in the 1930s and included Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Dziga

Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, and Aleksandr Dovzhenko. He goes on to describe the individual attributes that distinguish each director: Eisenstein is the learned genius, Pudovkin the passionate propagandist, Vertov the documentary chronicler, Kuleshov the experimental teacher, and Dovzhenko the Ukrainian poet.1 Christie was right to describe these five directors as representing the masters of the Soviet cinema canon. To this day if someone thinks of whom the best Soviet filmmakers are, the names of “The Five” will be recalled.

Evidence of this can be seen in the book by Herbert Marshall, Masters o f the Soviet

Cinema, which expands on the individual attributes mentioned by Christie. While he never uses the word, Marshall’s book is an auteur look at the directors that brings out their individual style. Marshall’s and Christie’s observations that the early Soviet film canon is identified by its directors rather than individual films is a sign that the early

Soviet masters are also early auteurs.

While “The Five’ became prominent in the 1930s, a 1926 article by Vladimir

Nedobrovo was the first to mention the top five leading directors in Soviet cinema, and had similar attributes assigned to the filmmakers that Christie and Marshall identify.2 The main difference in Nedobrovo’s article is that, instead of Dovzhenko, Abram Room occupied the last place. Why has Room been removed from “The Five”? The replacement by Dovzhenko is understandable considering the international success of his Ukrainian trilogy, the first film of which did not come out until 1927. The question remains as to why there could not be a “The Six” with the addition of Dovzhenko, without sacrificing

Room. Room’s nine year absence from the screen provides the answer. The reason for such an unproductive period was not of Room’s own doing. His first sound film, Plan o f

Great Works (Plan Velikikh Rabot, 1930), was poorly received, his production of Ilf and

Petrov’s script for One Summer Day (Odnazhdy Letom) was cancelled in 1934, and his greatest achievement, the film Strict Youth (Strogiy Yunosha), was banned in 1936, with the director fired from filmmaking until 1939. Even though most Soviet filmmakers, and artists in general, had difficulty working in the 1930s, Room’s case shows that he might have fared the worst. Fortunately, Strict Youth survived after its banning, and the film can be viewed today. Unfortunately, the story of Room as a martyred artist does not get much attention in modem times, and his name remains mostly unknown both at home and abroad. Christie makes a point of Room’s problem when discussing directors outside the canon:

a director like Room was never perceived as a martyr and consequently achieved

neither a fully validated Soviet “career” nor an accredited Western “crippled

creative biography”. Despite the consistency and quality of his individual films,

made under immensely difficult and compromising conditions, he still awaits

posthumous recognition.3

By looking at Room as an auteur director, a privilege that “The Five” usually receive as evidenced by their easily identifiable traits, the unique and individual style that is consistent throughout his early work will be evidence that he remains a master of Soviet cinema just as when he was identified as one in 1926.

The first problem that arises when looking at Room as an autem' is determining his overall style. Nedobrovo’s ambiguous identification of Room’s trait is his masterful use of details. Film historian Irina Grashchenkova described a “Roomesque”

(Roomovskiy) film as having “believability in the depiction of people, things, atmosphere, and action. Everything is shown as it is, without separating what can become an object of art on screen and what cannot.”4 Room s friend, the literary theorist Viktor

Shklovsky, also described a Roomesque film as de-aestheticized and ugly.5 In contrast to these statements, film historian, Jay Leyda wrote the following about Room’s relationship with realism: “Room seems to have experienced some revulsion against that style, for thereafter he indulged in extremely handsome, almost stylized film-manners.”6

What these statements are saying is that Room is a realist, with Leyda writing that Room used to be a realist. All of these views derive from what continues to be Room s most popular film, Bed and Sofa (Tretya Meshchanskaya or Third Meshchanskaya St.) made in

1927. Bed and Sofa tells an honest story of a love triangle that arises out of the characters living in a small one room basement in Moscow. The triangle evolves naturally, without the traditional high melodrama, and is intercut with documentary footage of city life that is reminiscent of Vertov’s films. Shklovsky is fond of this film because he and Room wrote the script together, with Shklovsky being impressed by the work on the set.

Grashchenkova believes that the film had a direct influence on Neo-Realism, after being screened in postwar Italy. At the opposite end of Bed and Sofa is the 1936 film Strict Youth which shows the

“stylized and extremely handsome film-manners” that Leyda criticizes. As Eisensteins student, Leyda’s distaste for Room’s overall style is understandable considering that

Eisenstein wrote that “Room is suffering from neurosis” and that his style “lacks factuality and is chaotic.”7 It is these criticisms that help to reveal Room’s true style, that of a stylish decorateur rather than a revealer of real life, which Bed and Sofa certainly did. In fact, Bed and Sofa should be looked at as both an oddity in Room s career, and a film that is also handsome and stylized but to a lesser extent than his other work. Strict

Youth, on the other hand, is Room’s true achievement. Film historian Maria

Belodubrovskaya wrote that Room gave everything he had as an artist in the production of Strict Youth, motivated by his long absence from film work.8 Strict Youth can be looked at as the culmination of all of Room’s previous work in one film, making it his greatest artistic achievement.

Seeing that the realism that Room is so praised for in Bed and Sofa is at odds with the rest of his early work, the question becomes how can Room’s style be described?

Leyda’s and Nedobrovo’s ambiguous descriptions of Room's over stylized and detailed aesthetics hint at the true nature of his work. With the praise that the “The Five” get, it is possible that Room was seen as an outsider. While Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, and

Kuleshov worked with real locations and environments, and edited the footage in complex montage sequences, Room took the opposite approach. Room’s stylistic traits are most evident in his use of mise-en-scene. Therefore, if the four mentioned directors from “The Five” are referred to as montage filmmakers for their creative use of editing, 5

Room, in contrast, can be viewed as a decorateur, deriving from the French word for set designer.

Unlike the montage directors who edited their films entirely themselves, Room is not credited as the production designer of his pictures, but just as Andrew Sarris suggested that an auteur director does not need to be the author of his scripts,9 this principle will also work for Room. There is evidence of Room taking particular interest in designing the sets as part of his directorial work, and the consistency of his style is further evidence of his authorial approach, especially when considering that, unlike the montage directors who used the same crew Room never used the same production designer twice. Studying under Vsevolod Meyerhold before moving to film, there are influences of theatre in Room’s sets. Often times, they are large and, in constructivist fashion, have mobile or transformative parts that change before the camera without the use of editing or other cinematic tricks. The sets themselves are not usually representations of authentic environments as much as expressions of the film’s central theme and characters’ inner emotions. Room clearly favors baroque styles and this can contrasts with his proletarian characters. It is rare for Room to set his films in a factory or farm, the two traditionally favorite environments for early Soviet film, and when he does, it is still an unusual sight for the screen, such as the crystal factory in Potholes. Typical settings for Room are either coastal vacation resorts or empty deserts, both are unusual settings for proletarian struggles. Since mise-en-scene plays an important part for Room the average shot lengths are much longer in his films than those of montage directors.

The camera often lingers on the composition, giving a tableau feel to some films. Sometimes Room explores the space of the set by either cutting closer or moving the camera in long tracking shots. That is not to say that all of these techniques are exclusive to Room in Soviet film. Interesting set designs, compositions, and camera movements are found in the films of the montage directors, while Room occasionally includes montage

sequences in his films. Room even criticized the overt theatricality of Robert Wiene’s

The Cabinet o f Dr. Caligari for not employing enough cinematic elements to an

otherwise well designed film that must have had considerable impact on him.10 Room’s theatrical background extends not only to sets, but acting as well, and if Bed and Sofa is praised for its realistic acting style, Room usually has a greater range of acting styles in a

single film, such as grotesque, biomechanical, and eccentric.

Another aspect of Room as an auteur, which is outside the decorateur style, is his

rare interest in the sexuality of his characters. While the menage a trois in Bed and Sofa is

an obvious example, along with the issues of abortion and women s independence, the

subtle homosexual motifs are rarely discussed, and there are traces of these issues in

Room’s other films. That Room would be interested in touching upon sexual subjects is

rare, but understandable considering that abortion and homosexuality were

decriminalized in Russia in December of 1917, and equality for women was promoted.

Early Career

Abram Matveyevich Room was bom on June 28th, 1894 in the city of Vilna,

Russian Empire (now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania). It seems clear that the old city, with its baroque and neoclassical architecture, had an influence on Room’s style. In his autobiography, Room writes that while in school, he showed interest in theatre but when he moved to St. Petersburg in 1914 he entered the psycho-neurological institute. He would frequent the theater and was most impressed by the productions of Meyerhold. The following year, Room transferred to the medical faculty of the Saratov University to become a doctor. At the university, he staged amateur plays with his fellow students. He did not finish his education when in 1918 he was recruited by the Red Army. Discharged in 1919 he returned to Saratov not to resume his medical studies, but to take charge of the town’s theater, abandoned after the Revolution.11 He became the theater’s leading director from 1920 until 1923. The director of the Saratov Museum, Elena Savelyeva, summarized the critical receptions of Room’s productions in such a way:

From the very beginning the director had a unique mark with his bright

spectacles, unusual settings, the use of forgotten and rare plays, circus tricks,

buffoonery, and a strict attention to the actors’ technique. Room turned out to be

the person who could organically and with enthusiasm recreate the aesthetic

principals of Meyerhold.12

It is interesting to note that this summery already anticipates Room’s work in the cinema.

The bright spectacles, unusual settings, and buffoonery suggest elements of his decorateur style, while adaptations of forgotten and rare plays were his exact concern at the end of his career. After three years in Saratov, Room had a disagreement with the theater, which insisted on realistic productions that would cater to the actor’s performance rather than focus on the play’s form. By then, Room received an invitation from Meyerhold to direct plays at his theater in Moscow.

Under Meyerhold, Room’s first job was directing Aleksey Faiko’s Lake Lul in

1923. In his autobiography, Room writes that he directed the play under the influence of cinema and that from then on his interest in that art became stronger.13 No pictures of

Room’s plays exist, but the same year there was a production of Sergei Tretyakov’s The

Earth in Turmoil directed by Meyerhold. A photograph of the rehearsal shows a huge constructivist set with a white screen intended for projection (imgl). Eisenstein’s first film, Glumov’s Diary, was also made in 1923 and intended to be projected during the performance of Aleksandr Ostrovsky’s Enough Stupidity in Every Wise Man. All of this shows that Room came to work for The Theatre of the Revolution the year that

Meyerhold was interested in incorporating film into theatre. It makes sense that Room left the theatre the following year to pursue a career in cinema.

