Klondike on the Moskva: Lev Kuleshov, the Jack London short story, and the chamber film

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to re-contextualize Lev Kuleshov’s By the Law (Po zakonu, 1926) as a chamber film, a genre mostly associated with Weimar-era German cinema (the Kammerspielfilm) that uses naturalist settings and characters; expressive, chiaroscuro lighting; and slow, ponderous acting that critique lower-middle-class lives. By the Law is the result of Kuleshov’s montage experiments and theoretical reworking of chamber film dynamics, all of which were undertaken in a climate of material and financial scarcity. In order to understand how Kuleshov both adopted and reinvigorated chamber aesthetics, we need to examine Kuleshov’s process of adapting two naturalist Jack London short stories, ‘Just Meat’ (1906) and ‘The Unexpected’ (1905). After developing a process of making études, or films without film, with material like ‘Just Meat’, Kuleshov would extend his experimentation to shooting and editing By the Law deliberately as a chamber film. In particular, his use of expressive American montage represents an important evolution away from the German Kammer tradition.