eisenstein & montage in prole cinema

[Mark Nornes]

I'm still curious why Pudovkin, followed by Timoshenko, Kuleshov and  
Vertov, attracts all the attention (in the prewar/wartime eras). My  
impression is the in much of the world, the relative hierarchy most  
historians would come up with would place Vertov and Eisenstein  
before the others. Any thoughts, Chika? Or is my impression totally  
off-base?

Markus






On Oct 26, 2007, at 1:06 PM, Chika Kinoshita wrote:

> I'm kind of embarrassed to see my sensei kindly promote my  
> dissertation chapter, while I was overwhelmed by the constant  
> onslaught of course preparation... Thanks, Michael!
>
> The ways in which the Soviet montage film theory and films were  
> introduced to the Japanese film community around 1927-1931 are  
> interesting, because the actual films came later (Pudovkin's The  
> Storm Over Asia in October 1930, Eisenstein's The Old and the New,  
> Dovzhenko's The Earth, Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera, and  
> Mikhail Kaufman's In Spring in 1931). I haven't looked at the  
> censorship records of those films; it must be a fascinating research.
>
> Potemkin was imported but turned down by the Custom at the Yokohama  
> bay (for this dual censorship, Makino san's book provide a great  
> account). Kurahara Korehito's report to Kinema junpo in 1927 did  
> mention Potemkin's use of non-professional actors, filtered  
> photography in the ocean, and handling of the crowd at the Odessa  
> steps briefly. But as Kurahara and Kobayashi Takiji were very close  
> friends, Kobayashi must have got knowledge of Potemkin directly  
> from Kurahara. A number of Japanese who lived abroad sent rather  
> detailed (some really detailed, occasionally shot by shot)  
> descriptions of Soviet montage films they saw in New York etc. to  
> Kinema junpo and other film magazines prior to the above films'  
> release in Japan; Iijima Tadashi translated an excerpt of the  
> scenario of October for one of them. Shinkô eiga (not to be  
> mistaken for the film studio established in the 1930s), the organ  
> of Prokino edited by Murayama Tomoyoshi, published some movie  
> stories (eiga monogatari, synopsis juxtaposed with still  
> photographs) of Soviet montage films. But I don't recall any on  
> Potemkin. I remember reading some people talking about it (probably  
> the same ones Will mentioned) in film or literary journals, but I'd  
> have to go back to my photocopie piles. Anyway, in my chapter, I  
> argued that sort of "montage" style of contemporary proletarian  
> literature, like a staccato enumeration of nouns and brief  
> sentences, came from those descriptions and translations of the  
> unavailable Soviet montage films (as well as from modernist  
> literary movements form the mid 1920s like Shinkankakuha).
>
> As for the term "montage" (montaju in katakana), Iwasaki Akira is  
> credited with first using it in his translation of Semyon  
> Timoshenko's booklet on montage in 1928 (from German). This  
> translation was eventually included in Sasaki's translation of  
> Pudvkin as an appendix. Fukuro Ippei Will mentioned seems like the  
> only translator of Russian. The National Film Center in Tokyo's  
> exhibition on film history, which I saw a few years ago, but is it  
> permanent??) included his books, posters he got from Russia, etc.
>
> Iwamoto Kenji's pioneering article, "Nihon ni okeru montâju riron  
> no shôkai" [Introduction of the Montage Theory to Japanese Cinema],  
> Hikaku bungaku nenshi 10 (1976), 67-85, as well as Yamamoto Kikuo's  
> book Michael talked about, provides excellent bibliographical  
> references on this topic. For the info. on the Soviet films shown  
> in Japan, Yamada Kazuo, "Nihon de jôei sareta Sobieto eiga," in  
> Bessatsu sekai eiga shiryô: Sobieto eiga no 40 nen (Tokyo: Sekai  
> Eiga Shiryô Sha, 1959) is useful, while Yamada doesn't tell us the  
> source of the info., making us leaf through Eiga kenetsu jiho and  
> Kinema junpo.
>
> To add to Roger Macy's fascinating discovery of the 1929 Russian  
> catalogue of the exhibition about Japanese cinema, Eisenstein's  
> "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" was first  
> published in it as "Afterword."
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chika
>
> On 10/25/07, Michael Raine < mjraine at uchicago.edu> wrote:
> By mistake, I sent this reply to Markus instead of to the whole  
> list. I hope he (and Chika?) will respond (have already responded?)  
> here instead…
>
> Chika Kinoshita's dissertation has an excellent discussion,  
> extending the work of Iwamoto Kenji and Yamamoto Kikuo, of the  
> introduction of montage theory between 1928 and 1931, generating  
> what she calls a "culture of montage" in Japan. She argues that  
> Tokunaga Sunao's Taiyo no nai machi tries to find a literary  
> equivalent to the juxtaposition and simultaneity characteristic of  
> the Soviet version of montage, so a connection to The Factory Ship  
> wouldn't be surprising. Much of the discussion of Eisenstein and  
> others took place in mainstream journals, not only the Prokino  
> texts. That's true of the US too: it's amazing where translations  
> of Eisenstein's essays turned up (Hound and Horn?!). It seems the  
> usual conduit for the translations was through German, which makes  
> sense. Yamamoto (Nihon eiga ni okeru gaikoku eiga no eikyo; for all  
> its methodological shortcomings I really like this book!) lists  
> Kurahara Korehito's articles in Kinema junpo (March and April 1927)  
> as the first accounts of Potemkin and other montage films. Though  
> his general point is that a lot of "montage" in Japanese films  
> (flash frames, etc) comes from European filmmaking practices, while  
> the dominant "influence" on Japanese film in general came from  
> Hollywood. As Markus says, a worthy topic for further study…
>
> I forgot to mention that it's interesting, and perhaps not wholly  
> surprising, that Eisenstein's essays were published during wartime,  
> and were still being advertised during the Pacific War. Not all  
> writers on film during wartime were nativist champions of cultural  
> autochthony: people like Ooya Soichi defended "Americanism" in the  
> pursuit of a populist "People's film" and there are clear narrative  
> and technical borrowings (Stagecoach, midair photography) from  
> Hollywood films. Also, some of the writing on formal aspects of  
> film as essential to a medium committed to total mobilization seems  
> to me to share Eisenstein's "illiberal modernist" understanding of  
> the relation between screen and viewing subject. Speaking of  
> wartime film books … has anyone see the book on film performance  
> (Eiga engigaku dokuhon) with chapters by Itami, Kinugasa, Ozu and  
> many others? Is it as fascinating as it seems? Apparently Waseda  
> has a copy.
>
>
> Michael
>
>
> From: Mark Nornes [mailto:amnornes at umich.edu]
> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 1:41 PM
> To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Subject: Re: eisenstein & montage in prole cinema
>
>
>
> 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&s 
> eq=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
>
>

A. M. Nornes
Professor
Department of Screen Arts & Cultures
Department of Asian Languages & Cultures
University of Michigan
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
Suite 6111, 202 South Thayer Street
Ann Arbor, MI  48104-1608
Phone:  (734) 647-2094; FAX: x0157
Homepage: www.umich.edu/~amnornes


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