KinoKultura: Issue 65 (2019) |
A succession of tableaux vivants separated by inter-titles is how film theoreticians describe early motion pictures. Specifically, it is the genre of historical film that is associated with the use of tableaux as a way of structuring cinematic narrative. Translated from French as “living picture” (zhivaia kartina in Russian), performances of such tableaux have enjoyed a long history and can be traced back to mystery play cycles that were once showcased on the church squares of medieval Europe. With the advent of motion pictures at the end of the nineteenth century, it seemed natural that this already familiar stage practice should be turned into the basic unit of silent film. “Early film did not only include literal representations of tableaux vivants performed on the stage,” writes art historian Steven Jacobs about this cultural phenomenon, but “after the turn of the century, [film] also appropriated the aesthetics of tableaux vivants in its attempts to develop new models of narrative cinema” (Jacobs 2011: 91-92). In this article, I analyze how tableaux transformed historically-themed films of the Russian Empire, which became known as “costume dramas,” into commentaries on the state of the fin-de-siècle society.
The primary function of tableaux in early cinema was to organize the scenes in a film. As a mode of representation that synthesized theater and the visual arts, a sequence of “living pictures” transferred history onto the screen and made it accessible for audiences that were usually, but not always, familiar with the plot. It was the theoreticians of the Enlightenment who first formulated the principle functions of tableaux. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, for instance, refers to tableaux as a “pregnant moment,” whose significance is acquired through representation. Denis Diderot labels tableaux as a compositional method in stage performance. In his writings on theater he in fact assigns more importance to tableaux than to the coup de théâtre: the latter, in his opinion, is an incident that occurs unexpectedly to an effect, whereas the former does not depend on action and hence possesses greater significance.[1]
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, European and Russian tableaux reached the apex of their popularity as a form of theater that conveyed emotions non-verbally. The fascination with tableaux, which began among the Russian nobility in the form of recreating famous paintings, gradually trickled down to the common folk, so that the practice of performing “living pictures” was no longer an unusual occurrence in the Russian provinces. Increasingly, writers began to describe this phenomenon in their prose. Mitya Karamazov, for example, recollects how the performance of tableaux was “cooked up” in a small town, which was enlivened with the arrival of an institute girl (Dostoevsky 2002: 111). The practice of staging tableaux at the artistic salons never went out of fashion among the elite. Konstantin Makovskii’s son, Sergei, reminisces about the “living pictures” performed in their house during the 1880s (Makovskii 1955: 83). Some of the most accomplished historical tableaux of the early 1900s were enacted by members of the Aleksandr Nevskii Society of Sobriety in St. Petersburg. Tableaux even became a popular component of charity events, such as the one that was held at Ekaterinograd following the devastating floods in the Kuban Region of Western Circassia during the winter of 1907-1908.
One of the first successful adaptations of tableaux on the screen was French director Georges Méliès’ 1900 production of the story of Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc). The film featured twelve tableaux and hundreds of actors parading before the camera in extravagant costumes. Italian costume dramas soon followed and surpassed the French ones in popularity. The film that started the trend on historical productions is considered to be The Last Days of Pompeii(Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii, 1908), loosely based on the novel of the same name by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The success of The Last Days of Pompeii was repeated with The Fall of Troy(Caduta di Troia, 1910), Quo Vadis? (1913), and Cabiria (1914). The United States were not far behind in this respect, with an abundance of motion pictures that recreated episodes from British and American history. The advantage in turning to tableaux for organizing plots, according to Jacobs, was that they “enabled early filmmakers to punctuate the action, to emphasize or prolong a dramatic situation, or to give a scene an abstract or quasi-allegorical significance” (Jacobs 2011: 92).
