The Politics Behind the Cinema:
An inquiry into early Soviet cinema requires a thorough understanding of the history and the politics that were heavily influencing films and the production of meaning through film at that time. The implementation of the Five Year plans in the late 1920's by Josef Stalin was to significantly change the attitude of the Soviet people and Soviet life in general. These Five Year plans were systems used in order to organise the Soviet economy. Prior to Stalin, Lenin had been the founder of the concept of the NEP (New Economic Policy) whereby he wanted Russia to catch up with industry as it was significantly behind the more advanced countries. 'He considered such a revolution a precondition for building socialism.'[5]. When Stalin assumed control, he put an end to the NEP and set out on a new course to full communism with the Five Year Plans.
During the Stalin era, it was declared that the theme to all art forms was to depict the Soviet life as it was in order to further enforce this notion that the Soviet people were working together for the greater good of the country. The first Five Year plan (1928-32 inclusive) highlighted this need for heavy industry and attempted to organise a central agricultural economy based on the principal of collectivity. The second Five-Year plan (1933-37) enabled more consumer goods to be produced. The third (1938-42) cut consumer production in order to focus on defence.
In terms of cinema, filmmakers were faced with a common goal in their films,
'the innovations in cinematic structure that they introduced not only advanced the Communist dogma but also startled the film world of that day. The new mode of Soviet Cinema was 'Socialist Realism'-an approach toward portraying real life rather than dramatic fantasy on the screen.'[6]
Under the RAPP Resolution on Cinema produced in 1930; cinema was to serve as an 'instrument of the Party in the cause of Communist enlightenment and agitation, as one of the powerful factors of the cultural revolution, as one of the factors, facilitating socialist construction as a whole.'[7] Politicians were severely concerned with ideological corruption by foreign products and therefore imposed heavy restrictions to what the audiences were allowed to see. Many filmmakers found it difficult to stick to these strict guidelines as they just wanted to make films that would appeal to the audiences and could not do this with the type of cinema that was being asked of them to produce. Their cinema was not agitational enough for the politicians. In terms of Vertov, although he was 'ideologically motivated and did produce films with ‘correct’ messages,'[8] his films were equally seen as ineffectual to serve the purposes of the agitators as his style was too experimental and this was considered as alienating to the audiences. Vertov was heavily criticised and charged with formalism by his audience. (Formalism having to do with any form of deviation from a simple narrative storyline, and any type of artistic innovation.) Vertov's work suffered due to the audience demand of popular genre films.