eisenstein & montage in prole cinema

[Mark Nornes]

On Oct 23, 2007, at 12:18 PM, Anne McKnight wrote:

>
> 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?

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 (Eiga no benshoho) 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.

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.

A couple things come to mind.

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:

http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/ 
filmprojournals.html

The earliest book is from Murayama in 1928 (Puroretarian eiga Nyumon;  
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.bbx2322.0001.001), and that has almost  
nothing on Eisenstein.

One place you might be able to find some things is the back end of  
Puroretarian Eiga no Tenbo; look around page 247:

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

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.

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.

Fourth, this involves translation, and from a fairly unusual  
language. You never know how personal predilection of the  
translator=gatekeeper plays into this.

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.

Markus
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