Cinema of attractions versus narrative cinema: Leonid Gaidai's comedies and el'dar riazanov's satires of the 1960s

Slavic Review

Volumn 62, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 455-471

  Prokhorov, Aleksandr ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 14944343924     PISSN: 00376779     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3185801     Document Type: Article

References (56)

1. Gaidai's Operation Y and Other Adventures of Shurik brought 70 million spectators to Soviet movie theaters and became the most watched film of the year. See Miroslava Segida and Sergei Zemlianukhin, Domashniaia sinemateka (Moscow, 1996), 303. Gaidai's Captive of the Caucasus or the New Adventures of Shurik repeated the success of Operation Y and became the most attended film the following year: 77 million viewers. The Diamond Arm again ranked first among Soviet films for the year, attracting 77 million viewers. Ibid., 186, 44-45. In 1995 the Russian television channel RTR named The Diamond Arm "the best comedy ever made" and awarded it the "Golden Ticket" prize. See Mikhail Brashinskii, "Leonid Gaidai," Kinoslovar': Noveishaia istoriia otecheslvennogo kino 1986-2000 (St. Petersburg, 2001), 233-234
2. Attendance at Riazanov's films during the 1960s was high, but considerably lower than that at Gaidai's: The Hussar's Ballad (49 million viewers), Give Me the Complaints Book (29.9 million viewers), Beware of the Car (29 million viewers), and Zigzag of Luck (24 million viewers). Riazanov's 1961 comedy Chelovek niotkuda (A man from nowhere) was shelved. No numbers are available for tickets sold to the portmanteau film Sovershenno ser'ezno (Absolutely serious, 1961), where both Riazanov's "How Robinson Was Created," and Gaidai's short "Pes Barbos i neobyknovennyi kross" (Dog Barbos and the unusual race) appeared. All critics, however, point out that it was Gaidai's short that made Absolutely Serious popular. Lev Lainer notes that out of five shorts in Absolutely Serious, only Gaidai's was purchased for the price of a feature film by almost a hundred countries. See Lev Lainer, Vese-laia troilsa (Moscow, 2001), 27.
3. See also Mariia Pupsheva, Valerii Ivanov, and Vladimir Tsukerman, Gaidai sovetskogo soiuza (Moscow, 2002), 68-89. Riazanov's Irony of Fate premiered first on television and then because of its phenomenal success was released in the movie theaters, where 7 million tickets were sold. Office Romance drew 58.4 million viewers. For data on ticket sales, see http://www.nashekino.ru (last consulted 12 May 2003).
4. See Emil' Braginskii and El'dar Riazanov, Beregis' avtomobilia (Moscow, 1965).
5. See William Paul, Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (New York, 1994), 33-34.
6. Paul contends that the change in social structure also increased the prominence of certain speech genres, such as black slang among white youth. Paul, Laughing Screaming, 34. In Russia, after Nikita Khrushchev liberated millions of camp inmates, jail argot (vorovskoe argo) assumed a position comparable to that of black slang in the speech of liberal intellectuals and youth.
7. See Richard Taylor, "Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumiatskii and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s," in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, eds., Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (London, 1991).
8. Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London, 2000), 50-56, 188-190
9. Rostislav Iurenev, Souetskaia kinokomediia (Moscow, 1964).
10. Less ideologically orthodox critics, such as, for example, Vladimir Propp, still referred to Hollywood comedy as the one that, above all, unleashes base instincts in humans. See Propp's discussion of Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like It Hot: the critic attacks the filmmaker for creating an immoral gag out of a murder. Vladimir Propp, Problemy komizma i smekha (Moscow, 1999), 160-161
11. Although published in the late 1990s, Propp's Problemy komizma i smekha was written in the 1960s and 1970s.
12. Propp, Problemy komizma, 201.
13. This film was placed in the third distribution category, a status awarded to films that were either artistic or political failures. See Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 301.
14. Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator," in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 5th ed. (New York, 1999), 825.
15. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde," Wide Angle 8, nos. 3-4 (1986): 64.
16. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectators and the Avant-Garde," Wide Angle 8, nos. 3-4 (1986): Ibid., 66.
17. Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment," 822.
18. See Kuleshov, "Americanism," 72-73.
19. See also Kuleshov, "Mr West," in Taylor and Christie, eds., The Film Factory, 108.
20. Boris Barnet played an American cowboy on a trip to Russia in Kuleshov's eccentric comedy The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and made the witty romantic comedies Devushka skorobkoi (The girl with the hat box, 1927) and Dom na Trubnoi (The house on Trubnaia Square, 1928).
21. See El'dar Riazanov, Nepodvedennye itogi (Moscow, 1995), 19-21.
22. See El'dar Riazanov, Nepodvedennye itogi, Ibid., 48-55
23. Ibid., 48-55. Richard Taylor, "Singing on the Steppes for Stalin: Ivan Pyr'ev and the Kolkhoz Musical in Soviet Cinema," Slavic Review 58, no.1 (Spring 1999): 143-159
24. See Evgenii Dobrenko's Bakhtinian analysis of Volga-Volga and Carnival Night in "Soviet Comedy Film, or the Carnival of Authority," Discourse 17, no.3 (Spring 1995): 49-57. For a discussion of Sun Valley Serenade.
