Insiders and outsiders in Russian cinema

Abstract

Stephen M. Norris and Zara M. Tortone, eds. Insiders and Outsiders in Russian Cinema. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008. 179 pp. Index. $21.95, paper.This collection of essays is a contribution the growing field of Russian cinema studies. The volume consists of an introduction and nine essays that focus on how the concepts of us and them shaped the Russian film from its inception through the post-Soviet years. The contributors examine ways in which Russian films helped form the authences' understanding of what it meant be Russian and/or Soviet. This approach has proven be productive in analyzing both well known and previously much discussed feature films, such as Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks ( 1 924), Protazanov's^e/z'to ( 1 924), and Aleksandrov's Circus ( 1 936), and many other films that are less familiar Western readers and authences.Although the title of the collection promises an analysis of two concepts - insiders and outsiders - most essays discuss depiction of those who did not belong or did not fit into Soviet society. Julian Graffy studies images of foreigners in early Soviet cinema and argues that the tropes of ours and theirs became indispensible Soviet films. This discussion is then furthered in Josephine Woll's examination of Aleksandrov's Circus and in Joan Neuberger's analysis of the images of foreigners in Eizenshtein's Ivan the Terrible. Emma Widdis demonstrates how otherness (including foreignness) was revealed through costumes in Soviet films of the Stalin era. Peter Kenez focuses on the images of internal enemies, such as kulaks and saboteurs, in films of the 1930s; enemies within, such as German invaders and collaborators, in Soviet war films; and, finally, external enemies, such as spies, in films of the Cold War era. Oleg Sulkin once again examines the images of the enemy in post-Soviet films, resorting some sweeping statements regarding ideologies that have supposedly informed Russian filmmakers. A much more nuanced study of the cinema's attempt capture the dilemmas of a post-Soviet individual is offered by Anthony Anemone in his essay on films by Aleksei Balabanov, one of the most controversial contemporary film directors from Russia. Both Anemone and Stephen M. Norris, the author of the collection's concluding chapter on post-Soviet films about WW II, provide an engaging discussion of the dynamics of us and them and view post-Soviet subjects first and foremost as searching for a usable past, as renegotiating Soviet ideological legacy in order make sense of the present and to create a better future (p. …