9/29/02

10/8/02

Adam Cohen

Muffled Montage:

Capitalism within the Soviet Film Industry

Long after the Tsar had been shot and long after the White guards had been defeated, the proletariat revolution that formed the Soviet Union waged on for more than a decade after 1917. The genesis of the USSR was fraught with an ideologically divided leadership, social turmoil and an economy in shambles. Stymied by the economic recession caused by World War I, the Communist Party attempted to reinvigorate the economy by introducing the New Economic Policy (NEP). However even Lenin, the father of the revolution, “was ambiguous about NEP. He recognized the need to tolerate the Nepmen in order to revive the economy but could not always suppress the fear that these private entrepreneurs might constitute a foot in the door for a bourgeois restoration”[1] Equally disheartened by the infection of capitalism in the new communist utopia, Dziga Vertov faced a nation of mass contradiction and hypocrisy. Vertov saw his country plagued with capitalistic decadence, divided by class stratification and motivated by the desire for profit. Apparent to Vertov, the Czarist legacy permeated particularly throughout the film industry. His only weapon against this threat was Kino-Eye, with which Vertov intended to galvanize and lead the masses towards true communism. The corrupted film industry provoked Vertov, who in turn responded through The Man with a Movie Camera, to break away from the traditional bourgeois cinematic past and search for a new communist ideal for the medium of film.

The first conflict that Vertov faced, as a microcosm of the international soviet revolution that was taking place, occurred within the film industry. To Vertov, the battle lines were drawn between the traditional and mostly foreign capitalistic films versus the new techniques of montage. Vertov characterized his use of montage as “our cinematic October…the most powerful weapon and the most powerful technology are in the hands of the European and American film-bourgeoisie…the opium of bourgeois film-dramas…the battle of vision can and must begin only in the USSR, where the film-weapon is in the hands of the state”[2]. Within this battle between old and new film, the primary debate reflected the essential character of the revolution, “false consciousness”. In the German Ideology, Marx discussed how the proletariat revolution that would result in communism must be precipitated by a transition of false to true consciousness. “The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class; about the premises for the latter sufficient has already been said”[3]. Thus in order for the masses to advance in society, the general populace must throw off the generally accepted rules of society propagated by the ruling class. According to Marx, “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production”[4].

Vertov echoed this exact sentiment, however translated into the arena of cinema. Where Marx credited the bourgeois of establishing condoned societal thought, Vertov censured the bourgeois for using “the film-theatrical representations act…on the viewer’s…subconscious, completely circumventing his protesting consciousness”[5]. Vertov attacked the idea of bourgeoisie film on two different levels. The first is the circumvention of consciousness, leading to a general lack of thought and thus stagnation. Many of Vertov’s public assailants attacked his films for forcing his audience to think too much, and philosophize too deeply. In fact, one of Vertov’s contemporaries, Petrov-Bytov went as far as promulgating that films should be based on “topics of interest to peasants, such as ‘the cow that was sick with tuberculosis; the dirty, muddy cowshed that had to be remade…”[6]. The absurdity of these claims would in no way alter the level of consciousness described by Marx, but would only serve to promote the status quo. Vertov’s second condemnation of “fairy tale” movies was that they were used to “cram some idea, some thought or other, into his [the peasant’s] subconscious”[7]. Vertov recognized that danger that these films posed to the weal of the Soviet Union, and therefore saw it as his duty, through film, to combat these corrosive elements. To prompt this change of consciousness outlined by Marx, Vertov promoted his theory of montage to advance an unwilling public’s attitudes.

