When it comes to Soviet Montage, at least from the American perspective, Eisenstein is the dominant figure, Vertov the experimental artist, and Pudovkin the peripheral character defined in terms of his relation to Eisenstein as friend and aesthetic rival. Perhaps this hierarchy reflects the paltry selection of modern English translations of works by Pudovkin and the comparative wealth of resources by Eisenstein. Or maybe it reflects Eisenstein’s deft capacity to theorize and simultaneously self-promote. In “The Fourth Dimension of Cinema,” he routinely cites his own works as “classic”[1] examples illustrative of all the most crucial formal elements of film art.
Eisenstein was not above criticizing, and occasionally dismissing, works by Pudovkin, particularly when he construed them as veering too far his own artistic vision of montage. Eisenstein cites Storm Over Asia (1928) as an example of metric montage gone awry. The technique, he argues, fails when it is paired with “complex rhythmic tasks.”[2] True, the religious procession to honor the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is highly complex and orchestrated, even prior to the added intricacies of cutting and splicing. The sequence is not Pudovkin’s most glorious in Storm. However, it is neither inherently flawed nor fruitless. The awkwardness, which Eisenstein describes as the “forcible application” of metric montage, suggests an inability to convey all of the nuances of this Mongolian ritual practice. We are inundated with visual information (compounded by the vigorous, ethnic score), yet the meaning of vast ceremony remains oblique. The best moments are those in which Pudovkin exercises restraint, for instance, when the static camera fixates on the exotic dancing bodies, filmed in horizontal and diagonal lines, and finally in a curve that snakes from background to foreground. The slightly jarring cuts, which juxtapose accelerating dancers with static musicians, suggest a level of uncertainty, as though meanings and symbols inevitably elude the westerner.
Pudovkin transplants the viewer to a space that is neither fully human nor divine, but rather exists on the threshold of both of these worlds. He does not impose a vision or attempt to contrive meaning from the indigenous dance and music. Rather, he allows the Mongolian masks and costumes, the formations and the dances, to speak on their own terms. The content is beautiful and enthralling, even if the metric montage is occasionally awkward. The sequence evokes the experience of an outsider far more than it characterizes the Mongolians. We empathize with the camera’s gaze, which is incapable of focusing on a single dancer or musician for long. Who is to fault Pudovkin for evoking the experience of walking in on a ceremony performed by a foreign people or culture — that is, the experience of witnessing but not belonging?
One of the reasons Storm Over Asia resonates so profoundly in the silent film canon is its thematic, if not contextual, connection to the Soviet heritage and worldview. Although the film does not address Soviet woes, routines, or spaces directly, it grapples with a powerful and pervasive question present in the Russian psyche: To what extent should Russia be construed as “West” or “East”? Pudovkin alludes to the historical debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers through cinematic language, rather than blatant, polemical statements. Few Russians appear in the film, with the exception of the partisans. But the Russians' naturalistic style creates a visual parallel with the seemingly ancient Mongols — suggesting deeper connections to the Mongolians than to continental Europeans.
Storm suggests an underlying ambivalence in terms of Russian identification with either the West or East, though the film tends to empathize with the Mongolians. The sentiment is conveyed through (1) landscapes that manifest an Asian aesthetic in their graphic simplicity and still depiction, (2) the intimacy and sensitivity with which the nuclear Mongol family and its prized ornaments are filmed prior to the son's departure, and (3) the implicit connection between Anglo characters and unnatural processes, including surgical repair of the body, the hygienic and materialistic "rituals" before the visitation to the Buddhist Temple, and the infiltration of technology into the primeval environs of the Steppes.
