This vintage book contains two pioneering volumes on the subject of film making by V.I. Pudovkin. Considered two of the most valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making ever written, these texts will prove invaluable for the student or film enthusiast, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. The chapters of this volume include: 'The Film Scenario and Its Theory', 'Film Director and Film Material', 'Types Instead of Actors', 'Close-Ups in Time', 'Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film', 'Rhythmic Problems in my First Sound Film', 'Notes and Appendices', 'Film Acting', et cetera. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (1893 – 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor, famous for developing influential theories of montage. This volume is being republished now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.

Pudovkin is listed amongst the great and the good of twentieth century directors: his influence is acknowledged by such diverse figures as Hitchcock and Kubrick, Zavattini and Mamet, and Walter Benjamin usedhis work as a vital source forhis studies of the aesthetics and cultural politics of the period. Vsevelod Pudovkin: Classic Works of the Soviet Avant-Garde is the first book on Pudovkin for more than twenty-five years. It covers his career from his apprenticeship with Gardin and Kuleshov in the early '20s to his sound films of the early '30s. It discusses films on which Pudovkin worked as director, as collaborator and in which he appeared, from the famous troika, The Mother, The End of St Petersburg and Storm over Asia to the lesser known The Mechanics of the Brain and The Living Corpse. Pudovkin's art is placed in the context of his contribution to the cultural and political fervour of Soviet Russia after the Revolution, and especially the theoretical disputes with his contemporary Eisenstein. The book also suggests broader alignments within European avant-garde movements and takes a close look at the influence D. W. Griffith exerted over this giant of early Soviet film-making. Vsevelod Pudovkin: Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-Garde is the companion volume to Richard Taylor's translations of Pudovkin's writings, The Pudovkin Collection.

The book brings together all key writings of Vsevolod Pudovkin - one of the classic directors of Russion cinema.

This text examines the aesthetics of Soviet cinema during its golden age of the 1920s, against a background of cultural ferment and the construction of a new socialist society.

Pudovkin is listed amongst the great and the good of twentieth century directors: his influence is acknowledged by such diverse figures as Hitchcock and Kubrick, Zavattini and Mamet, and Walter Benjamin usedhis work as a vital source forhis studies of the aesthetics and cultural politics of the period. This is the first book on Pudovkin for more than twenty-five years. It covers his career from his apprenticeship with Gardin and Kuleshov in the early 1920s to his sound films of the early 1930s. It discusses films on which Pudovkin worked as director, as collaborator and in which he appeared,

Lev Kuleshov (1899–1970) was the first aesthetic theorist of the cinema. An outstanding figure in the “montage” school, he was a key influence on Eisenstein and Pudovkin. Kuleshov was the first to see clearly that montage—the assemblage and alternation of shots—was the very essence and structure of cinematic expression, often overriding the significance of the content of the shots themselves. Deriving his insights from close study of American films (particularly D. W. Griffith’s), Kuleshov used his experience in prerevolutionary Russian films and his wartime efforts in Soviet documentaries to conduct experiments in film acting and montage. He developed an editing method later referred to as the “Kuleshov effect” that juxtaposed shots to evoke new meanings from the combinations. In one experiment, he intercut identical shots of an actor’s neutral face with shots of a bowl of soup, a child in a coffin, and a sunny landscape to evoke different emotional responses from the audience. Kuleshov also “synthesized” a nonexistent woman from close-ups of different parts of several women and created artificial landscapes by intercutting shots of locations separated by great distances. Kuleshov taught at the Soviet film school and was a well-known director of features, and Kuleshov on Film contains essays on both the theoretical and practical sides of filmmaking. Influenced by Futurism, Russian Formalism, and structural linguistics, Kuleshov’s analysis can now be seen as semiotic, presaging studies of film as a system of signs. As a Marxist and structuralist, Kuleshov examined form and content with a materialist approach. The translator’s extensive introduction discusses Kuleshov’s use of signs, typage, and other structuralist concepts and places him in the development of semiotic thought. It also provides intriguing biographical detail on Kuleshov’s conflicts with advocates of “socialist realism,” who attempted to stamp out the artistic and theoretical innovations of the early revolutionary years, and establishes Kuleshov’s position as one of the great figures in the evolution of film. Kuleshov on Film is essential reading for everyone seriously concerned with the cinema. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.