Vertov’s initial hurdle in his battle against traditional film was overcoming the past inundation of bourgeois cinema endured by the public. In his quest for disseminating reality and true consciousness, Vertov was met with almost total public inertia. According to the historian Peter Kenez, “Neither the Soviet state nor the audience was interested in artistic experiments. We have a rather clear idea about popular tastes in movies. Soviet people, as people elsewhere, went to movies to be entertained. They liked romance, adventure, and laughter”[8]. However Vertov’s enthusiasm went unabated. He only saw the general dependency on entertaining films as further remnants of capitalistic culture. This proclivity for “the NEP audience prefer[ing] “love” or “crime” dramas that doesn’t mean that our works are unfit. It means the public is”[9]. Vertov was often decried for not appealing to the tastes of his audience, but to Vertov, film was not about enjoyment. Vertov used film as an opportunity for the workers “to sharpen their sense before the shining screen of cinema”[10]. Film, specifically montage, was a tool to teach the workers and proletariats to expand their thinking to be congruent with Marxist theory, not to hold onto the past ideas of life under bourgeoisie domination.

Vertov realized that transition within the Cinema industry had to be gradual, subscribed to the ideas promulgated by Lenin about film. Whereas the NEP was a gradual shift using elements of capitalism to spawn communism, Vertov believed, at the very least, that small elements of drama could be used to lead to montage. However, even with this model of gradualism, Vertov saw a lag between the existing capitalistic films and socialist movies. Vertov often quoted Lenin who “mentioned the necessity of establishing a ‘fixed ratio between entertainment pictures and scientific ones’ in movie theater programs”. Furthermore, Vertov saw the current breakdown of Soviet cinema as 95% Artistic cinema and only 5 % devoted to Scientific and educational films. However in an ideal Soviet world, as outlined by Lenin, there was a need for 45% Kino-eye, 30 % Scientific and educational films, finally allotting only 25% for artistic drama.[11] This model depicts a strong lean away from the traditional films, but allows some transition time for the masses. However, Sovkino, the organization charged with the creation and distribution of films, devoted 50% of the budget towards creating “drama” based films, fit for both domestic and foreign consumption.[12] The fact that such a large percentage of Soviet films appealed to bourgeoisie foreigners attests to the capitalistic contagion within the industry. This imbalanced composition Soviet film was however not the only source of Vertov’s disillusionment with the Soviet film industry.

The Sovkino was categorized by “the dominant factor in the politics of the silent film industry; the fierce competition among film organizations resulting from the paucity of resources”[13]. In a scant economy of post-revolution Soviet Union, Sovkino was motivated by profit, greed, and everything which opposed communism. Critics “criticized the industry for not producing enough films for worker and peasant audiences, for importing too many films, and for caring too much about making money”[14]. In an almost quasi-privatized industry, the only means of survival open to Sovkino was to depend on the financial earnings of foreign and popular films both at home and abroad. These factors debilitated Vertov on several levels, hampering both his process and his message. The first complaint raised against Vertov was his squandering of resources. Vertov’s principles based around viewing and editing the facts and realities of life, led him away from a script or any kind of planned budgeting. One of Vertov’s films, One Sixth of the World, was budgeted to cost 30,000-40,000 rubles, but ended up costing 130,000 rubles. Another estimate showed that Vertov used 26,000 meters of film for a 1140 meter move.[15] Vertov’s need for total discretion and control over his films antagonized Sovkino, which depended on strict monetary control for its survival. Furthermore, Vertov, unwilling to depend on recreations of reality in any way, caused huge traveling expenses when filming in different cities. In response to the restrictions imposed upon him, Vertov commented “filming done under economic pressure takes into account the cinematic interest of a subject, and this necessarily results in the recoding of static moments together with dynamic—which is inadmissible in the poetry of movement”[16]. The tight budgetary restrictions were yet another example of profit-margins and greed inhibiting the creative process and spread of communist ideals through film.

The first attack that Vertov himself leveled against the film industry was aimed at the traditional format of drama and plot based films, requiring actors. According to Vertov, plot-based “productions that show us how the bourgeoisie love, how they suffer, how they “care for” their workers, and how these higher beings, the aristocracy, differ from the lower ones (workers, peasants, etc.)”[17]. Even though the new government decreed that the film industry produce “proletariat” movies, Vertov, as well as many other critics, found that actors and actresses could not fulfill this role. According to several film critics of the era, “these actors were too “bourgeois” to play the lower-class heroes of Soviet cinema well”[18]. Vertov also saw the need for discontinuity from capitalistic methods of film and the new Soviet film. Vertov explained that “a “lady” remains a lady to [the workers], no matter what “peasant clothing” you show her in”[19]. Through all of his films Vertov espoused the ideas of truth, reality and facts. Therefore his diametric rival was represented by actors which, to him, were fake representations of reality and were thus deceitful. Referring back to the idea of false consciousness, no matter what the script, a false reality on the screen could in no way contribute to the necessary truth of educating the masses.

