REENTRY SHOCK: HISTORICAL TRANSITION AND TEMPORAL LONGING IN THE CINEMA OF THE SOVIET THAW by GREGORY BLAKE MILLER A DISSERTATION Presented to the School of Journalism and Communication and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy December 2010 ii “Reentry Shock: Historical Transition and Temporal Longing in the Cinema of the Soviet Thaw,” a dissertation prepared by Gregory Blake Miller in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the School of Journalism and Communication. This dissertation has been approved and accepted by: _____________________________________________________ Dr. H. Leslie Steeves, Chair of the Examining Committee _______________________________________ Date Committee in Charge: Dr. H. Leslie Steeves, Chair Dr. Biswarup Sen Dr. Julianne Newton Dr. Jenifer Presto Accepted by: ___________________________________________ Dean of the Graduate School iii © 2010 Gregory Blake Miller iv An Abstract of the Dissertation of Gregory Blake Miller for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Journalism and Communication to be taken December 2010 Title: REENTRY SHOCK: HISTORICAL TRANSITION AND TEMPORAL LONGING IN THE CINEMA OF THE SOVIET THAW Approved: _______________________________________________ Dr. H. Leslie Steeves Nostalgia is the longing for a lost, and often substantially reimagined, time or place. Commonly regarded as a conservative impulse available for exploitation by hegemonic forces, nostalgia can also be a source of social questioning and creative inspiration. This dissertation examines the ways in which nostalgic longing imports images and ideas from memory into present discourse and infuses works of art with complication, contradiction, and ambiguity. In the early 1960s, emboldened by Nikita Khrushchev’s cultural Thaw, many Soviet filmmakers engaged both personal and social memory to craft challenging reflections of and responses to their times. These filmmakers reengaged the sundered spirit of the 1920s avant-garde and reimagined the nation’s artistic and spiritual heritage; they captured the passing moments of contemporary history in a way that animated the v permanent, productive, and sometimes stormy dialogue between the present and the persistent past. Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966, released 1971), and Marlen Khutsiev’s Ilich’s Gate (1961, released with changes in 1965 as I Am Twenty) were planned in the anxious years surrounding Khrushchev’s fall, and the films mark a high point of Thaw-era cinematic audacity. Each film is epic in scope; each deploys temporal longing to generate narrative ambiguity and dialogue between historical epochs. The films are haunted by ghosts; they challenge the hegemony of the “now” by insisting on the phantom presence of a thousand “thens”; they refurbish old dreams and question contemporary assumptions. The Thaw permitted the intrusion of private memory into public history, and the past became a zone for exploration rather than justification. Easy answers became harder to come by, but the profusion of questions and suggestions created a brief silver age for Soviet cinema. For us, these films offer an extraordinary glimpse into creative life during one of the great, unsung social transitions of the 20th century and reveal the crucial contribution of individual memory in the artistic quest for formal diversity, spiritual inspiration, and ethical living. vi CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Gregory Blake Miller GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene University of Southern California, Los Angeles University of Washington, Seattle University of California, Irvine DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Communication and Society, 2010, University of Oregon Master of Professional Writing, 1999, University of Southern California Master of Arts, International Studies, 1994, University of Washington Bachelor of Arts, 1992, University of California, Irvine GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS: Nevada Press Association Award, Best Sports Feature, 2010 Warren C. Price Scholarship for Excellence in Communication History, University of Oregon, 2009, 2010 Warren C. Price Award for Best Journalism History Paper, University of Oregon, 2009 Columbia Scholarship for Academic Excellence, University of Oregon, 2009 Top-three Student Paper, Communication History Division, International Communication Association Conference, Chicago, 2009 vii Parenting Publications of America, Gold Award, Best Humor Column, 2004 Parenting Publications of America, Gold Award, Best News Feature, 2001 Edward W. Moses Graduate Prize in Fiction, University of Southern California, 1998 Summa cum laude, 1992, University of California, Irvine Phi Beta Kappa, 1991, University of California, Irvine viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my warmest gratitude to my dissertation committee chair at the University of Oregon, Professor Leslie Steeves, and to the members of my committee, Professors Biswarup Sen, Julianne Newton, and Jenifer Presto. Their support, wisdom, and advice have helped me immensely as I have worked on these pages. I am also indebted to the professors at the University of Washington who helped propel me down the Russian road: Herbert J. Ellison, Stephen Hanson, Jack Haney, and the late Donald W. Treadgold. Lastly, I would like to thank Professor John Givens of the University of Rochester, as well as Kerry Candaele, Nina Bunche Pierce, Olga Elliott, and Phil Hagen for their support and intellectual friendship over the years. ix For my wife, Svetlana, and our son, Elek, who make each day a joy to remember. x TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................1 II. CONTEXT: THE ROOTS AND REALITIES OF THE SOVIET CINEMATIC THAW...............................................................................................................19 1. Longing and Leninism ...................................................................................19 2. The Leninist Inheritance.................................................................................21 3. Before the Thaw ............................................................................................35 4. The Thaw.......................................................................................................45 5. The Dreamers ................................................................................................52 III. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORY: MEMORY, LONGING, AND THE INTEGRITY OF THE IMAGE..........................................................................67 1. Opening the Code: Sincerity, Scripting, and the Soviet Thaw.........................67 2. Restorative and Reflective Nostalgia..............................................................72 3. Bergson’s Philosophy of Perception and Memory ..........................................77 4. The Image......................................................................................................88 5. The Layering of Time ....................................................................................94 6. Nostalgia, Postmodernism, and Commodification ..........................................98 7. Nostalgia for the Lost Possibility .................................................................108 xi Chapter Page 8. Selected Works on Thaw and Post-Thaw Soviet Cinema..............................109 9. Revising Revisionism ..................................................................................114 10. Notes on Methodology...............................................................................132 IV. REENTERING TOMORROW: NOSTALGIA FOR AN IMAGINARY LENINISM AND MIKHAIL KALATOZOV’S I AM CUBA...........................142 1. Introduction .................................................................................................142 2. Remembering the Future: Nostalgia and Modernization...............................150 3. Dreamers of an Interrupted Dream ...............................................................152 4. Cutting Edge Cuba: Soviet Visions of Spontaneity Lost...............................159 5. Conclusion...................................................................................................173 V. REENTERING ETERNITY: NOSTALGIA FOR THE SPIRIT OF CREATION IN ANDREI TARKOVSKY’S ANDREI RUBLEV...........................................175 1. Introduction .................................................................................................175 2. The Narrative Arc of Andrei Rublev.............................................................177 3. The New Nostalgia ......................................................................................180 4. Layers of Memory: Rublev and Rublev in Russian History...........................182 5. Nostalgia and Materiality.............................................................................195 6. Conclusion...................................................................................................212 VI. REENTERING THE PRESENT: NOSTALGIA FOR THE PASSING MOMENT IN MARLEN KHUTSIEV’S ILICH’S GATE...................................................215 1. Introduction .................................................................................................215 xii Chapter Page 2. At Play on May Day ....................................................................................222