Russian cinema joined the costume craze in 1908. Out of 297 productions made in Russia during the subsequent four years, 85 could be categorized as “acted” films, which could in turn be classified as follows: 20 per cent based on belles lettres (literature); 27.1 per cent on plays; 5.9 per cent on songs; 12.9 per cent were original melodramas; 8.2 per cent comedies; 25.9 per cent historical dramas (Likhachev 1927: 96). The actor and filmmaker Petr Chardynin remembered that the public’s interest in pictures about Russian history was so overwhelming during this time that orders rained down on the film studios as if from a horn of plenty (Tsiv’ian 2002: 19). By for the most part copying—with only minor variations—from Europeans, the method of organizing film narratives as a series of tableaux, Russians appropriated a set of definitive “winning” strategies (Youngblood 1999: xii). One such strategy was to choose a controversial figure from history as a film’s central character. The most popular medieval personality in Russian costume dramas appears to be Ivan IV (Groznyi), whereas Joan of Arc and Dante hold the record in French and Italian films (Joan’s story was adapted for the screen at least eight times between 1898 and 1914, and versions of Dante’s life and works were filmed in Italy eleven times between 1908 and 1911).[2] Ivan IV appeared onscreens at least six times—Song about Merchant Kalashnikov (Pesn’ pro kuptsa Kalashnikova, 1908), The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Smert’ Ioanna Groznogo,1909), Volga and Siberia, or Ermak Timofeevich the Conqueror of Siberia (Volga i Sibir’ (Ermak Timofeevich—pokoritel’ Sibiri), 1909), Vasilisa Melentieva and Ivan the Terrible (Vasilisa Melent’eva i Tsar’ Ivan Vasil’evich Groznyi,1911), Prince Serebriany (Kniaz’ Serebrianyi,1911),and Wrath of the Tsar (Tsarskii gnev, 1912)—and as many as eleven times from 1908 to 1914.[3] These films paint a historical portrait of a ruler famous for a reign rife with massacres, lawlessness, wars, and power struggle. Known neither for noble self-sacrifice, as was the case with Joan of Arc, nor for artistic achievement, as was the case with Dante, it is entirely possible that his popularity reflected a national desire to see a more assertive monarch than the one who was occupying the Winter Palace. Not coincidentally, Peter I happens to be the most popular post-medieval ruler on film during this period.
Limited screen time in these productions made movement particularly important. Since the attraction of tableaux originates in the tension between stasis and motion captured in a single moment, the adaptation of this form of still-life as a block of film developed from the dependence of tableaux and film on movement. A tableau may remain frozen as an image of a particular scene, but the idea of movement is encoded into its structure. Early films similarly depended on movement to effectively tell a story. “The actor was required to move, gesticulate, and mimic at all times,” remembered witnesses to the Russian film industry during its early years. “This was necessary in order to continue stressing the difference between cinema and still photography” (Khanzhonkova 1962: 121). It is no coincidence either that film offered identification with the actor onscreen, thereby ostensibly presenting proof of its “anti-theatricality,” and enforcing the belief that this was not an actor playing a role but a real individual (Lotman and Tsiv’ian 1994: 11). From Ivan IV presiding over the feast in Song about Merchant Kalashnikov or angrily shaking his staff in The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Fig. 1) or ordering an execution of the disobedient boyar in Wrath of the Tsar or instructing Maliuta Skuratov to murder his unfaithful spouse in Vasilisa Melentieva and Ivan the Terrible, the actor often abused the power of gesture. The inability to grasp the difference between acting on the stage and in front of the camera unintentionally introduced a carnivalesque aspect into performances and transformed the actor’s body into something that Mikhail Bakhtin would later refer to as a “source of the grotesque” (Bakhtin 1984: 352).
The tableaux’s other function in these period films comes down to their role as an ideological weapon at a time of rising nationalist sentiment. That said, tableaux as a practice that glorified heads of state already enjoyed its own rich history. A particularly salient example of the ideological use of tableaux in the age of pre-cinema took place at the imperial courts. The common approach relied on tableaux to present multi-ethnic empires not through the lens of “colonizer versus the colonized,” but as unified, harmonious nations. Such was the case with the performance that was held in India in honor of Queen Victoria’s assumption of the imperial title in 1877, when the actors personifying different nations honored the British Empire’s patronage over its colonies by appearing before the dignitaries in their national costumes. During the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s 1898 jubilee, the presentation of The Emperor’s Dream, a play written for the occasion that relayed the story of the first emperor of the Hapsburg Empire who magically travels through the country’s future toward the final tableau of his dream sequence, depicted the monarchy as an allegedly peaceful union of co-existing nations.
