Durham E-Theses Shklovsky in the Cinema, 1926-1932 BAKER, ROSEMARI,ELIZABETH How to cite: BAKER, ROSEMARI,ELIZABETH (2010) Shklovsky in the Cinema, 1926-1932, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/378/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Contents Contents 1 Illustrations 2 Statement of Copyright 4 Notes on Translation, Transliteration, and Dates 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1: Criminal Law and the Pursuit of Justice 20 Courts Without Law 20 Legalised Lawlessness 29 Negotiating Responsibility 37 Improvised Justice 45 Chapter 2: Realistic Discontent and Utopian Desire 57 Justice as Social Daydream 57 God, the State, and Self 64 (Dys/U)topian Dreams of Rebellion 70 Active Deeds 70 Passive Fantasies 81 Chapter 3: Myths of Domestic Life and Social Responsibility 97 At Home in the City 97 Private House, Public Home 114 Chapter 4: Metatextual Modes of Judicial Expression 136 Self-Reflexive Performance and Genre Hybridity 136 Art Beyond Representation 153 Entertainment and/or Enlightenment 161 Intertextual and Intercultural Authorial Strategies 168 Conclusion 181 Bibliography 186 Filmography 208 1 Illustrations Fig. 1 Edith (far left), Hans (centre), and Dennin (far right) at the 23 murder trial (By the Law) Fig. 2 Dennin’s posthumous return (By the Law) 28 Fig. 3 Viktor Shklovsky as Mikhail Petrashevsky (far left), while 30 Nikolai Khmelev plays Fedor Dostoevsky (centre) greeting a fellow utopian socialist (far right) (House of the Dead) Fig. 4 The Finnish recruit is flogged and dragged away (House of the 34 Dead) Fig. 5 Dostoevsky stretches through the iron grilles towards the 34 Finnish recruit (House of the Dead) Fig. 6 A lone tree and the tent where the prospectors temporarily 51 reside (By the Law) Fig. 7 The prospectors’ cabin and the Alaskan Yukon (By the Law) 51 Fig. 8 The prospectors’ cabin and its reflection in the Alaskan 51 Yukon (By the Law) Fig. 9 Hans (left) and Edith (right) drag the sledge bearing Harky 53 and Dutchy (By the Law) Fig. 10 Dennin’s escape attempt (By the Law) 54 Fig. 11 Advertising poster for Wings of a Serf 58 Fig. 12 Safiiat Askarova as Tsarina Maria (Wings of a Serf) 61 Fig. 13 Madame Golikov’s bedroom (The House on Trubnaia Square) 103 Fig. 14 Polly sleeps in her bunkbed (The Last Attraction) 103 Fig. 15 Elizaveta Petrovna at court (The Ice House) 103 Fig. 16 The screen in Wanda’s boudoir (The Traitor) 103 Fig. 17 Golikov shakes dust from his curtains on the staircase (The 106 House on Trubnaia Square) Fig. 18 Volodia leans out the train window while travelling to 107 Moscow (Third Meshchanskaia Street) Fig. 19 Kolia (left) and Liuda (right) sleep in their apartment (Third 109 Meshchanskaia Street) Fig. 20 The window of Kolia and Liuda’s apartment (Third 111 2 Meshchanskaia Street) Fig. 21 A civil war battlefield (The Last Attraction) 117 Fig. 22 A civil war battlefield concealed by smoke (The Last 117 Attraction) Fig. 23 The circus caravan (The Last Attraction) 119 Fig. 24 Serzh (far left) serenades Maria (centre) as Vanechka (far 121 right) helps her wash (The Last Attraction) Fig. 25 Polly rouses Vanechka (The Last Attraction) 122 Fig. 26 Serzh admires the view from atop the caravan (The Last 123 Attraction) Fig. 27 Maria looks out the window vent (The Last Attraction) 125 Fig. 28 Volodia stares ahead near the printing press (Third 126 Meshchanskaia Street) Fig. 29 Liuda watches Volodia while crouched near a wicker chair 127 (Third Meshchanskaia Street) Fig. 30 Parasha in the Golikovs’ kitchen (The House on Trubnaia 145 Square) Fig. 31 Semen delivers his victory speech (The House on Trubnaia 146 Square) Fig. 32 Parasha watches Semen perform on stage (The House on 146 Trubnaia Square) Fig. 33 Kurapov distributes revolutionary literature to the peasant 159 crowd (The Last Attraction) Fig. 34 Kurapov imagines himself agitating (The Last Attraction) 159 Fig. 35 The dénouement of the circus troupe’s third internal 166 performance (from left to right, standing: Vanechka, Maria, Kurapov, Serzh; from left to right, lying down: Klim, Polly) (The Last Attraction) Fig. 36 Advertising poster for The Marriage Circle 169 3 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 4 Notes on Translation, Transliteration, and Dates All transliteration of Russian conforms to the Library of Congress system (without diacrytical marks), except for personal names that have now acquired more familiar English equivalents (‘Eisenstein’ instead of ‘Eizenshtein’, ‘Dostoevsky’ instead of ‘Dostoevskii’, etc). Titles of literary and cinematic works and all key citations in the text are provided in Russian and English at first mention, and thereafter in English, while titles of newspapers, journals, and magazines are rendered in Russian only. Titles in the footnotes, bibliography, and filmography are exclusively in Russian. All translations from Russian are my own, unless otherwise stated, while Shklovsky’s notion of ostranenie is rendered as ‘enstrangement’ in accordance with the convention proposed by Benjamin Sher.1 All dates preceding the 1918 calendar reform are given in the Julian style. Where discrepancies arise over the date of a film’s release, the variant stated in The Annotated Catalogue of Soviet Feature Films has been deemed authoritative.2 1 Benjamin Sher, ‘Translator’s Introduction: Shklovsky and the Revolution’, in Viktor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, trans. by Benjamin Sher (Elmwood Park, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1998), pp. xv-xxi (pp. xviii-xix). 2 Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil´my: Annotirovannyi katalog, 5 vols (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961-1979), I-III (1961). 5 Acknowledgements The creation of this thesis would not have been possible without the guidance of Alastair Renfrew and Alexandra Harrington at Durham University and the financial support provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I am privileged to acknowledge the benevolent assistance of all staff at Gosfil´mofond, Moscow, and remain indebted to Valerii Bosenko and Galina Popova for their patience, generosity, and enthusiasm throughout my first Russian archival experience. In this regard, I am also grateful to Marianna Taimanova and Iuliia Zharikova, who ensured that a prolonged visit to Moscow was as comfortable and productive as possible. Finally, I owe special thanks to Mark and Jill Baker, without whose encouragement I would not have attempted this research project, and to Nicholas Cater, without whom I could never have finished it. 6 Introduction According to Richard Sheldon, ‘Viktor Shklovsky [1893-1984] was the first theoretician to take a semiotic approach to the cinema’.3 Alongside his colleagues from the so-called ‘school’ of Russian Formalism, who included Boris Eikhenbaum, Iurii Tynianov, Boris Kazansky, and Adrian Piotrovsky, Shklovsky endeavoured to construct a ‘poetics of cinema’ in the mid-1920s comparable to the Formalist poetics of literature.4 Although the group’s members were principally concerned with attempts to determine a scientific basis for ‘literariness’ (literaturnost´), i.e. that which makes a given text a work of literature, their claims for literature’s specificity also implied the formal specificity of other artistic media from which literature is distinguished. As Alastair Renfrew argues: 3 Richard Sheldon, ‘Introduction’, in Viktor Shklovsky, Literature and Cinematography [1923], trans. by Irina Masinovsky (London: Dalkey Archive Press, 2008), pp. vii-xvii (p. vii). 4 It is important to remember that the theorists and critics who have been grouped under the heading ‘Russian Formalism’ do not represent a unified or consistent school, movement, or method of literary theory. They were characterized as such in the 1920s by their opponents, and, conversely, in the 1960s–1980s by their supporters, who were anxious to recover that which had been lost during the Cultural Revolution: see Carol Joyce Any, Boris Eikhenbaum: Voices of a Russian Formalist (Stanford, CA: Stanford U.P., 1994). For elucidation of Formalist theory, see in particular: Stephen Bann and John E. Bowlt, eds, Russian Formalism: A Collection of Articles and Texts in Translation (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1973); Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism (London: Methuen, 1979); Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History–Doctrine, 3rd edn (London: Yale U.P., 1981); Aage Hanson- Löve, Russkii formalizm: metodologicheskaia rekonstruktsiia razvitiia na osnove printsipa ostraneniia [1978] (Moscow: Iazyki russkoi kul´tury, 2001); Robert Louis Jackson and Stephen Rudy, eds, Russian Formalism: A Retrospective Glance: A Festschrift in Honor of Victor Erlich (New Haven, CT: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 1985); Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: