the sounds of music soundtrack and song in soviet film

The Sounds of Music: Soundtrack and Song in Soviet FilmAuthor(s): David C. GillespieReviewed work(s):Source: Slavic Review, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003), pp. 473-490Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3185802 .

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The Sounds of Music: Soundtrack and Song in Soviet Film

David C. Gillespie

Film and Music under Stalin: Playing Ideology's Tune

In Soviet cinema, the importance of music exercised critical minds even before the coming of sound. In 1926 the Austrian-born Edmund Meisel wrote a musical score that he performed with orchestra for the Berlin

showing of Bronenosets Potemkin (Battleship Potemkin, 1925) which hugely impressed the director Sergei Eizenshtein, and Meisel was asked to com-

pose a score for Oktiabr' (October) a year later. Eizenshtein subsequently began formulating his own views on the role of sound and music in film. In the late 1920s, the anticipated arrival of movies with synchronized sound

gave rise to much debate on the role of music, with Eizenshtein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigorii Aleksandrov putting their names to ajoint "statement on sound" in 1928. These directors saw the role of sound and music as integrated within the montage structure of a film, thereby heading off the perceived challenge that sound could provide to film montage. As the statement makes clear: "Only the contrapuntal use of sound vis-a-vis the visual fragment of montage will open up new possibilities for the devel-

opment and perfection of montage. The first experiments in sound must aim at a sharp discord with the visual images."'

Soviet cinema did not, therefore, regard sound and music as passive or "silent"; it was to do more than simply provide what Royal S. Brown calls the "dramatically motivated musical backing" that would characterize

Hollywood films.2 In Soviet films sound would be endowed with an organizing or structural function. Film was intended to educate the masses in

"high" cultural values, and, under Iosif Stalin, this went hand in hand with the "true and historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolution- ary development." Music, too, had to play its part. Music could enhance and even determine analysis, comment, and judgment, "in the spirit of communism."3

In this article, I seek to analyze the role of music, in particular song, in Soviet film blockbusters, especially of the 1970s. I have chosen films where the music is deliberately foregrounded, so that it assumes both a structural and an organizing role within the narrative. In addition, I have chosen to concentrate on films that feature "urban" songs and those that depict village life, often accompanied by a wide diversity of folk musical genres. In all the films chosen, the music is endowed with both an emotional (for

I am particularly indebted to Natasha Zaslavskaia and Elena Smirnova of the University of Bath for their invaluable assistance with analyzing popular song and its relevance in Soviet culture of the 1970s.

1. "Statement on Sound" (by Sergei Eizenshtein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigorii Aleksandrov), in Richard Taylor, ed., The Eisenstein Reader (London, 1998), 81.

2. Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: ReadingFilm Music (Berkeley, 1994), 14. 3. C. Vaughan James, Soviet Socialist Realism: Origins and Theory (London, 1973), 88.

Slavic Review 62, no. 3 (Fall 2003)



474 Slavic Review

the purposes of viewer recognition and identification) and an intellectual (to aid understanding and interpretation, and so to construct meaning) function.

The Soviet Union's greatest composers, Sergei Prokof'ev and Dmitrii Shostakovich, both worked extensively in film, the former becoming re- nowned for his contribution to Eizenshtein's AleksandrNevskii (1938) and Ivan Groznyi (Ivan the Terrible, 1944-45) and Shostakovich beginning a

productive collaboration with Grigorii Kozintsev in 1929 that would last until the 1970s. The collaboration between Eizenshtein and Prokof'ev has been described as "one of the highlights in the history of the cinema, both because of the quality of the music itself (both Aleksandr Nevskii and Ivan the Terrible have been arranged into concert suites), and because of the

ingenuous way in which it was used."4 David Bordwell has further noted that in Aleksandr Nevskii Prokof'ev's music "creates motifs aligned with the two forces: the folkish tunes of the Russians versus the German invaders' Catholic hymn."5 Furthermore, the composer's low, ominous brass and woodwinds depict the Teutonic Knights as irredeemably evil, just as Ed- uard Tisse's camerawork caricatures them in grotesque and monstrous

images. Tension is heightened in the climactic battle on the ice through rushing orchestral passages, sudden crescendos, and abrupt pauses.

Ivan the Terrible contains an array of musical genres: religious chants, chorales, soldiers' songs, church bells, lullabies, and orchestral passages all form elements of the narrative of both parts, and it is often unclear whether they are actually part of the film's "reel reality" (the diegesis) or

imposed on the soundtrack (non-diegetic). It was in these scenes that Eizenshtein attempted to create "a complete harmony of sound and colour."6

Prokof'ev's music remains "intellectual" in its conception, designed as a structural motif to aid in interpreting the film's themes. Here he can be

compared with Dmitrii Shostakovich, whose greatest innovations in film music were not in the area of soundtrack and score but in diegetic music, particularly songs. The best-known musical element of the Maksim Trilogy (1934-38) is the urban song "Krutitsia-vertitsia shar goluboi," arranged by Shostakovich, which opens the second film of the trilogy, Vozvrashchenie Maksima (The return of Maksim, 1937). Much of this film is shot in a smoke-filled bar, and these scenes are regularly punctuated by songs that, together with billiards and drinking, offer an affirmation of male

working-class culture. This and other songs, especially those performed on the guitar by Mikhail Zharov, contain a direct appeal to the emotions

4. Brown, Overtones and Undertones, 144. 5. David Bordwell, The Cinema ofEisenstein (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), 220. 6. Orlando Figes, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (London, 2002), 496.

Tatiana Egorova also notes that the score for Ivan the Terrible was "original and innovatory": "the music of that last great joint creative effort by Eisenstein and Prokofiev broke the established, stereotyped notions of the functional role of film music, enabling it to approach the nature of a sound-visual image based on a synthesis of a higher order." See Tatiana K.

Egorova, Soviet Film Music: An Historical Survey, trans. Tatiana A. Ganf and Natalia A.

Egunova (Amsterdam, 1997), 113.




and sensibilities of a working-class audience, thus combining both popular culture and ideology to produce a particularly Soviet form of political entertainment.