25. see Richard Stites, Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society since 1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 126.
26. In the 1950s and early 1960s the literary miscellany emerged as one of the forms of liberal literary publications. Literaturnaia Moskva and Tarusskie stranitsy became the best-known miscellanies because they both introduced new writers, such as Aleksandr Iashin and Naum Korzhavin, for example, and revived in cultural memory the forgotten names of such authors as Marina Tsvetaeva and Nikolai Zabolotskii. The publication of the miscellanies was usually accompanied by conflicts with cultural authorities. See Charles Moser, ed., The Cambridge History of Russian Literature (Cambridge, Eng., 1992), 530-531
27. In addition, Absolutely Serious included "A Story with Pies" (Trakhtenberg), "Foreigners" (Zmoiro), and "Bon Appetit!" (Semakov).
28. See Carl and Ellendea Proffer, eds., Russian Literature of the Twenties: An Anthology (Ann Arbor, 1987), 371-374
29. My understanding of the sight gag follows Noel Carroll's definition: "The sight gag is a form of visual humor in which amusement is generated by the play of alternative interpretations projected by the image or the images series.... And it is this play of alternative, often conflicting interpretations, rooted first and foremost in the visual organization of the scene, that primarily causes the amusement that attends sight gags." See Noel Carroll, "Notes on the Sight Gag," in Andrew Horton, ed., Comedy, Cinema, Theory (Berkeley, 1991), 26.
30. Noel Carroll, "Notes on the Sight Gag,", Comedy, Cinema, Theory (1991), Ibid., 28.
31. Noel Carroll, "Notes on the Sight Gag,", Comedy, Cinema, Theory (1991), Ibid., 30, 31.
32. Georgii Vitsyn (1918-2001) studied acting at the Vakhtangov Theater School and the Second MKhAT School and enjoyed popularity as an actor in both theater and film. He appeared in 94 films, both comedies and dramas.
33. Iurii Nikulin (1921-1997) started his performing career as a circus clown, became a popular film actor, and served as the director of the Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard until his death. After Nikulin's death the circus was renamed Nikulin's Moscow Circus on Tsvetnoi Boulevard.
34. Evgenii Morgunov (1927-1999) was primarily a film actor at Mosfil'm Studio, although he also performed at the Teatr studiia kinoaktera.
35. He started his career in 1948 in Sergei Gerasimov's film adaptation of a socialist realist novel, Mololodaia guardiia (The young guard) by Aleksander Fadeev. In 1963 Morgunov also directed a comedy, Kogda kazaki plachut (When Cossacks cry), whose screenplay he coauthored with Mikhail Sholokhov.
36. On the history of folk crime narratives see Neia Zorkaia, Fol'klor, Lubok, Ekran (Moscow, 1994), 71-86, 112-134
37. In the comedy titled Sem' starikov i odna devushka (Seven old men and a girl, 1968), the filmmaker, Evgenii Karelov, invited ViNiMor to his production. Among other jokes, Karelov focused specifically on the gender distinctions between Morgunov and Vitsyn. When they use a public restroom, Vitsyn goes to the Women's and Morgunov goes to the Men's.
38. Andrei Rublev's name and work returned to cultural circulation during this period as part of a renewed interest in non-Soviet Russian history. Rublev's Trinity also became a culturally familiar image after the release of Andrei Tarkovskii's Andrei Rublev (1969).
39. Gaidai also planned to finish his later film The Diamond Arm with a nuclear explosion, which was for him the ultimate sight gag. See Natal'ia Savitskaia and Svetlana Lepeshkova, "Iadernyi vzryv v 'Brilliantovoi ruke,'" Nezavisimaia gazeta, 31 January 2003. Obviously, Gaidai was asked to cut the documentary footage of a nuclear explosion because, for the cultural administrators, a nuclear explosion belonged among serious political and ideological narratives, into whose company a comedy could by no means be incorporated. For Gaidai, however, a nuclear explosion was a cinematic event set against the grain of a film's narrative.
40. Lainer, Veselaia troilsa, 7, 27-28.
41. See the pioneering discussion of this subject in Katerina Clark's "Aural Hieroglyphics?" in Nancy Condee, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics (London, 1995), 1-21.
42. Taylor, "Singing on the Steppes," 143-144
43. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 31.
44. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, Ibid., 37.
45. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, Ibid., 52.
46. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, Ibid., 289-290
47. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, Ibid., 40.
48. See, for example, Georgii Daneliia and Igor' Talankin's Serezha (1960);
49. Mikhail Kalik's Chelovek idet za solnlsem (A man follows the sun, 1961);
50. Andrei Tarkovskii's Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan's childhood, 1962) and Andrei Rublev (1969).
51. See, for example, Georgii Daneliia and Igor' Talankin's Serezha (1960), Mikhail Kalik's Chelovek idet za solnlsem (A man follows the sun, 1961), and, finally, Andrei Tarkov-skii's Ivanovo detstvo (Ivan's childhood, 1962) and Andrei Rublev (1969).
52. Gaidai's short is based on O'Henry's story "The Ransom of Red Chief."
53. In the original version of the screenplay, the protagonist's name was Edik. Later the name was changed to one more popular in the 1960s, Shurik. Lainer, Veselaia troitsa, 47.
54. Ibid., 55.
55. Riazanov, Nepodvedennye ilogi, 146-149
56. See Grigorii Chukhrai, Moe kino (Moscow, 2002), 166, 183. According to an online film encyclopedia, Nashe kino, 39 million viewers watched Twelue Chairs and 60.7 million viewed Ivan Vasil'evich: Back to the Future in their respective years of release. See http://www.nashekino.ru (last consulted 12 May 2003).