Cine-placards of the Russian avantguard of the middle 20-th – ealy 30-th – are the most extraordinary brilliant … of the cinema, that is ever existed. Gine-placards of that time use the same innovative cinematographic, techniques used in pictures they propagandized: the most close shooting, unusual lighting angle, distorted proportions. Elements are mounted which are not equivalent, photographs and lithographs are combined, the entourage of one scene is joined with heroes from another, humans faces are painted in different colors, silhouettes are torn in pieces. In this genre there exist the only rule: give free play to one’s imagination.
The Revolution of 1917 changed life in Russia totally, from every points of view of art that was considered to be an instrument of creation of the new republic future. The new slogans told about this, too: “To make the power of art a part of life”, or “The power of art – is a part of technology”. It was the time of an artistic experimentation in atmosphere of immense strain. Different artistic trends, such as constructivism and realism, suprematism and cube-futurism, analytical and proletarian art, developed alongside, in parallel, but independently of each other.
So, it was until 30-ies when there was the only one function left to art: to reflect the official party line. But during mat time masterpieces were created, which determined the development of the graphic language for many years to come, came into history of art manuals and formed our national pride. The genre of placard was raised up to the standard of fine art, namely by Russian avant-guardists of 20ies.
The Russian avant-guardist cine-placard peculiarity is it’s original expressive form, distinct from most of other placards, where the whole attention is concentrated on the main character of the movie. Even the pictures of famous cinema actors (for example Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Baster Keaton or Gloria Svenson) on the placard didn’t play the principal role. A placard value was defined by it’s graphic quality. Though the placard authors realized perfectly that their creations lifetime was limited by several weeks (as long as they staid glued upon bill-stands), they put all of their soul and skill into their work.
Actually, cine-placards remained seldom. They served only as an announce and weren’t considered artistic creations. They were printed on a low-grade paper, and what’s more, even that sort of paper lacked, that’s why a sheet that was used once then was of ten used repeatedly and printed on the reverse.
The placards production, like everything in the soviet system, was carried out in a centralized way under the state control: subordinate to the SOVKINO (soviet cinema) were there four studios and 22 production departments, many of them disposing of their own placard production. Some of the production departments, first of all those placed in remote republics, such as Uzbekistan and Georgia, had their own painters producing cine-placards or set the producers to work out placards. All the cine-placards had to be approved in reklamkino (advertisement department of Sovkino). It was managed by Ya. Ruklevsky, who had created group of extraordinarily talented young placard painters (many of them just graduated VKHUTEMAS – High Art School of Creative Masses). This group consisted of Georgy and Vladimir Stenberg, Nikolay Prusakov, Grigory Borysov, Mikhail Dlugatch, Alexander Naumov, Leonid Voronov, Iosif Gerasimovich, and others.
These young painters, as well as young producers searched new solutions, combined actual art directions in their own style, they captured spectators attention and awake their imagination: direct lines, intercrossing planes, heads soaring in space, split objects, compositions and collages, photomontages, weird colors.
One of the greatest innovations of the soviet movie production of mat time was the conception of montage. The french word “montage” means only “cutting” of a film. The soviet producer Lev Kuleshov demonstrated, how parts of a cine-film could be mounted in order to obtain a content quite different from that of separate shots (“Marry canary”, “By the law”, “Death ray”). The producer Dziga Vertov was a pioneer of the documentary montage theory. In his first feature film “Cine-eye”, shot in 1923, here were no actors, no concept, and no scenario. Vertov shot people and unusual events in the street (often with a hidden camera), then positioned the shots in a special way with a multiple lighting, using a momentary-shot technique, rear motion, high-speed shooting, michrocinematography, etc. Vertov’s films heroes were not actors, but cine-cameras and cine-technologies. At the end of his landscape film “A camera men” shot in 1928, the cine-camera leaves it’s tripod and bows as real movie star.
From the middle up to the late 20-ies was a time of successful film production in the USSR. The “Battleship Potyomkin (1925)” by S. Eisenshtain brought a word-wide fame to the Soviet cinematograph. In 1923, there were created only 12 pictures in the Soviet Russia, but in the next year they numbered already 41. Each important historical event was shot for a documentary. Painters took placards for the documentaries as serious, as feature films placards.