The Stalinist popularization of music, and the blurring of "high-brow" and "low-brow" genres, can also be seen in the musical comedies of Alek- sandr Ivanovskii in the immediate prewar years. Muzykal'naia istoriia (A musical story, 1940) and Anton Ivanovich serditsia (Anton Ivanovich gets angry, 1941) both try to erode the boundaries between classical and more "popular" music, in order to make the musical classics more accessible to working people. Anton Ivanovich brings the genre of operetta and the more "serious" classical mode of opera closer together, and the disman- tling of such hierarchies meets with the approval ofJ. S. Bach himself. A Musical Story demystifies and even deconstructs the aristocratic earnestness of classical music in order to show the all-inclusiveness of Stalinist cultural policy and the possibilities of social progression: in the Soviet Union even the humblest taxi driver (played by the popular tenor Sergei Lemeshev) can become a nationwide star.

The musical comedies of Grigorii Aleksandrov and Ivan Pyr'ev in the 1930s and 1940s can certainly be called "blockbusters" in the modern sense, and the immensely popular songs they contained were undoubt- edly a major factor in their success. These films provided accessible and enjoyable entertainment, with the ideological kernel given a suitably sug- ary coating through the medium of music. Isaak Dunaevskii's songs in Alek- sandrov's films (Veselye rebiata [Jolly fellows, 1934], Tsirk [Circus, 1936], and Volga- Volga [1938]) and in Pyr'ev's collective farm musicals (Traktoristy [Tractor drivers, 1939], Kubanskie kazaki [The Kuban cossacks, 1949-50]) were critical elements of the popular success of these films and remain popular today. In Aleksandrov's films, the music would be familiar to an urban audience, a mixture of 'jazz, music-hall and military marches, however unlikely that combination may appear." Pyr'ev's films employ mainly folk melodies that complement the uplifting pictures of a thriving and happy workforce enjoying the benefits of life in Stalin's sun-blessed socialist paradise and are therefore clearly aimed at a rural workforce. As Rich- ard Taylor concludes: "By entertaining the mass audience with glimpses of utopia, the Stalinist musical promoted the illusion encapsulated in popular songs not only that 'Life has become better, comrades, life has become happier' but further that 'We were born to make a fairy-tale come true."'7

Soviet directors therefore saw the early sound film as a totality of sensuous experience, where the visual image was supported and even com- plemented by its musical or sound accompaniment. The soundtrack both supported and enhanced the film's ideological message (although Eizen- shtein could also be said to subvert it), and song made that message immediately accessible to the target audience. Music and song had to be in tune with Stalin's grand symphony. In post-Stalin film, popular song, in

7. Richard Taylor, "But Eastward, Look, the Land Is Brighter: Towards a Topography of Utopia in the Stalinist Musical," in Diana Holmes and Alison Smith, eds., 100 Years ofEu- ropean Cinema: Entertainment or Ideology? (Manchester, 2000), 19, 24.

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particular, could more emphatically lay claim to the expression of a pri- vate realm, and soft, lyrical songs across a variety of genres could guaran- tee success at the box office.8

Film Music after Stalin: Urban Song

Song continued to be an integral part of a film's structure and "message" after Stalin's death. Indeed, it became a vital element of the blockbusters of the "stagnation" years, when politically safe but entertaining films

played to full houses and encouraged Soviet citizens to believe that they lived in a prosperous and just environment, protected from the dangers of the outside world by an ever-vigilant state. Song could add an extra di- mension to an established genre or turn a feel-good movie into a sentimental weepie, as audience recognition led to nostalgia and a yearning for lost youth. Two films here are of great significance: Vladimir Motyl"s Beloesolntsepustyni (White sun of the desert, 1969) and Vladimir Men'shov's Moskva slezam ne verit (Moscow does not believe in tears, 1979). Both were

immensely popular and unashamedly populist, and both use song as a ma-

jor structural motif. One of the major aspects of the post-Stalinist thaw in literature was the

emergence of a body of young writers whose main works were written and

published between 1956 and 1964 and whose work became known as "youth prose." The attention paid to the problems and ambitions of young people also found its expression in film. Georgii Daneliia's "lyrical com-

edy" Ia shagaiu po Moskve (I wander around Moscow, 1963) gave early roles to Nikita Mikhalkov, Inna Churikova, and Irina Miroshnichenko and combined a patriotic message of social contentment with a catchy, lively score that is sung later in the film and thus becomes part of the diegesis. Both content and soundtrack work together to show young people at ease in a sun-blessed Moscow, helping to build the future of a bustling, cos-

mopolitan city. In the late 1950s and 1960s, the politically sensitive lyrics of the guitar

poets Bulat Okudzhava, Aleksandr Galich, and Vladimir Vysotskii reached a mass audience through the medium of the tape recorder. Magnitizdat became the musical equivalent of samizdat, banned literature produced and distributed in typewritten copies.9 The music of magnitizdat is gener-

8. David MacFadyen comments that "popular songs in Russia after the death of Stalin make quiet claim to the material world, to a subjective interpretation of it. ... What the Soviet Union, one-sixth of that global material mass, meant after the all-encompassing and

semantically greedy culture of Stalinism vanished is both reflected and created by the

songs which Soviet citizens waited to hear on their radios or watch performed on their television sets." See David MacFadyen, Red Stars: Personality and the Soviet Popular Song, 1955- 1991 (Montreal, 2001), 79.

9. Gerald Smith quotes statistics on the availability of the tape recorder in the 1960s: "The open-reel tape recorder was first marketed in the USSR on any significant scale in 1960, when 128,000 were manufactured. The number reached nearly half a million by 1965 and topped the million mark by the end of the decade." See Gerald Smith, Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet "Mass Song" (Bloomington, 1984), 95.

