ABSTRACT
In Soviet film studies, it has been common practice to categorize the coming of sound to Soviet cinema as a moment of crisis and failure, the moment when the ‘Golden Age’ of Soviet avant-garde cinema and the montage school came to an abrupt end. This chapter explores the consequences of the transition to sound in Soviet cinema and the ways ‘cinematic excess’ might be said to define Socialist Realism as a style. Looking at three films from the early to mid-thirties—Sergei Yutkevich's Golden Mountains ([Zlatye gory], 1931), Fridrich Ermler and Yutkevich's Counterplan ([Vstrechnyi], 1932), and Ermler's The Peasants ([Krest'iane], 1935)—this chapter argues that the drive toward ‘realism’ (straightforward plots, continuity editing, naturalistic sound effects) produced an excess of cinematic devices that could not easily be contained by narrative structures or motivated by plot.