Russian “imperial” tableaux were no exception. For example, Lev Naryshkin celebrated Catherine II’s military successes with a private masquerade that was held on 2 July 1772 and culminated with six panegyric tableaux, one for each of her recent victories: the first tableau—the capture of Khotin (1769); the second—the battle at the river Larga (1770), the third—the battle at the river Kagul (1770); the fourth—victory over the Turks at Chesme (1770); the fifth—taking the fortress town of Bender (1770), and the sixth—conquest of Crimea (1771). Among the characters appearing in the production were Glory, the goddesses of war Minerva and Bellona, and a soaring eagle, all celebrating the empress with laurels, hymns, scrolls, and recitals (Pyliaev 1889: 133). Performances of tableaux before the monarch remained in fashion at the Russian court throughout the nineteenth century. Thomas Atkinson, a British explorer of Siberia and Central Asia, who needed permission from the Russian emperor to travel throughout the country’s farthest corners, begins his travelogue, Oriental and Western Siberia (1858), with an enthusiastic description of tableaux that were staged for Nicholas I. Alexander II’s 25 years on the throne in 1880 were to be commemorated with a performance (planned but never materialized) of Aleksandr Borodin’s musical tableau, The Steppes of Central Asia, which aimed to bring attention to Russia’s politics in the Orient. Another panegyric production, “The Glory of Russia,” was performed before Alexander III in 1888 and consisted of seven tableaux, and by the same token drew on themes of a victorious nation. Despite the similarities between European and Russian monarchs in their use of “living pictures,” an important difference remained: if European politically-themed tableaux turned into a fashion that managed to reach all social classes through performances at public holidays and festivals, Russian imperial tableaux remained largely a private enterprise, reserved for the nobility.
The tercentenary celebrations of the Romanov Dynasty in 1913 presented an ideal opportunity for putting the ideologically-themed tableaux onto the screen. The idea belonged to a self-proclaimed court photographer, opportunist, and entrepreneur Aleksandr Drankov (1886-1949), who selected a series of tableaux for his two-part costume drama entitled The House of Romanov (Trekhsotletie tsarstvovaniia doma Romanovykh,1913).[4] He set out to create a film that narrated the lineage of the Romanov Dynasty, from Mikhail Romanov (played by Mikhail Chekhov) to Nicholas II (“starring” the tsar himself). “The studios had to be very careful not to get into censorship trouble by too harsh a depiction of any Romanov ancestors,” reminds us Denise J. Youngblood, “which meant that historical subjects were mainly selected for their pictorial or legendary value” (Youngblood 1999: 116). This notwithstanding, censors were not particularly preoccupied with films set in the distant past and regarded the most accomplished of them as educational material. They did, however, remain ever so vigilant with the films that referenced contemporary or recent (ca. nineteenth-century) Romanovs. To feature the “recent” Romanovs—Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II, and Alexander III—the producer had to get creative since he could not hire actors to portray them. Drankov, then, turned to tableaux, in which he found an original solution: Alexander I, Nicholas I, and Alexander II appeared on the screens via marble busts surrounded by their contemporaries in historically accurate costumes: Mikhail Kutuzov, Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, Aleksei Ermolov, Metropolitan Platon, Mikhail Speranskii, and Nikolai Karamzin near Alexander I’s bust (Fig. 2); Aleksandr Griboedov, Nikolai Gogol, Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Ivan Krylov, Vladimir Kornilov, Pavel Nakhimov near Nicholas I’s bust (Fig. 3); and serfs near Alexander II’s bust (Fig. 4). Alexander III’s portrait that took up a half-second of screen time and the opening ceremony of his monument in 1909 followed this elaborate historical sequence as a fitting tribute to his years as emperor.