Throughout the film, the agrarian and uncultivated landscapes range from chillingly vacant, to tranquil, serene and sublime. Ultimately, though, the Steppes pulse with a voracious life force: a mysterious and aggressive wind decimates the British colonial presence. Pudovkin elevates and restores the dignity of the indigenous Mongols through this ostensibly natural (though seemingly supernatural) force. Pudovkin wrote that D.W. Griffith was highly influential in molding his cinematic consciousness. Indeed, the scale and graphic potency of Pudovkin’s landscapes do reveal parallels between the directors' works. But the shots in Storm overlooking the sand dunes, mountains and conifers of the Steppes, are also entirely unique. Prior to Storm, no one had ventured into the rural, nomadic domestic spaces of the Buriat-Mongolian Republic with a movie camera. Pudovkin had attended film school with Valeri Inkizhinov, the actor who played the protagonist, and thereby entered a world previously invisible to film. Had he employed a strictly Hollywood approach, the product would likely not have contained the languid series of stills, dissolving one into the next, forming subtle conflicts of plane and scale, which infuse Storm with a distinctively Eurasian atmosphere. The director complemented his Soviet montage technique with an awareness of Asian art, establishing graphically simple, yet emotionally stirring landscapes, with just the slightest degree of movement (shuddering leaves, shifting ice, or the slow, almost viscous flow of a river).
Storm constitutes an exquisite portrait of Mongolian life, integrating graphic landscapes (in which the individual is frequently subverted to the grandeur and scale of the natural environment) with humanizing close-ups of the native people and the indexical signs present in their lives, such as the amulet that had belonged to the lama, and the prized skin of the silver fox. The Mongolian hunter's family appears aged, crouched, tanned, and wrinkled, yet their faces embody a spirit and spontaneity that is totally absent from the visages of the British Army Commander and his bejeweled and powdered wife. The lighting in the interior of the Mongolian yurt is fascinating and quite beautiful. Whatever wrong Eisenstein perceived in terms of metric montage in the religious dance is fully compensated by the tonal complexity within the shot! The crisscrossing of cast shadows simultaneously gives the impression of individuals trapped within a colonial economic framework, and integrated with the natural space. The continuity between anatomy and environment suggests a higher level of authenticity. These individuals, bound by the complex of shadows, are close to the earth and to each other, in-tune with the seasons, the wildlife, and the hours. In contrast, the British delegate and his wife shroud themselves in unnatural pieces of finery: a long satin sheath wrapped around an obese male torso, the whale-bone corsette cinched unnaturally at the waist, and layers of lotion and powder set on the skin.
The naturalistic quality of the Mongolians makes the surgery performed on Inkizhinov's character all the more loathsome. The victim, after being bound and brutally shot, is essentially reawakened from the dead and brought out of the natural space of the sand dunes into the civilized Anglo interior. Sanctioned violence is followed by sanctioned medical penetration to revive the human form. The body, bound like a mummy, and restricted in its movements, constitutes a mannequin or dummy. It is the physical manifestation of the Mongolian's diplomatic function as a pawn of the British Empire's. The surgical repair is unnatural in that it is totally divested from any spiritual healing (i.e. the sort of healing presented in the earliest moments when the lama prays for the father's recovery).
The Mongolian is wholly castrated, unable to quench his thirst or articulate his thoughts. The moment when he attempts to drink from the fish tank, an action wholly outside the purview of civilized European decorum, is quite poetic: his head on the slick floor, surrounded by the thrashing fish, constitutes a visual metaphor for all the trauma and exploitation he has endured, and his inability to thrive within this world. Yet, like all of the images infused with pathos, it is neither sentimental nor contrived.
The closing scene is perhaps the most unambiguous example of Soviet montage. Pudovkin employs the fastest tempo, the wildest mise-en-scéne, and rapid inter-cutting between a savage, fully restored Mongolian hunter and the intertitles, producing negatives of the image that seem monstrous and supernatural. Yet, it is highly telling that the British defeat is staged without bloodshed: the wrath of the wilderness is the only outpouring of violence. The men fall back, rolling and somersaulting like weightless dolls blown down. It is as though this culminating struggle occurs outside the bounds of mortal life: it is no mere territorial dispute, but a recovery of the dignity and humanity that was lost.
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