Eisensteins Erben: Der sowjetische Film vom Tauwetter zur Perestroika (1953-1991) by Eva Binder , Christine Engel (review)

Abstract

276 Reviews pretext forignoring the wider research implications. In this sense the volume widens the gap between philological research and rather 'aesthetically' oriented literary his? tory.In this field, the work of the literaryscholar begins where the notion of literature and the literary significance of sacral texts are being questioned. Only Dieter Stern's contribution to the volume attempts to rise to that challenge. Humboldt Universitat, Berlin Wolf-Heinrich Schmidt Eisensteins Erben: Der sowjetische Film vom Tauwetter zur Perestroika (1953-1991). Ed. by Eva Binder and Christine Engel. (Slavica Aenipontana, 8) Innsbruck: InnsbruckerBeitragezur Kulturwissenschaft. 2002. xiv + 404pp. ?70. ISBN 385124 -198-3. This volume covers a crucially under-researched period in the history of Soviet cinema. Josephine Woll's recent Reel Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: Tauris, 2000) was the firstEnglish-language study of the Thaw period and covers only the period until c. 1967. Anna Lawton's Kinoglasnost: Soviet Cinema in Our Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) dealt with the 1980s, while Birgit Beumers's edited volume Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema (London: Tauris, 1999) covered the 1990s, but there is as yet nothing in English to cover the whole post-Stalin period in a single volume. This Austrian collection is therefore a welcome addition forthose who can read German. Eisensteins Erben begins with six short essays by Russian scholars introducing the films of the period. These cover: morality tales; the pathos of the unheroic; eccentric comedy; black-and-white film and realism; the auteur film; and the 'long shadow' of the perestroika film.One surprising omission fromthis list, perhaps, is any specific discussion of the changing role of the war film and the consequent revision of both the official and popular views of the 'Great Patriotic War'. The bulk of the book consists of a decade-by-decade coverage of the films themselves, starting with Iosif Kheifits's BoVshaia sem'ia (The Great Family, 1954) and ending with Nikita Mikhalkov's Urga (1991). The appendices include up-to-date bio-filmographies of the directors mentioned, a chronology of background events, and film and people indexes. Entries for each individual film contain detailed production credits, a brief plot synopsis, an essay of two to three pages on the film,and a bibliography. Most of this is very useful. However, the bibliography contains only Russian-language sources and is confined almost entirely to sources contemporary to the film. This information is, of course, of no use to anyone who does not read Russian, but much of it is already available in the Russian-language catalogue Sovetskie khudozhestvennyifiVmy (Soviet feature films) produced in four volumes during the Soviet era (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1961-68). An opportunity has here been missed to produce a book that would have had a much wider appeal to a student readership and might thereforehave been worth translating into English. As it is, only those who read German will have access to a volume that continues the distinguished tradition of high-level scholarship that characterizes the German-language (but alas, not always the English-language) literature on Soviet cinema. University of Wales Swansea Richard Taylor ...