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PYR´EV,
Ivan Kubanskie kazaki [Kuban Cossacks]/
FOOD FILMS/
FILM MAIN |
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Mosfil´m, 1949;
released 27.2.1950/ Scrn: N. Pogodin/ Phot: Valentin Pavlov/
Music: Isaak Dunaevskii/ Song lyrics: M. Isakovskii and M.
Vol´pin |
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After World War Two, with hunger and hardship still rife,
the kolkhoz fantasy of abundance returned in such
films as KUBAN COSSACKS and THE CAVALIER OF THE GOLDEN STAR
(1951), which Kruschev singled out for denunciation in
his 1956 'secret speech'. Stalin, he claimed, had
consistently used cinema for self-serving myth-making, and
nowhere had this been more evident than in the spectacle of
plentiful food that had occupied Soviet screens through the
hungriest decades. An unusual instance of the politics of
food imagery, which has more often related to scarcity and
famine, but a reminder of how potent the theme remains,
especially in Third World cinema and the social documentary
tradition. "Myths can often
come to grips with life but they are always the eternal
winners. Following the release of this typical propaganda
film, many viewers believed that they were the exception,
not the film with its portrayal of such Soviet affluence.
"In any case, a
myth is something we are very happy to listen to. There can
be no negative myths, for otherwise they would be rejected
by public opinion. That is why we adore overt mythmakers who
openly shoot films or stage plays for us, as well as covert
mythmakers who, for example, generate news for the mass
media, with everything so flawless and correct in their
creations, be it a film or news story."
Heorhy
Pochepstov |
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Professor Heorhy Pochepstov |
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In his 1956 Secret Speech,
Nikita Khrushchev singled out Soviet filmmakers for their
role in supporting Josif Stalin's personality cult and in
varnishing reality through their depiction of Soviet
agriculture and life on the kolkhoz. Ivan Pyr'ev's film
The KUBAN COSSACKS has been generally associated with these
remarks, and this has prevented a nuanced assessment of
Pyr'ev's contribution to Soviet cinema. Richard Taylor
attempts to redress the balance by examining, in the context
of the doctrine of socialist realism and the demand for a
"cinema for the millions," the development of the kolkhoz
musical, a genre that Pyr'ev made his own. Four films are
examined in detail: THE WEALTHY BRIDE, THE TRACTOR DRIVERS,
THE SWINEHERDESS AND THE SHEPHERD, and THE KUBAN COSSAKS.
Summarizing Pyr'ev's distinctive contribution to Soviet
cinema, Taylor concludes that the kolkhoz musical was an act
of faith in which audiences were willing to collaborate and
that cinema was indeed, in Stalin's words, an illusion that
dictated its laws to life itself.
(Richard
Taylor, "Singing on the Steppes for Stalin: Ivan Pyr'ev
and the Kolkhoz Musical in Soviet Cinema")
Ian Christie, Heorhy
Pochepstov |
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