| Abstrakt: |
Despite the sharp power struggle that continued throughout 1928-1930 in the top Power of the USSR (this time the so-called "right deviation" in the Communist party was being liquidated), the situation in the cinema and in the press became the subject of close attention. Former "formalistic" liberties and relative creative freedom gradually began to disappear under the pressure of ideological censorship. In particular, cinema, film distribution and the press became the field of the communist struggle against bourgeois propaganda, entertainment, formalism. And here, a severe ideological and administrative blow was dealt to the Teakinopechat publishing house, headed by V. Uspensky (1880-1929), who in the second half of 1928 - early 1929 was also the editor of the Soviet Screen. A number of meetings were also held to strengthen control over the cinema and the press. All these events could not but affect the overall situation in Soviet Screen: its pages from 1925 to 1930 saw a gradual and consistent decrease in the number of articles about Western cinema, which eventually led to an almost tenfold decrease in this kind of texts in 1930 relative to 1925. The reasons for this decline in the volume of magazine articles on Western cinema are mainly related to the ideological and administrative struggle of the Soviets against Western influence in all spheres of culture, which intensified sharply by the end of the 1920s. Based on the content analysis of texts published in the Soviet Screen magazine from 1928 to 1930, this article highlights the following main genres and trends within the framework of topics related to Western cinema: - articles sharply criticizing the policy in the field of distribution of foreign films in USSR and the harmful influence of Western cinema on Soviet viewers; - biographies and creative portraits of Western actors and directors, which were already published in much smaller volumes compared to the period of 1925-1927 and were more ideologized; - reviews of Western films (also kept to a minimum and with a greater critical focus); - reviews of Western national cinematographies, which on the whole give a very negative assessment of the film process in leading Western countries; - articles about Western newsreels, where criticism of the bourgeois system and cinema in general was also intensified; - articles about foreign film technology, studios and cinemas (perhaps the only section of the magazine that still retained an ideologically neutral presentation of facts and calls to adopt foreign technical experience, for example, in the field of sound films); - short informational materials about events in foreign cinema (which, in contrast to 1925-1927, were already deprived of neutrality and photos of Hollywood stars, but were presented in a feuilleton and revealing manner). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
