The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion by Richard Taylor, and: The Man with the Movie Camera by Graham Roberts, and: Burnt by the Sun by Birgit Beumers (review)

Abstract

260 Reviews The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion. By Richard Taylor. (KINOfiles Film Companion i) London and New York: Tauris. 2000. xiv + 130 pp. ?12.99. ISBN 1-86064-393-0. The Man with theMovie Camera. By Graham Roberts. (KINOfiles Film Compan? ion 2) London and New York: Tauris. 2000. xvi+io8pp. ?12.99. ISBN 186064 -394-9. Burnt by the Sun. By Birgit Beumers. (KINOfiles Film Companion 3) London and New York: Tauris. 2001. ?12.99. ISBN 1-86064-396-5. It seems fairto say that the beleaguered discipline of Russian Studies has in the 1990s been relieved and enhanced by the rise in Russian Film Studies courses in many universities, and I. B. Tauris can be congratulated for providing accessible (and relatively cheap!) guides to some of the most important films of the Soviet and the post-Soviet period. These three companions are excellent introductions to these major films, and should go a long way towards establishing Russian Film Studies as a core humanities discipline within at least the English-speakinghigher-educational world. These three books display a methodological consistency in providing a detailed analysis of the plot and production background of each film, discussion of the major themes and motifs, as well as an account of their significance and/or reception. Each author is careful to locate the director within the relevant cultural and historical contexts, and to analyse these films not only as socio-historical documents, but also as artistic texts. But they offer other insights, too. For instance, Graham Roberts provides much detail on the innovative techniques employed by Dziga Vertov, and also demonstrates how Vertov's 1929 film 'can be viewed as a manifesto for Stalin's policies of the 1930s: crush resistance in the countryside, urbanize, industrialize and purge opposition' (p. 63). Indeed, Roberts's book offers a tantalizing glimpse into the psychology of a gifted and committed artist who desperately wanted to become a Stalinist, but was not allowed to by the very man he wished to worship. Richard Taylor's book has the expected hallmarks of accomplished scholarship and close attention to detail. Volumes have been written about The Battleship Potemkin (1926), Eisenstein's film about the failed 1905 revolution, and one could feel entitled to ask ifthere is anything left to discover within this magnificent and hugely influential film. Most emphatically, replies Taylor. Indeed, I doubt if any other Eisenstein scholar has given such a thorough interpretation of the significance of the swan as represented on the buckle of the young mother who is shot on the Odessa Steppes, as Taylor traces its usage back to Shakespeare and Greek mythology. The book excels in explaining to an undergraduate readership Eisenstein's concepts of 'typage' and 'montage', and in analysing the director's cinematic style and devices, whereby 'Eisenstein was able to turn real defeat into reel victory' (p. 57). Taylor's book, as detailed and thorough as it is, retains sufncient humility to remind us that, like all great works of art, The Battleship Potemkin contains much that still needs to be investigated : such as, for instance, camera movement and the use of light and dark, the gender relations, and the sexual connotations of some of the imagery. Nikita Mikhalkov's 1994 film Burnt by The Sun is perhaps the most celebrated Russian film of the post-Soviet period, largely because it was awarded a prize at Cannes in 1994 and the Oscar forbest foreign-language film in 1995. Birgit Beumers places it within the context of other contemporary films about Stalinism, and within Mikhalkov's own ceuvre, most tellingly his 1977 filmAn UnfinishedPiece for Mechanical Piano. Beumers provides a thorough examination of the personal histories and interrelationships of the three central characters Kotov, Marusia, and Mitia, as well as the other main players. The real strength ofthe analysis, though, is in its dissection of the film's themes and stylistic motifs, such as the use of diegetic music, masks and mirrors, and, ultimately, the inversion of the fairy tale. A significant plus is the MLRy 98.1,2003 261 inclusion of much ofthe critical reception ofthe film on its release. Particularly delicious is Beumers's identification of negative reviews...