<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span"><DIV>On Oct 23, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Anne McKnight wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; "><BR></DIV><DIV style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">But looking at the prole cinema materials that I have, Eisenstein doesn't seem to feature much. I read of _Potemkin_ being banned by the government, while essays and translations seem to focus on Pudovkin, and the presentation of Soviet cinema by French scholars (whose work remains untranslated in English to date). All this leads me to think that while people hadn't perhaps seen _Potemkin_ in Japan, they both heard about it, and/or may have seen it in Russia. Has anyone seen "story-plays" (eiga monogatari) of _Potemkin_, for example? </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>This is an interesting question, and I'd love to see it researched by someone. Pudovkin does seem to get all the glory when it comes to the Soviets. Sasaki Norio published a book of his translations from Eisenstein (<I>Eiga no benshoho</I>) in 1931, and a second collection was published in 1940 (believe it or not). Books of Pudovkin's writings were published in 1930, 1935, and 1936, and all of those got revised, updated versions published shortly thereafter. </SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Some magazines were known for doing photospreads and scenarios of Soviet films; however, the only one I've seen for Eisenstein was Zensen in one of the Prokino journals. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">A couple things come to mind. </SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">First, this is late. In fact, long after the Kobayashi book. The proletarian film journals don't really start until 1927-28, and I don't recall them writing much of anything about Eisenstein—or Soviet cinema in general. You can see them here, in my reprint series: </SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/filmprojournals.html">http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/filmprojournals.html</A><SPAN class="Apple-style-span"></SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="Apple-style-span">The earliest book is from Murayama in 1928 (Puroretarian eiga Nyumon; <A href="http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.bbx2322.0001.001">http://hdl.handle..net/2027/spo.bbx2322.0001.001</A>), and that has almost nothing on Eisenstein. <BR></SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>One place you might be able to find some things is the back end of Puroretarian Eiga no Tenbo; look around page 247: </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><A href="http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=cjfs&cc=cjfs&idno=bbx2327.0001.001&q1=dlps&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=263">http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=cjfs&cc=cjfs&idno=bbx2327.0001.001&q1=dlps&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=263</A></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Second, those first journals are mostly about screenwriting because they didn't see production within their grasp. Pudovkin wrote some fairly practical things about screenwriting, and I think the first book translated was on that. This could explain the preponderance of his writings. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Third, also because this is all happening late, the criticism of Eisenstein and Vertov's formalism has probably started affecting Japan. Formal experiments like Iwasaki's Asphalt Road were criticized, so it would make sense that Eisenstein's films were overlooked in favor of Pudovkin's more pedestrian style of montage. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Fourth, this involves translation, and from a fairly unusual language. You never know how personal predilection of the translator=gatekeeper plays into this.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV>Of the articles I've read on montage by Iwamoto and others, I don't recall a discussion of this. But I have always wondered what was going on. <BR><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Markus</DIV></BODY></HTML>