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icarus-suraki · 6 months

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Classic, owl, skeleton for the spoopy asks :D

Spoopy ask game ooooooh~

Classic: What’s your favorite classic spooky movie? I could get really pedantic here like "But what do we consider a 'classic' and what is a 'spooky' movie? Indeed, what is a 'movie'?" But I'm not gonna.

I'm gonna go way back to a true classic: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1920.

The German Expressionism turned up to 11, the irrational and disproportional sets, the establishment of a buncha tropes, the influence it had and still has, the visual elements, the twist ending, Conrad Veidt in a black leotard and a lot of eye makeup…!

I like a lot of spooky movies, some more spooky than others, and I could just sit here and list them, but Dr. Caligari is just so iconic and influential in so many ways.

The art museum here had a showing some years ago accompanied by a live string quartet and I desperately wish I could have gone. Alas!

Owl: What creature would you have as a familiar? This is tough! I mean, I can always fall back on the classics: cat, crow, raven, owl.

Whatever, I'm kind of basic: cat. But it would be interesting to have a hairless cat. I worked with a guy who once said that I seemed like the kind of person who'd have a hairless cat. Maybe he's right. My hairless cat familiar and me, practicing experimental chaos magic in a minimalist house all done in black and white. That's the dream.

Now, speaking of, I did have a dream about a skinny black-and-white cat (more black than white, but he had white toes) named Honk who I saw in the bay window of an old bookstore next to a sign that read "Honk is not for sale!" So if I ever find Honk (who will be adoptable, I'm sure, but not for sale), maybe he's my familiar?

Skeleton: What never fails to send a shiver down your spine?

A lack of context!!!!!!!!

Let me explain: the less context or explanation there is around an image, a sound, a video, &c, the creepier or stranger it is (to me).

This is why I get disappointed partway through basically, um, every analog horror series or internet horror creation: sooner or later, there's too much context and/or too much explanation and it destroys the mystery. It puts too much of a frame around the concept. It solidifies it. And it immediately defangs it.

Once there was all this lore that evolved around The Backrooms, they immediately stopped being interesting to me. Do I like that The Backrooms are this collaborative storytelling project? Absolutely. And I enjoy some of the things people have made in that whole concept. But they've ceased to be as eerie to me because there's all these explanations now.

One of my favorite(?) examples of no-context-horror is from just before the US-made version of The Ring came out, the "cursed video" was posted online--and it was just the cursed video. There was no context, just a series of unnerving and (seemingly) disconnected images. (It was 2002 and I remember watching it on my friend's desktop in her dorm room. We were all scaring each other with it. If you had a cell phone, you'd call your friend's dorm number right after she'd seen it lol.)

And, yes, a lot of the images are gross or disgusting unto themselves--twitching severed fingers in a box is gross. But not knowing how everything connected together made even benign images like a plain wooden chair all the more horrifying. As in, if the images will go as far as a finger jammed onto a nail, the implications of the plain wooden chair are even more horrifying.

But then you see the whole movie and it's like seriously? That's it? It was a real letdown for me. The suggestions were scarier than the facts.

And, honestly, anything that you do show can't be as horrifying as what might be shown. I don't even mean Cloverfield-style where you don't really see the monster but you know a monster is there. I mean leaving the whole thing open-ended enough that the benign becomes the terrifying. Why are weird sounds in the dark scary? Because you don't know what's out there; you can only imagine it. Or worse, you can only half-imagine it.

I think The Blair Witch Project (1999) just about managed this because they never showed the witch. You got no satisfying explanation. That made it scarier (to say nothing about the "is it real or isn't it?" marketing, as Cannibal Holocaust did back in the 70s).

Nowadays, it feels like all the found footage stuff explains too much. It's like the creators think of something for the backstory so therefore they must include it in the main plot. No, don't do that. Stop that. You have to hold some things back.

Same thing with most modern "real ghost videos." It's Too Much.