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The decision to conclude the film with footage of a living emperor, following his ancestors, who were represented by visual pieces of high art, became the culmination of the costume drama, building as it did on everything that had been learned about filmmaking up to this point. Drankov achieved the latter by combining “acted” film with documentary short, which became known as the tsar’s chronicle.[5] As its name suggests, the purpose of this documentary footage was to record official events in which the imperial family participated. “[The tsar’s chronicle] envisioned history as a non-hierarchical panoramic stream with no beginning and no end, as fragments arbitrarily pulled out of the stream of life,” writes Oksana Chefranova in her study of this film genre (Chefranova 2016: 65-66). As “fragments” of the imperial functions, the tsar’s chronicle created a historical record where a spotlight was on the figure of the monarch. Films, in particular, benefited from the relaxation in censorship during the tercentenary year—such as, according to Richard Wortman, the lifting of the ban on the presentation of Romanov tsars on the stage, which had been in effect since 1837—as the government sought ways to popularize the emperor (Wortman 2000: 484). Likhachev estimates that 9.5 per cent of the documentaries produced from 1908 to 1912 were devoted to the ceremonies, processions, or leisure times of the Russian imperial family, which attests to the public’s interest in seeing the monarch on the screen (Likhachev 1927: 96). Censors recognized the potential of the tsar’s chronicle to enhance the prestige of the imperial family and hence treated the genre as an ideological commodity. To this end, they quickly devised a list of special rules for the screening of these films, which transformed each showing into a kind of ritualized performance. Svetlana Limanova notes some of the salient characteristics of these screenings, which involved the lowering and raising of the curtain, an intermission before the next film, approved musical accompaniment (usually, national anthem or military marches), and the projection of these films at a speed that was controlled manually—as opposed to an electric projector—thereby keeping the appearance of the imperial figures on screen dignified at all times (Limanova 2016).
The integration of the tsar’s chronicle with “acted” film for the tercentenary production broke a number of the aforementioned rules. Drankov chose to include footage of Nicholas II’s coronation (the first instance of the tsar’s chronicle), the already mentioned ceremonial inauguration of the monument to Alexander III, and the celebration of the Borodino centenary.[6] The film intended to boost the popularity of the imperial family, as well as the tsar’s chronicle, which was on the wane due to its “monotonous” nature: the camera remained fixed on one spot and recorded the imperial processions from the same angle (Limanova 2016). Despite Drankov’s intentions, it was evident by this time that the tsar’s chronicle failed as an effective piece of political propaganda and that instead of celebrating the myth of the tsar as the nation’s father and savior, his appearance on the screen inadvertently undermined it. Limаnova points out that while watching the emperor for the first time in movie theaters, regular people who would ordinarily never have gotten a chance to observe him had to take notice of such potential embarrassments as Nicholas II’s height or the fact that the heir was carried around by a servant (Fig. 5).
I propose to consider the subversive potential of costume dramas as tableaux’s most controversial function. The first Russian “acted” film, Stenka Razin: The Life of Brigands from the Lower Reaches (Sten’ka Razin (Ponizovaia vol’nitsa), 1908), produced by none other than Drankov, is exemplary in this regard (Fig. 6). Like Méliès with his trust in the legend of Joan of Arc to draw viewers, Drankov’s decision to make the legendary Don Cossack the protagonist of his picture satisfied an attempt at filming an uninterrupted, self-sufficient narrative. He based the plot on a fragment from Dmitrii Sadovnikov’s famous libretto From Beyond the Island (Iz-za ostrova na strezhen’), which told a well-known episode from the life of Stepan Razin (ca.1630-1671). Inspired by the countless folktales and legends surrounding this Russian bogatyr’ centuries after his death, Razin figured prominently in national memory as someone who possessed powers to enchant weapons, intimidate animals, and remain invincible to bullets. The historian Mykola Kostomarov asserts that the ataman acquired a reputation as “patron and avenger of those who were suffering or were oppressed” (Kostomarov 1995: 91). The historical truth about the nature of the Cossack’s revolt and the topic of serfdom may have been ignored in the film but not in peoples’ memory. The film reminded people of a muzhik who once held enough power in his hands to scare the tsar himself. Stenka Razin, thus, can still be regarded as an articulation of society’s symbolic struggle against the autocratic regime, particularly since it was screened in movie theaters only three years after the events of 1905. As such, the notion of debauch (razgul) as chaotic disorder that is both attractive and repulsive enlivens these cinematic tableaux and informs their form and content.
