| PYR´EV,
Ivan Kubanskie kazaki [Kuban Cossacks]/
FOOD FILMS/ FILM
MAIN |
| Mosfil´m,
1949; released 27.2.1950/ Scrn: N. Pogodin/ Phot: Valentin
Pavlov/ Music: Isaak Dunaevskii/ Song lyrics: M. Isakovskii and M. Vol´pin |
|
Professor Heorhy Pochepstov |
 |
| After
World War Two, with hunger and hardship still rife, the kolkhoz
fantasy of abundance returned in such films as KUBAN
COSSACKS and THE CAVALIER OF THE GOLDEN STAR (1951),
which Kruschev singled out for denunciation in his 1956
‘secret speech’. Stalin, he claimed, had consistently
used cinema for self-serving myth-making, and nowhere
had this been more evident than in the spectacle of
plentiful food that had occupied Soviet screens through
the hungriest decades. An unusual instance of the
politics of food imagery, which has more often related
to scarcity and famine, but a reminder of how potent the
theme remains, especially in Third World cinema and the
social documentary tradition. |
|
"Myths can often
come to grips with life but they are always the eternal
winners. Following the release of this typical propaganda film,
many viewers believed that they were the
exception, not the film with its portrayal of such
Soviet affluence.
In any case, a myth is something we are very happy to listen to. There
can be no negative myths, for otherwise they would be
rejected by public opinion. That is why we adore overt
mythmakers who openly shoot films or stage plays for us,
as well as covert mythmakers who, for example, generate
news for the mass media, with everything so flawless and
correct in their creations, be it a film or news
story."
(Heorhy
Pochepstov)
|
|
In his 1956 Secret Speech,
Nikita Khrushchev singled out Soviet filmmakers for
their role in supporting Josif Stalin’s personality cult
and in varnishing reality through their depiction of
Soviet agriculture and life on the kolkhoz. Ivan
Pyr’ev’s film The KUBAN COSSACKS has been
generally associated with these remarks, and this has
prevented a nuanced assessment of Pyr’ev’s contribution
to Soviet cinema. Richard Taylor attempts to redress the balance
by examining, in the context of the doctrine of
socialist realism and the demand for a "cinema
for the millions," the development of the kolkhoz
musical, a genre that Pyr’ev made his own. Four films
are examined in detail: THE WEALTHY BRIDE, THE TRACTOR
DRIVERS, THE SWINEHERDESS AND THE SHEPHERD, and THE
KUBAN COSSAKS. Summarizing Pyr’ev’s distinctive contribution to Soviet cinema,
Taylor concludes that the kolkhoz musical was an act of
faith in which audiences were willing to collaborate and
that cinema was indeed, in Stalin’s words, an illusion
that dictated its laws to life itself.
(Richard
Taylor, "Singing on the Steppes for Stalin: Ivan
Pyr’ev and the Kolkhoz Musical in Soviet Cinema") Ian Christie, Heorhy
Pochepstov Kazaki
Music – Kuban Cossacks |
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