Georgy and Vladimir Stenberg were eminent cine-placard painters. In Moscow of the late 20-ies one could see everywhere fixed, cine-placards signed “2 Stenberg 2”. The two brothers produced 300 cine-placards on the whole. The brothers Stenberg had the richest knowledge in lithography. As the typographical technology in mat time didn’t permit to properly reproduce photographs or cinema frames, the brothers invented the method of photo-shots imitation (it takes a great attention and a narrow look to tell a reproduction of a drawing from a photograph).
The Stenberg brothers constantly found new facilities to picture on paper the films dynamics: the placard to the film “A daddy’s son” evokes in spectator an almost physical sensation of a fall from a height; the placard to the picture “The Ereventh” reproduced the depth of the space through concentric circles, crossed with two lines of photographs going away into the prospect. The brothers liked to experiment on unusual combination of colors (it’s interesting, that cinematograph of mat epoch was black and white). The Stenberg brothers created often two different placards for the same picture. Since 1927, the brothers have always worked together, until 1933, when Georgy has been killed in a crash. The placards produced by Vladimir after his brothers death, differ essentially from those they created together.
Another name in cine-placard of 20-ies is Nikolay Prusakov. On his remarkable placard for the picture “The big grief of a little women” he mounted a face of a women the hat of an invisible man against the background of the city. Prusakov continues to elaborate the theme of a human couple on his placard to the film “The glass eye”: a men and a women are dancing, cheek to cheek, and all of a sudden, it strikes the eye, that the shortly man is simply dangling his legs, in the air, which are too short to reach his partner’s knees. There is an element of surrealism present on the placard: the photographer’s trunk is a cine-camera.
Some of his most successful placards were created in cooperation with Grigory Borisov. The painters got to show an incredible tension between sitting twins on the placard to the motion-picture “A twin unwillingly”, who are pictured so that one can see how they strive to push off each other bodies are tightly interlaced. The placard to the film “Law and Duty/Amok” at first sight reflect the idea of literary work, but Prusakov and Borisov knew hoe to escape a direct excursion through an effective combination of vibration lines, extravagant colors and black-an-white photographs.
Borisov cooperated also with Peter Zhukov, having as result of their common creation several sensational works. On the placard to the motion-picture “The living dead” they used the constantly repeated title of the film as pattern of heroes suit fabric, and for the court-nall picturing.
So, the sole “living” parts which aren’t sealed up with the text remain pierced the typographical text is directed at the onlooker in accusation.
Very much interesting are Alexander Naumov’s experiments, who derided a placard plane with lattices or vertical lines, in order to obtain the effect of three-dimension space. He had a success in creating magic placards, portraying an as well magical world, to the films “Bella Donna” and “The Stoled bride” (Naumov was drowned aged 29).
Alexander Rudchenko didn’t created that many cine-placards, but he contributed greatly into this branch of art, because of his peculiar understanding of design and innovatory us of photomontage.
The most prolific painter of this genre was Mikhail Dlugatch, who produced over 500 cine-placards. his placard to the motion-picture “The electric chair”, where there is an electric discharge going through the picture of the cinema hero can be considered the forerunner of modern methods of different images montage. An amazing sense of color habitual to Dlugatch was shown brightly on the placard to the “Cement” motion picture, where red color of the cine-hero’s countenance against the black-and-white reproduction produced a sudden striking effect.
Several really magnificent cine-placards were created by painters whose names are unknown to us.
Cine-placards announcing revolutionary films, as were as film of mat epoch itselves, became a new form of art. Painters experimented on colors, space, proportions, print, they mounted the images in most inconceivable combinations. If one would take into consideration, that they had to fulfill orders in extraordinarily short terms, the artistic standard of these works seems to be all the more inaccessible. Vladimir Stenberg and Mikhail Dlugatch recalled, mat it was nothing special mat, having seen a film at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, they had to present ready originals by 10 o’clock of the morn’s morning. They often had to make placards to films they hadn’t even seen. As usual, it happened when foreign films were demonstrated: the painters were simply told about the short contents of a film or informed of Hollywood announces. Besides, as it was mentioned, the whole edition was to be destroyed after the demonstration and the painters were ware of it. What ambition, professional honesty and creative energy must have these painters possess to go on working up to such a high standard? Maybe, they simply were very young and lived in a vary young country…
KaK Magazine, #3, 1998 |
