Russian & Soviet Cinema :sx continuity & change .sx RICHARD TAYLOR , University College , Swansea .sx In the history of Russian and Soviet cinema the dominant tendency , among both Soviet and Western scholars and critics , has been to periodise that cinema's development in terms purely of the development of the state itself .sx Soviet historians have until fairly recently generally argued that pre-Revolutionary Russian cinema was not worthy of attention , and that Soviet power perforce built a new cinema from scratch .sx Western historians have until equally recently tended to argue the case for a similar , but downward turn at the end of the heroic golden age of the 1920s .sx These myths have survived because , like most myths , they do contain a germ of truth but they both represent an oversimplification and reflect a prevailing political antithesis .sx All art , whether it is , to cite Trotsky , a mirror or a hammer , reflects the context in which it is produced :sx where that context is as highly politicised as it has consistently been in Russia , both before and since the 1917 Revolution , so the art too will inevitably be highly politicised .sx To deny this would rapidly lead cinema historians into the same cul-de-sac as that inhabited in recent years by literary critics insisting on the universal primacy of the text at the expense of the context .sx Yet cinema's own history and dynamic have all too often tended to be overlooked .sx We have made certain assumptions about the transition from early Russian to Soviet cinema or about the advent of sound without putting those assumptions to the test .sx Indeed we have been unable to put them to the test because of a basic lack of information :sx closed or inaccessible archives , defective runs of newspapers and periodicals , and simple absence of contact with Soviet scholars working in the same field , who have themselves for too long equally been denied access to their Western counterparts .sx Whatever the ultimate fate of perestroika and the accompanying process of glasnost , their effect on cinema studies has been , and will continue to be , enormous .sx Easier access to source materials and increasing contact between Soviet and Western scholars have enabled us to begin to confront the enormous task of enquiry and research that lies ahead .sx This furnishes us all with unique opportunities , but it also raises some fundamental questions .sx Are there enough suitably qualified people in the Soviet Union and the West combined to carry out this task ?sx Are the resources available ?sx Most important of all :sx are the questions we are asking the right ones ?sx What was the actual role of what Lenin once supposedly called " the most important of all the arts " ?sx How did that role change and develop ?sx What was cinema like at the grass-roots level , both in the studios and for the audiences on the receiving end in the cinema theatres themselves ?sx To return to my opening remark :sx how should the periodisation of cinema history be related to the periodisation of the general political history of Russia and the Soviet Union ?sx The contents of this special issue of the Journal are based on just under half the papers delivered to the conference on 'Russian and Soviet Cinema :sx continuity and change' that Derek Spring , of the University of Nottingham , and I organised on behalf of the British Inter-University History Film Consortium at the Imperial War Museum , London , from 17 to 19 July , 1990 .sx We hope to publish the remaining papers in book form in the near future .sx We should like to thank both the organisations mentioned for their assistance and forebearance , and also Jim Ballantyne , of the British Universities Film and Video Council , and Ian Christie , of the British Film Institute , for their support in the detailed administration of the conference .sx Invaluable financial support came from the British Council , the Soros Foundation and the Ford Foundation .sx We should also like to acknowledge the co-operation of the following Soviet organisations :sx the USSR Union of Cinematographers , the Central Film Museum , the All-Union Research Institute for the History of Cinema Art ( VNIIK ) , the All-Union State Institute for Cinematography ( VGIK ) ( all based in Moscow ) , and Gosfilmofond .sx Without their assistance and support this important gathering could not have taken place .sx The presence at the conference of the largest-ever delegation of Soviet film scholars to visit Britain is reflected in the contents of this issue .sx They have all played a significant part in the recent and continuing reappraisal of their own cinema history :sx they are , as it were , the front-line fighters in the battle to unearth the truth .sx But they , and we , all recognise that in historical research the answers to one set of questions merely produces a new set , or indeed new sets , of questions that demand their own answer .sx There are multiple layers , horizontal and vertical , identified here that remain to be more fully explored :sx the comparative significance of popular and avant-garde film , of fiction or documentary ; the influence of internal and external factors on cinema's development ; the role of cinema vis- a-grave -vis the other arts ; the political implications of industrial and organisational structures ; the relative roles of the spontaneous and the planned ; indeed , all the underlying elements of continuity and change .sx At this stage in the unfolding debate between Soviet and Western cinema scholarship , at a point where - as this conference demonstrated - we can at last begin to talk of common ground , such answers can only be partial and tentative .sx Mr Capra Goes to War :sx Frank Capra , the British Army Film Unit , and Anglo-American travails in the production of 'Tunisian Victory' .sx TONY ALDGATE , The Open University .sx Much has been written about Frank Capra's film activities during the Second World War .sx Not surprisingly , commentators have tended to concentrate their attention on the important series of seven films he produced for the US Army under the title , Why We Fight ( 1942-45 ) , " the centrepiece of the Army's troop indoctrination programme " , as it has been correctly described .sx Occasional , albeit significant , scholarly contributions have also been