In 1924 Room directed his first films, a pair of shorts, one on the subject of advertising an advertisement company, the other, to bring awareness to the problem of alcoholism. Already from the beginning Room failed to deliver the intended ideological messages, a problem that would follow all of his early film work. Both films were considered failures, but were recognized for their ambitiousness, with Room trying various cinematic tricks in each. Room’s ambition was rewarded with a chance at directing a feature length film. Made in 1925, Death Bay (Bukhta Smerti) is lost save for a few stills, the script, and critical receptions, but these artifacts show the early signs of the director that Room would become. The subject of the film is the revolutionary 9 struggle on board a battleship stationed in Odessa. Room chose the script because he felt he could include his experiences working on a ship during the civil war. Because of

Room’s personal experience with the subject, the film is noted for its attention to ship life and overall realism. Yet, certain aspects of the decorateur seemed to shine through.

Shklovsky recalls that the counterrevolutionary captain of the ship is lit from underneath to emphasize his role as a villain, while the crew of the boiler room is presented as having various forms of elephantiasis, creating a grotesque effect.

Grashchenkova makes an interesting point that the film was being shot around the same time as Battleship Potemkin, and that Room and Eisenstein were editing their films simultaneously at the same laboratory, making sure not to mix up each other’s footage. In a review of the time, P. Neznamov wrote that Death Bay has an unfortunate fate of coming out shortly after Potemkin, and that “Room’s ship cannot out maneuver the impactful montage of Eisenstein’s battleship.”14 As film critic B. Gusman wrote in his review, “Room needs to work more with scissors.”15 Defending Room’s style, Shklovsky wrote that “Room showed that a reel does not need to be filled with events. For the first time we saw an exciting piece of 80 meters and understood that American montage is not the only way to make reels.”16 Shklovsky is describing a long take scene (2min, 54sec) that starts off as a card game and escalates into a knife fight. An impressive example of the use of a single take to show the escalation of tension in silent cinema, without resorting to montage. But most opinions seem to have agreed with Neznamov’s comparison to Potemkin, and Death Bay ended up having a mixed reception. 10

Traitor

In 1926 Room directed his first true decorateur film, Traitor (PredateI). The story is in two parts, the first is about the persecution of Bolshevik sailors of the battleship

Saratov (a Reference to Room’s theatre days) during WWI, the second takes place after the revolution and is about trying to find the spy who informed on the sailors. While the surviving print of the film is incomplete, there is enough material to showcase Room’s style. The first element of the film that catches attention are the opening credits that describe Vasili) Rakhals as the production constructor. This is different from the usual description of production designer in Soviet credits of the time and could suggest that it is

Room himself who was responsible for the artistic aspect of the film’s design. Rakhals was possibly the constructor of the sets, responsible for overseeing the technical aspect.

Traitor is shot in a tableaux style with long stationary compositions that linger on the details of the sets and the locals of the town. The first half of the film is mostly baroque, with the main locations being a brothel, a mansion, and the streets of the coastal town. The brothel is made up of five rooms, a lounge (img2), stairs (img3), hallway

(img4), and two bedrooms. All of the rooms are constructed sets and are oversaturated with designs and odd touches, such as the stuffed wolf with a top hat by the stairs, or the hearts and the line of doors leading to the prostitutes rooms in the hallway. The main lounge looks grand in size, with striking symmetric mirrors and a strong focal point in the middle, created with a spotlight. The lounge compliments well with the mansion of the businessman villain (img5), which is also grand and baroque but is shot in an actual 11 building in Yalta, along with the exteriors. As a resort town, Yalta is an unusual location for proletarian sailors. With its mansions, castles (img6), and gardens (img7), the setting is far removed from the industrial docks. The contrast is emphasized by the baroque brothel that the sailors visit. It is unlikely that brothels of the time would look like the one depicted in the film, especially for it to be frequented by regular sailors. Room sacrifices realism in order to create a setting that symbolizes the decadence of capitalism by combining the ornate with the profane. The quarters of prostitutes are then similar to those of the millionaire. Overall, the setting of Yalta functions as a bourgeois prison for the revolutionary sailors, most of who will be arrested and executed. A conversation between two sailors behind an ornate fence visually suggests the idea of a prison (img8), the curvatures of the designs tangling into them.

Perhaps the most unique aspect of the set design is in the two prostitutes’ bedrooms. One of the bedrooms is visited by a sailor who is in love with a prostitute

(img9). When they are about to go to bed, a large fan opens up, blocking the view of the action (imglO). There is no logic for the fan since the two characters are in a private bedroom, it only serves as a theatrical device to censor the intimacy from the camera. An unusual approach for cinema considering that Room could have simply cut away from the shot at the right moment. Such a constructivist set adheres to Meyerhold’s view of

“the setting becoming part of the action”.17 The mobile part of the bedroom interacts with the action of the characters, and the audience watching. Another example of playful constructivism is when the businessman enters what appears to be a bathroom with a girl in a tub (imgl 1). The bathtub opens up, revealing that it is in fact a bed with pillows and a mattress (imgl2). Again, there is no cinematic logic in having one set function as both a bath and a bedroom. Room seems to be incorporating a theatrical stage trick in the cinema instead of using montage, while also pointing out that in a public house a bed and a bath are both places for sexual encounters. The two sets suggest that things are not what they seem and obscurity of action that is representational of the espionage plot.

The prominence of the public house to the plot of the film is unusual considering that the story is about Bolshevik sailors. The first title card of the film even reads that

“Often a Provocateur can be found by his treatment of women.’* The traitor of the film frequents the public house more than others and gets drunk, revealing revolutionary

secrets to the workers of the establishment who are secretly connected to the government.

These actions cause the sailor’s arrest and transformation into a traitor by agreeing to work for the government and spy on his comrades. A different sailor who is in love with one of the prostitutes is shown in a more sympathetic light since his only interest in the place is to visit the woman he loves. But both of these different characters are connected to the public house because most of the revolutionary sailors are shown to have an interest in visiting the place, which is why the government has an interest in it as well.

Room takes the individuality of his revolutionaries further than most directors by revealing them as sexually active flawed men.

With the first half of the film depicting the downfall of Bolshevik sailors during

WWI, the second half takes place in the present and involves the surviving sailors trying to figure out who betrayed them. The plot structure of the second half is interesting because the viewer knows the identity of the traitor who now has a successful life. There is sympathy for his character in that most of the part concerns him trying to h'de his identity and protect the peaceful life that he has from the mistakes of the war past. The traitor’s paranoia is visually represented by cutting to a shot of dead bodies hanging from the noose against the sky (imgl3). This shot is repeated throughout the film, and is an early example of Room’s interest in dream sequences that reveal his characters emotional states, becoming more elaborate with each subsequent film. Most of the action takes place in the traitor’s large house, and, stylistically, Room distinguishes the two parts by having the sets of the house made in a decorative but modernist rather than baroque style (imgl4). Strict, repetitive lines, rather than elegant curvatures, decorate the wallpaper. While the two styles serve to separate the pre and post-revolutionary periods, the modernist design also reveals the identity of the traitor by showing him as overcompensating his pro-revolutionary sentiment. The idea is further exaggerated by the visual appearance of the traitor (imgl5), with his hat, glasses, chin beard, and a tight leather jacket, the look is that of a stereotypical revolutionary of the 1920s. This appearance creates a contrast to the normal looking, good revolutionaries (imgl6). The appearance of the characters and their acting style distinguishes them between the good and the bad. Such an idea is especially evident in the first half of the film, where normal looking and acting sailors (imgl7) contrast the grotesque workers and rich patrons of the brothel. One character in particular is shown playing the piano, with his image reflected in a large mirror (imgl8). His bald head, frowning expression, large eyes, and unnatural movements shows a grotesque acting style that reveals him as one of the villains, contrasting the more subtle acting style of the sailors and other protagonists. Much like Death Bay, Traitor came out to mixed reviews, praising the director’s skill and effectiveness of the film as a thriller, but criticizing him for overindulgence in the visual stylizations of the environment. Nedobrovo’s review reveals the price for overt individuality:

Traitor is all made up of details: the stream of water coming out of a facet,

von Dietz’s money, the fan in the public house, the hand of the traitor, all stick

out of the everyday environment of the picture. This is no longer a basic

technique but exquisiteness. Not just a shot but a beautified shot. This is an

aesthetic of a virtuoso. Uniquely his. Touches of style? Perversion, simply

sadism. The invisible execution in Traitor. These stylistic touches are unbearable.

They are unnecessary and assault the nerves.18

Ironically, the critique serves as evidence of Room being a decorateur, with criticism aimed at the shots with aestheticized mise-en-scene. Nedobrovo is ahead of his time since his criticism will be a staple of all the rest aimed at Room’s films. He continues his review by saying that Traitor feels like a foreign product which, according to him, is not a compliment for a Soviet film. The main reason given is the lack of ideology in the script. This lack of ideology was probably a reference to the baroque sets, the brothel location, and the choice of Yalta, all of which looks inviting rather than critical of the bourgeois lifestyle. These locations and style, together with the sympathy for the traitor in the second half, and the genre of a suspense thriller give the film a bourgeois feel, even with its innovative style and overall pro-revolutionary sentiment. Nedobrovo concludes 15 the review by saying that he has low hopes for Room since his next project is about a woman who has sexual relations with two men at the same time.

Bed and Sofa

Even though it is possible to argue that Bed and Sofa has elements of Room’s

more flamboyant decorateur approach, the film’s realism and minimalist quality is

undoubtable. The question arises as to why Room would want to make such a film?