Back in the early 2000s on YouTube there were actually decent "real ghost videos" that had no context, no explanation. Some of my favorites were compilations of ghost videos and photographs from Japanese horror/ghost televsion shows--I remember the photos giving me the absolute creeps in particular. And it was because I had very little context. The language and culture barriers made everything scarier--to say nothing of the time distance, since most of the clips I was watching were from the early-mid 90s. So it was all low-quality VHS tapes and film cameras, which made it just that much harder to really parse out what you were seeing. And then when you see it, you will shit bricks.

And I think this lack of explanation is what makes Tool's video for "Sober" by Fred Stuhr so fucking disturbing. Humans like narrative and explanation right? And, yes, there's some kind of narrative here but it doesn't entirely align. There seems to be a story here but it's not clear. At one point, this human-like figure the camera has been following opens up a pipe and there's raw meat flowing through it. What does it mean? What's going on? Why is this happening? We want an explanation, in part because the raw meat is distressing unto itself, but we get nothing, which makes it more distressing than just gross-out images. (The video always reminds me vaguely of Kafka's writing, and he understood this too. See: The Trial and The Penal Colony.)

I could talk about this for hours because I really think "showing the monster" is both the escape hatch or the release valve of horror but it's also the weak point of horror. Stephen King loves to show the monster eventually in his books and I don't usually find his books all that horrifying. But Revival actually almost got me because of the creepy visions the main character experiences and the whole "Mother is behind the paper sky" line. There's not much explanation in the plot/text about this, but it's not totally unexplained. But I can tell you, the first time I hit it in the book it actually got me. And that's rare.

I think that lack of context is very hard in the, well, context of a narrative. I mean, narrative demands context. Narrative is context. So the things that get me are the rare things without much of that: the cursed video from The Ring, music videos (like "Sober"), certain kinds of visual art (Francis Bacon's early work, especially), butoh dance, early internet stories and some urban legends, ghost videos/photos that don't try too hard… Lose the context, gain the fear.

(I think this is why I like the smeared, almost-but-not-quite look of older AI art, like Midjourney v3. It's in that other uncanny valley: it should be recognizable and yet it isn't entirely right.)

Oh my gaw this went on longer than it should haaaaave...

#ask game #ask me things #anon is on

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cxnthie · 2 years

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Hiii @alsophila-grahami tagged me for this game, thank you so much pal <33

fav color: Not sure? I've always said turquoise but violet may be up there too.

currently reading: I've just finished Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (which was so great, just the ending was super rushed in my opinion), and now I'm in the middle of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage by Lord Byron (which is wonderful, though some historical context fails me) and How to Fight Antisemitism by Bari Weiss (which I'm not too sure about? I've heard the author is a bit controversial but I suppose this won't be the only book I'll be reading on this subject, so I guess it will level out?)

last songs: ummmm Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen, Saint Paul by Shane, Let's Go To Bed and Charlotte Sometimes by The Cure, Последный герой and Кончится лето by Kino, I Want the One I Can't Have by The Smiths and Sedona by Sir Chloe... I guess that's enough :)

last series/show: Technically A Bit of Fry and Laurie but I'm still in the middle of The Terror and I'll watch those last few episodes very soon!

last movie: Just finished Nazi Agent with Conrad Veidt, which was alright. I missed seeing those old black and white movies haha

currently working on: My book! I'm in the middle of chapter 2 out of the 5 I have planned and if I finish 3 by the end of summer, I'll be really happy :))

Thank you so much for the tag <33 I tag @vcasih @crowley1990 @katecaru @vakarcs @david-watts and @king-trash-cryptid if y'all want to do it, if not, that's alright too!