forthcoming on related orientation projects such as The Negro Soldier ( 1944 ) and Know Your Enemy - Japan ( 1945) .sx Of late , however , the spotlight has been turned upon Capra's role in the course of official Anglo-American efforts to co-operate in the making of two prestigious documentaries intended to celebrate the allied cause .sx The first sought to record the successful outcome to the last North African campaign while the second was concerned with the war in the Far East theatre and was meant to outline the strategic value of the Burma campaign .sx These collaborative ventures attracted a considerable amount of high level support and interest in their day but , as recent accounts have emphasised , the experiments did not prove to be especially easy for the participants .sx Both attempts were bedevilled by squabbles in production , by professional rivalry , and , to borrow Frank Capra's own words , by " national pride and prejudices " .sx Nor , indeed , were the results particularly worthwhile as propaganda .sx In the case of the Burma campaign film , in fact , there was no visible result , at least in the form of a joint production .sx Having sought to act in unison between autumn 1944 and spring 1945 , the American and British contingents felt compelled , quite simply , to go their separate ways .sx Colonel Frank Capra quickly produced The Stilwell Road for the US War Department .sx And by the outset of November 1945 , Lieutenant Colonel David Mcdonald and Captain Roy Boulting ( producer and director , respectively ) had finished work on Burma Victory for the British Ministry of Information .sx In the case of the earlier proposal for a documentary on the North African campaign , the concerted efforts of the American and British production teams , under Capra and Major Hugh Stewart ( with Boulting's help , once again ) , did finally bear fruit in Tunisian Victory .sx This was first shown in New York and London on 16 March 1944 , some seven months after Capra and Stewart had embarked upon their combined enterprise , and fully a year after the end of the campaign it purported to cover .sx Even among the American film critics , who greeted it favourably on the whole , there were those like Bosley Crowther of the New York Times who felt compelled to point out that " the most obvious encumbrance on this picture is the fact that it is woefully late " .sx Among British critics , the film's tardy arrival was the least of its problems and just one of several faults found with Tunisian Victory .sx Campbell Dixon of the Daily Telegraph thought it guilty of " sins of omission " and believed it " shows signs of having been edited largely for the American public " .sx " The moral of the film , which is obvious enough , is lost in a lot of sentimental and incredibly well-meaning vapourings " , concluded the Documentary News Letter .sx It detected " the fell hand of Capra's Hollywood " , as did many British critics who greatly disliked the introduction of Burgess Meredith and Bernard Miles on the soundtrack and the 'pie in the sky' message of the film's ending .sx All were agreed that Tunisian Victory fared badly in comparison with the 'sober' documentary style employed in its hugely successful predecessor , Desert Victory ( 1943 ) , which had been made by Macdonald and Boulting of the British Army Film Unit with no input from either American sources or personnel .sx All were agreed , furthermore , that with Tunisian Victory Capra had simply 'poached' for his own nationalist ends what was intended initially to be a joint Anglo-American venture .sx The charge that Frank Capra had , in effect , 'poached' Tunisian Victory for his own purposes stuck and , indeed , gained added credence with subsequent disclosures forthcoming from some of the British and Americans who were most closely involved in its production .sx J. L. Hodson , for instance , who co-wrote the commentary for both Desert Victory and Tunisian Victory , was one member of the team who felt the joint exercise had actually proved beneficial .sx Yet , for all that , he revealed in the second volume of his wartime diaries that he had constantly found it necessary to do " a little fighting to prevent our picture on the Tunisian campaign becoming disbalanced in favour of America " .sx " After all " , Hodson argued , " we did most of the dirty work and had twice as many casualties " .sx It is perhaps little wonder there were arguments in production since , as Hodson noted , the protagonists seemed to disagree over so much else besides :sx We dined with Capra the other evening - Stewart , Boulting , and I. During our talk Capra said the public was always right in its judgments but I said that I thought , on the contrary , they were usually wrong , and that it was only a minority of folk who kept the best art going , whether music or pictures or plays or books .sx For every lover of Shakespeare and Beethoven there are a hundred who prefer swing music and Rudolph Valentino .sx But maybe we were both wrong and the truth lies about midway .sx .sx In the third volume of his diaries , Hodson outlined more about the precise nature of the problems encountered over Tunisian Victory :sx .sx No war documentary can be made with absolute integrity and truth , some reconstruction is inevitable if the story is to be properly told .sx A short part of Desert Victory , and this is not the least effective , was reconstructed .sx The battle of Hill 609 in the new Tunisian film was 'shot' by the Americans in America .sx .. There are two schools of thought .sx The first says :sx 'Preserve integrity - make it real .sx Use the stuff shot by the photographers with the troops and only that - even if the resultant picture is poor .sx Keep the reconstructed stuff down to , say , 5% of the whole .sx We realise the picture may lose something that a lot of 'fake' material would give it but integrity counts higher than that' .sx The other school says :sx 'Make a good picture .sx If the 'real' stuff isn't good enough , fake some that's better .sx The result is all that counts' .sx The second , as I understand it , is the American view , and the Anglo-American picture of the Tunisian campaign pretty well conforms to it .sx And the result ?sx Well , I think it's a good picture - it is at once something more and something less than Desert Victory .sx