Rachel Morley - Performing Femininity

Rachel Morleys carefully researched and convincingly argued study re-examines the transformation of the female from performing object to performing subject in pre-revolutionary Russian silent cinema. Her work is skilfully interdisciplinary: cutting across cinema studies, dance and performance studies, as well as feminist and gender studies, and more.

Vladimir Padunov, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Nuanced in its attention to cinematographic technique, sensitive in the application of theoretical models, and firmly grounded in historical context, this elegantly written book represents a major contribution to the study not only of early cinema, but of womens history in Russia.

Emma Widdis, University of Cambridge

Rachel Morleys illuminating study is a uniquely detailed exploration of gender relations in early Russian cinema that also conveys much of importance about the culture of the era more generally.

Catriona Kelly, University of Oxford

Kino Series

Joint General Editors: Birgit Beumers & Richard Taylor

Editorial Board: Birgit Beumers, Julian Graffy, Richard Taylor & Denise J. Youngblood

Forthcoming:

Rachel Morley

Performing
Femininity

Woman as Performer
in Early Russian Cinema

Copyright 2017 Rachel Morley

The right of Rachel Morley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions.

References to websites were correct at the time of writing.

KINO: The Russian and Soviet Cinema Series

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available

List of Illustrations

Illustrations 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 5.1, 5.2 and 6.1: courtesy of Gosfilmofond of Russia

Illustrations 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 7.1, 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5: courtesy of the British Film Institute

Vera sits alone in her bedroom (Bauer, Twilight of a Womans Soul, 1913)

Petrov parts the gauze curtains and enters Veras bedroom (Bauer, Twilight of a Womans Soul, 1913)

Veras bedroom, presented naturalistically (Bauer, Twilight of a Womans Soul, 1913)

As Mary flirts with her admirers, the camera tracks in on an exotic Salome dancer (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

The Salome dancer (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

Mary tangos with her new lover (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

Mary steps over Viktors corpse, revealing her tango slipper (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

Viktors study (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

The juxtaposition of idealised aesthetic image and real self-image: the faithless Mary indulges herself in erotic daydreams of Viktors valet (Bauer, Child of the Big City, 1914)

Lola performs in her Gypsy costume in the privacy of her bedroom (Chardynin, The Love of a Councillor of State, 1915)

Lola attempts to enliven the von Brcks dull tea party by playing music-hall tunes on the piano (Chardynin, The Love of a Councillor of State, 1915)

The vengeful sister performs her Duncan-esque dance (Bauer, Iurii Nagornyi, 1916)

Zoia makes Andrei the object of her gaze (Bauer, After Death, 1915)

The extreme close-up of Vera Karalli as Zoia Kadmina (Bauer, After Death, 1915)

Andrei dreams of Zoia (Bauer, After Death, 1915)

Zoia recites Tatianas bold love letter from Pushkins Evgenii Onegin (Bauer, After Death, 1915)

Surrounded by toga-clad actors, Zoia expires (Bauer, After Death, 1915)

General Editors Preface

Cinema has been the predominant art form of the first half of the twentieth century, at least in Europe and North America. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Russia and the former Soviet Union, where Lenins remark that of all the arts, cinema is the most important became a clich and where cinema attendances were until recently still among the highest in the world. In the age of mass politics Soviet cinema developed from a fragile but effective tool to gain support among the overwhelmingly illiterate peasant masses in the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution, through a welter of experimentation, into a mass weapon of propaganda through the entertainment that shaped the public image of the Soviet Union both at home and abroad for both elite and mass audiences and latterly into an instrument to expose the weaknesses of the past and present in the twin process of glasnost and perestroika. Now the national cinemas of the successor republics to the old USSR are encountering the same bewildering array of problems, from the trivial to the terminal, as are all the other ex-Soviet institutions, while Russia itself is now the worlds sixth largest area for distribution. The present volume demonstrates that there was life in Russian cinema even before the 1917 Revolutions and that Soviet cinema did not come from nowhere.