#this was fun I like rambling about stuff I've watched/read and all that jazz :)#also m i hope you had fun watching paddington 2 with your mom!!#i have yet to persuade my family to watch the paddington movies and then i do... ooohh that will be the day #tag

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suchamiracle-does-exist · 3 years

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CV Fanwork prompt sheet #2 (April 2021): 1. Devil Inspired by this. Made for the prompt sheet over on Conrad Veidt in Context at Facebook

… … … … … … … … … 1. Devil 2. Height 3. Feminine 4. Hands 5. Blue 6. Historical 7. Gothic 8. Angel 9. Cabaret 10. Sword +11. Your choice … … … … … … … … …

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aikainkauna · 6 years

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#conrad veidt #der geiger von florenz #...no #stop that #beckoning to his daughter just when he's about to discipline her #as if this weren't dodgy enough #both the context and the casting of this guy in general tbh

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count-lero · 2 years

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A sudden thought came recently to my mind: why haven’t I ever spoken about my favourite portrayal of one mischievous Austrian statesman on the big screen? I’ve actually seen several interpretations of Metternich in different types of media but only one won me over completely after some time of contemplation. 🎥

Thus, let us turn to a movie called “Der Kongreß tanzt” (“The Congress Dances”)! 💃

This intriguing product of German cinematography was originally filmed in 1931. The movie focuses on - who could have guessed! - on the events of the Congress of Vienna (mostly imaginary but still). It stared many leading German actors and comedians of the time and was promoted as a response to the success of the American cinema in Europe.

Here’s how Wikipedia’s article expands on the whole drama:

“Der Kongress tanzt” is a particularly well achieved move in Ufa's attempt to challenge US supremacy in the European film arena, taking advantage of the introduction of sound. As such, the studio released the movie in three different language versions (MLV): in German, in French as Le congrès s'amuse, and English as Congress Dances. Lilian Harvey played in all three versions, as she spoke all languages; Henri Garat replaced Willy Fritsch for the French and English versions.

Ufa spared no efforts: the cast reads like a who's who of German film, from the top billers of the day to heavy-weight comedians - even the supporting cast is made out of stars. The sets were lavish and top talent made up the entire technical cast.

Despite the ambition and the auspicious beginning, Ufa's challenge to US supremacy never materialized, both due to the strength of the Hollywood majors and to the constraints Germany's creative film and performers would suffer from 1933 onwards.

As you can see, the destiny of this movie is quite an upsetting one… But there is one review mentioned in the article which strikes me right to the heart. 💔

"This truffle of cinema unfolds its flavours like a heavenly feast for the anonymous millions it is dedicated to." Lichtbild-Bühne

That truly is the state of this film in the eyes of the public. It won’t be interesting for the major part of the audience, even if the audience enjoys cinema of the old times, simply because this movie is about history at it’s finest! Of course, the original creators did their best in an attempt to adapt the plot to the taste of general public, removed a lot of notable historical characters who would seem excess for the storytelling and oversimplified the relationships between certain political figures but it still requires some level of immersion in the historical context…

That’s why for those who are invested in the period of Napoleonic wars this movie may be a treasure. Or a complete disaster, perhaps! :)

I’m obliged to feature the “disaster” part here because of those oversimplifications I mentioned earlier, immense problems with costumes (especially uniforms and women’s clothes) and appearances (as usual) of certain historical characters (for example, the man in the posters above is… emperor Alexander I, even though his moustache makes him look much more like Prussian king Frederick Wilhelm III; the resemblance is almost shocking!). Also, the plot focuses mostly on an idle love affair between emperor Alexander with the charming lady next to him and many other possible plot lines were left behind for the sake of it…

Still one of the best parts of this movie remains the same, in my humble opinion: it is an incredibly talented and dashing German actor Conrad Veidt playing the one and only - chancellor Metternich! 🇦🇹

I guess, the only thing I can say about this cast in particular is that Veidt was… just… someone extraordinary. 👁👄👁

Hence, I’m simply going to recommend you this movie wholeheartedly (if you haven’t watched it already, of course), as you’ll be able to savour it’s lively comedy, lovely music and wonderful acting of the Pleiad of old German cinema stars!

To sum it all up, I’ll leave few more screenshots of Metternich and his entourage for you to enjoy. 🤲💗

P.S.

