Difficult cases: Communist morality, gender and embodiment in Thaw cinema

Abstract

The article explores cinematic sensibility in Larisa Shepit'ko’s Wings (Kryl'ia, 1966) and Dinara Asanova’s Rudolfio (1966) within the broader context of the Thaw cinema and Communist morality. Both films became ‘gender trouble’ for the audience and censors, and were considered controversial by their contemporaries. The aim of the article is to explore how women filmmakers used the aesthetic pluralism of the Thaw to embed a critique of the standards of Communist morality. The article begins by analysing Communist morality and its reconfigurations during the Thaw. It claims that Shepit'ko and Asanova revealed non-normative experiences of womanhood and girlhood as complex, yet legitimate. Drawing on recent theories of ‘haptic’ in cinema, special attention is paid to the aesthetic strategies used by the filmmakers to encourage an embodied connection between the spectator and the film. The foregrounding of this connection can lead to a better understanding of the interrelation between the aesthetics of the film, the politics of emotions and gender/sexual norms in the Soviet society.