James K. Pringle and Dr. Raissa Solovieva, German Studies and Slavic Languages

This research examines how Soviet directors portrayed Americans in the six anti-American films released during the late Stalin era (1945-1953). These six films are The Russian Question (dir. Romm, 1947), Meeting on the Elbe (dir. Alexandrov, 1949), Court of Honor (dir. Room, 1949), Conspiracy of the Doomed (dir. Kalatozov, 1950), Secret Mission (dir. Romm, 1950), and Silvery Dust (dir. Room, 1953). This period is unique because the allies of World War II became enemies in the Cold War. Accordingly, for the first time in Soviet Cinema, Americans became the enemy. Since the Soviet Union was a closed country, all actors were Soviet, and the Soviet viewers had little knowledge of Americans. Besides using scripted speech, the directors actively differentiated the American characters from the Soviets using a variety of film techniques, including costume, mise-en-scène, music, camera angle, and lighting. Clothing is the simplest marker of nationality. Music, especially jazz, announces the Americans in a scene or shows their lack of refinement. Camera angle, lighting, and mise-en-scène subtly manipulate viewer’s perception of Americans. Furthermore, the contrast between Americans and Soviets becomes more dramatic when they appear in the same scene. The effect of these techniques helps the viewer sympathize with the right character—the pro-Soviet—and absorb the film’s anti-American ideology.

During the period immediately following the war, the enemy in Soviet film changed from the fascist Germans to the Americans. As a new conflict dawned, America emerged as the Soviet Union’s rival. Through the course of World War II, a large number of Soviet citizens saw the outside world. To the government, this represented a political danger that had to be counteracted (Kenez 107). Consequently, films of the post-war era were tasked with depicting both a miserable, undesirable outside world and the peace-hating enemies that filled it. The films mentioned above are representative of this period and the only ones released during the late Stalin era (1945-1953) depicting Americans.

The late Stalin era was unique in that it produced significantly less films than any time period before, evidence of the producers’ lack artistic freedom, and the result of the traumatic war. According to Beumers, “The constraints of Socialist Realism required filmmakers to varnish reality and show life in a positive light that would allow people to trace the path to the bright (communist) future, whilst the reality consisted of forced collectivization, famines and the Purges” (2). This period in Soviet film history is called malokartin’e, a word referencing the small quantity of films produced. The 1930’s produced about fifty feature films a year whereas production fell to under ten films a year in the late Stalin era. The film industry returned to “healthy” production numbers only during the so-called thaw, led by Khrushchev after he politically denounced Stalin in 1956.

Malokartin’e had a profound effect on the kind of movies that could be produced simply because there weren’t many scripts to choose from. All the films of this study except Secret Mission are actually adaptations from plays. The plays of The Russian Question and Conspiracy of the Doomed ran in theaters all around the Soviet Union just before the films were released and were very popular (Dobrenko 931-932). Often in meetings at the Moscow House of Cinema, party officials would criticize directors, comparing their films to the plays, because the plays developed themes better or had a stronger socialist message.
None the less, directors were adept at utilizing various cinematographic methods to give depth to their films, films that otherwise could have been little better than a recording of a play performance. Romm, commenting on his film Secret Mission, straightforwardly announced

“Certainly the picture should be cruder than real life because of the single fact that if you let one of the thirty-five million people who which the film—and we are producing it for them—go to a session of the United Nations, I am not convinced that if there isn’t a Soviet representative there to give an explanation of what is going on, I am not convinced that that person will understand what happened…I had to change a lot of scenes and make them simpler and “cruder” than in the script.”1 (Proceedings 16)

Soviet directors knew they had to make their films easily understandable for their viewers. Besides including moments of blatant propaganda in actors’ speech, directors reinforced the film’s ideology with everything else under their control.

Each film is different in how much it relies on the different cinematographic techniques at the directors’ disposal. In Meeting on the Elbe, director Aleksandrov utilizes a broader variety of cinematographic techniques than Room, Romm, or Kalatozov in the other films of this study. He doesn’t bombard the viewer with visual propaganda as in Conspiracy of the Doomed. It isn’t focused on rhetoric like the anti-cosmopolitan Court of Honor. Instead, Aleksandrov interweaves music with other things like lighting and camera angles to prop up his film’s implicit ideology.

Aleksandrov actively separates the Soviets, Germans, and the Americans for the viewer through music. When the Soviet commanders discuss how to rehabilitate a devastated German city in their office, the sophistication of classical music graces the background. The Germans sing songs of freedom. Further, there is the arid, hysterical American music reminiscent of jazz that accompanies the American scenes. The director knows that three distinct worlds are easier to discuss than a bland jumble of Soviet, German, and American characters. The film Meeting on the Elbe has other clues strewn throughout that subtly demarcate these “worlds,” too. Major Kuzmin wears a handsome white tunic while the Americans often dress in black. The camera angles up to show the Soviet heroes while it angles down to show the corrupt Senator Wood. The film combines a lot of these simple cinematographic techniques consistently from start to end, and they leave an indelible impression on the viewer: American culture is the embodiment of vice, while Soviet culture is refined and superior.

Each film except Silvery Dust received the Stalin Prize in the first or second degree, equivalent to winning an Oscar or Academy Award in the United States, because of how convincingly they conveyed Soviet ideology. Each film deserves its own paper and in-depth treatment. It is clear the directors went beyond putting a script onto screen. They deliberately enhanced the Soviets and Soviet ideology and disparaged Americans using all cinematographic techniques at their disposal.

Works Cited

• Beumers, Birgit. A History of Russian Cinema. Oxford: Berg, 2009. Print.
• Dobrenko, Evgeny. “Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War: An Equation without Unknowns.” Modern Language Review 98.4 (2003): 929-44. Print.
• Kenez, Peter. Cinema and Soviet Society: from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Print.
• USSR. Arts Committee of the Cinematography Ministry. Proceedings. Moscow. Russian State Archive of Film.