Olga Shmarova, On Those Who Do Not Love to Talk about Love. May 5, 1953
The first published article challenging the conventions of Soviet culture to appear after Stalin’s death, was the work of a young student at the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography who asked that simple matters of love – things that did not necessarily express ideologically fitness, but were important to young people – be brought back to the screen. Publication of the article was signalled a sea change in Soviet culture. Few noticed at the time that its naive treatment of film characters as if they were real people reaffirmed a fundamental principle of socialist realism.
Original Source: Sovetskoe iskusstvo, 5 May 1953.
Problems of educating man in the spirit of communist morality have always occupied the attention of our party and government, our community and our literature and art.
Our artists’ object of attention should become not man ‘in general,’ not an abstract being, but living, concrete man with all his passions, thoughts, behavior, dreams, merits and defects, in things big and small, ‘private’ and public.
The theme of love, marriage and the family is an important theme. ‘In love two participate and a third emerges-a new life. The community’s interest is concerned and duty to the group arises,’ Lenin said in a conversation with Klara Tsetkin. A serious regard for this theme is demanded by Party, state and public.
More than once Soviet Cinematography, true to the beat traditions of Russian classical and Soviet literature, has tackled and successfully treated the theme of love, family and marriage I. such films as ‘Mashenka,’ ‘Komsomolsk,’ ‘Member of the Government,’ ‘Teacher’, et al.
During the postwar period, however, our cinematography has not only failed to advance In treatment of these themes, but has largely lost the experience which it had previously accumulated. In scenarios and films the theme of love has been completely replaced by the theme of work. Lovers converse most of ail about work alone and a declaration of love is made this way, for example.
He: Please excuse us, Comrade Mechanic, but we must call your attention to something–we are concerned about you.
She: What’s wrong?
He: You are single. As a mechanic, you are leader of the group, but as a woman you are single, That’s bad, incomprehensible, and it should not be so in Soviet life.
She: Well, am I the only one and do you think I shall be single forever?
‘He’ to Alesha, ‘she’ is Sasha, the hero and heroine of the film ‘Road to Glory.’
In order that the filmgoer may realize that this is the long-awaited conversation on love, the ‘mechanic with a decoration’ comes to ‘him’ and asks: ‘Alesha!’
‘Well?’
‘Is it love?’
It is indisputable that the private and the social are closely linked, but this link is infinitely more complex in life. One does not say to one’s beloved: ‘Fulfill the quota 100% and I shall love you,’ or ‘If you become a Stakhanovite coal minor I shall marry you; if you don’t–look for mother.’ To put the hero of a play or scenario to speaking such lines is to adopt the bourgeois view of love and marriage, in the midst of socialist society.
It is significant that the authors fall into contradictions by attributing such a view to their characters.
‘How difficult it is to know whether a person is good or bad,’ the mechanic Sasha says to her assistant Alesha in the same film, ‘Road to Glory.’ ‘But I knew I Each person shows himself in his work. When you see how a person behaves toward his work, you immediately know whether he is good or bad!’ and, together with her authors, she completely forgot that her first husband, Makagon, had been both a shockworker and a Stakhanovite, but not much of a man nevertheless, and that she had left him with good reason, before she had lived with him a full year.
It is vulgar simplification when authors slide over the surface of phenomena and, fearing difficulties, flee from showing life in all its complexity and contradictoriness. That is why love in such films is much more boring, dull and petty than the most prosaic love in real life.
We must stipulate, however, that we are not in favor of treating questions of love and everyday life in every film, but we do hold that authors who undertake to treat such a theme treat it as truthfully, vividly, profoundly and skillfully as possible.
For example, what feeling other than irritation with the author can be aroused by the following ‘depiction’ of the beautiful and complex relations of two people in love:
Shot 75. Lt.-Capt. Orlov and Lena walking along the embankment.
Orlov: Lenochka. Lena. Will you tell me no more today?
Lena: Not today. I shall say nothing further.
Shot 605. Orlov and Lena on the veranda.
Orlov: Lenochka, will you tell me something today?
Lena; Today? Today I shall tell you everything! Everything!
As you see, we have not been afraid to ‘weary’ the reader by quoting the entire story of the relationship between the two characters in the film ‘in Days of Peace,’ for the ‘love’ story consists only of these two scenes, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the film. The characters do not meet again throughout the whole film, each being engaged in his own affairs.
One of our young people’s favorite literary characters, construction chief Batmanov in V. Azhaev’s novel ‘Far From Moscow,’ says in a conversation with Tanya Vasilchenko: ‘I think more and more often now about what we call private life. It seems to me that a great deal depends on how a man’s life shapes up at its beginning, whether he starts with a great, real love.’
This great, real love has not yet become a cherished theme of our cinema.
The constantly rising culture of Soviet man is setting lofty standards in love. Art has the duty of educating man by example in every sphere, including the innermost, deepest personal feelings such as love.
What do many of our films teach, for example? That we must cherish love as the greatest happiness? That we must not dissipate our feelings or squander them over trifles? That we mom see the important and the great behind the facade of chance events ? That we must not quarrel over trifles and must guard one another against unnecessary hurt and suffering? No, no, the majority of our scenario writers and producers take quite the opposite line with their characters. They cause their lovers to turn from one another because of inane misunderstandings, to insult one mother by petty suspicions and unfounded accusations of unfaithfulness.
What prevented Kazakova, in the film ‘Village Doctor,’ for example, from loving her Ivan Denisovich serenely? Quite aside from the question of why she loved him at all. Why did they turn from each other so easily and for a whole year meet -only as acquaintances?’ Or why did Lena, in the film ‘In the Name of Life, I go away, abandoning the man she loved at the most difficult time in his life? Could she not have told him that she would always have time to study and that they should be together in a moment so difficult for them both? She should have done this not only out of love for the person closest to her, but in the interests of meeting that great problem which he now had to decide alone, since his friends had left him.