Especially when considering that the previous effort and his following work will not

adhere to these principles. Room himself states that “after working on two large scale

pictures, there is a temptation to work on a film in which the material world is

condensed”.19 While that may be so, a more probable reason is revealed by Shklovsky:

The year 1927 was a difficult time for cinematography, for a number of reasons

there was no money for cinema, so we had to write a script, the production of

which would cost only a minimum. Third Meshchanskaya St is based on minimal

attractions, the use of a cityscape and one poor stage.20

It seems strange for there to be no money for cinema in 1927 when there was quite a few

the previous year. Yet, with 1927 being the anniversary year of the revolution, the

number of reasons mentioned by Shklovsky is most likely the fact that most production

money went to films that dealt with the revolutionary theme, especially the epics like

Eisenstein’s October and Pudovkin’s The End o f St. Petersburg. 16

Bed and Sofa is about a couple, Kolya and Lyuda, who live in a one room

basement in Moscow. When Kolya’s wartime friend, Volodya, unexpectedly arrives

because he has nowhere else to stay, the couple let him live on their couch. After Kolya

goes out of town for work, Volodya and Lyuda start an affair, and by the end of the film

she is pregnant without knowing who the father is. Part of the reason why Nedobrovo

thought of this project as ideologically unsound is because such dramas were labeled as

bourgeois, belonging to the prerevolutionary tradition of Russian cinema of depicting

love triangles between members of the upper class (such as the films of Yevgeny Bauer).

Eisenstein even has a passage in Film Form that sates “We brought collective and mass

action onto the screen, in contrast to the individualism and the triangle drama of the

bourgeois cinema.”21 Even if he intended to subvert the melodrama of the love triangle,

Room’s film is problematic from the start considering the anniversary year of the

Revolution.

Much like Room’s first feature, Death Bay, Bed and Sofa partly derives from the

director’s personal experience. The lack of living space for workers in Moscow is similar

to the housing shortage that Room experienced while studying in St. Petersburg, living

for almost a year without a permanent place to stay. Since the main location of the film is

a single small set designed to look like a basement, Shklovsky and other critics have

described the film as de-aestheticized. However, the design of the basement is

oversaturated with small details of decor and household items. The official poster for Bed and Sofa even features a decorated piece of lace that covers Lyuda’s face (imgl9),

suggesting an aestheticized rather than a drab setting. Each comer of the basement is 17 filled with detail. The comer with the couch features a wall mg, various pictures hanging, and a cupboard with china. The couch itself is decorated with floral patterns, while the dining table beside it has a white table cloth and set silverware (img20). Wallpaper also covers the entire basement walls. The couple have their own comers that reveals their character. The husband’s comer has plans and rulers hanging on the wall, and a shelf with rolled up charts that reveal his profession as a foreman (img21). The wife’s comer features a vanity table with mirror, perfume bottles, and little statuettes (img22). A movie poster, various photographs, and even a picture of a stork that hints at her pregnancy later in the film, hang from her wall. The location of her comer underneath the stairs of the floor above is a feature that suggest that her character is walked over by the men. The contrast between the husband’s and wife’s comers also reveal that the husband has a career and, therefore, meaning in his life, while the wife’s stereotypical, feminine comer shows her lack of purpose and the reason for her unhappiness. Even if the basement set does not feature movable parts, a large scale, or constructivist designs, it does adhere to

Meyerhold’s key requirement for the setting to become part of the action, with Room’s set revealing who the characters are to the viewer before any explanatory titles. The set is also aesthetically pleasing, especially when compared to a film that came out around the same time. Boris Barnet’s The House on Trubnaya is also a film that deals, in part, with the housing shortage in Moscow, and takes place around a single location. Unfortunately,

Barnet’s one room apartments have featureless walls and limited props (img23), suggesting nothing that the character living in the room is a barber. Looking at the various details found in every part of the basement in Bed and Sofa shows that, although small, the mise-en-scene is not poor or de-aestheticized, and adheres to Room’s decoratuer style.

Another interesting element about the mise-ne-scene is the expressive use of props. A steaming teapot suggests that Lyuda is having sex with Volodya (img24). More curios is the use of a porcelain cat, a gift to Lyuda from her husband. When Lyuda cries near the end of the film, a tear drop falls on the face of the cat (img25) making the mise- en-scene share in her sorrow. But the most important prop is Lyuda’s mirror. In their first intimate contact after the husband leaves, a composition shows Lyuda in the reflection of the mirror (img26). Her gaze is downwards while her hand supports her head, making emphasis of her wedding ring. Volodya’s only presence is shown throw a hand caressing

Lyuda’s hair. In a survey of world cinema, World on Film, Martha Nochimson writes that the interior composition of this scene “sums up the unhappy marriage of the film’s heroine”.22 Nochimson even points out that Room’s film uses single image mise-en-scene to create effective frames, rather than the montage of his colleagues.

Lyuda’s reflection has other meanings as well. For one, she is the central image while Volodya’s only presence is his hand caressing her ha*'. The caressing of the hair recalls the same action done before by Kolya (img27), foreshadowing that Volodya will be no different than Kolya in his eventual treatment of Lyuda. The mirror also suggests that Lyuda is not physically a part of the house, as the men are, but just a reflection. This idea is strengthened by having her the only person that is fully reflected in the mirror, the only exception comes at the very end when she leaves. The two men do not know what to do with themselves, and their concern reflects in Lyuda’s mirror (img28). The beginning 19 foreshadows the reflection of the two men, when Volodya is the first character introduced. As the train arrives in Moscow, a double reflection shows Volodya’s face in the train’s window (img29), creating a symmetric composition that opens and ends the film. Reflections also open the views of Moscow to the film. After Volodya arrives at the city, the buildings are shown as reflections in puddles and the Moscow River. A striking example is a reflection of the Church of Christ the Savior (img30), a ghostly image that is foreboding considering the church’s demolishment in 1930. Like Lyuda’s reflection, these images also suggest that the city is something that can be looked at but not interacted with, or, in Volodya’s case, the lack of housing makes the city unlivable.

An element of Bed and Sofa's mise-en-scene that is rarely mention is the use of lighting. One of the aspects of lighting is especially surprising considering that it breathes life to an otherwise artificial set, creating the realistic look that the film is so praised for.

While the basement is a set, one side of it has windows (img31), decorated with flower pots and curtains. Through the windows, shadows give the appearance of life happening outside. This use of light does not only apply to shots of the windows, for the day scenes of the interior, there is a subtle but constant play of shadows falling on the walls of the basement to create the feeling of people and cars moved past the windows. The effectiveness of this lighting makes the basement feel like an actual location. There are also small hints of the expressionistic use of lighting as well. When Volodya, unexpectedly, first enters the home, Lyuda gets scared and hides behind a chair. The sunlight from the window throws a decorative shadow from the chair on her face (img32). A similar lighting pattern shows up in Volodya’s printing factory. When he thinks of Lyuda, an almost identical shadow decorates his face (img33).

There is also the creative use of double exposures to expand on the limited space

of the set. Even though Room is not fond of the technique as it appears only in Bed and

Sofa. The first instance of a double exposure occurs when Kolya and Volodya argues

after he finds out about the affair. Lyuda hides behind a curtain that covers the entrance to the basement. The image of the curtain is laid over with a close up of Lyuda’s face

listening to the argument (img34). The creative image solves the problem of filming

Lyuda in a tight comer where she is hiding. A more creative use of a double exposure

reveals a dream that Kolya is having after he leaves the house. Mad at his wife for

cheating on him, Kolya goes to spend the night in his office but is uncomfortable sleeping

on his desk. He begins to dream about how spacious his small basement actually is.

Room shows the dream by having a double exposure of Kolya lying on the bed along

with an image of him sitting on the rocking chair (img35). Such a use of a double

exposure builds on the complexity of dream sequences that Room started with the image

of the hanging sailors in Traitor.

During the production of Bed and Sofa in 1927, the Bolshoi Theater was being

renovated, giving Room the opportunity to employ this event in his film. While it may

seem that the film lacks the Roomesque touch of having exotic locations, the way Room

presents Moscow is somewhat unusual. As mentioned, the reflections of buildings in the

water give the city a ghostly look. The sight of The Bolshoi Theater, covered in a web of

construction beams, is a surreal sight (img36). It is here that Kolya works as a foreman. 21

Room was able to give his character a job that is proletarian but still surrounded by

unique sights. The environment of the construction workplace, with its many beams, and

multiple levels of walkways, remind of the large constructivist sets of Meyerhold’s

Theater (imgs37-38). The camera captures Nikolai Batalov (actor playing Kolya) and the

construction workers acting on this stage, with the vistas of Moscow as the backdrop

(img39). The location also offers the contrasts of architectural styles that Room likes to

include. The constructivist beams and walkways intermingle with the neoclassical

facades and statues of the Bolshoi’s decor (img40). The camera filming through the

beams on top of the old building provides a dichotomy of the modem and classical.

Perhaps the most famous aspect of Room’s most famous film is the strong

feminist element, unusual for film of the time. The only feminist film, with a similar message, to predate Bed and Sofa is Germaine Dulac’s 1923 short The Smiling Madame

Beudet. Unlike Dulac s film, in which the heroine tries to kill her husband as a protest

against her abusive marriage, Room’s Lyuda decides to leave both the men and the home in order to pursue an independent life as a single mother. While her future is uncertain,

Lyuda rides the train into the distance with confidence, calling for women to not be afraid in following her example. The message of women's independence and equal treatment is the main theme that the film ends with, but there are other progressive ideas introduced throughout the story. An alternative title to Bed and Sofa and Third Meshchanskaya St is

Menage a Trois, that is, a sexual relationship shared between three people. Culturologist

Yan Levchenko points out that in the Soviet Union of the 1920s The People’s Commissar for Social Wellness, Aleksandra Kollontai, advocated the principles of free love and criticized the bourgeois concept of possessive relationships.23 With the two men sharing a

woman in Bed and Sofa, and with the woman switching between the two men based on

who treats her better, it suggests this concept of free love and hints at a possible

polygamous relationship. The highlight of this idea comes when both men show up at the

clinic to say that they are the father of Lyuda’s child. Even though such a relationship

does not succeed by the end of the film, throughout the course of the story the

polygamous arrangement is, pretty much, depicted.

The scene of the abortion clinic also shows another new social reality of the

Soviet state, that of the legalization of abortion. Room depicts the women in the waiting

room as a social strata of different people who require an abortion for different reasons

(img41): there is a woman much like Lyuda herself, a prostitute who is a regular as part

of her work, a peasant woman who seems to already have kids and is struggling

financially, and a frightened underage girl waiting with her mother. Lyuda herself is part

of this spectrum, as she represents a new woman facing a choice if she wants to keep a

baby without knowing who the father is.