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ally urban songs played for a young audience. Both Vysotskii and Okud- zhava were born in Moscow, and Galich studied there. All of these "bards" are represented in Soviet cinema. Galich worked as a scriptwriter until the 1960s. Vysotskii appeared in more than twenty-five films between 1959 and his death in 1980, performing his songs in many. Among the most memorable of these are Stanislav Govorukhin's Vertikal' (Vertical, 1967), Kira Muratova's Korotkie vstrechi (Brief meetings, 1967), Gennadii Poloka's Interventsiia (Intervention, 1969) and Iosif Kheifits's Edinstvennaia (My only one, 1975). Yet Vysotskii's songs do not add much impetus or dy- namic tension to the plot, nor insight into the emotional dramas de- picted. The superstar Vysotskii is given a public forum to perform his own songs in his highly individual style, and the Soviet viewer can catch a glimpse of a controversial talent whose career was at best tolerated by the Soviet authorities.'0

Okudzhava contributed music to the elegiac Belorusskii vokzal (Belo- russian station, 1970), where war veterans find themselves unable to adapt to society twenty-five years after the war, and the song's refrain ("nam nuzhna odna pobeda / Odna na vsekh . . . my za tsenoi ne postoim") serves to underline their lament for the loss of single-mindedness and unity in the postwar generation. Okudzhava and his collaborator Isaak Shvarts provided the song "Vashe blagorodie, gospozha razluka" for the extremely popular civil war comedy/drama The White Sun of the Desert. Al- though the film is set in Central Asia, the guitar music and song that in- creasingly blend into the soundtrack belong to the 1960s urban song culture of metropolitan Russia, giving the film a contemporary resonance (the song was written in 1967).

In the film the sands of the desert are contrasted with the rushing waves of the clear blue sea, next to which the final climactic battle takes place. Motyl"s film has a catchy score that alternates balalaika, guitar, and orchestral passages with brief shots of the lush greenery of the Russian countryside that the main character (Sukhov: "dry") misses so much. Indeed, both the music and the dialogue establish a semiparodic, whim- sical tone.

Two stanzas (the first and third) of "Vashe blagorodie, gospozha razluka" are sung by Pasha Vereshchagin, a former Russian customs officer who yearns for home with vodka and his long-suffering wife as his only moral supports in a world that has passed him by. His own home is like a shrine to a distant world, with photographs, a samovar, and a seem- ingly endless supply of vodka symbolizing the Russia he has lost. As he sings, Vereshchagin's homesickness as reflected in the song is "trans- ferred" to Sukhov, as the camera moves to him sitting outside on the sand and listening:

10. Vysotskii's songs are also used in the film Ballada o doblestnom rytsareAivengo (The ballad of the valiant knight Ivanhoe) directed by Sergei Tarasov in 1983, that is, three years after Vysotskii's death. The songs are used as part of the soundtrack, the love lyrics reminding us of minstrels' songs, others adding considerably to the excitement and tension of the battle scenes, especially when delivered in the singer's characteristic raucous tones.

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Bame 6JIaropoAHe, rocnoxca Pa3JIyKa, MbI c To6oH pOAHa AaBHo, BOT KaKaSa mTyKa.

FnHCbMeHO B KOHBepTe, noroaH He pB ... He Be3eT MHe B cMepTH-HnBe3eT B Jmo6BH!

Bame 6JiaropoaHe, rocnoca Y?aia, ,sjis KorO TbI ao6paa, a KOMy HHaqe. ]IeBsTb rpaMMOB B cepanje, HOCTOH, He 30BH ... He Be3eT MHe B CMepTH-nOBe3eT B JI6BHI!

(Your Esteemed Honor, Lady Separation, You and I have long been kin, that's the gist of the matter. A letter in its envelope, wait, but don't tear it, Death brings me no luck-that will come with love!

Your Esteemed Honor, Lady Happy Fortune, For some your kindness knows no bounds, for others it is different. Nine grams in the heart, wait, don't call, Death brings me no luck-that will come with love!)

These words provide various thematic motifs for the narrative. They point to the physical dangers of the conflict, Vereshchagin's sadness and Su- khov's separation from his beloved wife, Katerina Matveevna. The guitar chords and the song's melody become part of the film's soundtrack, as-

suming the twin roles of backdrop and commentary." The White Sun of the Desert was seen by 34.5 million people in 1970 and

was the tenth most popular film that year.l2 Another film that combined music and contemporary popular culture, and one that featured urban

song much more centrally, is Vladimir Men'shov's Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. It was released to popular acclaim in 1979, and awarded the Acad-

emy Award for Best Foreign Language Film a year later. The title refers to a Russian proverb, and the film recounts the emotional ups-and-downs of three female friends (Katia, Liuda, and Tonia) who live in Moscow from the late 1950s to the 1970s. All three have come from the provinces to find their fortune and happiness in the big city, and each meets with a different fate. Katia becomes pregnant and brings up her daughter alone. Liuda marries an ice-hockey star who takes to the bottle, and they divorce. To- nia marries Nikolai, and they represent the conventional happy family.

There are plentiful diegetic and non-diegetic songs that serve as musical signposts to guide the (Soviet) viewer through the decades, stirring both recognition and nostalgia. The film opens to a panorama of 1970s

Moscow, with Iurii Vizbor's song "Aleksandra" (lyrics by Vizbor and Dmitrii Sukharev, music by Sergei Nikitin) establishing Moscow as the location of the film:

11. The song as performed in the film is slightly different from the version now re- tained in Okudzhava's canon. The full text runs to four stanzas and is included in the re- cent collection Bulat Okudzhava, Stikhi. Rasskazy. Povesti (Ekaterinburg, 1999), 24.

12. Miroslava Segida and Sergei Zemlianukhin, Domashniaia sinemateka: Otechestven- noe kino, 1918-1996 (Moscow, 1996), 34.

478




He cpa3y Bce ycTpoHJIocb, MOCKBa He cpa3y cTpoHJIacb, OHa ropeiia CTOJIbKO pa3, pocJia Ha 3oJIe.

TsHyJIocb K He6y aepeBo, H TOJIbKO B He6o BepHJIo, A KpoMe He6a BepHJIo HaTpyCKeHHOI 3eMJIe.

AJIeKcaHapa, AJieKcaHapa, ITO TaM BbeTC5i nepea HaMH, 3TO ICeHb CeMeHaMH KPYTHT BaJIbC HaI MOCTOBOH. IceHb C BHgOM aepeBeHCKHM, npHo6iHJincS K BaJIbCaM BeHCKHM, OH npo6beTcA, AneKcaHApa, OH Ha,abIIIHTCa MOCKBOI.

