Movies for the Masses Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s [Paperback]

A pathbreaking study of Soviet cinema in the 1920s.Focusing on commercial directors, acting genres, box office hits and audience responses, this survey of Soviet popular cinema demonstrates that it was dominated by bourgeois directors and middle class tastes greatly influenced by Western and pre-revolutionary film cultures.Focusing on commercial directors, acting genres, box office hits and audience responses, this survey of Soviet popular cinema demonstrates that it was dominated by bourgeois directors and middle class tastes greatly influenced by Western and pre-revolutionary film cultures.This book presents a pathbreaking study of Soviet popular cinema in the 1920s. Professor Youngblood focuses on commercial directors, acting genres, box office hits and audience responses to these films and their stars. She also examines the role of foreign films and the governmental and industrial circumstances underlying filmmaking practices of the era. The author demonstrates that during the first decade after the revolution, Soviet cinema was dominated by bourgeois directors and middle class tastes and was greatly influenced by Western and pre-revolutionary film cultures.Introduction; Part I. Contexts: I. A historical overview 'from below'; 2. The entertainment or enlightenment debate; 3. The inostranshchina in Soviet cinema; Part II. Practice: 4. Genres and hits; 5. Images and stars; 6. Iakov Protazanov, the 'Russian Griffith'; Part III. Alternatives: 7. Boris Barnet, Soviet actor/Soviet director; 8. Fridrikh Ermler and the social problem film; 9. For workers and peasants only - factory and tractor films; Conclusion. Movies for the Masses is an excellent survey of the popular cinema of the 1920's and the debates surrounding it. Slavic and East European Journal [A] sprightly study of the cinema industry at the dawning f the world's first proletarian state.... Charles A. Ruud, Journal of Modern History