The final progressive theme of the film, that is popular in modem readings, is the homosexual subtext between Kolya and Volodya. Both Nochimson and Levchenko point

out that by Lyuda’s departure, the two men are left as the new couple. The sexual aspect

of their relationship, after Lyuda’s departure, is suggested when Kolya asks Volodya if he

would like some tea, while both of them are lying on their respective bed and sofa. The

association of tea with sex refers an earlier scene when Volodya asked Kolya for tea, to

distract him and be intimate with Lyuda. The boiling teapot was used as a symbol for the sexual act. The idea of Kolya and Volodya sleeping together was also suggested when

Volodya first arrives. Kolya explains to his wife that they fought together in the civil war and slept under the same overcoat. After saying this, Kolya gives Volodya a quick fraternizing kiss while patting his head (img42). They exchange a much longer kiss in a romantic embrace (img43) when Kolya sneaks up on Volodya and Volodya kisses him thinking it is Lyuda. The problem with this comedic scene is that Kolya is not aware of

Volodya’s relationship with his wife and does not seem offended by the unexpected kiss.

Another comedic moment with homoeroticism occurs when Kolya takes a break at the

Bolshoi restoration. He sits next to a nude male statue and leans his head against its genitalia to take a nap (img44). All of these instances of homoeroticism point to a possible homosexual relationship between the two men who enjoy each other’s company much more than Lyuda’s. Homosexuality along with abortion, polygamy, and women’s independence, show a survey of the forms of free love that were discussed in Soviet society of the 1920s. It also shows Room building on the aspect of exploring his characters’ sexuality that he started in Traitor, and with the theme of having strong women characters being present in most of his films until the end of his career.

Bed and Sofa continues to enjoy some popularity as one of the best Soviet films of the 1920s, mostly because of its progressive messages. However, the depiction of liberal sexuality and female independence did not sit well with most Soviet critics of the time. If Traitor had one notable piece of criticism attacking Room’s excessive style, historian Peter Kenez describes how the reception of Bed and Sofa “was greeted with a storm of abuse. Soviet critics did not want to see films about life as it was.”24 The 1927 issue of the film journal Soviet Screen even had a satirical poem titled Room, Lost His

Mind on the Gender Question.25 The criticisms almost anticipated Nedobrovo’s prediction that Room’s next film would be ideologically unsound. Luckily, in 1927 films that faced harsh criticism were not yet banned, and Bed and Sofa screened across the country and found its supporters. Film critic K. Denisov wrote that “it seems Room’s main concern was to speak on behalf of the underdeveloped woman-the housewife. We already know from his previous picture Traitor, that he is knowledgeable in depicting

women's plight.”26 The film was more warmly received abroad, especially in France and

Germany. In 1928, Room attended a screening of his films in Berlin and was shown around a large studio where sets were being built in a former zeppelin hangar. Room wrote that he was impressed by the large sets and technical craft of this studio, and it seems this would influence his desire to recreate the same scale oack at home.27 In the end, the experience on Bed and Sofa did not give doubt to Room’s confidence as an artist, and his next film would be an unofficial sequel to Lyuda’s story.

Made in 1928, Potholes (JJkhaby) tells the story of a woman working in a factory with her husband. After she gets pregnant, the husband insists that she gets an abortion.

When the wife decides to keep the baby, the husband begins an affair with a different woman, while the wife gets laid off because of her pregnancy. Potholes is a darker version of Bed and Sofa. Unlike Lyuda, the heroine in Potholes did not choose to be a single mother who moves away from her husband. The plot is then more factual rather than idyllic in depiction of the struggles of single women of the time. As is the case with

Death Bay, Potholes is now lost, but there are descriptions of the film that not only 25 suggest traces of Room’s decorateur style but also elements that foreshadow his future projects. Vladimir Nedobrovo gave a more favorable review to Potholes, and described how Room was able to incorporate his fondness for aestheticized images by changing the location from a lumber, which was originally in Shklovsky’s script, to a crystal blowing factory. The change allowed for Room to film his characters through different types of glass, while also intercutting the development of their relationship with the formation of a vase that shatters when they break up.28 The review shows that Room was able to change elements of Shklovsky’s script in order to accommodate his own style. Another authorial element is pointed out by film historian Naum Kleiman. The plot of the film included the characters putting on theatrical productions in the factory. One of these productions was an ancient Roman play and had all of the workers dressed in togas. Kleiman makes a connection that the inclusion of this play in the film foreshadows the ancient Greek and

Roman motifs that are prominent in Room’s latter film Strict Youth29 The worker’s theater also references the past, when Room organized amateur plays at the medical university. Even though Potholes is lost, the available information on the film suggests that it is also a decorateur film, with aesthetic images of crystal rather than wood and coal

(img45), and prominent use of theatrical elements. While Jay Leyda called Potholes

Room’s last film in the realist style of Bed and Sofa,30 other evidence points to it being stylistically in time with Room’s other work. Ghost That Never Returns

In 1929 Soviet cinema witnessed a stunning image in Room’s film, Ghost

That Never Returns (Prividenie, Kotoroe ne Vozvrashchaetsya. Abbr. Ghost). A huge

Panopticon prison fills the screen with levels upon levels of cells in the background, each occupied by an extra. In the middle, a guard sits in a rotating booth, observing all

(img46). Today’s audience might think that the director had a premonition of the future state of Soviet society, with the huge prison representing the atmosphere of paranoia, persecution, and lack of privacy that would define the latter part of the decade. Yet,

Room is using the key set piece to visually define the theme of Henri Barbusse’s story of persecuted oil workers in an unnamed Latin American country, on which the film is based on. The plot is about Jose Real who has been in prison for 10 years for revolutionary work. Prisoners are granted a leave of 24 hours for every decade served, but if they fails to return in time, an agent will shoot down the prisoner on charges of trying to escape. The Panopticon cleverly highlights the film s central theme of trying to survive in a world under constant surveillance, whether in or outside the prison walls.

To accommodate the size of the prison, the set was built from scratch, outside, in a desert near Baku, Azerbaijan. With its grand scale, multiple levels, and mobile element, the prison looks like it could feature an entire production at Meyerhold’s theatre. The many intersecting lines from the cell bars and catwalks gives the set a constructivist feel, making the appearance both stylized and practical. The symmetrical, circular set with a radiating focal point in the middle, somewhat resembles the style of one of Meyerhold’s most successful productions of Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector in 1926 27

(img47). A similar style can be traced in the set design of Room s next film, Strict Youth.

Renowned theatre director, and Meyerhold’s admirer, Boris Golubovsky, even wrote an article in 1998 praising the mise-en-scene and compositional quality of the film:

Room’s film is compositionally complex, as if every frame was created by our

favorite masters, like Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Rodchenko, a work of graphic,

architectural, and engineering art: unexpected angles break our perceptions of

space, sharp contrasts of black and white.31

The opening image of the prison in Ghost makes it seem like it will be shot in a tableau style similar to Traitor, but Golubovsky’s review points out otherwise.

The following action in the prison shows that the set allows for various shots to be filmed that create striking compositions. The first transition from the opening long shot of the prison is a dramatic cut to a close up that reveals the individual face of Jose in his cell

(img48). The following sequence shows Room employed a healthy dose of cinematic techniques that compliment his already complex mise-en-scene. As new prisoners march into their cells, the camera captures them walking on the catwalks from a high angle,

showing the height and the curving lines of the many walkways below (img49). As one of the prisoners escapes, a long shot shows the prisoner and the guards running on

different levels of the catwalks (img50). A low angle camera placement shows the prisoner and guards run above the camera (img51). When they surround him, the prisoner jumps, and the camera follows him to the ground (img52), cutting to a high angle shot for the impact (img53). Jose reacts by calling for the prisoners to riot, and a high angle shot

has the camera swing back and forth as the prisoners throw their plates and spoons on the 28 ground below, next to the body (img54). This high angle shot contrasts a low angle one looking from the ground up at the cells as the prisoners throw their items. Hand held move from side to side, tilting to extreme angles that suggest the photographs of

Rodchenko that Golubovsky mentions (img55). Room then cuts to the warden’s office, a large, empty space with an oversized desk and chair in the foreground, and a huge door in the background that symbolize the scale of power (img56). In contrast to his office, the warden is a small man with a crooked spine and animal like behavior (img57). Leyda criticizes the grotesque acting style as “unreal stylization that is only occasionally punctuated by a right gesture from Room’s past. 32 Yet, the acting of the villains is in tune with Room’s previous work, such as the deformed engine room workers in Death

Bay and the brothel laky in Traitor. The scene continues with the warden ordering for the prisoners to be hosed down, and there is a series of quick cuts of the streams shooting up at the cells (img58) and the prisoners getting hit. The sequences climaxes with a fast metric montage that cuts from a close up of Jose’s screaming face to the long shot of water streams. A return to the tableau long shot of the entire prison reveals that this time there are bars and a lock in the foreground that encompasses the entire frame, with a row of soldiers standing in the background, ideally fitting between the bars (img59). What is also amazing about this composition is the use of deep focus that keeps all of the elements of the composition in view, from the bars in the foreground to those of each individual cell in the distance. The next shot is a low angle looking up at the cells

(img60), followed by a high angle shot looking down at the ground (img61). A strict line of soldiers stands in both perspectives. Finally, the scene ends with static tableau of the opening, contrasting the handheld camera moves and quick cutting that expressed the 29 chaos of the prison riot. Order is restored, and the bars in the foreground, and the lined up soldiers, visually suggests the implementation of that order.

The opening prison scene of Ghost reveals Room using various techniques to create a dynamic scene and show the complexity of his set, its three dimensional aspect that could be filmed from many angles. This builds on the more simple montages of city life and factory work interspersed throughout Bed and Sofa, and it shows Room has given answer to his criticism of Caligari for only relying on the theatrical mise-en-scene for its effect. Some scenes go the opposite direction and employ more of aspects of the mise-en- scene to depict the psychological state of a character. After Jose learns about his one day leave, he is full of anticipation as he awaits for the day when he will be released. Jose’s anticipation is depicted by showing him thinking about his family and friends. Instead of cutting away to shots of the family or using a double exposure to show them appear in his cell, Room has actors physically sit in the cell as Jose thinks of them. Jose is visited by his wife (img62) and then his father (img63). They sit motionless, like statues, lit by a spotlight, while Jose walks around them without making contact. As the wait becomes agonizing, Jose is seen lying face down and leaning against a comer of his cell at the same time (img64). This is a variation of the shot that showed Kolya sitting and laying down in Bed and Sofa. A significant difference in this case is that instead of utilizing the generic technique of a double exposure to show the two actions simultaneously, with the ghostly faint image suggesting that this is but a fantasy and not reality Room uses physical people. A body double laying down represent the same Jose that is also clearly leaning against the wall. It is a decorateur maneuver, as Room is restricting himself to working only with the elements of the mise-en-scene. Room is showing a purely mise-en- scenic way to convey emotions in silent cinema.

