Salys, Rimgaila (ed.) The Russian Cinema Reader. Volume One: 1908 to the Stalin Era Salys, Rimgaila (ed.) The Russian Cinema Reader. Volume Two: The Thaw to the Present (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 751 Salys, Rimgaila (ed.). The Russian Cinema Reader. Volume One: 1908 to the Stalin Era. Cultural Syllabus. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 303 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Further reading. $49.00: £36.95 (paperback). Salys, Rimgaila (ed.). The Russian Cinema Reader. Volume Two: The Thaw to the Present. Cultural Syllabus. Academic Studies Press, Boston, MA, 2013. 334 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Further reading. $49.00: £36.95 (paperback). Published as part of the Academic Studies Press Cultural Syllabus series, the two volumes of Rimgaila Salys’s The Russian Cinema Reader are explicitly conceived as companion textbooks ‘for History of Russian Cinema and for Russian Culture courses that emphasize film’ (Vol. 1, p. 8 and Vol. 2, p. 9). They are intended both to complement existing courses and to aid course design: the thirty-two films included in the Readers have been selected either because they are already ‘widely taught’, or because Salys believes they ‘should be taught’ (Vol. 1, p. 8 and Vol. 2, p. 9, emphasis in the original). As their titles make clear, the Readers are structured chronologically, with Volume One covering 1908 to the early 1950s and Volume Two spanning the Thaw to the near present (the most recent film included is Aleksei Popogrebskii’s How I Ended This Summer, from 2010). Both volumes are subdivided into three parts,eachofwhichfocusesonadefinedperiodwithinthevolume’soverarching timeframe. Thus, Volume One encompasses ‘Early Russian Cinema 1908– 1919’, ‘Soviet Silent Cinema 1918–1930’ and ‘Stalinist Cinema 1928–1953’, while Volume Two covers ‘Cinema of the Thaw 1953–1967’, ‘Cinema of Stagnation Late 1960s–1985’ and ‘Perestroika and Post-Soviet Cinema 1985–2000s’. Each of these six parts opens with a period survey, all of which ‘provide historical context, outline genres, themes and emblematic aesthetic markers for each era, and give brief information on important films and directors not included in the reader’ (Vol. 1, p. 8 and Vol. 2, p. 9). Written by acknowledged experts in the cinema of each period, respectively Denise J. Youngblood (on both early Russian cinema and Soviet silent cinema), Lilya Kaganovsky, Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorova, and Vida Johnson and Elena Stishova, these concise surveys provide excellent introductory overviews of the periods in question. Each is followed by a brief list of further reading, mostly in English but occasionally also in Russian. In each part, the period survey is followed by sections on individual films, which are, for the most part, well chosen and which, taken together, offer good coverage. (Selecting thirty-two films from over 100 years of Russian cinema is, of course, no easy task, and it is therefore inevitable that those who teach Russian film will have opinions about inclusions or omissions.) As is perhaps unavoidableincollectionsofthistype,thereisanemphasisontheacknowledged classics and the established canon. Thus, the Readers include two films by Sergei Eizenshtein and two by Andrei Tarkovskii. There are some surprises SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 752 as well, however, and the inclusion of less obvious films, such as Vladimir Motyl´’s White Sun of the Desert and Kira Muratova’s The Tuner, is to be welcomed. Also pleasing is the fact that the pre-Revolutionary period is not explored solely through the films of the era’s most revered director, Evgenii Bauer (represented by his 1914 film Child of the Big City), but also through Vladimir Romashkov’s 1908 Sten´ka Razin, conventionally identified as the first Russian-made feature film, Władysław Starewicz’s animated comedy, The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912) and Nikolai Larin’s rural melodrama, The Merchant Bashkirov’s Daughter (1913). It is, however, disappointing that this part includes nothing made after 1914, the point from which films become longer and increasingly sophisticated. The sections on individual films take different forms. Some have a brief introduction, which includes information on the director’s career and a commentary on the film. Most of these introductions have been assembled by Salys. Additional secondary material is included on many, but not all, of the films. This comprises reprints of already published criticism (excerpts and complete essays) and, occasionally, newly commissioned articles. Unfortunately, the way the material is referenced will make it difficult for undergraduate readers both to identify which entries are new and to locate the...