The Issue of Unity of Style in Soviet Cinema in the Late 1920s — Early 1930s (By the Example of Nikolay Iezuitov’s Works)

Abstract

This article discusses the formation of style in Soviet film studies of the late 1920s — early 1930s in the aspect of discussions on art movements and trends in Soviet cinema. Although there are some theoretical and historical film studies on the formation of style trends of that period, much less attention has been paid to the historiography of this matter. Because of the small number of comprehensive historiographic research on this topic, the author decides to study the process of forming classifications of those movements. This article uses traditional research methods, introduces new archival sources into scientific circulation for the first time; and its main tasks are the historiographic study of the subject and the analysis of its key concepts and provisions. The article examines the unity of style in Soviet film studies of the 1920s — early 1930s on the example of works by Nikolay Mikhailovich Iezuitov (1899—1941), one of the founders of Russian film studies, who proposed in 1933 a concept of Soviet cinema development, the main category of which was style. Linking the concepts of “style” and “art movement (trend)”, Iezuitov identified two styles: the one of socialist concepts and the other of socialist feelings. In this, Iezuitov followed the logic of the book “Art Movements in Soviet Cine­ma” (1930) by Adrian Piotrovsky (1898—1937) — the author of the “intellectual” and “emotional” film classification. Iezuitov’s concept was criticized, especially at the jubilee session of the Scientific and Research Sector of the State Institute of Cinematography (now VGIK) in 1934. In the same year, the first history of Soviet cinema “The Ways of Feature Film” was published. It regarded the movements and their contribution to the development of Soviet cinematography according to the criteria of innovation and realism. Socialist realism was declared a platform, a common style that included all the various trends and styles of Soviet cinema. Iezuitov, who died in the war in 1941, did not get a chance to complete his fundamental study “The History of Soviet Film Art”. The story of the victory of socialist rea­lism was declared one of the main tasks of the textbook, and the process of formation of socialist rea­lism became the content of the science of film history. The article shows that socialist realism, as a unity of diversities and contradictions, allowed Iezuitov, on the one hand, to adhere to its normative aesthetics and, on the other hand, to conduct a stylistic analysis of schools and specific movies within this aesthetics.