MOCKBy pi6HHbI KpacHJIH, ay6bI CTOIJIH KHII3AMH, Ho He OHH, a aceHi 6e3 cnpocy HapocJIm. MocKBa He 3p5 HaaeeTcA, qTO BCA B JIHCTBY ogeHeTCA. MOCKBa HaiiAeT jajI epeBua XOTb KpaemeK 3eMJm.

(Our lives work out not instantly, and Moscow grew inconstantly, It burned and burned so frequently, and grew again on ash. A tree stretched up towards the sky, and only in the sky believed, But not just the sky, in overworked earth it kept its faith.

Alexandra, Alexandra, what is spinning there before us, It's the ash tree with its seedlings dancing a waltz above the road. A rural-looking ash tree, joining waltzes in Vienna, It'll make it, Alexandra, it will breathe the Moscow air.

Moscow's adorned by rowan trees, the oaks stood by like princes royal, But ash not oak grew ever up, not asking if they cared. Moscow does hope in earnestness that green will be its finery, Moscow will find for every tree its tiny piece of land.)

This song explains much of what occurs in the film. Despite having seen its fair share of ruin, Moscow is a resilient place. The "seedlings" billowing about Moscow's streets represent those who come to the big city from out of town, usually the village. With hard work and determination these people can achieve their goals and realize their dreams. (The second stanza is then repeated.) In other words, human affairs are like the trees that grow in Moscow, the new ash trees outgrowing the old prince-like oaks as time goes by, but with each one assured its own plot of land.

In key emotional scenes, the melody of "Aleksandra" becomes integrated with the soundtrack: when the heroine Katia brings her newborn baby (to be called Aleksandra) home from the hospital and again when she meets her child's errant father twenty years later in a Moscow park. Throughout the film, background music plays a crucial role. The late 1950s are referenced by popular songs (including Spanish and Italian) played on a radio and by television clips of the topically satirical chastushka- performing duo Aleksandr Shurov and Nikolai Rykunin. The voice of Klav- diia Shul'zhenko singing "Davai zakurim" echoes in the background as the three friends relax at Nikolai's dacha in the late 1950s and is repeated in the same location twenty years later, thus prompting recognition and nostalgia.'3 The 1970s are represented by the music of Boney-M, indicating

13. Klavdiia Shul'zhenko (1906-84) is to the Russians what Vera Lynn is to the En- glish, a singer whose songs relate to wartime comradeship and pulling together. Her song

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480 Slavic Review

the sanitized western pop made officially available to the younger generation, and thus showing the authorities' progressive openness. Songs of seasonal change-winter giving way to spring-serve as pointers to the human world, as Katia (Vera Alentova) falls for the charismatic, multi- talented, and self-effacing Georgii (Aleksei Batalov).

Men'shov's film shows how, in the end, love can conquer all obstacles, and the use of song throughout offers a lyrical, sentimental accompaniment to the motif that you are never too old to fall in love. Romantic melodies serve as bridges between scenes and contribute to the powerful emotional payoff at the end.

Men'shov's film also works on a different level, however: as a politically conformist stroll through two decades of Soviet social history. In scenes set in the late 1950s, real-life players pop up in cameo parts: Andrei Vozne- senskii reading his poems in public, the young actor Innokentii Smoktu- novskii waiting to be noticed, and the established actors Georgii Iumatov and Tat'iana Koniukhova rushing past adoring fans to watch a new French film. Soviet viewers over the age of forty would thus be encouraged to re- live their youth and recall their own fond memories. The film also constructs a myth of trouble-free social progress: for example, in the 1970s ordinary Russians shop in western-style supermarkets and carry home their goods in plastic bags (definitely defitsit in those days). Social cohesion is also there for all to see, as academics rub shoulders with humble techni- cians, and living standards improve beyond measure. It is possible for a single mother to get to the top of her profession without a man in her life, and society is sufficiently compassionate to give her a single room in a workers' hostel in which to bring up her baby. The appearance of Georgii, the man "without faults," brings a fitting resolution to the fairy tale.

Those social vices that do exist are threatening but nonpolitical. Men can be heartless sexual predators, but two decades later they are lonely middle-aged losers. Professional sport can lead to alcoholism, as sports fans buy rounds for the faded ice-hockey star Gurov. In the end, though, a woman's place is with her man, and she should not earn more than he does.

As the closing credits roll, Vizbor's song is played again, but in a

slightly different variant. Whereas the verses that open the film set out the main themes, the final playing of "Aleksandra" emphasizes closure. First, it is performed by a male-female duet, echoing the love partnership of Katia and Georgii that is happily resolved. Second, the lyrics emphasize "love" ("true," "pure," and "maternal"), the end of "sadness" in a Moscow where the Garden Ring Road becomes as close and dear as a "wedding ring" and is identified with Moscow's "destiny":

He cpa3y Bce yCTpOHJIOCb, MOCKBa He cpa3y CTpOIJIaCb, MOCKBa CJOBaM He BepHJia, a BepJiia mJo6BH. CHeraMH 3anopomeHa, JIHCTBOIO 3aBopoceHa, HaiineT Tenio npoxoceMy, a AepeBsy 3eMJIH.

"Sinii platochek" holds roughly the same appeal for Soviet servicemen as "The White Cliffs of Dover" did for the British.




AJIeKcaHjpa, AjieKcaHApa, 3TOT ropoa Ham c To6oio CTaJIn MBI ero Cygib6oio, TbI BrJIAmHCb B ero JImo. 'TO 6bI HI 6bIJO BHaqaje, yTOJIHT OH Bce neiaJIH, BOT H CTaJIO o6pyanjbHbIM HaM CaAOBoe KOIboUO. MOCKBa TpeBOr He npATajla, MocKBa B.MaJIa BcaKOe, Ho 6ejbI Bce H ropecTH CKJIOHaiHCb nepea Hell. Jho6oBb MOCKBbI He 6blCTpaa, HO BepHaa H 'IHCTaa, nOCKOJIbKy MaTePHHCKaa Jno6OBb )pyrHX CHJIbHeii.

AneKcaHApa, AjieKcaHApa, 3TOT ropoa Ham c To6oio, CTaJIH MBI ero cyab6o0), TbI BrJISHHCb B ero FIHuO. tITO 6bi H 6blJIO BHaMaJIe, YTOJ1HT OH Bce neqaJIH, BOT H CTaJIo o6pyqaJIbHbIM HaM CaAOBOe KOjIbnO.