The anarchic arrangement of Drankov’s six tableaux challenges their definition as a motionless mode of representation. Nature of the bucolic Russian countryside constitutes the background of each tableau, which is neither still nor artificial. From the boats rocking violently on the Volga River in the film’s opening sequence (Fig. 7), to the night scene during which the gang plots against the princess, to the ferocious dance of a group of jealous Cossacks in the forest, to the final act of sacrifice with the ataman tossing the body of his allegedly unfaithful lover into the Volga’s raging waters—the natural setting enhances the violent atmosphere of each tableau. When one compares Drankov’s chaotic vision of Razin with, say, Joan of Arc’s immolation in Méliès’ film, the latter is not nearly as unsettling due to the static, theatrical background—whether it is a house in a countryside, interior of a cathedral or exterior of a castle. The final episode, for instance, that depicts Joan’s ascent to the heavens presents the other world as a peaceful place where everything is arranged for her arrival as if on a stage (Fig. 8). The Italian film about the destruction of Pompeii (produced, incidentally, during the same year as Stenka Razin) similarly preserves the tableau’s static nature: the magnitude of the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius, which is shown in a distance through a drawn silhouette—is recreated with smoke that fills the amphitheater (Fig. 9). In contrast, the finale of Stenka Razin is exacerbated by the water violently rocking the boats and features the ataman throwing his love interest overboard as punishment for her alleged infidelity: “Mother Volga, you gave me water; you fed me and rocked me on your waves,” run the inter-titles of Razin’s words directed to his beloved river, “Accept my precious gift.” The dramatic loss of life that is captured in the final seconds of the reel glorifies Razin’s choice, which was historically interpreted as a choice between Russia and Asia, between his Cossack brothers and a female intruder. The ataman’s decision transforms the princess’s death into a sacrificial act that purges the Cossack community of its foreign element or, at least temporarily, delays its disintegration. Russian audiences that were used to the static tableaux of foreign films surely recognized the volatility of the tableaux in Drankov’s production, which appear to fall apart physically but not aesthetically. Of course, Stenka Razin was not the first motion picture that was filmed “on location”— location, in this case, being the Sestroretsk Reservoir (Lake Razliv) that sufficiently resembled the Volga—a strategy that was popularized by Italian historical dramas, which were set typically among ancient ruins. Stenka Razin, however, became the first Russian “acted” film that appropriated tableaux as a framing device but altered their function.
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Another aspect that distinguishes Drankov’s tableaux is their suggestion of an analogy between Razin and Nicholas II: authoritarian father-figures to those who eventually turn against them. The desire for peace forces the ataman to kill his love interest, much like the last Russian tsar was forced to compromise his autocratic power in a last-ditch effort to save the monarchy. The concept of rebellion may not be overt in the portrayal of Razin in this production, but it is overt in its depiction of the rebellion of Razin’s men against their leader. The suggestion that the authority figure must succumb to the demands of his subjects is present in a plot twist that makes the ideological message of Drankov’s film complex and ambivalent. Film historian Jay Leyda, who became acquainted with Drankov, then a Russian émigré living in the United States, sensed the ambiguity in Razin’s portrayal and became convinced that in choosing the ataman as the protagonist the producer successfully played both fronts. “This film audience had experienced a revolution and, though temporarily defeated, was now conscious of a strength they had not dreamed of before,” writes Leyda, “Drankov chose to attract and conciliate [audiences] with the character of [Stenka] Razin, an almost legendary figure of heroism, a symbol of the Russian people rising against their oppressors. Conscious, as [Drankov] was, of his audience’s nature, he was even more conscious of his own class affiliations—and proceeded to water down the hero of the Volga to the dimensions of a gay, carousing, drunken brigand who meets a sad end” (Leyda 1960: 35). Razin’s “cult-of-the-outlaw” thus extends the analogy to the moral characters of Razin and Nicholas II in this act of double subversion.
The costume dramas that flooded the movie theaters during the early years of Russian filmmaking relied primarily on the aesthetic properties of tableaux to eclectically present historical moments from the country’s turbulent past. Early film scripts were based on stories derived from well-known songs, literary works, lives of legendary figures, historical and folk narratives. These “native” productions considerably sped up the development of the film industry in the years prior to World War I, a time when Russian filmmaking lagged behind Western cinema by about a decade, with an abundance of historical epics, which were still largely imitations of foreign period-pictures. That said, the sociopolitical content of tableaux enabled these films to overcome imitative stereotypes that were gleaned from the foreign sources. Tracing the development of these cinematic tableaux as ideological weapon, on the one hand, and subversive—however ambiguously—commentaries, on the other, constructs a different vision of society in peril and transcends their function as mere entertainment.
Notes
1] “Un incident imprévu qui se passe en action, et qui change subitement l’état des personnages, est un coup de théâtre. Une disposition des personnages sur la scène, si naturelle et vraie, que rendue fidèlement par un peintre, elle me plairait sur la toile, est un tableau.” (Diderot 1819, 364).
