Kino-Fist: On the Film Propaganda of Sergei Eisenstein

Introduction

I don't believe in kino-eye, I believe in kino-fist. (1)

The failure of Soviet film propaganda in the post-revolutionary period of Russian history was ultimately the failure of the Soviet filmmakers to satisfactorily combine the ideological pedagogy and artistic excellence of the propagandistic avant-garde with the popularity and appeal of the otherwise vapid populist cinema. The highly innovative and challenging work of Sergei Eisenstein is particularly emblematic of this failure. A model Bolshevik, a consummate artist and an influential cinematic theorist, Eisenstein, for all his formal brilliance and ideological rigour, was ultimately unable to connect with the largely proletarian audiences of his times, most likely because of these very qualities. Though it is certainly arguable that calling Eisenstein's work emblematic of failure is absurd, particularly in light of his irrefutable and canonical position in the history of the cinema, (2) it should also be noted that, insofar as the intention behind them was at least partly propagandistic, the vast majority of Eisenstein's films were indeed failures. As Nicholas Reeves writes,

the films had been made in order to transform the ideology of the millions of Soviet citizens [and if they] were not seen by those millions, then no matter what other qualities they may have possessed, they were ipso facto a failure. (3)

It is in this light that Eisenstein's failure as a propagandist must ultimately be acknowledged.

Cinema and the Bolsheviks

The importance of film propaganda to the Soviet state was very great. Reeves outlines three key reasons for this. (4)

Firstly, cinema is a technological medium and the Bolsheviks firmly believed in technology as a means of bringing about and sustaining the effects of revolution. To Bolshevik eyes, technology was symbolic of Soviet progress and cinema in particular, especially at this early stage in its development, conveniently embodied this idea. Secondly, cinema is easily duplicated and disseminated and Soviet propaganda had over 140 000 000 citizens to reach (85 per cent of whom lived in rural areas) and approximately 22 000 000 square kilometres of land area to cover when the Bolsheviks first came into power in October 1917. (5) Finally, cinema was, at this time, widely considered to be a kind of 'universal language' and its almost exclusively pictorial form (6) seemed perfect for communicating with a largely illiterate and multilingual audience such as that of the Soviet state.

As we shall see, however, it was perhaps this third reason, considered by the Bolsheviks to be the most important of the three (7) and based, as time has shown, on an unfortunate misconception, that ultimately lead, in part, to Eisenstein's failure as a propagandist.

Eisenstein and the Avant-Garde

I want the pen to equal the gun, to be listed with iron in industry. (8)

As regards his approach to cinema, Eisenstein was an exemplary Bolshevik revolutionary; so much so, in fact, that the strength of his ideological convictions ultimately lead him to adopt an aesthetic that unduly alienated his audience and, as a result of this, prevented him from ever making any truly effective pieces of Bolshevik propaganda on his own terms. A nineteen-year-old civil engineering student at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Eisenstein's scientific background (his father was also a civil engineer) rendered him particularly receptive to the political, revolutionary and scientific worldview of the Bolsheviks. His aesthetic principles were very much a product of this new social matrix, (9) something that he himself was only too ready to admit, describing himself as "a young engineer . . . bent on finding a scientific approach to the secrets and mysteries of art." (10)

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that Eisenstein's work would ultimately reflect this extraordinary ideological fervour. Indeed, what set the films of the avant-garde apart from the simplistic agitprop that preceded them (11) and the insipid Soviet Realism that followed them (12) was the extent to which the ideals of the party influenced not only the content of the filmmakers' work, but also, ultimately, the form it took as well. Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Esther Shub and Alexander Dovzhenko (13) were for the first time "[breaking] decisively with the conventions of mainstream, narrative cinema . . . [demonstrating] that the Soviet Union was indeed breaking out of its bourgeois past." (14) Upon the release of Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925), Russian film critic Alexi Gvozdev succinctly wrote that

form and content have been fused into a powerful unity and a film with a revolutionary theme has found it proper revolutionary artistic form. (15)

However, despite its impeccable ideological pedigree, this "proper revolutionary artistic form" was completely incomprehensible to the average Russian cinemagoer who was far more interested in the imported Hollywood melodramas of the day than in the avant-garde's formal reinvention of the cinema. (16) Eisenstein in particular, especially as regards his prominent role in the development of what has since come to be known as Soviet Montage, (17) which aimed to produce a chain of juxtapositions and visual shocks that would incite the viewer to revolutionary action, (18) was pushing the boundaries of established cinematic language to a point where it would have to be learnt all over again if his films were to be intelligible to his generally disinterested audience. Cinema, it now seemed, wasn't a 'universal language' after all, but rather, as Christian Metz would later prove, (19) a complex semantic system that was heavily reliant on 'visual literacy,' which had to be learnt like any other written or spoken language. Needless to say, learning the new cinematic language of Eisenstein was not something that the Russian proletariat was particularly enthusiastic about or even capable of doing (20) and subsequently avoided his films in droves. How could Battleship Potemkin really be considered successful propaganda when it only ran for a sum total of six weeks in Moscow before being pulled by exhibitors to make way for Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922), which was, ironically, "back by popular demand"? (21) It's no wonder that The First All-Union Party Conference on Cinema that was held in March, 1928, ultimately demanded that Soviet filmmakers start making films that were "intelligible to the millions..." (22)

Stalin and the 1930s

Some might wish to argue, however, that in the 1930s this trend was reversed, with Eisenstein's integrity as an artist suffering at the hands of his first apparent success as a propagandist. Indeed, Alexander Nevsky (1938), with its Romantic hero-imagery suggestive of Leni Riefenstahl's films for the Nazis (23) and its rousing call-to-arm sing-a-longs that feel oddly like scenes from a Soviet Disney film, (24) was for a long while considered to be Eisenstein's most effective propaganda film. However, one successful propaganda film does not render one a successful propagandist, and there exists substantial evidence to show that the 1930s were perhaps an even worse time for Eisenstein, as both propagandist and artist alike, than the 1920s had been. (25) The issue at hand was no longer Eisenstein's revolutionary aesthetics, which had been officially curtailed by the authorities after 1928, but rather the changing face of Russia under Stalin, who, for a number of more or less arbitrary reasons that were usually based on his own (often incorrect) interpretations of the films, (26) saw to it that a whole slew of Eisenstein's work went uncompleted, (27) got censored, or even worse, as in the case of Ivan the Terrible, Part III, (28) destroyed.

It thus stands that, even though some may wish to cite Nevsky as a propagandist success, for the most part Eisenstein's work in the 1930s suffered from the exact same lack of an audience that it had suffered from in the 1920s, albeit for extremely different reasons.

Conclusion

One could say that Eisenstein was too much of an artist to make a good ideologue. (29)

As we have seen, both the 1920s and 1930s saw the highly politicised films of Sergei Eisenstein go widely unseen by the Soviet citizens upon whom he hoped to impress his revolutionary beliefs. Despite his strong political convictions, artistic excellence and theoretical bravado, the vast majority of Eisenstein's work, insofar as it was intended as propaganda, must ultimately be said to have failed because of this. The filmmaker's unwavering artistic vision and his experiences with unmet audience expectations and official censorship ultimately reveal the two dichotomous poles between which he unrealistically attempted to erect his work. Art and propaganda are essentially antithetical and, despite the intentions of the filmmaker who hopes in vain to reconcile the two, one side or the other must eventually prevail. In Eisenstein's case, to the benefit of the cinema, the prevailing side was ultimately art.

Notes

1. Sergei Eisenstein, quoted in Peter Wollen, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (3rd ed, 1972) 41.

2. Battleship Potemkin (1926) has appeared on the Sight & Sound top ten poll of world critics every decade since its inception in 1952. 'The Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll: history' (2002) <http://bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/index.html> at 13 June, 2005.

3. Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (1 st ed, 1999) 73.

4. Ibid 49.

5. Ibid.

6. We must remember that sound did not come in until the late 1920s in the United States and not until even later in the Soviet Union.

7. Richard Taylor, 'Soviet Cinema – The Path to Stalin' (1990) 40 (7) History Today 43, 43.

8. Wollen, above n 1, 37.

9. Ibid 19.

10. Ibid 32.

11. See Reeves, above n 3, 50–8 and Taylor, above n 7, 43–4.

12. See Taylor, above n 7, 46–7.

13. Reeves, above n 3, 70.

14. Ibid 72.

15. Alexi Gvozdev, 'A new triumph for Soviet cinema' (1926), quoted in Richard Taylor (ed and trans) and Ian Christie (ed), The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896–1939 (1st ed, 1988) 140.

16. Reeves, above n 3, 60–70.

17. See David Bordwell, 'The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film' (1972) 11 (2) Cinema Journal 9, 9–10.

18. Wollen, above n 1, 39.

19. See Christian Metz and Michael Taylor (trans), Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (1 st ed, 1974).

20. Denise Youngblood, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (1 st ed, 1985) 50.

21. Richard Taylor, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema 1917–1929 (1 st ed, 1979) 95.

22. Taylor, above n 7, 44.

23. Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938).

24. For more on the interpenetrative influencing of Walt Disney and Eisenstein on one another see Anne Nesbet, 'Inanimations' (1997) 50 (4) Film Quarterly 20–32.

25. See especially Ron Briley, 'Sergei Eisenstein: The Artist in Service of the Revolution' (1996) 29 (4) The History Teacher 525, 531–35.

26. Taylor, above n 7, 48–9.

27. See David Ehrenstein, ' Bezhin Meadow ' (2002) 23 Senses of Cinema <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/23/bezhin.html> at 20 June 2005.

28. Briley, above n 25, 534.

29. Dan Shaw, 'Sergei Eisenstein' (2004) 30 Senses of Cinema <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/eisenstein.html> at 7 June 2005.

Works Cited

Bordwell, David, 'The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film' (1972) 11 (2) Cinema Journal 9.

Briley, Ron, 'Sergei Eisenstein: The Artist in Service of the Revolution' (1996) 29 (4) The History Teacher 525.

Ehrenstein, David, ' Bezhin Meadow ' (2002) 23 Senses of Cinema <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/02/23/bezhin.html> at 20 June 2005.

Metz, Christian and Taylor, Michael (trans), Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (1 st ed, 1974).

Nesbet, Anne, 'Inanimations' (1997) 50 (4) Film Quarterly 20.

Reeves, Nicholas, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality? (1 st ed, 1999).

Shaw, Dan, 'Sergei Eisenstein' (2004) 30 Senses of Cinema <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/eisenstein.html> at 7 June 2005.

'Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll: history, The' (2002) <http://bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/index.html> at 13 June, 2005.

Taylor, Richard, The Politics of the Soviet Cinema 1917–1929 (1 st ed, 1979).

Taylor, Richard, 'Soviet Cinema – The Path to Stalin' (1990) 40 (7) History Today 43.

Taylor, Richard (ed and trans) and Christie, Ian (ed), The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896–1939 (1 st ed, 1988).

Wollen, Peter, Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (3rd ed, 1972).

Youngblood, Denise, Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918–1935 (1st ed, 1985).