The financial concerns caused by actors were yet another reason Vertov opposed traditional dramas. A contemporary director of Vertov, Les Kuleshov once noted, “the commercial pursuit of beauties and names is none other than hidden pornography or psycho-pathology for which there is absolutely no place in Soviet cinematography”[20]. Following the guidelines of the NEP, actors, existing on a de facto free agent basis, were fought over by myriad directors for their films. As a result, actors’ salaries could account for up to 50% of any given film’s production budget.[21] This perversity of the Socialist system not only allocated most of the Sovkino’s resources towards perpetuating the capitalist system of film, but also served to take away the monetary means allotted for Vertov. As a result, Vertov often complained about the Soviet’s “technical backwardness”[22] in regards to lack money towards the advancement of the movie-camera. “One minute there’s no camera, or the stock’s no good, then the lab won’t return footage”[23] The tight fiscal situation, of which the culpability lay upon the pursuit of actors, also hampered all continuity of Vertov’s staff. He was continuously forced to deal with new editing crews, which delayed the production of his work. Having witnessed and endured so much of the detrimental effects caused by the NEP’s infection of the film industry, Vertov used his movies to lash out against the capitalistic system.

Throughout the film, The Man with the Movie Camera, Vertov portrayed scenes featuring actual audiences as a method of offering social criticism of the traditional format of film, while promoting his version of cinema. In the first scene this reproach for tradition is apparent. Vertov took great care filming specific components of the theater, specifically the seats, and their function to the overarching process of displaying a film. In his scene by scene analysis, Roberts Graham posits that the first scene within the theater, “has already informed the views that they are about to experience a completely new and completely cinematic form of communication…truly the medium is the message”[24] While Graham is correct in pointing out Vertov’s aggrandizement of montage as a new film medium, he misses one large aspect of the social implications in the scene. In the first scene Vertov focused on the numerous empty seats of the movie theater falling on five different occasions. This seemingly simple action of dozens of seats opening up represents the new film-industry opening up and becoming accessible and useful to the proletariat. Vertov stated, “the proletariat…submitted themselves to the corrupting influence of the masters’ cinema. The theater is expensive and seats are few. And so the masters force the camera to disseminate…how these higher beings, the aristocracy, differ from the lower ones”[25]. Vertov metaphorical use of the theater seats depicts how montage differs from the traditional film, geared towards the average worker rather than capitulating to the whims of the bourgeois.

The next scene which integrates an actual audience into the movie, abound with criticism for the film industry is centered around an old Asian man performing magic on the sidewalk. Graham published analysis of the scene that lacks grounding within the documented opinions of Vertov, and espouses pure speculation. He points out that Vertov is trying to show the audience that “film projection is magic”[26] and that this particular scene shows “the magician fades in. The Cine-Eye will now do its own magic”[27]. Graham overlooks two basic points established in Vertov’s own writing. This historian begins by ignoring Vertov’s general view on “magic” and also fails to consider the fact that the magician is the one palpable foreigner in the film. Vertov clearly wrote that “we oppose the collusion of the ‘director-as-magician’ and a bewitched public. Only consciousness can fight the sway of magic in all forms…Long live the class vision!”[28]. In a world split by the dichotomy between false reality and truth, magic and vision, and drama versus Kino-eye, Graham’s assertion that Vertov depicted Kino-eye as magical is ridiculous. Vertov saw it as his mission in life to pull back the veil of ignorance from over the eyes of the masses and bring about true consciousness and communism, as outlined by Marx. The sidewalk magician is an example of the continuance of bourgeois entertainment persisting in the Soviet Union. Just as the magician deceived the public into believing that the three rings in his hands were attached, so too was the bourgeois structured film industry propagating anti-socialist rhetoric. Another factor missed by Graham was the fact that magician was a foreigner. As the Soviet masses were inundated with foreign films, motivated by the Sovkino’s desire for profit, Vertov saw the dream of a communist state come under assail. Keeping in mind that China had yet to become a communist state in 1939, the presence of a Chinese magician is yet another critique of the capitalistic elements put forth by the film industry.