Just as striking as the fabricated sets are the use of locations in Ghost. To create an unnamed Latin American country that would look alienating to Russian viewers,

Room shot in the desert and oil fields of Azerbaijan. The landscapes look truly surreal, as if constructed especially for the film. Outside the prison walls, the empty landscape is punctuated by forests of oil towers (img65) and electric poles (img66). The oil towers, made out of many intersecting wooden beams, appear like some constructivist protrusions, reminiscent of the wooden beam webbing that engulfed the Bolshoi in Bed and Sofa.

After his release, Jose takes a train to go to his home town, but misses his stop

after falling asleep. In panic, he jumps off the train, followed by an agent ordered to shoot him if he fails to return on time. Jose is forced to transverse the vast desert on foot, and the two men are shown as tiny specks on this barren landscape (img67). The flat desert

landscape is reminiscent to that of Crimea, where in 1927, Room shot a short

documentary Jews on Land (Evrei na Zemle. img68). In the documentary, the Jewish

settlers are trying to build a kolkhoz in the desert by burrowing for underground water, and their bodies are also shown as small specks against the desert.

The flatness of the landscape breaks when Jose sees a lone hill that, with its

curving edge, reminds of some sitting animal (img69). Jose climbs on top of this strange

looking hill and, for a moment, he thinks he sees his home in the distance, but the

distortion of the image reveals it to be a mirage. Exhausted, Jose passes out on top of the 31 hill, and upon waking up, he realizes that his time is out. He springs up, trying to escape the agent, but ends up getting shot. The agent, trying to reach Jose’s body, ends up stuck in quicksand (img70). Lying on the ground, Jose sees a wagon pass him by, carrying his wife. The wife jumps out and comforts Jose (img71), but a sudden cut reveals that it is the agent standing over him (img72) and that they are, in fact, back on the hill. The agent states that Jose still has some hours left.

It is as if the surreal quality of the landscape has generated such a disorientation.

With sleep creating the first obstacle for Jose, the viewer expects to believe that this problem could happen a second time. Characters experiencing visions is something that was seen in Room’s films before, whether it is the hanging sailors in Traitor, or Kolya thinking about how spacious his apartment is in Bed and Sofa. With Ghost, Room creates a complex dream sequence that seems as if it is part of the actual plot. The mise-en-scene, with its weird looking hill, suggests the unreality of what is happening. Such a technique appears in an identical way and on an even larger scale in Strict Youth. The dream also suggests that what is driving Jose to keep going is the chance to see his wife. It is interesting to note that the wife, played by Olga Zhizneva, is Room’s actual wife, and she would return to play the main love interest in Strict Youth, showing a personal connection to Room's idea of a perfect woman. While the character of the wife is not a strong individual as the women in Bed and Sofa and Potholes, the fact that a woman is the main motivator of the protagonist is interesting and explains the reason for an otherwise unnecessary dream sequence. By the end of the film, Jose refuses to return to the prison and resumes his revolutionary activities with his comrades, creating an obligatory statement of the importance of revolutionary struggle for Jose. Yet, the visions of his family at the prison, and the strange dream of his wife during a moment of desperation reveals the psychological state of Jose who is only thinking about his wife. This gives the film a more romantic and thus bourgeois streak since the desire for a wife and a home

(which Jose sees in the mirage) are bourgeois ideas of property that should not be primary motivators for Soviet protagonists.

With its baroque sets and the location of Yalta, Traitor created an unusual environment for a revolutionary struggle that typically involves factories or the country side. Room continued this tradition in Ghost, with its set of the Panopticon prison and the

Azerbaijani oil fields, creating another unordinary backdrop for an otherwise basic revolutionary message. In his review of the film, Siegfried Kracauer points out the quality of the mise-en-scene:

One cannot but be amazed at the masterful use of space. Through a high

angle shot the prison floor stretches to the size of a desert; the stone walls

surrounding the long road, stretching to infinity from the prison, is a sign of

paralyzing fear. Most striking is the unique landscape of the oil industry, a

grotesque view where trees are replaced by oil towers and telegraph poles. This

landscape consumes people, it literally devours the prisoner.33

Much like Nedobrovo’s review of Traitor, Kracauer makes note of some of the stunning images that Room creates but the review is an unfavorable one. Being a proponent of realism in cinema, Kracauer’s interest in Soviet film is understandable, and this is why

Room’s film is problematic. Kracauer criticizes the film for its lack of content, saying 33 that “Instead of augmenting with realism, which is common for Russian cinema, the film trades it for empty stylization. The film only works as a picturesque canvas”. If auteurs are usually discovered through positive receptions from film to film, then in Room’s case we can find evidence of his auteurship through the similar criticisms expressed by

Eisenstein, Nedobrovo, Leyda, and now Kracauer. All four criticize Room for allowing his expressive mise-en-scene to take over the content of his story, whether ideological or realistic. Even though Room tried to have an ideologically sound message in Ghost with a story that promotes the communist struggle in other countries, the visual beauty of the film makes it more an exercise in formal and, particularly, mise-en-scenic stylization.

While Ghost was successfully completed and shown around the country and abroad, its production marked the beginning of Room’s downfall as a leading director. It is hard to find the records of the budget that Ghost cost, but based on the look of the film, from the distant locations to the huge sets, it seems Room was more ambitious after the modest productions of Bed and Sofa and Potholes. The evidence that Room pushed his budgets past their limits can be found in articles that describe his failed production of

One Summer, based on the script by the famous writing duo Ilf and Petrov. An article by

Room’s assistant director, N. Rudenko, titled Room’s Bridge is of a satirical nature that describes Room as a talented artist, but points out his follies. The article concludes that

Room wasted 500,000 of the 600,000 ruble budget, having shot only five percent of the picture. The reason for this was because the script had many scenes taking place on and around a bridge. Instead of shooting on an actual bridge, Rudenko complains that Room wasted time and money by constructing a bridge and a moat of water from scratch. The 34 set was soon destroyed by bad weather before any scenes could be shot. As for locations,

Room wanted to shoot in the resort town of Sukhumi, Georgia, on the coast of the Black

Sea. Rudenko makes a point that lazy directors prefer to location-scout on the warm coast of the Black Sea to escape the cold weather in Moscow. He accuses Room of using location scouting as a means of getting a paid vacation.34 While these seem like legitimate accusations, it is possible to argue against them when looking at Room’s previous mise-en-scenes. With the exception of the Moscow setting in Bed and Sofa, both

Traitor and Ghost follow the formula of having intricate set designs of places that could otherwise have been shot on location (prostitute’s bedroom, prison), while the locations themselves are in exotic locales that complement the outlandish designs (Yalta,

Azerbaijan). Yalta, in particular, is a Black Sea resort town like Sukhumi. Following this pattern, it makes sense for Room to construct a set of an otherwise everyday thing in order to give it an expressive quality of a decoratuer, while the location of Georgia was still a remote and unique place to depict in Soviet cinema of the time. When Room blamed the studio, Mosfilm, for sabotaging the production by not giving more money for completion, he was transferred from Moscow to Ukrainfilm Studio in Kiev as punishment. Ironically, the remote studio offered Room his last opportunity to continue to indulge in his excessive style, resulting in the creation of his true masterpiece.

Strict Youth

Strict Youth is about a Komsomol, Grisha, who falls in love with the young wife, Masha, of a respected and wealthy surgeon, Stepanov. With Bed and Sofa and 35

Potholes, Strict Youth makes it the third time Room has had a love triangle be a central part of his plot. Just as in the two previous films, the love triangle serves not for a melodramatic effect, but as a way to comment on Soviet society. In the case of Strict

Youth, the love triangle develops against a background of the communist future, a classless society in which the young Komsomols debate as to what moral characteristics people should have. The script was written by the famous author and playwright Yuri

Olesha, whose plays have been adapted by Meyerhold. Film historian Yevgeny Margolit wrote that the script was publicly debated in 1934 as to whether it should be produced, with many criticisms given to the fact that the script was too literary to adapt and had characters that played sports and had philosophical debates instead of working in factories or the fields. This omission of ordinary workers and their environments is what may have drawn Room towards the script, considering his previous adaptations. Margolit points out that Meyerhold was at the debates and defended the script against criticism.

Room even offered Meyerhold and his wife, Zinaida Reich, the roles of Stepanov and

Masha, with Meyerhold considering the part before declining.35 Although Meyerhold had

still considerable respect at the time, Maria Belodubrovskaya states that it was a period in

Soviet cinema when the government wanted to attract professional authors to write

scripts in order to curb the authorial power of the director. Since most writers were reluctant to work in the cinema, any script written by a respected writer was given a pass.30 This allowed for the final product to have lines of dialogue that were not so subtle

in criticizing the direction that society was heading. 36

Throughout the film, there are many arguments between Grisha and his friends, and Stepanov’s servant, Tsitronov. To explain why Stepanov deserves special luxuries that the Komsomols protest, Tsitronov asks Grisha, “You agree that there are few people like Prof. Stepanov and many like you?” Grisha agrees, to which Tsitronov replies, “Then you agree that socialism does not mean equality” (my translation). Grisha’s friend Kolya

(same name as that of the husband in Bed and Sofa) reacts by saying that Tsitronov should be killed. A dark exchange in an otherwise humorous film that hints at the increasing danger of having an ideological opposition in Soviet society. The exchange also throws possible criticism at the revolution itself by hinting that people react violently at the wealth of others. A humorous exchange between Grisha and Stepanov has Grisha

state that “a Komsomol should have pride” after being offended by a joke, to which

Stepanov replies “a Komsomol should have a sense of humor”. The dialogue criticizes the strict ideals by which the Komsomols live, hence the title of the film. Another odd

device from the script in the film is the unnatural repetition of lines and lack of filters in

the characters, they seem to say anything that is on their mind. One of Grisha’s friends

says “Do you really not understand?” every time somebody asks a question, repeating the

line a total of 12 times throughout the film. Kolya, on the other hand, states flatly that

Grisha is in love with Masha to Stepanov’s face, to which Stepanov replies that he feels

like he is in a dream, hinting at the film’s dreamlike quality.

