“LIFE AS IT SHOULD BE” SOCIALIST REALISM OF THE 1930S

Soviet Cinema in the 1930-s 1933 – The government makes plans for a “Soviet Hollywood.” All-union council for comedies is created. Search for new, ideologically acceptable forms and themes 1935 – Union of Filmmakers; self- censorship Emergence of musical comedy Back to star system

LiubovOrlova Marlene Dietrich

LyubovOrlova ( )

Jolly Fellows (1934) Venice Film Festival Best Director and Best Music Awards (1934); proclaimed one of 6 best movies ever. Genre: “Jazz-comedy” Plot: a cowherd (mistaken for a foreign celebrity) and a cleaning girl from Odessa region are talented musicians; they find their way to Moscow, rehearse posing as a funeral orchestra and perform, with a jazz band, in the Bolshoi Theatre.

Jolly Fellows (1934) First Soviet musical comedy Director: Grigori Aleksandrov Script: Grigory Aleksandrov, Vladimir Mass, and Nikolai Erdman (a comedy writer, arrested while the film was being shot, his name deleted from the credits) Music: Isaak Dunaevski Starring: Leonid Utyosov, Lyubov Orlova. (Orlova’s first lyrical-comedic role)

Liubov Orlova in Jolly Fellows

Jolly Fellows Jolly Fellows (1934)

Grigori Aleksandrov ( ) Actor and film-director; Started his career in the Proletkult Theatre with Eisenstein; participated in all Eisenstein’s theatrical projects and films as assistant director and actor In traveled with Eisenstein to the USA, Mexico and Europe to study the technique of making sound films

The Circus (1936) Grand-Prix in Paris (1937) Orlova’s acting style borrowed from Marlene Dietrich (The Blue Angel by J.Sternberg, first German sound film) International context: “Charlie Chaplin” clown in the circus (Chaplin’s Circus 1928) Eccentric acting, the theme of circus, grotesque (the image of the evil German) – inherited from Eisenstein’s aestheticsthe theme of circus

Orlova and Aleksandrov

Grigori Aleksandrov Learned the technique of shooting musical films from Walt Disney (first, the phonogram is recorded, then the film is shot to the phonogram) Makes a film (International, 1932) on Stalin’s personal order Jolly Fellows: theoriginal title was Jazz Comedy The public excited, the critics enraged Stalin’s approval; the genre thrives; Aleksandrov and his wife LyubovOrlova reign in the Soviet cinema.

The Circus (1936) Director: Grigori Aleksandrov Music: Isaak Dunaevski Starring: Lyubov Orlova, Sergei Stolyarov Synopsis: American actress Marion Dixon and her German manager are on tour in Moscow. Her number includes tap-dancing and a canon shooting her to the trapeze. The Moscow circus makes a (better, futuristic) copy of this act. Marion falls in love with a Russian; the German manager blackmails her with her mulatto baby; the Soviet people surprise him (and Marion) with lack of racism; Marion stays in Moscow.

The Circus Soviet realism: the reality “as it should be” Soviet values opposed to “Western” ones; proletarian internationalism. The lullaby scene; Solomon Mikhoels, the Jewish actor later killed on Stalin’s orders.The lullaby scene Dialogue with Hollywood: James Whale’s Show Boat (1936), the issue of racism (a female star is forced to leave the show: with her “impure blood,” she breaks the law forbidding interracial marriage); Paul Robson sings “Old Man River”

The Circus (1936)

Forward to the shining future!