Soviet silent comedies

[Jeffrey Karlsen]

The most productive sources are film periodicals of the era, if you can get
access to them:  Kino-gazeta, Sovetskii ekran, Zhizn' iskusstva, ARK, etc.
You can find specific citations for reviews and discussions of all these
films in volume 1 of:
Macheret, Aleksandr Veniaminovich, N. A. Glagoleva, and Gosfil'mofond SSSR.
Sovetskie khudozhestvennye fil'my : annotirovannyi katalog. Moskva:
Iskusstvo, 1961.

Secondary scholarship is very sparse.  There is useful info in both of
Youngblood's monographs on Soviet film:

Youngblood, Denise J. Soviet cinema in the silent era, 1918-1935. Ann Arbor,
Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985, and especially:
----.  Movies for the masses : popular cinema and Soviet society in the
1920s. Cambridge England ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

 I highly recommended the following anthologies:
Albera, Francois. Vers une theorie de l'actuer : colloque Lev Koulechov.
Lausanne: Universitâe de Lausanne : L'Age d'homme, 1994 (not just about
Kuleshov).
Posener, Valérie, et al. Le studio Mejrabpom, ou, L'aventure du cinéma privé
au pays des bolcheviks : catalogue. Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux
Documentation française, 1996.

You might also look at:
Horton, Andrew. Inside Soviet film satire : laughter with a lash. Cambridge
England ; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

On Mr. West:
Kuleshov's incomplete works has some resources (though unfortunately not the
early versions of the Mr. West screenplay):  Kuleshov, L. V. Sobranie
sochinenii v trekh tomakh. Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1987.
There is also an essay by Vance Kepley on Mr. West that I can't find the
cite for at the moment.

On Barnet:
Albera, Francois, and Roland Cosandey. Boris Barnet, ecrits, documents,
etudes, filmographie. Locarno: Festival international du film de Locarno,
1985.
Barnet is undergoing a kind of resurgence in Russia at the moment--the
Moscow film festival this summer opened with a production number based on
Devushka s korobkoi and Mikhalkov gushed about Barnet's genius--so there
should be more on the way.

Cigarette girl?  There may be something of value in Il'inskii's memoirs:
Il'inskii, Igor'. Sam o sebe. Izd. 2-e. Moskva: "Iskusstvo ", 1973.

-Jeff Karlsen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander Dallas" <a.s.dallas at EXETER.AC.UK>
To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 7:14 AM
Subject: [SEELANGS] Soviet silent comedies


> I am writing an essay entitled "The Representation of the 'Other' in
Soviet
> Silent Comedy Films" and am having great difficulty finding any relevant
> resources. The films I am studying are Kuleshov's "The Extraordinary
> Adventures of Mr West in the Land of the Bolsheviks", Zheliabuzhsky's "The
> Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom", and Barnet's "The Girl with the Hat box"
> and "The House on Trubnaia Square". If anyone knows of any texts that
might
> be useful, I'd be very grateful to hear from you. Thanks.
>

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