Also, like… those cuffs… Oh (boy) prince…

Das Ende~ 🎥

#film #historical film #der kongreß tanzt #conrad veidt #klemens von metternich #alexander i of russia #napoleonic era #napoleonic wars #the congress of vienna #19th century

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veidtveidtveidt · 3 years

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Conrad Veidt in context

For what it's worth, here 'tis: a new FB comm for Veidt fans who prefer to stay on topic and also prefer content that's actually new and relevant:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/conradveidtincontext

Posts are moderated for quality control, but anything that's of high quality and/or hasn't been seen a million times before is welcome. This goes for not only photos but links, articles, discussion, fanworks et cetera. No low-relevance spamming, crummy quality photos or off-topics, and there's a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of sexuality/gender/slut-shaming.

So if you're sick of seeing that same old photo of Gwynplaine over and over and prefer quality to quantity, come on in.

#conrad veidt #feel free to reglob this all over the place guys #as i know posts with links in won't show up on the cv tag #if you're as sick as we are of ppl using communities like personal blogs #or sick of diatribes against anita berber being 'disgusting' or homophobes being in denial about connie's biness #and of those tedious 'tihs VILLiAN inzpiered teh joekkkaer loll'! 'articles'...#well #btw i didn't even want to create this thing #but a handful of people have asked me to #so...

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screamscenepodcast · 7 years

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Our deadicated hosts return to Germany to review our first remake... Der Student von Prag (1926), directed by Henrik Galeen and starring Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss. We discuss how the remake, German Expressionism, and even Veidt's acting have evolved since our last viewings! Context setting 00:00; summary 22:14; discussion 46:10; ranking 1:02:38

#horror podcast #podcast #horror film #silent film #film review #der student von prag #student of prague #scream scene #scream scene episode 18 #henrik galeen #conrad veidt #werner krauss #german expressionism #germany #german history #remake

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ushas42 · 7 years

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snowgrouse replied to your post “I AM the airplane. No matter how nice he is, a German man saying the...”

And of course, I'm now thinking of Conrad Veidt delivering a line like that. He'd just say it slowly and softly and hypnotically to cover up for his shitty pronunciation and end up sounding creepily seductive instead. How does the full line go? (Humour me; I am delirious from fever and congestion and sleep deprivation and this is highly entertaining to me now. He's polishing his monocle and practicing his crazy stare behind me as we speak.)

“Yes, enemy cyborgs should provide plenty of MCFC electrolytes once you slice them open and... extract their fluids.”

He’s referring to the fact that I can replenish my energy meter by stabbing enemies, because my sword will automatically suck the energy out of their cyborg blood. Fairly vampiric, even in context, which gets lampshaded.

TVTropes considers it an accidental innuendo, though the use of the term “electrolytes” makes it sound like I’m stabbing the gatorade out of them

#snowgrouse #extrakt their fluidz #mgs #mgr

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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ALONG WITH the somewhat better-known Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson, the writer and literary theorist Yuri Tynianov was a central figure of the revolutionary-era school of literary and cultural criticism that came to be known as Russian Formalism. The Formalists were contemporaries and advocates of Futurist poets like Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov, as well as early Soviet film pioneers like Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov. In keeping with the mood of avant-garde experimentation that held sway in the early years of Soviet rule, Formalist ideas about literature and art were radical and stark, especially in comparison with the mystical impressionism of pre-revolutionary Russian writers and critics. Like Shklovsky, Jakobson, and their colleague Boris Eikhenbaum, Tynianov was first and foremost a scholar of literature, but the creative explosions of the new Soviet film industry demanded the Formalists’ attention. Tynianov, like Shklovsky, dove in as both a theorist and practitioner; he began penning screenplays and working directly with actors and filmmakers, most notably with the wacky and inventive “Factory of the Eccentric Actor” (FEKS) group. He also wrote a series of articles on film, like the one below, which were published in daily newspapers, and in 1927 released a substantial volume of Formalist essays on cinema. Tynianov’s writings on film are valuable for their insider’s perspective and the sense of palpable, physical immediacy they convey (even as he insists on the fundamentally abstract quality of film as an art form). He applies his formidable skills as a literary theorist to this material, teasing out fascinating parallels between the way words and images can be shaped and altered by their place in a work. But Tynianov is also unique among the Formalists, in that he argues for film’s essential difference from all other art forms.