For his part as director, Room created his most beautiful images in Strict Youth

that seem to build on everything that he has done previously. Visually, the opposition

between Stepanov’s world and that of the Komsomols is depicted through contrasting designs. The architecture of Stepanov’s mansion leans towards the baroque, while the

Komsomol facilities are in a neoclassical style, referencing the real life Stalinist architecture that was being built throughout the country at the time. Despite these oppositions, the overall look of the film’s setting is described by Levchenko as “ghostly white architecture in a vacation resort style”.37 This description matches the feel of the locations in Traitor, with Yalta being a resort town. Room's reassignment to Kiev gave him proximity to the Black Sea, allowing him to film in Odessa’s resorts without criticism.

When Grisha first arrives on Stepanov’s estate, a large, decorative, fence separates him from the mansion. The huge curls of the fence decorate every shot of this introduction, whether it is a shot of the mansion from Grisha’s point of view (img72) or a shot of Grisha from the other side (img73). The baroque curvatures of the fence compliment the style of the mansion and contrast the strict neoclassical architecture of the Komsomols. A white background behind Grisha creates a chiaroscuro effect of the dark fence, while the decorative curls seem as if they are entangling the protagonist.

Much like the more modest decorations on a fence symbolized a bourgeois prison in

Traitor, or the many shots through actual prison bars in Ghost that depicted physical entrapment, the fence in Strict Youth symbolizes Grisha’s entangled obsession with

Stepanov’s wealth and young wife. Assistant director Isai Lelikov wrote how it took a long time to construct the fence especially for the film from Room’s personal sketches, to the dismay of the rest of the crew, since in Olesha’s script there was but one line, “A young man looks through a fence.”38 A small element of the script, such as an act of looking through a fence, turns into a moment of aesthetic beauty and visual meaning.

Lelikov’s notes give evidence to Room’s already established obsession with decor, to the point of impracticality in the view of his colleagues, and that he took it upon himself to design some of the sets of the film.

In Olesha’s script a small scene of Grisha’s friend, Kolya, having a dream about attending Stepanov’s party becomes the radiating center of the film’s style and meaning for Room. As in Ghost, when Jose realizes that he was dreaming on top of a hill, the fact that Kolya is dreaming is not apparent. The setup of the scene is that Grisha was originally invited to attend Stepanov’s party, for which Kolya had to go through the trouble of finding a tuxedo in a theater’s costume department, but is then uninvited after

Stepanov learns of Grisha’s feelings for Masha. Kolya insists that he goes regardless, but

Grisha says that will not lower himself to such an act and throws the tuxedo at Kolya.

Room then cuts to Stepanov’s fence at night. Kolya goes up one of the pillars with ease, as if there was a staircase behind it. When he is on top of it, a spotlight illuminates Kolya as if he was a music conductor (img74). This surreal image makes sense considering that

Stepanov is holding a piano concert. Kolya’s theatrical entrance continues with a stroll through a magical garden of unnaturally huge flowers (img75), some of which are literally shown flying around. Kolya walks past Tsitronov guarding the door, and enters a huge banquet hall (img76). The hall is like a circular arena reminding of the prison in

Ghost and Meyerhold’s symmetrical stages. Besides a baroque chandelier, the walls of the hall are white, without ornamentations, and, with the scene shot in soft focus, look especially ghostly. The floor is black and reflective, creating a strong contrast that 39 matches the tuxedos of the guests. A white line runs through the black floor, ending on a long staircase on the other side. The strong visual composition of the set is emphasized with a focal point in the middle on which the grand piano sits. The hall is overtly large for the mansion, and its design is neither baroque nor neoclassical. Belodubrovskaya compares the set to those of Hollywood RKO musicals of the 1930s.39

There is another instance of absurdist dialogue. During the performance, the pianist stops playing. When Masha asks what happened, Stepanov replies “You are distracting us Masha” after which she goes to Kolya, only to hear the music stop age n and Stepanov repeats the same line. The sudden chemistry between Kolya and Masha is shown by having artificial butterflies circle around them. Room is devaluing dialogue and showing true emotions of his characters through the use of props. After this scene, the music stops and Stepanov repeats himself for the third time, during which Grisha suddenly appears running down the staircase yelling “What do you mean distracting? She is music herself. Listen to her movement. Here is here kiss, listen.” As Grisha says this line, romantic music begins playing on the soundtrack, and a cut from a close up of

Grisha and Masha back to the establishing long shot of the banquet hall reveals that they are now the only two people inside. Grisha kisses Masha and the whole set begins to transform. The black reflective floor reveals to be water as ripples begin to run through it, into which the chairs and the white pathway submerge, leaving Grisha and Masha on an island surrounded by water. Lotus flowers surface around them, as well as fountain streams. A change in lighting makes the walls transparent, revealing chiaroscuro tree branches, finishing the transformation of the hall into a pond and forest (img77). While 40 the transformation happens before the viewers’ eyes without editing, Room cuts from this romantic moment to one of slapstick comedy. In one movement, Kolya strips naked from his tuxedo and steals Tsitronov’s cream pastries. He perches on top of the same pillar he came from and begins to fling the pastries at Tsitronov, covering his face in cream.

Kolya’s posture on the pillar is identical to the ancient Greek statue Discobolus (img78).

The dream sequence ends by showing Grisha kneeling down at Masha’s feet in a medium shot (img79) with fountain streams in the foreground. A cut shows Kolya in a similar posture, but outside holding a tree (img80), with the rain waking him up. He goes to

Stepanov’s gate, but learns of the party’s cancelation because of the weather.

Since Strict Youth, as a whole, is aestheticized to the point of absurdity, it does not become apparent that the banquet sequence was a dream. Even with the unnaturally large flowers in the garden, and a hall that is too large to be possibly located in the mansion (the set of the hall was described to be 6 stories high, approximately the size of the prison in Ghost), because the scene is so lengthy it makes it seem as if it but a stylized interpretation of a wealthy celebration. The final cuts between Grisha holding Masha, and

Kolya holding the tree are the exact same way that Room revealed the dream in Ghost when he cut between Jose’s wife and the agent. What makes the dream scene in Strict

Youth more confusing though is that, besides the surprise of the dream reveal, it is revealed to be Kolya’s dream, even though the main action was of Grisha’s romantic encounter with Masha. Besides being unnecessary for the plot, the ending of the dream also serves to confuse the viewer, making it difficult to understand whose interpretation the dream is and for what purpose. The transformative stage was the most expensive part of the film and its technical complexity required the expertise of the engineer Morits

Umansky, who shares an art director credit with Vladimir Kaplunovsky. With the final production cost totaling 1,700,000 Rubles, a figure that Belodubrovskaya states is over budget,40 it is easy to imagine that the reason for this could be the extravagant sets, reminding of the case of Room’s bridge during the production of One Summer Day. The scene also shows Room’s interest in experimenting with sound, Strict Youth being his first official sound film. This is most evident when Grisha says to listen to Masha s movement and kiss, in response to which beautiful music plays on the soundtrack, complementing the beautiful composition and Masha s statuesque stance (img81). The experimentation is also evident in the absurdist dialogue and the repetition of lines.

Just as the prostitute’s bedroom stands for the obscurity of action in Traitor, the apartment in Bed and Sofa for marital constraint, the crystal factory in Potholes for marital fragility, and the prison in Ghost for paranoia, the banquet hall in Strict Youth represents the central theme of the film. The transformative power of love literally transforms the entire stage. With Grisha restricting himself from expressing his feelings to a married woman, the scene visualizes what he feels. This set is an even better expression of Meyerhold’s constructivist stage than the prison in Ghost. The hall, transforming before the eyes to express the love between the two characters is the perfect example of setting becoming part of the action. While the intercutting of literal pie in the face slapstick humor provides an element of attractions, with clowning technique being common for Meyerhold. It is possible to imagine these two different actions of romance and humor happening on a theatrical stage simultaneously. Narrative wise, the scene 42

serves no function, so its extravagance has to be understood purely in a symbolic way.

Even though a central theme of the film is Grisha’s love for Masha, the two never have a true romantic encounter. Since Grisha only appreciates Masha voyeuristically, the dream shows that this world is an extension of Masha s beauty transformed by her presence.

She is also music herself, as Grisha listens to her body before making physical contact.

Again, this is a very Meyerholdesque technique. As theatre designer Norris Houghton points out, “Meyerhold believes that the emotion of abandonment and joy with which a man is filled can much more accurately be revealed if he slides down a ten foot S curve to meet his lady than if he follows the dictates of natural development.”41 In Room’s case, the “ten foot S curve” is a banquet hall that transforms into a pond garden. With the rest of the film lacking in emotional depictions, this one scene concentrates all of the emotional power in itself and is expressed purely through the mise-en-scene, making it a decoratuer approach to love.

Shooting in the usual tableau style, the dream scene, while exciting in its transformations, does not have the exciting editing and cinematography as the prison

scene in Ghost. Room makes up for this lack in other scenes. One of them utilizes the tableaux and editing in a uniquely original way. After having worked out, Kolya is scene

entering a gymnasium for a massage. He walks by a pillar with a man standing like a

statue (img82), two sections of a hallway filled with people and adorned with actual

statues (imgs83-84), and finally enters the massage room (img85), which, without having

shown any entryway, seems like it is located at the end of the corridor. This is a curios

manipulation of space since by cutting to the next composition after Kolya walks past it, 43

it makes it seem like a single whole location that has been cut down into four parts. What

follows is a debate about the morals of the Komsomols, but instead of getting together

into one large group, the people in each tableau communicate with the people in the

other, with the shot cutting to the tableaux of the person speaking. It is a strange scene for the viewer is not exactly sure what the distance is between each shot, with standard perception suggesting that the shots of Kolya walking by only shows some of the pathway that he walked, and not in its entirety, but the editing between the conversations

makes it seem as if the areas of each shot are right next to each other. The strange use of

space is best evident when Kolya easily speaks from the massage room to the man

standing outside the gym.