2] On Joan of Arc, see Blaetz 2003; on Dante, Bondanella and Pacchioni 2017.
3] Veniamin Vishnevskii’s film catalog (1945) lists an additional 5 films, which, based on their titles, had to include Ivan IV. Since only limited information—sometimes just a title—is provided, it is difficult to make any definitive conclusions about the cast of actors involved with these productions. The films are Prince Serebrianyi (Kniaz’ Serebrianyi,1907), The Merchant Kalashnikov or the Battle of the Merchant Kalashnikov (Kupets Kalashnikov (Boi kuptsa Kalashnikova), 1909), Maliuta Skuratov (1911); The Tsar’s Bride (Tsarskaia nevesta 1911), and Maliuta Skuratov or Victim of the Oprichnina (Maliuta Skuratov (Zhertva oprichniny), 1914).
4] Not to be confused with Aleksandr Khanzhonkov’s film The Accession of the House of Romanov (Votsarenie doma Romanovykh, 1913), which was also released for the tercentenary celebrations. Khanzhonkov’s film focuses on the Times of Troubles and ends with the appointment of Mikhail Romanov.
5] Media historian James Chapman (2003) proposes to refer to this quasi-documentary genre as “actualities,” in which the tsar’s chronicle falls under a subgenre of ‘topicals’ (newsworthy events).
6] Drankov was not the first to insert documentary footage into “acted” film. Khanzhonkov’s The Defense of Sevastopol (Oborona Sevastopolia,1911)—a historical drama that told the story of the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War (1854-1855)—ended with footage of decorated veterans stepping in front of the camera one by one at the end of the film.
Image source Figure 1: from Tsivian 2002, 36.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and His World. Translated by Helene Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Blaetz, Robin. 2003. “Joan of Arc and the Cinema,” in Joan of Arc, a Saint for All Reasons: Studies in Myth and Politics, ed. Dominique Goy-Blanquet, 143-174. London: Routledge.
Bondanella, Peter and Federico Pacchioni. 2017. A History of Italian Cinema. London: Bloomsbury.
Chapman, James. 2003. Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present. London: Reaktion.
Chefranova, Oksana. 2016. “The Tsar and The Kinematograph: Film and History and The Chronicle of the Russian Monarchy.” In Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema, edited by Marta Braun, Charlie Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore, and Louis Pelletier, 63-70. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Diderot, Denis. 1819. Oeuvres. Vol. 6. Paris: Chez A. Belin.
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Jacobs, Steven. 2011. Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Khanzhonkova, Vera. 1962. “Iz vospominanii o dorevoliutsionnom kino.” In Iz istorii kino: materialy i dokumenty. Vol. 5, 120-130. Moscow: Akademiia nauk SSSR.
Kostomarov, Nikolai. 1995. Russkaia istoriia v zhizneopisaniiakh ee glavneishikh deiatelei. Vol. 2. Moscow: Svarog.
Leyda, Jay. 1960. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Likhachev, Boris. 1927. Kino v Rossii (1896-1926): materialy k istorii russkogo kino. Vol. 1. Leningrad: Akademia.
Limanova, Svetlana. 2016. “‘Tsarskaia kinokhronika’ i ekrannyi obraz Nikolaia II: ideologicheskaia transfromatsiia.” Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 107.
Lotman, Iurii, and Iurii Tsiv’ian. 1994. Dialog s ekranom. Tallinn: Aleksandra.
Makovskii, Sergei. 1955. Portrety sovremennikov. New York: Chekhov Publishing House of the East European Fund, Inc.
Pyliaev, Mikhail. 1889. Zabytoe proshloe okrestnostei Peterburga. St. Petersburg: Izdanie A. S. Suvorina.
Tsiv’ian, Iurii. 2002. Velikii kinemo. Katalog sokhranivshikhsia igrovykh fil’mov Rossii 1908-1919. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie.
Vishnevskii, Veniamin. 1945. Khudozhestvennye fil’my dorevoliutsionoi Rossii. Moscow: Goskinoizdat.
Wortman, Richard. 2000. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. From Alexander II to the Abdication of Nicholas II. Vol. 2. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Youngblood, Denise J. 1999. The Magic Mirror: Moviemaking in Russia, 1908-1918. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Yelena Severina
University of California, Los Angeles
Yelena Severina © 2019
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