The sense of movement in Georgii Daneliia's Walking the Streets of Moscow

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines Georgii Daneliia's 1964 film Walking the Streets of Moscow through its focus on space, movement and the built environment. A primary concern of the film, the article argues, is to explore the idea of a dialogical interaction between bodies and urban space, specifically within the changing architectural and cultural landscape of the Soviet Union in the immediate wake of Stalin's death. The film examines the body and its movement through Moscow's urban environment within three distinct frameworks: its passage through contemporary architectural structures; its aimless walking through exterior and interior spaces; and its sensory appropriation of the urban environment. The article further argues that the film deeps our understanding of both the debates around architecture and urbanism in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, and the broader rethinking of issues of space, subjectivity and urban development in post-war Europe, as exemplified in such works as Jacques Tati's 1967 film Playtime and the writing and practices of the Situationist International.