ABSTRACT
One of the original aspects of Soviet cinema is its daring in depicting con temporary historical personages, even living figures. This phenomenon is perfecdy in line with the new Communist art, which extols a very recent history whose protagonists are still alive. Perhaps historical materialism came logically to treat men as facts, to give them in the representation of events the place they were generally denied in the West until an historical, critical distance could lift the psychological taboo. Two thousand years weren’t even enough for Cecil B. DeMille to be so bold as to show more than Christ’s feet in Ben Hur.1 There is no way such artistic modesty could stand up against a Marxist critique; at any rate, it could not do so in the country where they erase from the records the names of comrades who have “betrayed” the cause, but where the body of Lenin is preserved. It seems to me, though, that the depiction of living historical personages on screen has taken on a central importance only with Stalin. If I’m not mis taken, the films about Lenin did not come out until after his death,2 whereas Stalin appeared on screen as early as the war in historical films that did not consist of documentary footage. The actor Mikhail Gelovani, who incarnates Stalin, so to speak, in The Vow (1946; dir. Mikhail Chiaureli), is a specialist whom the Russians had already seen several times in this role starting in 1938, in particular in Siberians (1940; dir. Lev Kuleshov), Valeri Chkalov (1941; dir. Mikhail Kalatozov), and The Defense ofTsaritsin (1942; dir. Sergei Vasiliev and Georgi Vasiliev [they are unre lated]). It is no longer Gelovani, however, who plays Stalin’s double in The Battle o f Stalingrad (Part I, 1949, and Part II, 1950; dir. Vladimir Petrov), and still another actor plays him in The Third Blow (1948; dir. Igor
Savchenko).3 Naturally, Stalin did not play himself in these historical re creations. Incidentally, the original version of The Vow, which was cut for French distribution, showed, it seems, Georges Bonnet dancing the Lambeth Walk,4 and the scenes in which Hider appeared were much too long (the role of Hider was played by a Czech railway worker whose resemblance to the Fiihrer was striking). In The Battle o f Stalingrad not only Hider appeared, but also Churchill and Roosevelt. It is worth noting, moreover, that these latter two “creations” were far less convincing than Stalin’s, and above all for these reasons: the actor portraying Roosevelt bore a distant (if finally acceptable) resemblance to the American presi dent, while Churchill was an utter and intentional caricature.