(Our lives work out not instantly, and Moscow grew inconstantly, Moscow believed not words, but believed in only love. With snow powdered, and with greenery bedecked, It will find warmth for the passer-by, and earth for the tree.

Alexandra, Alexandra, this is our town, We are part of its destiny, look into its face. Whatever was in the beginning, it will relieve all sadness, And the Garden Ring has become our wedding ring. Moscow did not hide its worries, Moscow has seen much, But grief and troubles bowed down before her. Moscow's love is not sudden, but true and pure, As maternal love is stronger than all others.

Alexandra, Alexandra, this is our town, We are part of its destiny, look into its face. Whatever was in the beginning, it will relieve all sadness, And the Garden Ring has become our wedding ring.)

Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears remains a funny and entertaining film. It foregrounds popular culture and song, in particular, as a barometer of social change over two decades. Made at a time when political dissidence became reality and the Soviet economy was entering terminal "stagnation," this tale of everyday life offers no social comment: every cloud has its silver lining, people are honest and hard-working, they have good friends and live in a fundamentally stable society. This conformist message was commercially successful, as the film was seen by 84.4 million viewers in 1980.14 And this seamless combination of popular entertainment, romantic fairy tale, and neutral politics is supported and directed by the use of music and song.

The Rhythms of Village Life

Films about rural life are generally more reflective and lyrical, with music, and especially folk song, indicating a more insular, occasionally national- istic agenda. Since Ivan Pyr'ev's collective farm musicals in the 1930s, mu-

14. Segida and Zemlianukhin, Domashniaia sinemateka, 257.

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sical motifs have been dominant in films about village life, but early post- Stalin films attempted to focus less on the material prosperity and massive harvests that Pyr'ev portrayed and more on ordinary people and their emotions. One of the earliest post-Stalin films set in the countryside was Stanislav Rostotskii's Delo bylo v Pen'kove (It happened in Pen'kovo, 1957), a film that is highly significant in its use of music and song to frame and even direct the narrative.

The opening credits are accompanied by sentimental strings rising to triumphalist orchestral passages as the camera dwells on lyrical rural vis- tas: this is a happy and united Russia. Rostotskii's film is adapted from an important thaw novella by Sergei Antonov whose main theme is the post- Stalin shift toward the "humane" management of agricultural production and the need for technological modernization. Rostotskii's film focuses less on the production theme than on the emotional melodramas in the village community. As the daughter of the collective farm chairman, Larisa is a prize catch for any eligible bachelor. In a ceremony conducted under a portrait of Stalin, she marries Matvei. Unfortunately, Matvei's eye is then caught by Tonia, an educated visitor from Leningrad. Tonia, too, is very much taken with Matvei's good looks and rugged charm.

In a key scene, Tonia lies alone in bed obviously yearning for Matvei, while he is in his bed with Larisa in a pose of surprising erotic frankness. Both scenes are linked by the background playing of Nikolai Dorizo's 1953 song "Ognei tak mnogo zolotykh" (music by Kirill Molchanov), with the following first verse:

OrHei TaK MHOrO 30JIOTbIX Ha yjnimax CapaToBa, IapHeii TaK MHOrO XOJIOCTbIX,

Aa mo6jmo weHaToro ...

(There are so many golden lights In the streets of Saratov, So many bachelor boys, But I love a married man.)

The song reflects Tonia's adulterous feelings for Matvei, and Matvei's for her, and the linking music transfers Matvei's erotic intent from Larisa to Tonia.15 Music and song then become the battleground for the resolution of this triangle. In the newly erected village club, Matvei sings, expressing both his feelings for Tonia and the impossibility of keeping it a secret (he is accompanied by a female chorus in folk costume):

OT moAeii Ha jepeBHe He cnpaTaTbCa, HeT CeKpeTOB B AepeBHe y Hac. He CoHTHCb-pa30HTHCb, He CocBaTaTbCa, B CTOpOHe OT npHHEIpIHBbIX rJIa3.

15. Dorizo's song ends with the female singer denying her love for the married man, thus saving the family unit. Gerald Smith comments: "The awesome gap between the atti- tude expressed here and normal Soviet sexual relations will be apparent to anyone with even a superficial knowledge of Soviet life as it really is." See Smith, Songs to Seven Strings, 23. It should also be noted that Rostotskii's film shows the village as a place of abundance and plenty, in stark contrast to the neglect and hardship historians tell us actually existed.

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The Sounds of Music: Soundtrack and Song in Soviet Film 483

Ho He 6or4cM, Te6sl He o6HgHM MbI, He nyraf4cs, 3eMJIAK, 3eMJIAKa, 3,Tecb aep)KaTb MO)KHo JBePH OTKpbITbIMH, TITO HaaeKHee eJno6oro 3aMKa.

3a HOJIAMH, caaaMH, 3a naceKoA, He yiTH OT 1PWI4,HPqH{BbIX rJla3, TeM, KTO IeP)KHT CBOH KaMeHb 3a na3yxoH, Ox, HM TPYIHO B gepeBHe y Hac.

(You can't hide from people in the village, There are no secrets in our village. You can't love or part or woo, Away from censorious eyes.

But do not fear, we will not offend you, Let not one local man fear another, Here you can leave your doors open, That is more reliable than any fortress.

Beyond the fields, the orchards and the apiary, You can't escape censorious eyes, Those who covet a secret wish, Oh, it's difficult for them with us.)

This remarkable song not only brings into the public arena the affair between Tonia and Matvei but also comments on the broader political environment. "Censorious eyes" seek out secrets and privacy is difficult to maintain in a tightly knit community where close bonds, ironically, deny personal freedom. The wider political allegory is there for all to hear.

Larisa fights back with her own brand of song. Immediately after Matvei's song she takes the stage and exposes the affair through a lively and risque chastushka, to the increasing embarrassment of the public:

MHe Moii M4JIbIi H3MeHAIeT,

3X, 'ITO 3T0 3a HOBOCTH? 51 6b1 TOKe H3MeHLjia, He xBaTaeT coBecTH.

