SOVIET INTEREST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1942, Page 4

SOVIET INTEREST

IN AMERICAN AND BRITISH FILMS CONGRESS IN MOSCOW. CINEMA AS POLITIC AT, INSTRUMENT. Papers on the British and the American cinema were read by E’scnsicii’. Pudovkin. Dovzhenko, and others a. the two-day Congress arranged oy the Soviet Film Committee and the society for Cultural Relations Abroad, the special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian" in Moscow wrote recently. . , „ ~ Inevitably it was mainly of the American cinema that most ol the pai - ticipants spoke, though Britisn newsreel operators came m lor mention from the director of that, remarkable documentary film “Leningrad at v'. ai. which it is understood, will soon be available in Britain. British documentary films, the most notable achievement of the British film industry. appear to be virtually unknown The speakers were interested in the cinema as a political instrument, and ui'ved that the AVestern film industry, with all its great technique and experience, should now concentrate on the task of interpreting the war. Dovzhenko, director of “Earth and “Schorrs,” advanced the view that me camera should not burke any war subject, however appalling, declaring that it was only from a complete realisation of war’s horror that the noble emotions of heroism and righteous hatred could spring. APPROVAL OF “WESTERNS.” Pudovkin saw in American films, especially the early “Westerns, a true popular art, .declaring that it was popular desire which created tne familiar buoyant, pugnacious, and agile hero fighting his way over recurrent obstacles by sheer force of optimism, and it was the hero’s character wmeh dictated the nature of the plot and its rapid tempo. He wished to. see the same hero now in war situations overcoming difficulties with tne same Ve ilva Ehrenburg spoke about. Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator,” which has been shown here only to a restricted audience, though it is no fault of tne Soviet authorities. Charlie Chaplin is immensely popular in Soviet, Russia, and this popularity has been recently enhanced by his championing of the cause of an immediate second front. Ehrenburg paid him the tribute or peing a man who knew and interpreted the instinct of the people. The congress shared some surprises. It was. for instance, a pleasant shock to hear Pudovkin talking or Judy Garland and those comedians known here as “Bratya Marx.” and no less so to see an old Bolshevik like Yaroslavsky chuckling at “The Private Life of Henry VIII,” which with a news reel of a''Mediterranean convoy was Britain’s contribution, though Britain s Prime Minister also appeared in a film showing his arrival in Moscow. RUSSIAN PRODUCTIONS. The Congress, however, which was held in the beautiful building of the Moscow Architects’ Society, where ’large exhibitions of the work of famlous producers are housed, is generally on a serious level. Though the Soviet cinema has during past decades never n fleeted the entertainment aspect, in production the schedule is determined by .a careful plan related to what are considered to be the needs ol the time and it was for similar planning in Britain and America for the purnose of mobilising the world against Hitler that some of the speakers centres of Soviet film production he?vc now been evacuated, and at Alma At£ on the Chinese borders, what is locally known as a second. Hoilywood S springing up. Eisenstein told'me that he is working there on a version of Alexei Tolstoy s Ivan the Terrible,” which is just going into production.'and that Pudovkin is preparing a film of the popular war play Sienstv’s “Russian People.” Doyzhenko the Ukrainian, is making a film abput his own occupied land It is to be hoped that before long steios will be taken to bring to Moscow a representative collection of British documentaries, which even if shown io ci restricted audience would do much to cement cultural relations growing, in spite qf all difficulties, between the Allies Such congresses as these indicate how much goodwill there is and how little knowledge about the more progressive aspects of British cultural achievements.