ABSTRACT

This book illuminates and explores the representation of women in Soviet cinema from the late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the 1970s, a period when Soviet culture shifted away, to varying degrees, from the well-established conventions of socialist realism. Covering films about working class women, rural and urban women, and women from the intelligentsia, it probes various cinematic genres and approaches to film aesthetics, while it also highlights how Soviet cinema depicted the ambiguity of emerging gender roles, pressing social issues, and evolving relationships between men and women. It thereby casts a penetrating light on society and culture in this crucial period of the Soviet Union’s development.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

part I|60 pages

Actresses, onscreen personas, and their evolution through the years

chapter 2|21 pages

Liudmila Gurchenko

Stardom in the late Soviet era

chapter 3|22 pages

Nina Ruslanova

Traversing the spaces of late socialism

part II|63 pages

Genre as device in mainstream cinema

chapter 5|19 pages

Melodrama’s womanly face

Femininity redefined in the Soviet cinema of the late 1960s–early 1970s

chapter 6|22 pages

A laughing matter

El’dar Riazanov and the subversion of Soviet gender in Russian comedy

part III|62 pages

New Soviet wave cinema and auteurism

chapter 8|21 pages

“What can be done about it? I’m a woman, not a pet”

The non-heroic heroines in Romm’s Nine Days of One Year and Shepit’ko’s You and Me