Y COHepHHUbI Moeii Ky,apH BbIOTCA H4 BHCAIT,

KpacoTbI-Ha CTO npoleHTOB, IypH-Ha CTO nIATbecSIT.

ConepHHua MOq- ToHiKaBq-npeToHKaSI, TojIbKO CTPYHbl HaTAIHYTb, BmaJlaJaiiKa 3BOHKMAI.

FBOPSIT, 'ITO A1 ropLa, Hy, nycKa1r H qem1yTcAI.

JIyxiie ropgoto .rso6HTb, MeM Ha m-eeo BeiiiaTbCsi.

AI CBOO conepHn4uy OTBegy Ha MeJIbHH41y, 43MeJIIo ee B MYKY 14 inenemeK HaneKy.



Slavic Review

Ko MHe MHIJIbIH noaomeei, MIJIKa, a Te6a HaameJi, He TbI HaIImeJ, a A Haiaia, Bopb6a 3a KaIecTBo nomiua.

(My darling is unfaithful, But that is nothing new to me. I would also be unfaithful, But my conscience won't allow it.

My rival in love Has hair that curls and hangs loose, One hundred percent of beauty, Stupidity-one hundred and fifty.

My rival in love Is slim and slender, But just pull tight her strings, And she's like a loud balalaika.

People say that I am proud, Well, let them have the itch to know. Better to love and be proud, Than hang round someone's neck.

My rival in love I'll take down to the mill, Pound her into flour, And bake bread loaves out of her.

My darling comes up to me, Beloved, I've found you. But I'm the one who has found out, And the fight for quality now begins.)

Tonia's public humiliation is complete. Although she loses Matvei, who is reunited with Larisa, Tonia's "song" becomes part of the soundtrack, re-

minding the audience of her love and her pain. The songs identify and

develop the film's daring permissiveness: extramarital love can be just as sincere and heartfelt as that within the family. In post-Stalin times, people are only flesh and blood, after all, and they have a right to privacy.

In the 1960s and 1970s folk music became infused with a more na- tionalistic fervor. If "youth prose" and films about young people in the

early 1960s concentrated on life in the cities, "village prose" and corre-

sponding films looked at the Russian peasant and his way of life. The rural theme in literature soon developed a more radical agenda, affirming the innate values of the village as the basis for Russia's moral regeneration and

vehemently denying the legitimacy of urban and western-influenced life-

styles. These motifs became apparent in films, reinforced by their musical

accompaniment. Nikolai Moskalenko's Russkoe pole (Russian field, 1971) offers a tradi-

tional, patriotic picture of rural Russia, a picturesque backdrop to the emotional and political dramas that are given center stage. Against a back-

ground of angelic choral pieces and balalaika strings, numerous lingering

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shots of the Russian countryside-a serene panorama of rivers, fields, trees and an endless sky that represent the natural contours of the land- allude to the nation's geopolitical importance. Because of the values in- stilled by the Russian countryside, the USSR is strong militarily. The men go off to fight a foreign invasion (probably China, though this is not explicitly stated), while, against a constant backdrop of folk and popular song, the women till the soil.

In this film, the women are explicitly equated with the natural world. The figure of Fedot'ia Leont'evna (Nonna Mordiukova), who loses her husband to a younger woman and her son to armed conflict, reflects the strength and indomitable will of the village community. The patriotic theme is thus conveyed threefold: the visual splendor of a lovingly filmed rural landscape, the flag-waving heroics of the Soviet military defending the "Russian field," and a soundtrack that emphasizes the pseudo-folkloric and quasi-messianic (the score is by Aleksandr Fliarkovskii, the songs by Leonid Derbenev).

One of the best-known directors to concern himself with rural life is Vasilii Shukshin. An enormously popular writer, actor, and director, Shuk- shin focuses on the sense of social dislocation felt by former peasants forced to leave the land. Moreover, Shukshin speaks to the millions of people who are the victims of the Soviet Union's massive social upheavals, as Geoffrey Hosking notes: "They are the children of the Soviet Union's whirlwind years of social change, in which tens of millions of people were torn away from their backgrounds and homes. Shukshin's heroes are the uprooted, who have left one milieu and never quite settled in another."16

Shukshin directed five films between 1964 and his untimely death in 1974: Zhivet takoi paren' (There lives such a lad, 1964), Vash syn i brat (Your son and brother, 1965), Strannye liudi (Strange people, 1969), Pechki- lavochki (Happy go lucky, 1972), and Kalina krasnaia (Red guelder rose, 1973). He also acted in his last two films, as well as in dozens of films by other directors, and he is the author of numerous short stories, novellas, and screenplays. Shukshin's films became extraordinarily popular, so that at the time of his death he had achieved "superstar status in the Soviet Union" and was in "a category by himself."17

Shukshin's first film, There Lives Such a Lad, does not display the director's fascination with the possibilities of soundtrack and music that would later become evident. With single-string guitar chords, the music, like the magnificent mountainous landscape, is kept strictly in the background. There is no mistaking the musical emphasis of Your Son and Brother, however. It opens with romantic orchestral strings accompanying shots of a river in spring, ice floes heralding the release of nature after the long winter. A folk melody accompanies shots of women, birds, and the natural world. The first few minutes are filmed as slice-of-life documentary, before any dialogue or narrative development.

16. Geoffrey Hosking, Beyond Socialist Realism: Soviet Fiction since Ivan Denisovich (Lon- don, 1980), 163.

17. John Givens, 'Vasilii Shukshin and the 'Audience of Millions': Kalina krasnaia and the Power of Popular Cinema," Russian Review 58, no. 2 (April 1999): 284.

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486 Slavic Review

The story begins with the return of Stepka to his native village, where he is met by his mute sister. This is no ordinary prodigal son returning to the family nest after traveling far and wide, however. Stepka has escaped from prison. To spend a day and night in his home, with his family and those close to him, will add two years to his sentence. Rather than con- demning Stepka's act, the film celebrates the Russian man's natural link with his land and his roots, affirmed by a background of folk music and female choral singing. The film provides positive images of rural life, with shots of the interiors of peasant huts and bathhouses. Folk melodies, accordion playing, chastushki, and dancing reinforce the cinematic reflec- tion of the simplicity and basic honesty of peasant life. Essentially good, though possibly impulsive, the Russian peasant is a man with "soul" who needs to be close to his land and his roots.