This brief, even aphoristic essay, translated by Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko, anticipates many foundational statements on film made by major theorists like Eisenstein, André Bazin, and Rudolf Arnheim later in the 20th century. In its early days, cinema was often praised as a synthesis of the arts (visual, literary, and musical). By asserting the uniqueness of cinema and insisting that it be treated according to its own criteria, rather than defined in relation to the other arts, Tynianov’s essay follows the essay-manifesto of the Cine-Eyes group, “We. A Version of a Manifesto.” Led by Vertov, the Cine-Eyes sought to purge cinema of its “hangers-on” — theater, literature, and music. Echoing the Russian Futurists, this group wanted to foreground machines (the camera/cinematic apparatus) as the essence of film and the model for film as art. Tynianov, by contrast, is less concerned with technology than with film’s unparalleled capacity for abstraction, which was exploited so productively by the early Soviet avant-garde.

To explain what he means by abstraction, Tynianov takes his guiding metaphor from poetry, his primary area of expertise. In this and other essays, he suggests that film can be broken down into component parts similar to those that make up a line of verse or a poem (though Tynianov warns sharply against applying the tools or standards of literary narrative to film). He sees a productive parallel between the idea of a montage sequence in film and his theory of the “density and unity of the verse line,” where the significance of individual words and sounds (and, by extension, of the entire line) is wholly dependent on their place in sequence and the interrelations between them. There is indeed an organic connection here. In developing his theory of “vertical” or audio-visual montage, Eisenstein himself had drawn on Tynianov’s writings on verse language.

Speaking of language, the “word�� of the essay’s title requires some explanation. Slovo in Russian has a primary meaning of “word,” with derivative adjective “verbal” (slovesnyi) and noun “verbal art” or “literature” (slovesnost’). But in the Russian tradition, slovo also has a much broader and more general meaning that can evoke both the religious depth of “the Word” (Logos) and the poetic experiments with the “self-sufficient word” (samovitoe slovo) of the Russian Futurists. In these contexts, slovo comes much closer to the standard anglophone use of “language”; accordingly, in the text below, it is rendered as either “word” or “language,” depending on the context. — Vera Koshkina and Ainsley Morse

Film and theater are not competing with one another. Film and theater are refining one another, showing each other the way forward as they mark out their own boundaries. [1] This younger art has preserved the easy freedom of youth (“maybe we should go to the movies?”), but has also acquired a forbidding power. In terms of the power of its impressions, film has overtaken theater. In terms of complexity it will never overtake it. They are on different paths.

First and foremost: space. No matter how much you deepen stage perspective, there’s no escaping the facts: the boxes like matchboxes and the stage under a bell-jar. The actor is bound by this bell-jar. He keeps running into the walls. (It’s so dreadful that in operas they even have people riding in on horseback! The horse stamps its feet and shakes its mane. Everyone is so relieved when they finally lead the unhappy animal out again. Otherwise it might have leapt off of the stage and fallen into the orchestra pit.) The theater gives you a close-up, a bas-relief. If the actor turns his back to you, all that exists for you is his back.

Then we have the actor’s body. From the upper balcony of the Bolshoi Theatre, even an actor playing Wotan looks like a little doll. [2] (This is the connection between theater and marionette theater.) From the upper balcony Hamlet looks like a fly. The Itinerants, meanwhile, put the actor right up in your face. [3] Also unpleasant.

The actor is bound by his body.

The actor’s speech is bound to his body, to his voice and to space.

Film is an abstract art. [4]

Experiments with space — unprecedented heights, leaps from Mars to Earth — are achieved using the most elementary, insultingly simple methods. [5]

The space of film is, in and of itself, abstract — two-dimensional. The actor turns away from the viewer — but look, here’s his face: he’s whispering and smiling. The viewer sees more than any participant in a play would see.

