MLR, 99.1, 2004 273 and one might question the 'authenticity' of Kusturica' s identification with the Roma, but this is an instructive, stimulating, and productive exploration of his work. Staffordshire University Peter Hames Early Soviet Cinema: Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda. By David Gillespie. (Short Cuts) London: Wallflower Press. 2000. xii+ii4pp. ?11.99. ISBN 1903364 -04-3. The Short Cuts series is designed forstudents and enthusiasts of cinema and popular culture. David Gillespie's contribution to this series, as he states in his preface, has a rather more specific goal: 'This book is intended to help all students of Soviet cinema through an examination of the major works by the directors of what has come to be known as the "golden age" of Soviet cinema' (p. xi). His monograph contains chapters on Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, and Vertov, and has an introduction which attempts to contextualize their works in relation to pre-Revolutionary cinema and some of the more mainstream films of the 1920s. The aim is clearly to absorb some of the scholarly writing on these directors which has appeared over the last thirtyyears, and to make it accessible and interesting to the contemporary reader. Bearing in mind the intended audience of this book, it would be churlish to criticize its lack of originality or the superficiality of its observations. Nevertheless, it is disappointing to note that the opportunity has been missed for a more dynamic presentation of this period, away from the tired old stereotypes of yesteryear. The FEKS films of the 1920s certainly merit a more detailed discussion than is offered here (it is not true, as the author claims in mitigation, that they are better known for their work in the 1930s). In addition, it would have been nice to see much greater emphasis on films which, for reasons of ideological hostility, are less well known, and for this reason artistically underrated?such as Dovzhenko's Zvenigora (1927) or Eisenstein's unfinished Que Viva Mexico! (1930). Despite the author's declared intent to approach the films in terms of their visual aesthetic, much of his book consists of plot recapitulation; indeed, it is well nigh impossible, given the author's limited ambitions, to distinguish properly between these important directors, and to explore fully the poetics of their respective cinematic worlds. Neither can Gillespie do justice to the complexity of their many innovative ideas (it is symptomatic that, despite selective listing of Eisenstein's works in the bibliography, there are hardly any references to his writings, and his concept of montage is dealt with only superficially). This sense of disappointment is compounded by a number of questionable and (for students certainly) misleading statements in relation to individual directors and/or their films. Gillespie's view that Abram Room's Tret'ia Meshchanskaia (Bed and Sofa, 1927) is essentially about an 'urgent social problem' (housing shortages in Moscow) is rather naive, since it suggests that, ifnot for the conditions, the sexist assumptions of the two male protagonists during the supposedly liberated 1920s would not exist. This is not a film about conditions but about culture and psychology. Elsewhere, we encounter assertions which are erroneous. The idea that Kuleshov's use of fade-ins and fade-outs is evidence of 'stylistic exuberance' (p. 30) overlooks the fact that these were conventions that had been established by 1915. The view that the mechanical division ofthe peasant hut in the opening sequences ofEisenstein's Staroe i novoe (The Old and the New, 1929) is an image of 'coercion and misery' (p. 50) ignores the fact that it records an authentic and voluntary practice in the Penza district, thus seeking to satirize the peasant obsession with private property. The view that Dovzhenko's Arsenal (1928) is largely static, 'in contrast to Eisenstein's fluid and dynamic camera movement' (p. 84), ignores the fact that, firstly,Eisenstein's films are not noted in 274 Reviews general for their camera movement, and secondly, that Arsenal contains one of the most extraordinary tracking shots in the history of Soviet cinema (the sequence in which the Bolshevik soldiers take their dead comrade back to his village on galloping horses). The assertion that Pudovkin's career...