Iurii Olesha, Abram Room and Strogii Iunosha-Artistic Form and Political
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lURn OLESHA, ABRAM ROOM AND STROGII lUNOSHA - ARTISTIC FORM AND POLITICAL CONTEXT Milena Lily Michalski School of Slavonic and East European Studies Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of PhD 1999 ProQuest Number: U118707 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U118707 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT Strogii iunosha was a unique experiment to create a new art form, conceived by the author lurii Olesha and developed by him and the director Abram Room. It was intended to be, at once, a literary and a cinematic work of art. Room's film was banned, but Olesha's written version was not. Analysis of previously unconsidered production notebooks for the film Strogii iunosha reveals the reason for this. Other scholars have suggested that the change in the prevailing political atmosphere between 1934 and 1936 on the one hand, or the effects o f the differences in the natures of literature and cinema on the other, explain why the film was banned, yet the scenario was not. While both have relevance to a comprehensive explanation, analysis o f the notebooks shows that, more than either, the crucial factor is the director himself. Room's enduring fidelity to the original and his profound understanding o f Olesha's intentions simultaneously kept the film true to Olesha's vision and surpassed it. Doing so in the prevailing political and cultural circumstances made the film's banning inevitable. This explains the different outcomes for the two parts o f this artistic experiment. Contents Page Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 Preface 9 Acknowledgments 15 Illustration: A photograph of Olesha and Room 17 Chapter 1 Introduction: the different fates of Strogii iunosha - the soviet context and the nature of the medium 18 i) The question of Strogii iunosha: critical views 22 Illustration: Poster for future films from the Kiev and Odessa Ukrainfil'm studios 29 ii) Soviet politics and culture: the transition o f the late 1920s-1930s 35 iii) Film and literature: the nature o f the medium 38 iv) The thesis: political context, nature of the medium and artistic intent as keys to the divergent fates o f Strogii iunosha 50 Chapter 2 lurii Olesha: before and after Strogii iunosha 54 i) The development and decline of an inveterate writer 55 Illustration: A caricature depicting Olesha and his 'unnecessary themes' 62 ii) Zavist' 70 iii) Olesha and cinema: invention and compromise 77 iv) Scriptwriting and screenplays 94 v) Conclusion 106 Chapter 3 Abram Room: before and after Strogii iunosha 108 i) Room: from theatre to cinema 111 ii) After Strogii iunosha 114 iii) Before Strogii iunosha 128 Illustration: Patterned shadows link the faces ofVolodia and Liudmila in Room's Tret'ia Meshchanskaia 136 iv) Conclusion 143 Chapter 4 Reconciling the old and the new: lurii Olesha's bid for personal and political compromise in Strogii iunosha 146 i) The plot of Strogii iunosha: an opportunity for mutual reassessment 147 Illustration: Drawing of Diskobol and Masha at the stadium by V. Kozlinskii 151 ii) Thematics of ambiguity 154 iii) Characterization: Strogii iunosha — the duality of Grisha Fokin 160 iv) Other characters: the old and the hope of a new future 172 Illustration: A sketch from the film Veselaia Moskva. 1934 179 Illustration: Stroeii iunosha: Diskobol in Grisha's dream 180 v) Conclusion 182 IllustrationiA still from Strosii iunosha showins Grisha in the cupboard after *Devushka' has revealed his hiding place 183 Chapter 5 Critical response to lurii Olesha’s Strogii iunosha. 1934-35 185 i) Critical response: content 187 ii) Critical response: form 196 iii) Critical response: the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers 207 iv) Conclusion 214 Chapter 6 Strogii iunosha; the filming of the new art form 216 i) The film and its structure 217 ii) Use of the camera: whiteness and duration 221 Illustration: Stroeii iunosha: light and spectacle 223 iii) Sound: music and silence 225 iv) Mise en scène 229 Illustrations: Stroeii iunosha: Masha and Grisha at the gate to the Stepanovs* dacha 233 and Victor Horta, Staircase in 12, rue de Turin, Brussels, 1893 233 Illustration.'Aleksandr Samokhvalov, 'Devushka s iadrom', 1933 235 Illustration:'Discus thrower (Discobolus)', Roman marble copy after a bronze statue by Myron of about 450 BC. 239 Illustration: Still from 'Oktober 1936', the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl's 1938film Olympia 240 v) Conclusion 243 Chapter 7 Critical failings: production, content and form 245 i) The production of the film 