Stalin S Final Films

Stalin's Final Films explores a neglected period in the history of Soviet cinema, breathing new life into a body of films long considered moribund as the pinnacle of Stalinism. While film censorship reached its apogee in this period and fewer films were made, film attendance also peaked as Soviet audiences voted with their seats and distinguished a clearly popular postwar cinema. Claire Knight examines the tensions between official ideology and audience engagement, and between education and entertainment, inherent in these popular films, as well as the financial considerations that shaped and constrained them. She explores how the Soviet regime used films to address the major challenges faced by the USSR after the Great Patriotic War (World War II), showing how war dramas, spy thrillers, Stalin epics, and rural comedies alike were mobilized to consolidate an official narrative of the war, reestablish Stalinist orthodoxy, and dramatize the rebuilding of socialist society. Yet, Knight also highlights how these same films were used by filmmakers more experimentally, exploring a diverse range of responses to the ideological crisis that lay at the heart of Soviet postwar culture, as a victorious people were denied the fruits of their sacrificial labor. After the war, new heroes were demanded by both the regime and Soviet audiences, and filmmakers sought to provide them, with at times surprising results. Stalin's Final Films mines Soviet cinema as an invaluable resource for understanding the unique character of postwar Stalinism and the cinema of the most repressive era in Soviet history.

The political influences on Soviet cinema are traced from its pre-revolutionary heritage, through the Revolution and the golden years of the late 1920s through Second World War liberalization and the extraordinary repression of Stalin final years.The political influences on Soviet cinema are traced from its pre-revolutionary heritage, through the Revolution and the golden years of the late 1920s through Second World War liberalization and the extraordinary repression of Stalin final years.

Monografie over de laatste maanden in het leven van Stalin en de periode daarna.

Stalinism and Soviet Cinema marks the first attempt to confront systematically the role and influence of Stalin and Stalinism in the history and development of Soviet cinema. The collection provides comprehensive coverage of the antecedents, role and consequences of Stalinism and Soviet cinema, how Stalinism emerged, what the relationship was between the political leadership, the cinema administrators, the film-makers and their films and audiences, and how Soviet cinema is coming to terms with the disintegration of established structures and mythologies. Contributors from Britain, America and the Soviet Union address themselves to the importance of the Stalinist legacy, not only to the history of Soviet cinema but to Soviet history as a whole.

As Stalin lies dying, this novel records his last thoughts, which he renders as a movie about the people he believes envenomed his life, namely, Lenin and certain women. (A film devotee, Stalin so loved movies that some scholars have even suggested that he governed the Soviet empire by cinematocracy, rule by cinema.) He has suffered a stroke but will linger for three days before dying. As in a film, he revisits scenes and old arguments with Lenin, and then endures a trial over his charge that women have poisoned his life. At the conclusion of the trial, Stalin’s mind screen returns to V.I. Lenin. What follows then is Stalin’s concluding mockery and denunciation of Lenin; Lenin’s final assessment of Stalin; and the end of the novel: Stalin’s dying words.

Stalinism and Soviet Cinema marks the first attempt to confront systematically the role and influence of Stalin and Stalinism in the history and development of Soviet cinema. The collection provides comprehensive coverage of the antecedents, role and consequences of Stalinism and Soviet cinema, how Stalinism emerged, what the relationship was between the political leadership, the cinema administrators, the film-makers and their films and audiences, and how Soviet cinema is coming to terms with the disintegration of established structures and mythologies. Contributors from Britain, America and the Soviet Union address themselves to the importance of the Stalinist legacy, not only to the history of Soviet cinema but to Soviet history as a whole.

In Not According to Plan, Maria Belodubrovskaya reveals the limits on the power of even the most repressive totalitarian regimes to create and control propaganda. Belodubrovskaya's revisionist account of Soviet filmmaking between 1930 and 1953 highlights the extent to which the Soviet film industry remained stubbornly artisanal in its methods, especially in contrast to the more industrial approach of the Hollywood studio system. Not According to Plan shows that even though Josef Stalin recognized cinema as a "mighty instrument of mass agitation and propaganda" and strove to harness the Soviet film industry to serve the state, directors such as Eisenstein, Alexandrov, and Pudovkin had far more creative control than did party-appointed executives and censors.

This book explores how Soviet film worked with time, the past, and memory. It looks at Stalinist cinema and its role in the production of history. Cinema's role in the legitimization of Stalinism and the production of a new Soviet identity was enormous. Both Lenin and Stalin saw in this 'most important of arts' the most effective form of propaganda and 'organisation of the masses'. By examining the works of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the Stalin era--Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, Fridrikh Ermler--the author explores the role of the cinema in the formation of the Soviet political imagination.