In the theater, time is broken up into pieces, but it moves in a straight line — not backward or to the side. This is why there can be no Vorgeschichte [back-story — trans.] in a drama (it can only be provided through language). (In fact, this is what gave rise to the specificity of drama as a literary genre.) In film, time is fluid; it has been untethered from a specific place. This fluid time fills the screen with an unheard-of variety of things and objects. It allows for forays both backward and to the side. This is a path for a new literary genre: the broad “epic” time of film suggests a cine-novel.

The actor’s body in film is abstract. Watch him shrink down to a dot — and now watch his enormous hands shuffling cards, grown to fill the entire screen. Watch him grow and change. The film protagonist will never be a fly. This is why film has such intense interest in the actor. The names of film actors mean something completely different from the names of theater actors. There is new interest every time: how will Conrad Veidt transform this time, what will Werner Krauss’s “abstraction” be like today? [6] The [actor’s] body is light, it can be stretched and compressed. (And in theater? Remember all those ponderous theatrical “deaths”: when the actor falls, you can’t help worrying that he has hurt himself.) All of the props of film are abstract: close the door in front of the fakir and he will walk through the wall.

Finally, language [slovo] …

But this is the most important part.

They used to call film the Great Silent. It would make more sense to call the gramophone the “great strangled.”

Film is not silent. Pantomime is silent, but film has nothing in common with pantomime.

Film uses speech, but it is abstracted speech, broken down into its component parts.

You are looking at the face of a speaking actor — his lips are moving, his facial expressions are dramatically strained. You cannot make out the words (and this is good — you are not meant to be able to make them out), but you have been given a certain element of speech.

Then an intertitle is trotted out — you know what the actor said, but you know it after (or before) he said it. The meaning of the words is abstracted, divorced from their pronunciation. They are separated out in time.

But where is the sound? The sound comes from the music.

The music in film is internalized — you barely hear it and don’t pay much attention to it. (And rightly so — music that is interesting on its own distracts you from the action; it barges into film like an outside force.)

The music is internalized, but not for nothing: it gives actors’ speech the final element they were missing — sound.

In this abstract art, speech is broken down into component parts. Rather than in its unsullied, real-life coherence, speech appears as a [new] combination of its elements. And each element can therefore be developed to the ultimate limit of expressiveness: the actor is not obligated to say what is expected of him, he can say whatever words provide the greatest abundance of facial expressions.

The intertitle is free to choose words with the most appropriate meaning.

Music provides an abundance and subtlety of sound unknown to human speech. It makes it possible to reduce the characters’ speech to a tense, trenchant minimum. Music allows film to do away with all of its lubricants, all of the extra “packaging” of speech.

Film is the art of abstract language. [7]

In film, as soon as the music stops, a tense silence ensues. It buzzes (even if the projector is not buzzing) and hampers the viewing. This is not because we are simply used to music in the cinema. If you remove the music from film, it will empty out and become a defective, inadequate art form. When there is no music, the pits of the gaping, speaking mouths are excruciating.

Look closely at the movement onscreen: how heavily the horses are leaping in that emptiness! You can’t keep watching them running. Movements lose their lightness and the escalation of the action weighs on you like a stone.

When you take music out of film, you make film truly mute; deprived of one of its elements, the characters’ speech becomes a hindrance, an abomination. You lay waste to the action. This is an important second point: music in film gives rhythm to the action.

Theater is built around a cohesive, unified language (encompassing meaning, facial expression, sound). Film is built around the broken-down abstraction of language. Film is not capable of “competing” with theater. But theater should likewise not compete with film. Physical stunts in theater run into the walls, just as dialogue in film runs into the screen.

When inventing a poison, it is customary to invent the antidote as well.

The antidote that is capable of killing film is the Kinetophone. [8]

The Kinetophone is an unhappy invention.

The characters will speak “like in a real theater.” But film’s whole power lies in the fact that the characters do not “speak” — “speech” is provided. Provided in the minimal and abstracted way that makes film art.

