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Western Cinema on the Pages of the Soviet Screen Magazine (1969–1985): Reviews of Western Films
Authors: Alexander Fedorov, Anastasia Levitskaya, Andrei Novikov
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Based on content analysis (in the context of the historical, socio-cultural and political situation, etc.) of texts published during the “stagnant” period of the Soviet Screen magazine (1969–1985), the authors came to the following conclusions.
Of the wide range of Hollywood and British films, Soviet film distribution in the period we analyzed included mainly films with an acute social message, critically showing Western realities. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that these films received maximum support in the Soviet Screen; articles by Soviet film critics emphasized the “progressive anti-bourgeois significance” of these films. It is very significant that, even when reviewing American films, which seemed to be completely far from politics, the reviewers of Soviet Screen demonstrated ideological approaches.
Of course, among the reviews of American and British films in Soviet Screen, there also appeared texts that were devoid of a direct appeal to politics. “Apoliticalism” was especially evident in reviews devoted to film adaptations of classical works, which often took place in the 19th century and earlier.
Frankly entertaining Hollywood and British films were released into Soviet distribution in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s quite rarely. And here, Soviet Screen reviewers often sought to distance themselves from edifying political and ideological assessments, concentrating on a professional analysis of the artistic quality of this or that entertaining film.
In Italian and French cinema, the Soviet Screen consistently gave preference to political films that “expose capitalist reality.” Of course, Soviet Screen, as before, could not ignore the works of Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni, Francois Truffaut and other outstanding masters of cinema. But here, too, the magazine’s reviewers assessed their work mainly within the framework of Marxist ideological principles, on the basis of which even the films of such recognized masters as Federico Fellini were criticized.
The sharp rejection of Soviet Screen reviewers was often caused by entertainment films with the participation of Jean-Paul Belmondo, which were reproached for promoting “supermanhood” and violence. The Soviet Screen's reviews of famous French and Italian comedies were more benevolent, but overall rather skeptical.
Of course, the range of Western films, for one reason or another, did not reach the Soviet mass audience, was much wider than film distribution. And year after year, the editors of the magazine selected examples for criticism of bourgeois society and imperialism: films of an anti-communist and anti-Soviet orientation, as well as films “glorifying the American military” and “whitewashing the Nazis.”
The openly entertaining part of Western film production has traditionally been viewed by the magazine mainly in a sharply negative light.
Soviet Screen did not ignore the topic of film sex, popular in the West in the 1970s. Of course, articles were published about films of this kind, condemning the “decomposition of the morals of bourgeois society.”
In articles in Soviet Screen about international film festivals and the current repertoire of Western national cinemas and weeks of foreign cinema in the USSR, there was also a clear division of Western cinema into “progressive” and “bourgeois”.
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