In the next scene that incorporates an audience, Vertov portrayed montage’s ability to proliferate the image of the idealized Soviet worker. A large portion of The Man With the Movie Camera is devoted to scenes of athletes participating in a multitude of track and field events spliced with images of the spectators. Vertov wanted his audience to realize that only Kino-Eye was the only method of film able to interpret this sporting phenomenon. Graham correctly notes that, “the athletes perform in slow motion while spectators look on in standard speed footage. Tsivian memorably descries Vertov’s use of slow motion as a ‘close-up of time’”. However, following suit with his earlier analysis, Graham incorrectly places emphasis in this scene on Vertov’s “exploration of eroticized body parts”.[29] Although Vertov might have intended to examine sexuality in the new Soviet society as a moot point of his film, the athletes shown by the technological abilities of Kino-Eye are an obvious link to the new human image. Vertov proudly announced in his personal ideology, “I am kino-eye, I create a man more perfect than Adam, I create thousands of different people in accordance with preliminary blue-prints and diagrams of different kinds”[30]. Vertov, in a heavy-handed fashion, displayed how the techniques of montage allowed him to bring together man and machine, forming a “perfect” new man. The contrast between the normal speed proletariat audience and the slow motion perfect athletes is Vertov’s testament to the didactic value of his system of film.

As the film reaches its finale, the move speeds up to a frenzied pace, and the audience and meta-audience are both bombarded with images of dancers harkening back to the traditional experience of the theater. Through a disorienting split-screen view, Vertov demonstrated one of his earlier comments that “The spectator at the ballet follows, in confusion…a series of scattered perceptions, different for each spectator. We cannot present this to the film viewer…[We require] forceful transfer of the viewer’s eyes to the successive details that must be seen”[31]. Vertov used this climax to demonstrate the ineffectiveness and in fact the negative impact of theatrical endeavors. Acting only to confuse and disorient the masses, traditional acted dramas and theater only propagate the consciousness of capitalism. To reinforce this idea of the ineffectiveness of the traditional theater and film, Vertov ended his film with an image of the Bolshoi Theater imploding; thus demonstrating, according to Graham, that “Art is dead. Long live the unplayed cinema”[32]. This ostensible attack of the traditional film industry concludes the film so as to leave a lasting impression in the minds of the Soviet audience as the salient issue of Kino-Eye, his new cinematic innovations.

Vertov having drawn the battle lines between Kino-eye, headed by himself, and tradition, headed by almost the entirety of the Soviet Union, predictably lost. Faced with centuries of theater tradition and plot-driven dramas, Kino-Eye was unable to subvert the film industry or revolutionize the cinematic world. Vertov, after all of his rhetoric, symbolism and impressive experimentation failed to create movies that were “comprehensible to the millions”. For this singular fault, Vertov’s avante garde was destined to be appreciated only by a small ineffectual minority. In one of the number contradictions of the Soviet Union, the new Socialist powers suppressed and ignored one of its greatest film champions. Even more ironical, as Vertov added the finishing touches to the editing of The Man with a Movie Camera, Stalin finished the transition between the Leninist NEP era and his 5-year plans. This shift in policy ran completely congruent with the arguments and criticisms from Vertov, but nevertheless his impact was washed away in the rush to censor and suppress anything resembling creativity and individuality. Vertov’s primary mistake in his attack on the lingering structure of capitalism in the film industry was that he encoded his message in his ideal socialistic form, rather than using the vernacular of society. Therefore it could be expected that a traditionally minded public would be unable to comprehend Vertov’s message of evolving to the Soviet film language of montage if he sends his message using that very same still indecipherable system of communication.