By contrast, the next scene is set in the town where Stepka's brothers Ignat and Maxim live. Here there are endless crowds and queues and the

impersonality of relationships is underscored by the cacophonous jazz rhythms blaring from a radio set. Urban life is generally characterized by a lack of harmony and decency; it is a place where families argue. When the brothers travel to their native village, they find a mythical picture of wholeness and purity: in the village, girls wear white, and human activity takes place against a majestic backdrop of mountains, forests, and lakes. Wanton drunkenness and social alienation are not present here, for all rural workers are serious, honest, and industrious. At the end of the film, water flows, strings play, and life goes on: "Vse pravil'no" (Everything is as it should be), is the film's final motto.

Strange People opens with the song "Milen'kii ty moi" sung on the soundtrack by Shukshin and his wife Lidiia Fedoseeva-Shukshina, accom-

panying a shot of a young child in a field of flowers in summer. An orchestral score then takes over as the film's narrative begins. The film is struc- tured around three of Shukshin's stories. Throughout communal singing and folk song are never far from the action, and there is very little non-

diegetic music: "Milen'kii ty moi" is a girl's pained plea to her married lover who has rejected her and recurs later in the narrative. Soft guitar music accompanies shots of fields, rivers, and sunsets. Popular band

arrangements add an uplifting, life-affirming note to the events and per- sonalities in the film. Only in the last of the stories, "Dumy" (Reflections), does pop music interrupt and dominate, the bombastic lyrics of the

younger generation symbolically threatening the stability and traditions of past ages. Balalaika strings, the accordion, and finally opera music on the radio all accompany the "reflections" of the elderly Matvei Ivanovich

(played by Vsevolod Sanaev) on his life, his accomplishments, and his

mortality. The film ends on a lyrical and reflective note, as the different musical genres and generations combine to enable Matvei Ivanovich to come to terms with life and the passing of the ages.

Happy Go Lucky begins with balalaika music as the actor-director Shuk- shin is shown against rolling fields, a scythe in his hand as in the Russia of old. Here even horses are preferred to cars as transport. As Vania Ras-

torguev and his wife Liuba (Shukshin and Fedoseeva-Shukshina) prepare



The Sounds of Music: Soundtrack and Song in Soviet Film 487

to leave for a holiday in the south of European Russia, they are seen off by their neighbors who sit around a table singing. The song is a sad one, for in a tightly knit community parting even for a short time is a cause for sorrow. In this film, too, the accordion plays, people sing and dance against panoramic shots of fields, river, and sky, and accordion and balalaika melodies accompany the couple as they travel by bus from the village to the railway station.

The train journey Vania and his wife take through Russia in Happy Go Lucky is, like the typical train journey in Soviet film, above all one of social discovery. Various types come and go: a petty criminal (the actor Georgii Burkov); a supercilious bureaucrat who looks down on village types, and who even tries to have Vania arrested for drunkenness; and a respectful professor (Vsevolod Sanaev again) who invites Vania to address his students in Moscow. Their long train journey is punctuated by popular music: Vania himself sings a folk song, and students in a neighboring com- partment sing to "Rossiia-matushka." The picture we get of Russia is essentially one of social harmony and national pride, a rejoicing in the vast- ness of the country, with only slight reservations about the fickleness of human nature. All this is set to folk music and song, both as background score and as part of the narrative, an all-encompassing sensuous celebra- tion of a mythical, almost abstract Russia that stands outside of historical time and sociopolitical reality.

Such a picture of Russia recurs in Shukshin's most famous film, Red Guelder Rose, which opened just a month before he died. As John Givens has noted, the film "is not so much a movie as a melody," part of the actor-writer-director's "synthetic thinking" where he can "weave seam- lessly various media-words, sounds, images and music-into one mean- ingful whole."18 Givens also notes that the film's music combines tradi- tional folk songs, modern stylizations, balalaika melodies, popular band music, and criminal songs (blatnye pesni), all of which help identify and reflect the film's main narrative concerns: Russia's history in the twentieth century and the moral, spiritual, and psychological effects of cataclysmic social change on the individual. Shukshin's earlier films may emphasize social cohesion and conciliation, but Red Guelder Rose focuses on tragedy and loss, with the music actively contributing to a quasi-Christian narrative of persecution, sacrifice, and martyrdom.

The film begins in a prison, as criminals who have reached the end of their sentences are singing the sad "Vechernii zvon." Shukshin plays Egor Prokudin who is unable to keep time in the chorus-an obvious symbol of his social and cultural alienation, a theme that is further developed during the course of the film. Balalaika strings accompany the opening credits. After Prokudin is released from prison, he visits his former gang, but then attempts to go straight as a tractor driver, symbolically returning to his rural roots. In scenes set in the village, collective farm workers sing round the table in sad and elegiac tones, and Prokudin's isolation and loneliness are reinforced by sentimental balalaika and guitar strings. In

18. Ibid., 273-74.



488 Slavic Review

the green fields of the Russian countryside sunshine illuminates the gleaming churches and groves of birch trees. At a public concert, a chorus of female singers dressed in folk costumes highlight the artificiality of officially sanitized folk music, and their performance is given a political coloring by the presenter's speech.

As the director, Shukshin invests crucial scenes with great emotional power. When Prokudin sees his mother for the first time in twenty years, he wears dark glasses to avoid betraying any emotion publicly. A few minutes later, he breaks down and cries to an accompaniment of orchestral strings, as a gleaming white church and birch trees appear in the background.

Prokudin's efforts to go straight ultimately fail; his former gang catches up with him, and he is shot by his former boss, Guboshlep (Georgii Burkov again). In the moments leading up to this final confrontation, Prokudin drives his tractor across the fields, against another background of birch trees, with balalaika strings again playing on the soundtrack. He is shot in a birch grove, smearing these sacred Russian trees with his blood, and dies lying on the earth he has just ploughed, accompanied by an angelic chorus. As Guboshlep says: "on byl muzhik, ikh na Rusi mnogo." These words are endowed with both symbolic and allegorical significance.