247 Illustration: English-language UkrainfiVin Kiev film 'factory' poster advertising Abram Room's Stro2ii iunosha and Iakov Urinov's Intriggn 257 Illustration: Stroeii iunosha: Dream — special effects 260 ii) Critical reaction; flawed content and Olesha’s errors uncorrected 263 iii) Formal inadequacy: Olesha’s promise unfulfilled 275 Illustration: Strosii iunosha: Operation — foliage and shadows 284 Illustration:Aleksandr Rodchenko, after 'Devushka s "leikoi"' 285 iv) Conclusion 287 Chapter 8 The themes of Abram Room's Strogii iunosha: reality, reassessment and reconciliation 288 i) Soviet Reality 290 ii) Reassessment and reconciliation: the issues 298 ii) Reassessment and reconciliation: Stepanov and Grisha 302 iii) Conclusion 309 Chapter 9 Conclusion 311 Bibliography 320 I. lurii Olesha 320 A. Primary materials 320 i) archival materials 320 ii) books 322 iii) contributions to journals and collected volumes 323 B. Secondary materials 324 II. Abram Room 333 A Primary materials 333 i) archival materials, including material by Boris Ferdinandov and Isai Lelikov 333 ii) publications in books 334 iii) journal publications 335 B. Secondary materials 335 in. Cultural Background 342 Books and articles 342 IV. Theory of film and literature 355 Books and articles 355 8 Filmography 377 A. Abram Room 377 B. Other key films referred to 379 i) Soviet/Russian 379 ii) non-Soviet/Russian 383 PREFACE This thesis was first conceived as a far broader investigation into the inter relationship between literature o f the 1920s and 1930s and film. For the first two years my research involved analyzing the influence o f film on the literary style o f various writers, and looking at a range o f film adaptations of their works. The list of writers includes Mikhail Bulgakov, Daniil Kharms (part o f this work has been published as 'Slobodan Pesic's film Slucaj Harms and Kharms's Sluchaf in Daniil Kharms and the Poetics of the Absurd, edited by Neil Cornwell, Basingstoke and London, 1991), I f f and Petrov, Boris PiTniak and Evgenii Zamiatin. Some of the adaptations were directed by (former) Yugoslavs, although most were Russian; some were older, but most were very recent. This latter fact meant that in no case was there a reciprocal relationship between the author of the literary text and its subsequent adaptor, as the writers were no longer alive. It also meant, however, that I was able to interview some directors, including Evgenii Tsymbal (Povest' nepogashennoi lunv. 1990) and Vadim Gems (Staru-kha-rmsa. 1991), even though this research did not find its way in to the finished thesis. Once 1 started to research lurii Olesha's approach to film, however, 1 found that his case was the most challenging because, unlike the authors listed above, he specifically confronted the issue of adaptation and attempted to go beyond its limits. 1 have published work on Olesha's relationship to film which includes material present here as well as material which goes beyond the scope o f this thesis (as 'lurii Olesha: Cinematic interests and cinematic influence' in Slovo. vol. 8, 1995, no. 2, pp. 33-43 and as 'Cinematic Literature and Literary Cinema: Olesha, Room and the search for a new art form' in Russian Literature. 10 Modernism and the Visual Arts, edited by Catriona Kelly and Stephen Lovell, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2000). Olesha's aim was to write a work that was neither a piece o f literature intended only for the page, nor a film script intended purely for an adaptor's purposes, but one which would fuse the two forms to create an entirely new genre. He chose Abram Room as the director to carry out this project. Room shared Olesha's desire to develop a new genre, a film which was neither a slave to its literary source, nor a completely separate work based on motifs from a literary text, but rather a work which retained key stylistic elements of the original and expanded the visual aspect of the images conjured up in the prose. This was an aim which went beyond anything expressed by the directors of literary adaptations I had previously studied. It dealt directly with the issue o f adaptation and the fates o f the written and filmic texts, and therefore the fates o f their creators are inextricably linked to these very issues. In Olesha’s and Room's cases the relationship between the written and the filmic text turned out to be of critical importance when the film was banned. The question presented itself: why was the written text published but the film banned, when the content was almost identical? It was my desire to find out more about Olesha's and Room's creative experiment as it was such an anomaly in terms of literary adaptation.