Two decades of Soviet biographical film: from revolutionary romanticism to epic monumentalism

Unrestricted This dissertation examines the evolution of the Soviet biographical film between the years 1934 and 1953, its stable recurrent elements and the major narrative changes that began to develop in the late 1930s. The study demonstrates two distinct types of narratives operative in the biographical films made before or around 1941 and those made in the 1940s. Chapter One introduces the categories that frame the analysis of Soviet film genre, an endeavor complicated by the fact that the Soviet critics openly challenged the notion of "genre." To avoid the confusion between the historical Soviet understanding of the genre and the contemporary definition of genre in film a larger distinction into epic and melodramatic modes of story-telling is introduced. Chapter Two analyses Stalinist culture’s gravitation toward the epic sense of reality, particularly evident in Soviet historiography and in theoretical statements on the development of narrative in Soviet film. The chapter shows how the disappearance of internal conflict in the protagonist, the loose episodic narrative structure and a static, austere, monumental style were welcomed and rationalized by the critics, who pronounced these developments welcome hallmarks of the epic film aesthetic. Chapter Three presents the case of one specific major concern of the Soviet film critics in their pursuit of the perfect cinematic realism, that of "naturalistic" tendencies that came to include a number of aesthetic phenomena. Acceptable in the 1920s Soviet art, portrayals of violence, death and disease still appeared in the 1930s' biographical films but had been positioned inside strong melodramatic collisions, and their affective power was leveraged for purposes of character motivation and for negotiation of peace-time ethics. Chapter Four discusses the narrative units that sustain the Soviet biopic, at various levels, like the elements that make up the plot, determine characterization and recur in mis-en-scenes.; The analysis shows that some elements appear to metaphorically express the theses of Stalinist historiography, while others may recur for no objective reason other than the fact that a specific gesture becomes part of a “natural” perception of the past and is repeated from film to film unreflectively.

【开放获取】本学位论文考察了1934年至1953年间苏联传记电影（Soviet biographical film）的发展历程、其稳定的反复出现的核心要素，以及1930年代末开始涌现的主要叙事变革。本研究揭示了1941年及此前创作的苏联传记电影，与1940年代出品的传记电影，各自存在两种截然不同的主导叙事类型。第一章介绍了用于开展苏联电影类型（film genre）分析的分类框架，但这一工作面临复杂挑战：苏联影评人曾公开质疑“类型”（genre）这一概念本身。为避免混淆苏联语境下的历史类型观与当代电影类型定义，本文引入了史诗性与情节剧式（melodramatic）两种更宏观的叙事模式作为区分标准。第二章分析了斯大林主义文化对史诗性现实感的推崇，这一倾向在苏联史学界以及苏联电影叙事发展的理论论述中体现得尤为鲜明。本章阐释了影评人如何接纳并合理化主角内在冲突的消解、松散的片段化叙事结构，以及静态、冷峻且具有纪念碑性的拍摄风格，并将这些特征界定为史诗电影美学的标志性元素。第三章聚焦苏联影评人在追求极致电影现实主义过程中所关注的一项核心议题：即被纳入诸多美学现象范畴的“自然主义”（naturalistic）倾向。尽管暴力、死亡与疾病的刻画在1920年代的苏联艺术中是可被接受的表现手法，但在1930年代的传记电影中，这类刻画仍需依托强烈的情节剧冲突展开，其情感感染力被用于服务角色动机塑造，以及契合和平年代的伦理规范。第四章探讨了支撑苏联传记片（Soviet biopic）的各类叙事单元，涵盖构成剧情、塑造角色以及在场面调度（mise-en-scène）中反复出现的各类要素。分析表明，部分要素会隐喻性地呼应斯大林主义史学的核心论点，而另一些要素的反复出现则并无客观逻辑可言——仅因某一特定动作已成为大众对历史“自然”认知的组成部分，便在多部影片中被不假思索地重复使用。