In contrast to the tableaux cutting style of the scene mentioned, the spaces of two other scenes are captured entirely through long tracking shots. When Grisha needs a tuxedo for the party, Kolya goes to a costume wardrobe where his father works to get one. The two minute tracking shot follows Kolya in the backstage of a theater as he walks past a strange storage of Christian statues (img86), a ballet recital (img87), and finally up the stairs to the wardrobe (img88), with the stairs covered in artificial foliage similar to the one seen in the dream. The shot is impressive in the smooth movement of the camera, and just as he did in Ghost to keep the large set in focus, Room’s use of deep focus keeps both Kolya and the dancing ballerinas in the background in clear view. Having the backstage be the main stage for the scene is also reminiscent of Meyerhold’s technique of incorporating the backstage into the set. Another two minute tracking shot contrasts the previous one by using the depth of the set. The camera tracks back as doctors walk towards it (img89). The movement reveals a large surgical auditorium and the doctors sit around the operating table (img90). The camera keeps tracking back to reveal Stepanov and another surgeon having a casual conversation as they are washing their hands in preparation for surgery (img91). The deep focus is strong enough to keep the details of the operating table behind the surgeons in view. Both of these shots are impressive for their time and are a new way for Room to reveal his sets. The two minute long takes also recall Room’s first use of it back in Death Bay. With this being Room’s first sound film, the camera movements are a strong way to showcase audiovisual synchronization, especially in the shot of the operating auditorium, which ends on a conversation between two characters. Room’s decorateur emphasis with long shots that show his mise-en-scene transfer well to sound, making Strict Youth a more accomplished sound film from a silent master than Pudovkin’s Deserter (1933), which works better as a silent film with its aggressive montage sequences that interrupt live sound recording.

Another unique aspect of the film’s style is in the opening scene. The film opens with a nude Masha going for a swim (img92) and then coming out of the sea, resembling the birth of Venus. This is a significant change from Olesha’s script in which Masha is first shown sailing on a boat in a river, providing another example of an auteur director who does not write his own films but changes the script to match his stylistic sensibilities.

Other moments of the script are followed in minute detail, even if they normally should not be. As a novelist, Olesha’s first film script was overtly literary, for which he was criticized. Room must have enjoyed the challenge of giving visual form to some of

Olesha’s lyrical descriptions, such as a dragonfly shadow on the wall of the mansion 45

(img93), used as a transition between Masha going in and out of the water. Such

decorative shadows also bring to mind the shadow play on the surfaces of walls and faces

in Bed and Sofa. Opening the film with a horizon of the Black Sea also follows the near

identical openings in Death Bay, Traitor (img94), and Jews on Land (img95), down to the element of foliage appearing in the comer of each shot. Foliage itself becomes an important recurring motif throughout the film. It is evident as artificial decorations in the theater, in unusually large plants and flowers in the dream sequence, and its shadows cover the walls of Stepanov’s hospital and Grisha’s room (img96). Such stylistic use of foliage serves to remind of the numerous trees, parks, and gardens that saturate the

environment of the film (img97), making it another element of what makes this communist future otherworldly. Otherworldly because during this time the Soviet Union was going through rapid industrialization through Stalin’s five year plans, and Soviet cinema was filled with images of large industrial works, deforestations, factories and mines. Room's already distinct film creates another contrast through its constant reminders of nature in its compositions.

Masha emerging like Venus from the water is but one example of the Ancient

Greek elements in the film. Other references to Ancient Greece become more obvious as

when Grisha and Kolya race actual chariots (img98), when Kolya practices throwing the

discus, and when they and other Komsomols have debates about moral conduct in a gymnasium decorated with life size statues of male nudes. Stepanov appears composed

next to a small female nude when he is thinking of Masha (img99). These depictions of

male and female nudity, through statues and physical bodies, create a sexually charged 46

atmosphere, much like the proximity of bodies in the living space of Bed and Sofa.

Kleiman called the nudity in Strict Youth “a manifest for the rehabilitation of the body”42

saying that Room saw the future of communism in the antiquity of Europe. Kleiman goes

on to say that Strict Youth continues the frankness of the sexual discussion in Bed and

Sofa by including the depiction of visible bodies. Both films also share the similarity of

having love triangles at the center of their plots. Having a love triangle as a central part of

the plot of a film about the communist future does seem like a strange approach

considering that melodrama was still considered a bourgeois art. Even Room’s attempts to subvert it in Bed and Sofa were still met with criticism. Perhaps Room thought that the

subversions of melodrama were going to be approved in Strict Youth but it just ended up

making the film more unclear of its intentions. For one, the relationship between Grisha

and Masha appears purely platonic, maybe intending to be another Greek motif. The only passionate kiss the two share s the one that happens in Kolya’s dream, and by the end of the film, after having taken a stroll together against Stepanov’s will, they seem to break

up. The final exchange between them has Masha say “I want to propose something to you” after which they kiss and the last shot of the film has Masha return to Stepanov, taking his hand. Such an ending is open to interpretation, have Masha and Grisha broken up and, after sharing their only real kiss, decided not to see each other. That would be the morally acceptable action of a Komsomol, but without this being stated clearly, it could

be very well that the two might plan on meeting in secret. This would create another

bourgeois problem of Masha returning to Stepanov only for his money. Levchenko makes another connection between Bed and Sofa and Strict Youth in that not all of the sexual motifs are necessarily heterosexual, hinting at another reason for the film’s banning when he states that “The Stalinist aesthetic was picky and chose to leave out the homosexual motifs of antiquity.” 43 There is evidence for this when considering the prominence of male nudity in both the undressed Komsomols playing

sports and massaging each other in the gymnasium, as well as the naked male statues that surround them. Male beauty is also emphasized by Grisha’s low self-esteem that causes him to inspect his features in a mirror fa reference to Narcissus) asking others if he is beautiful (imglOO). The composition is somewhat similar to the one of Lyuda’s reflection in Bed and Sofa. Homoeroticism could also be a part of the dream sequence when considering that the entire action is a dream of Grisha’s friend Kolya, who is dreaming of

Grisha embracing Masha. If Kolya is secretly in love with Masha as well, then why would he replace himself in his own dream with Grisha? If Grisha and Kolya work as a better couple, then the same could be said for Stepanov and his servant Tsitronov.

Throughout the film the two enjoy each other’s company more, with Tsitronov being not so much an actual servant as a friend who lives with Stepanov Masha appears more of the servant as she types Stepanov’s speeches, assists him during surgery as a nurse, and drives him around in the car, even fixing the motor herself while he waits inside. Masha is a wife made a servant like Lyuda in Bed and Sofa, but with a difference in tnat Masha shows signs of an educated woman, with knowledge of automobiles and medicine. 48

After starting the production on July of 1934, Strict Youth was finally banned in

June of 1936, almost two years later.44 Director of the Ukrainfilm Studio, Mark Tkach, made this declaration on why the film’s banning:

Formalistic playfulness, distasteful stylization, emphasis on physical beauty,

become the main points of the film, especially, such scenes as the stadium,

Grisha’s dream (Tkach makes the mistake of not realizing that it is actually

Kolya’s dream), walking through the theater. Cinematographer (Yuri) Yekelchik,

giving himself over to Room’s direction, gave his photography over aestheticized

qualities, stylization, and mystical formlessness Room, who at one time was

relieved from Mosfilm for his lack of discipline, is removed from directing in

cinematography.45

The declaration reveals that Room not only suffered the fact that his film will be banned, making it the sixth year of his absence from the screen, but that he was also fired as a

film director. Another part of Tkach’s criticism is that the film ‘is an example of foreign

influences penetrating into Soviet art”, mirroring Nedobrovo’s “foreign product”

criticism of Traitor. The declaration also states that it is Room’s style that is the primary

target of the film’s failure. Belodubrovskaya argues that the film was primarily banned

because of its content rather than its style,46 and while that makes sense considering

Olesha’s script already had the love triangle and philosophizing Komsomols in its plot,

the fact remains that the script was passed for production. What is more likely is that the

studio hoped that by accepting an overly literary script for production the director

assigned would instinctively want to adapt the descriptions into simple images. With 49

Socialist Realism being proclaimed as the only official art style of the Soviet Union in

January of 1935,47 Room had hoped that by accepting this script he could continue to

experiment stylistically. After all, a film about a future communist society seems to

adhere to the principle of Socialist Realism of not showing reality as it is but as it should

be. Evidence of this is shown in Room’s confidence during production, as seen by the

excitement in his telegrams to Olesha to see the rough cut, and by the utter surprise and

devastation when he realized the film was not going to be shown.48 By employing his

style to the maximum, Room thought that he was creating the most “real” Socialist

Realism. For Room Soviet society should be filled with art, nature, love, and philosophy,

and not depict the actual hardships and struggles that were happening in the process of

industrialization and militarization.

Conclusion

On January 17th of 1936, the campaign against Formalism and Naturalism in

Soviet art was launched after Stalin criticized the constructivist elements of the opera

Quiet Flows the Don.49 The campaign clarified the ambiguous meaning of Socialist

Realism by rejecting stylistic experimentation from its definition. While most historians

discuss the shutting down of Eisenstein’s production of Bezhin Meadow as the ultimate

sign for all filmmakers to fall in line, the event actually did not happen until March of

1937, long after Strict Youth was banned and its director criticized. Fellow director

Leonid Trauberg even wrote that Strict Youth was banned to make an example of Room

for others to see, Trauberg writes: 50

The failure of A Strict Young Man testified that an old conception of the master

as a self-sufficient genius who sat at the film studio and was one hundred percent

responsible for his creative work had become not only obsolete but also

counterrevolutionary.50

Trauberg’s perception of the film’s banning is insightful in that he believed that it aimed at stopping directors from making films that showed their individual traits. Essentially, the campaign against Formalism in cinema can also be called a campaign against auteur directors. The fact that Room was one of the first directors whose film was banned shows that he continued to be regarded as an auteur, enough to be made an example out of. That

Eisenstein did not follow this example explains why there was so much public criticism created around his Bezhin Meadow the following year.

Unlike Eisenstein, who did not live long enough to witness his rehabilitation,

Room was around when Strict Youth was finally screened at the Moscow International

Film Festival in 1963. Yet, it is only recently that the film received any critical attention.

