VISUAL STRATEGIES OF REPRESENTATION OF THE WAR IN SOVIET “FICTION-DOCUMENTARY” CINEMA IN THE LATE STALINIST ERA
The article examines the effect of the victory in WWII on the status of the Stalinist regime and on the representations of power in Soviet war films. Already in the last stages of the war (e.g., Fridrikh Ermler’s The Great Turning Point) the experiences at the frontline and on the home front were being transformed into a narrative of Victory, which started to replace the Revolution as the focal point of the myth of creation of the Soviet nation; the creation of a “useful past” was initiated. These moves were then fixed in a range of socalled “feature documentaries” that were supposed to recreate on the big screen the history of victorious “Stalinist blows”: Igor Savchenko’s The Third Blow, Vladimir Petrov’s Battle of Stalingrad, Mikhail Chiaureli’s The Fall of Berlin. These films had a particular kind of poetics and were very different from the pre-war Staliniana, giving a visual form to the transformed myth where Stalin was no longer just Lenin’s confidant, best pupil and heir, but where he was the only saviour of the country and the winner in the great war.
Keywords: late stalinism, soviet cinema, Great Patriotic War, representation of power, Fridrikh Ermler, Vladimir Petrov, Mikhail Chiaureli
References:
Anderson and oth. 2005 – Kremlin movie theater. Documents. Ed. by K. M. Anderson, L. V. Maksimenkov, L. P. Kosheleva, L. A. Rogovaya. Moscow, 2005. In Russian.
Bazin 1988 – Bazin А. The Stalin myth in Soviet cinema. Translation into Russian. Film theory notes. 1988. 1. P. 154–169.
Belova 1978 – Belova L. Through time: essays on the history of the Soviet screenwriting. Moscow, 1978. In Russian.
Bennett 1995 – Bennett T. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London, 1995.
Brandenberger 2009 – Brandenberger D. National-Bolshevism. Stalinist mass culture and the formation of Russian national identity (1931–1956). Translation into Russian. Saint Petersburg, 2009.
Ermler 1974 – Ermler F. Documents, articles, memoirs. Leningrad 1974. In Russian.
Kovarsky 1946 – Kovarsky N. History of victory. Art of cinema. 1946. 1. In Russian.
Manevich 1953 – Manevich I. USSR people’s artist Mikhail Chiaureli. Moscow, 1953. In Russian.
Margolit 2012 – Margolit Е. Living and dead. Notes to the history of the Soviet cinema 1920–1960’s. Saint Petersburg, 2012. In Russian.
Marin 1988 – Marin L. Portrait of the King. London, 1988.
Maryamov 1992 – Maryamov G. Kremlin censor: Stalin wathes a movie. Moscow, 1992. In Russian.
Petrov 1949 – Petrov V. The film about the heroic battle. Art of cinema. 1949. 3. In Russian.
Radzinsky 1997 – Radzinsky E. Stalin. Moscow, 1997. In Russian.
Romm 1964 – Romm М. Conversations about movies. Moscow, 1964. In Russian.
Ryklin 2002 – Ryklin М. Spaces of rejoicing: Totalitarianism and the difference. Moscow, 2002. In Russian.
Soloviev 1949 – Soloviev A. Ways of development of a new genre. Art of cinema. 1949. 4. In Russian.
Stalin 1947 – Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Short Biography. Moscow, 1947. In Russian.
Sutyrin 1946 – Sutyrin V. «Great Break». Art of cinema. 1946. 1. In Russian.
Urry 1996 – Urry J. How Societies Remember the Past. Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World. Ed. by Sharon McDonald and Gordon Fyfe. Oxford, 1996.
Vesnik 2009 – Vesnik Е. Notes of the artist. 2009. URL: http://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/1009497/Vesnik_-_Zapiski_artista.html. In Russian.
Yurenev 1949 – Yurenev R. Soviet biographical film. Moscow, 1949. In Russian.
Zhdan 1949 – Zhdan V. The image of the great battle. Art of cinema. 1949. 3. In Russian.
( 341.54 kB ) 
( 330.61 kB )
Issue: 4, 2015
Series of issue: Issue 6
Rubric: ARTICLES
Pages: 28 — 46
Downloads: 1148