The Kinetophone is a misbegotten child of film and the theater, a pathetic compromise. It takes the abstraction of film and carefully and awkwardly gathers the parts back together.

Film pulled apart speech. Stretched out time. Shifted space. And this is why it is maximalist. It works with very large numbers. “200,000 meters” [of film strip] recalls the abstract exchange rate of our ruble.

We are abstract people. Every day sees us split among 10 different areas of activity. This is why we go to the movies.

“Film — Word — Music” was originally published under the pseudonym Yu. Van-Vezen in the first issue of the journal Life of Art (Zhizn’ iskusstva, 1924). This text is translated from the Russian by Ainsley Morse and Philip Redko, from Poetika. Istoriia literatury. Kino, ed. Chudakov, Chudakova, Toddes (Moscow: Nauka, 1977), 320–322. It will be published by Academic Studies Press as part of Yuri Tynianov, Permanent Evolution: Selected Essays on Literature, Theory, and Film. In addition to this essay, Permanent Evolution includes “On the Screenplay,” “On FEKS,” “On Plot and Fabula in Film,” and “The Foundations of Film,” all written between 1924–1927.

Yuri Tynianov (1894–1943) was a major literary theorist, literary historian, and prose writer associated with the Formalist school of criticism.

Vera Koshkina is a freelance writer and translator living in Berlin. She received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Ainsley Morse is a literary translator and Russian literature scholar specializing in poetry and the 20th century.

[1] Film versus theater was a topic of especially heated debate from the inception of cinema as a popular entertainment in the late 19th century and into the 1950s. André Bazin’s famous 1951 essay “Theater and Cinema” discusses the body of the actor and the use of space in cinema and film in much the same way as Tynianov does here. Bazin also reaches the same conclusion, that the two art forms help one another rather than stand in competition.

[2] Wotan is another name for the Norse god Odin. Tynianov refers to a performance of Wagner’s opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Bolshoi Theatre is a major ballet and opera theater in downtown Moscow, built in 1825.

[3] Tynianov refers to the Itinerant Theater (Peredvizhnoi teatr), a democratically minded experimental theater (its first iteration was the “Public” or “Generally Accessible Theater”) that operated in St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad between 1905–’28. The name of the theater refers to, but should not be confused with, the Itinerant movement in 19th-century Russian painting.

[4] In the seminal essay “Film and Reality” (1933), published in his Film as Art, Rudolf Arnheim makes a similar claim about the essence of cinema as an art lying precisely in its abstraction from reality. All the ways in which film deviates from reality, specifically its flatness and the “absence of the nonvisual world of the senses,” are what provide cinema with its greatest expressive potential. Arnheim was coming at cinema via his study of the psychology of visual perception.

[5] Tynianov’s mention of Mars most likely refers to Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) directed by Yakov Protazanov. The film came out after this article was published but was widely advertised in the press for many months before its release. Another possible reference is A Trip to the Moon (1902) by Georges Méliès, considered the first science-fiction film. It is especially famous for its iconic image of a rocket landing in the moon’s eye, as well as the use of “cinematic tricks” or montage, to show people and objects appear and disappear on screen.

[6] Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss were known as the faces of German Expressionist cinema which, along with American films, were much better known and more popular than domestic productions with Soviet cinema audiences in the 1920s.

[7] Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov’s famous “Statement on Sound” (1928) is an elaboration on Tynianov’s claim that film is not silent. The directors worried that the advent of sound in film would make film less of an “abstract art” in the sense described here by Tynianov. As an antidote to this they proposed that sound in film should not be synchronous but contrapuntal. (English version of the “Statement” in The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, ed./trans. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie [Cambridge, MA, 1988], 234–235.)

[8] The Kinetophone was an early (1894), largely unsuccessful attempt by Thomas Edison and William Dickson to create a soundtrack synchronized with film. The Kinetophone was first demonstrated in Moscow in 1913, but by the time of Tynianov’s article other, more successful sound-film technologies had been introduced. By 1930, sound had officially conquered Soviet film.

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