Jay Leyda continued to d"'miss all of Room’s post Bed and Sofa work, and while he strongly supported those directors that suffered censorship, he approved of the banning of

Strict Youth, writing “There was sympathy when Room's film was taken from Soviet screens, with reprimands for him and the author, but for once the punishment fitted the crime.”51 In contrast to this shocking statement, today the film is being viewed as the best work of its director. Having a film banned and then being temporarily fired from directing must have had an artistic toll on Room since his subsequent films have not been as artistically creative as some of his contemporaries, granted that Socialist Realism under Stalin had reduced the artistic quality of most talented directors. A closer look a

Room’s Socialist Realist work does reveals signs of him trying to salvage some creative traces from his past. There is the two minute tracking shot in Squadron No. 5 (Eskadrilya

No.5 1939) that follows two pilots walking past a veranda cafe, the deep focus reveals a military airfield in the background (imglOl). Windfrom the East (Veter s Vostoka 1940) features not only a large and circular set in the vein of the prison and banquet hall in

Ghost and Strict Youth (imgl02) but also the baroque architecture of Room’s hometown of Vilnius. Even though these examples are few and far in between, and pale in comparison to the more extravagant set design of Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, it does show a continuity that is traceable throughout all of Room’s work. On the other hand,

Eisenstein’s stylistic approach in Ivan is much more different than the realism and montage of his previous work. After Stalin’s death and the Thaw period, Room made a trilogy of films based on Russian classics that all featured love triangles, strong female protagonists, and baroque architecture on the Crimean coast.52 It is as if Room picked up the themes he left off on in Strict Youth in his last pictures. While the latter films are not as visually exciting as Room’s earlier work, his career as a whole shows a consistence

over a long period of time and despite the political censorship that makes him a prime example of a Soviet auteur filmmaker. 52

Images 55 56 57 58 59 60

97 98 99 100 101 102 56

Notes

1 [an Christie, “Canons and careers: the director in Soviet cinema” in Richard Taylor, Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (New York: Routledge Inc., 1993), 149. 2 Vladimir Nedobrovo, Zagranichnyi Produkt (Foreign Product) https://chapaev.media/articles/5 878 (originally published: Kino (Leningrad Edition), 1926, No. 49, 7 December). 3 Christie, 169. 4 Irina Grashchenkova, Osobyi Dor Rooma (Room’s Special Gift) https://chapaev.media/articles/5626 originally published: Iskusstvo/Art 1977) my translation. 5 Viktor Shklovsky, Room. Zhizn i Rabota (Room. Life and Work) https://chapaev.media/articles/5650 (originally published: Tea-Kino-Pechat /Theatre-Cinema-Print 1929) my translation. 6 Jay Leyda, Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film (Princeton University Press, 1983), 216. 7 Cited in Mikhail Yampolsky, Sublimatsia kak Formoobrozovanie, Zametki ob Odnoy Neopublikovanoy Statie Sergeya Eizenshteina (Sublimation as Formation, Notes on Sergei Eisenstein’s Unpublished Article) https://chapaev.media/articles/5633 (originally published: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski /Film Study Notes 1999, No. 43) my translation. 8 Maria Belodubrovskaya, Politically Incorrect: Filmmaking under Stalin and the Failure of Power, https://search-proquest-com.ipllnet.sfsu.edU/docview/912740659?accountid= 13 802 (Order No. 3488733, The University o f Wisconsin - Madison, 2011), 181. 9 Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory”, in Barry Keith Grant ed., Auteurs and Authorship (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008), 43. 10 Abram Room, Kino i Teatr (Cinema and Theatre) https://chapaev.media/articles/5876 (originally published: Sovetskiy Ekran/Soviet Screen 1925, No.8) my translation. 11 Room, Autobiography https://chapaev.media/articles/5627 (originally published: Muzey Kino/Museum o f Cinema 1994). 12 Elena Savelyeva, VGMTI v Saratove 1920-1923 (VGMTI in Saratov) https://chapaev.media/articles/5879 (originally published: Saratov: Areal, 1995, Issue No.7), my translation. 13 Room, Autobiography. 14 P. Neznamov, Udacha Rezhissyora (Director’s Luck) https://chapaev.media/articles/7127 (originally published: Kino, 1926, 16 February) my translation. 15 B. Gusman, Teatr i Kino (Theatre and Cinema) https://chapaev.media/articles/7125 (originally published: Komsomolskaya Pravda (Komsomol Truth) 1926, 13 February), my translation. 16 Shklovsky, Chem Nuzhno Udivlyatsya (What to be Surprised By) https ://chapaev.media/articles/7122 originally published: Sovetskiy Ekran/Soviet Screen 1926, No. 4), my translation. 17 Robert Leach, Vsevolod Meyerhold (Cambridge University Press, 1989), 87 18 Nedobrovo, Zagranichnyi Produkt (Foreign Product), my translation. 19 Room, Tretya Meshchanskaya (Beseda s Rezhissyorom A. M. Roomom) (Third Meshchanskaya St (A Discussion with Director A. M. Room)), https://chapaev.media/articles/5627 (originally published: Kino 1926, 14 September), my translation. 20 Shklovsky, Room. Zhizn i Rabota (Room. Life and Work), my translation. 21 Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. Translated by Jay Leyda, (Harcourt Inc., 1977), 16. 22 Martha P. Nochimson, “Russia: Utopia and Dystopia”, in World on Film: an Introduction (Wiley- Blackwell, 2010), 87. 23 Yan Levchenko, Istoria Bolezni (History o f Sickness), http://www.cinematheque.ru/post/140900/print/ 2009. 24 Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society: 1917-1953 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1992), 60. 25 Argo, Room, Svikhnuvshiysya na Polovom Voprose (Room, Lost His Mind on the Gender Question) https://chapaev.media/articles/5645 (originally published: Sovetskiy Ekran/Soviet Screen No. 10,1927) 57

26 K. Denisov, V Zashchitu Nerazvitoy Zhenshchiny (In Defense o f the Underdeveloped Woman) https://chapaev.media/articles/5640 ^originally published: Sovetskiy Ekran/Soviet Screen No. 5, 1927), my translation. 27 Room, Tam Ya Uvidel Neabychainye Veshchi (There I Saw Unimaginable Things) https://chapaev.media/articles/5644 (originally published: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski/Film Study Notes, No. 58, 2002) 28 Nedobrovo, Zavod Igraet (The Factory Performs) https://chapaev.media/articles/5642 (originally published: Kino, No.5, 31 January, 1928). 29 Naum Klaimen, Drugaya Istoria Sovetskogo Kino (Alternative History o f Soviet Cinema) interview by Bernard Eisenschitz https://chapaev.media/articles/5646 (originally published: Kinovedcheskie Zapiski/Film Study Notes, 2001, No. 50). 30 Leyda, 216. 31 Boris Golubovsky, Rezhissura Vysshego Klassa (First Class Direction) https://chapaev.media/articles/5654 (originally published: Bolshie Malenkie Teatry/Large Small Theaters, 1998), my translation. 32 Leyda, 257. 33 Siegfried Kracauer, The Human Arsenal, https://chapaev.media/articles/5652 (originally published: Frankfurter Zeitung, 1929, 8 November), my translation. 34 N. Rudenko, Most Imeni Rooma (Room’s Bridge), https://chapaev.media/articles/5883 (originally published: Kino, 1934,22 March). 35 Yevgeny Margolit, Room-Formalist, https://chapaev.media/articles/5662 (originally published: Izyatoe Kino/Confiscated Cinema 1924-1953,1995). 36 Belodubrovskaya, 219. 37Levchenko, History o f Sickness, http://www.cinematheque.ru/post/140900/print/ my translation. 38 Isai Lelikov, Grashchenkova, Mezhdu Strokoy i Kadrom (Between the Line and Frame) https://chapaev.media/articles/5877 (originally published: Iskusstvo Kino/Cinema Art, No. 11,1996), my translation. 39 Belodubrovskaya, 171. 40 Belodubrovskaya, (2015) Abram Room, A Strict Young Man, and the 1936 Campaign against Formalism in Soviet Cinema. Slavic Review, 74(2), 311-333., 315. 41C. Moody, Vsevolod Meyerhold and the "Commedia Dell’arte www.jstor.org/stable/3727599 (originally published: The Modem Language Review, vol. 73, no. 4, 1978, pp. 859-869), 867. 42 Kleiman, Alternative History o f Soviet Cinema, https://chapaev.media/articles/5646 my translation. 43 Levchenko, History o f Sickness, http://www.cinematheque.ru/post/140900/print/ my translation. 44 Margolit, Room-Formalist, https://chapaev.media/articles/5662 45 Mark Tkach, Postonovlenia Tresta “Ukrainfilm” o Zapreshchenii Filma “Strogiy Yunosha” (Declaration o f the Studio “Ukrainfilm” on the Banning of the Film “Strict Youth”) https://chapaev.media/articles/5663 (originally published: Kino, 1936,28 July), my translation. 46 Belodubrovskaya, (2015) Abram Room, A Strict Young Man, and the 1936 Campaign against Formalism in Soviet Cinema. Slavic Review, 74(2), 311-333., 312. 47 Maya Turovskaya, “The 1930s and 1940s: cinema in context”, in Richard Taylor, Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (New York: Routledge Inc., 1993), 43. During the January, 1935 cinema conference marking the 15* anniversary of Soviet cinema. 48 See Milena Michalski, Promises Broken, Promise Fulfilled: the Critical Failings and Creative Success of Abram Room's Strogii Iunosha (Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 82, no. 4, 2004, pp. 820-846), 831-832. 49 Ekaterina Khokhlova, “Forbidden Films o f the 1930s” in Richard Taylor, Derek Spring, eds., Stalinism and Soviet Cinema (New York: Routledge Inc., 1993), 95. 50 Belodubrovskaya, “Abram Room, A Strict Young Man, and the 1936 Campaign against Formalism”, 311. 51 Leyda, 336. 58

52 The Garnet Bracelet (1965) based on a novella by Aleksandr Kuprin, Belated Flowers (1970) based on the first story by Anton Chekhov, and A Man Before His Time (1972) based on an unfinished play by Maksim Gorky. Room dedicated the trilogy to music, the beauty o f women, and human endeavor.