Egor Prokudin's life of petty crime began when he was uprooted at an

early age. His failure to find a home is representative of an entire generation. For the murderer Guboshlep, people are simply "wood chips" that "fly" when the "forest is cut down": the cost is not important; there will al-

ways be others to take the place of those who have fallen. The word Rus'

suggests that Russia is not a geographical or political entity, but the Holy Russia of myth and folklore. Prokudin's fate symbolizes the peasant's lot and is an allegory for Russia's twentieth-century suffering.

In these final moments, music heightens the film's powerful resolution, both articulating and bringing together the symbolic, allegorical, and mythical strands. In Prokudin's black-and-white memory of prison camp, a lone singer performs the song "Pis'mo materi," a rendering of a sad and sentimental poem by Sergei Esenin from 1924, set to piano and

guitar accompaniment by Pavel Chekalov. In the moments before Proku- din's death, this song becomes integrated with the soundtrack.

51 no-npeKHeMy TaKOH Kce He)KHbIH HI MeqTalK TOJIbKO JIHIHb 0 TOM, qTO6 cKopee OT TOCKH MITeKHOH BOpOTHTbCa B CTapeHbKHI HaIm AOM.

A5 BepHycb, Koraa pacKHHeT BeTBI

fIO-BeceHHeMy Ham 6eJmiii caA. TOJIbKO TbI MeHI y)K Ha paccBeTe He 6yAH, KaK BOCeMb neT Ha3aa.

(I am still that same tender boy, And dream only of one thing, To leave behind my restless sorrow, And return to our old little house.




I'll return when the tree branches Are spread out by our spring-like white garden, But don't you wake me up At the dawn, as eight years ago.)

At this point the song's melody becomes part of the soundtrack, as the camera follows Prokudin in his tractor. The next two stanzas follow, with the singer being shown only for the final two lines:

He 6yAn TorO, 'TO OTMeqTaJiOCb, He BOJIHyH Toro, 'TO He C6bIJIOCb,- CJImhIKOM paHHIOIO yTpaTy H yCTaJrOCTb IcnbIITaTb MHe B )KH3HHII pHBeJIOCb.

14 MOJIHTbCa He y'qH MeH. He Haao! K cTapOMy B03BpaTa 6o0Jbme HeT. TbI OAHa MHe nOMOWlb H oTpaAa, TbI OAHa MHe HecKa3aHHbIH CBeT.

(Do not reawaken memories of the past, Do not bother that which did not come true, Too early have loss and weariness Been my lot to suffer in life.

And do not teach me to pray. No need! There is no more return to the past. You alone are my support and joy, You alone are my ineffable light.)

As Prokudin catches sight of the car containing the gang members at the edge of the field, the guitar music on the soundtrack stops abruptly, dramatically signaling the danger he now faces. Esenin's poem is in the form of a letter written by a son to his mother.19 Although the son has not been home to his native village for eight years, he assures his mother that he has not forgotten his ancestral home, that it remains his source of inner strength, and that he longs to return. The mother grieves but waits for him. But the son has in fact outgrown the village. Yet, in his adult life, only his mother offers him moral support and spiritual sustenance. Esenin's poem encapsulates Prokudin's own fate, for he too has not seen his mother for many years. The song thus conflates the destinies of the fictional "muzhik" Prokudin, Esenin's poetic son, and the author of these lines himself.

The song therefore provides a powerful allegory for Prokudin's death. Russian viewers would not need reminding that Esenin called himself the "last poet of the village" before killing himself in 1925. Prokudin dies a peasant, having known only hardship and ordeals in his lifetime. In his various guises he represents all of Russia, its past and present, the village and the town, bravery and transgression: in the course of the film he is by

19. The song as it is performed in this film is a slightly modified version of Esenin's poem. The poem runs to nine four-line stanzas, and the singer in the film performs stanzas 5-8. For the full text of the poem, see Sergei Esenin, "Pis'mo materi," Sobranie sochinenii vpiati tomakh (Moscow, 1961), 2:155-56.

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Slavic Review

turns the folk hero Egor Khrabryi, the urbane Georgii, the brutalized criminal Gore (woe), the salt-of-the-earth Zhora, and the comically urbane Zhorzh, who looks to so-called sophisticated western ways for a "festival of the soul" but finds only superficiality.

Shukshin's use of music thus reflects the ideological agenda that is shared by other "village writers" of the 1960s and 1970s.20 In Red Guelder Rose the village is a place where scars can be healed and people are in- herently good, whereas the town is a haven of crime and debauchery. Tragedy comes when the town comes to the village. If other village writers advocated a return to the village, its ancient customs and perceived moral certainties for the regeneration of society, Shukshin shows this attempt as both futile and doomed. With the combination of visual images and soundtrack, Shukshin constructs a tragic nationalist myth, one with mass audience appeal.21

Music and song in Soviet film have thus been much more than a "dramatically motivated" background designed to enhance the emotional im- pact of the narrative. From the outset directors have sought to incorpo- rate music within the structure of the film, initially as a "counterpoint" to enhance and develop the visual montage. In the 1930s and 1940s music was integral to the structure and meaning of many key films, from directors as diverse as Eizenshtein, Kozintsev, and Leonid Trauberg, Aleksan- drov, Ivanovskii, and Pyr'ev. Stagnation directors such as Men'shov and Motyl' have been highly creative in integrating popular song within the framework of their films, making these films more accessible and enjoyable to an already appreciative audience. Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, in particular, foregrounds song as both a thematic pointer and a means of

promoting its conformism and social conservatism. In Shukshin's films about village life, the use of many styles of music-popular, authentic folk, or modern stylizations-encourages symbolic or allegorical inter-

pretations and thus actively contributes to the construction of a mythical discourse. In Shukshin's films, the music is the message.

20. For a subjective but nevertheless informative discussion of Shukshin's love of song and folk music, see Tamara Ponomareva, Potaennaia liubov' Shukshina (Moscow, 2001), esp. 179-90.

21. Red Guelder Rose was the second most popular film of 1974, with 62.5 million viewers. Segida and Zemlianukhin, Domashniaia sinemateka, 190.

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the sounds of music soundtrack and song in soviet film

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