Many in the West were impressed by the Moscow filmmakers Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov, but their works, which lacked traditional plots and likable heroes and which used metaphorical, so-called poetic montage, did not find a mass audience at home. But the well-crafted, accessible productions of Lenfilm touched the Soviet public. Their conscious emphasis on “prosaic” cinema was both acceptable to the authorities and eagerly consumed by the masses. Indeed, the Leningrad films were the only truly popular Soviet art of the period.
Lenfilm and its directors thus became the cultural darlings of the Stalinist era. In 1935 Stalin, using the fifteenth anniversary of Soviet cinematography as an excuse, awarded the Order of Lenin to Lenfilm, making it the first Soviet “creative collective” to receive the country’s highest honor. The order was also bestowed upon Kozintsev, Trauberg, Ermler, and the Vasilyevs (Eisenstein did not get one). That same year at the International Film Festival in Moscow, the first prize went to Lenfilm for a program that included Chapayev, Maxim’s Youth, and Ermler’s Peasants, a film about class struggle in the countryside. This official recognition as the country’s best film studio was the peak of success for Lenfilm.
That success was achieved at the cost not only of the directors’ youthful avant-garde ambitions but also of even the illusion of independence of the Party line, no matter how much it zigzagged. The directors themselves later admitted the cost. Trauberg bitterly recalled how his old friends rebuked him after Maxim’s Youth, which led to two acclaimed sequels. “Why did you move away from The Overcoat and New Babylon? A violinist should not switch to drums.”19
Ermler underwent an even more radical evolution, going from a film based on “The Cave,” a story by the 1920s Leningrad nonconformist Yevgeny Zamyatin, to The Great Citizen, the most notorious film of the 1930s. The Great Citizen presented, thinly disguised, the story of Kirov’s life and death in an interpretation that came from Stalin: the hero fights opposition leaders, spies, and saboteurs and dies at their hands. Stalin’s written reaction to the screenplay is known to us. “It is composed with indisputable political literacy. Its literary qualities are also indisputable.”20 The film’s writers announced breathlessly, “If our work receives critical appreciation from Soviet viewers, if it is of benefit in mobilizing vigilance, in exposing and destroying the enemies of the people, we will be happy knowing that our creative duty has been done.”21
Ermler’s The Great Citizen was both a justification of and an inspired hymn to the Great Terror. According to contemporaries, viewers left the movie theaters prepared to tear apart any opposition villains who tried to move the country from Stalin’s course. Trauberg’s reaction was understated. He called it “a splendid film with highly interesting characters.” Its effect was enhanced by Shostakovich’s music. The Great Citizen received, for its political and popular acceptability, the Stalin Prize first class.
Ermler was proud of The Great Citizen to the end of his days (1967), stubbornly insisting, “I am a soldier of the Party!” Shostakovich avoided talking about his early films in general and The Great Citizen in particular, merely saying that “one had to make a living.” However, it is clear that working on such projects was more than a source of income for him. Participation in film work sanctioned and supported by Stalin was a safe-conduct pass for Shostakovich. The composer did his work well and received an appropriate fee, but the real goal was to survive in a totalitarian state where his music was often branded “anti-people.” Many times he told his students, “Take up film scores only in case of extreme need, extreme need.”
Paradoxically, in his film work Shostakovich took unexpected creative leaps. For films with revolutionary themes, particularly the Maxim trilogy, Shostakovich often used Russian protest melodies from the turn of the century. These quotations made a powerful impression on the audiences, inspiring as they did memories of happier days past.
In the years of Soviet rule, the old revolutionary songs and revolutionary traditions in general underwent significant cultural revision. Stalin shunted them aside in favor of paeans to the exploits of the contemporary Communist Party and its great leader. The new “pseudo-revolutionary” songs were pompous and cold. The old ones—sincere and spontaneous—still had the spirit of protest. Gradually they became part of the new cultural “Aesopian language” characteristic of the Soviet era.