In the film ‘Donets Mine’ Vasya was so In love with Lida that he made her vow her love for him, for his own peace of mind, in every scene. Why, then, did he suddenly break off with his beloved when she entered the mining institute and could not go to Some far-off place with him? Only because he was ashamed’ to go to school in his home town. ‘Well, decide, Lida. Are we going of not? I he asks his beloved. Lida does not even refuse at first; she is only surprised: ‘But this is so sudden and-‘ But Vasya has decided: -Well, I understand. Goodbye, then, Lida.’
How easy it is for the characters in our films to deny themselves their own happiness I And how difficult it probably would be for them to live together if now, before marriage, in friendship and love, they cannot even manage to respect each other, to be thoughtful and concerned for each other and to help each other to learn.
The distinctive trait of the Soviet family lies In the very fact that the love upon which marriage rests must be accompanied by a great inner sense of responsibility for the person loved. Could Tatyana Aleksandrovna Dobrotvorskaia, in the film ‘Court of Honor,’ have acted otherwise then she learned that her husband Prof. Dobrotvorskii, had committed an offense against the state and against patriotism by divulging a state secret? Should she have left him, like Nina Ivanovna Loseva in the same film, run to influential acquaintances to ask help for her hush’? No. She should have acted exactly as she did by following her own conscience, like my woman who is genuinely in love. She opened her husband’s eyes and helped him to understand that he was guilty and was being justly judged, She did this very gently, but with a full sense of principle:
‘Alyosha, this to the most serious, difficult night in our lives. ” I shall remain with you always, I know you better than anyone else. Possibly I am the only one who really known what you are like, Can it be that you do not know that you are guilty and that you are being justly judged?
‘Can this be my own wife speaking?’
-I am a woman who loves you.’
It is not by accident but quite logically that, in his speech before the court of honor, Dobrotvorskii begins with his wife’s words: ‘The court of honor Is something which either changes a man Into a completely new being or makes him an outsider.’ It was the wife who helped Prof. Dobrotvorskii to turn into I new man.
The loving wife, greatest friend and comrade, became an active social force in the film. This I profoundly true to life. This helps to educate the filmgoer in the spirit of the advanced communist ethic.
The life of the Soviet people is vast and bright. Freed from the influence of bourgeois property, love brings Soviet man great happiness and healthy, life-asserting Optimism, and makes him stronger and more beautiful. Yet in our scenarios and films it is often dull and crude. Along the road to happiness, people must surmount so many external obstacles set by the writer’s generous hand that there simply is not room In the film for ordinary human happiness. Love does not ennoble or Inspire the Characters but, on the contrary, more often disorganizes and devitalizes them.
We find another example in ‘Road to Glory.’ Alesha loves Sasha. He works as her assistant. Although he has passed his examinations for mechanic, he prefers to remain where he is. When his comrade asks him why, he answers. ‘I don’t want to leave.’
You don’t want to advance from assistant to full mechanic? the same -mechanic with decorations’ asks in surprise. And this behavior of Alesha Is presented as virtue.
The theme of unshared and unrequited love has also disappeared from our art, but it has not disappeared from life. It is a matter of shame for our writers that this theme is not depicted in our films today. Many people are inclined to think that it is pointless to analyze the spiritual experiences of a character If he can be helped in no way and if a ready-made solution cannot be given to a person in such a situation. It only appears so at first glance, however. We Cannot shut our eyes to hat exists in life and, In some measure or other, has a harmful Influence on the formation of a young person’s character, keeping him from emotional stability for a long time and causing him pain and suffering. It is the task of the masters of Soviet cinema to depict life and people’s emotional being in all their fullness, depth and contradictory complexity.
Addressing a conference of senior students of Bauman, Borough secondary schools, M. 1. Kalinin Said: ‘This I$ the way it happens: one student goes out with some girl and then changes and begins to go out with another-and here you have a whole ‘drama.’ Do not think that I am speaking with the sarcasm of an old man. I was young once myself and I respect the feelings of young people. Well, then: For a person who has not established and sallied his or her life such a ‘drama’ can bear too much importance and can deeply disillusion him with life in general, leaving deep traces for many years.’
Finally, we must reproach our cinema art because it completely Ignores such important aspects of our life as the establishment of a young Soviet family. Why do films depict love only in the rosiest stage, when the hero and heroine are on the threshold of life’s experiences? Why does not a single picture deal with the everyday life of a new, young family, ‘where all kinds of conflicts are possible? Why are all the characters In our films childless? Is bringing up a new human being such a simple matter that does not deserve attention? Do we not have fathers and mothers who Cripple their own children morally and physically, implant bad habits in them, ‘train’ them to be self-centered egotists, idlers and vulgarians? How can this be ignored?
Underestimation of the theme of love has brought many of our film men to the point where they overlook a number of problems of immense, primary social importance.
A lag is most possible precisely in questions of love, the family, and everyday existence, where people are not directly part of a larger group. It often happens that at his work a man seems to be advanced–he is both a Stakhanovite and an active person in the community–but in his family he demands a rigid domestic regime, he is egotistic or coarse or has a thoughtless, irresponsible attitude. We must always remember that, sooner or later, this will affect all his working and public life and every moral aspect of the man.
The sphere of private life must not be forgotten. It is essential to mobilize all resources of the cinema, including such genres as comedy and satire, which scourge with humor and sear with fire the bourgeois survivals not only in people’s public, but in their private lives.
Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. V, No. 18 (1953), 26-27