[In the following essay, Michalski examines cinematic techniques used in Olesha's literary works and analyzes Olesha's screenplay, Strogii iunosha, and its adaptation by filmmaker Abram Room.]

LITERATURE AND FILM: IURII OLESHA IN CONTEXT

The 1920s and early 1930s in the Soviet Union was a period of experimentation and innovation in both literature and cinema. Writers felt that there should be a new Soviet literature, just as filmmakers felt that a new Soviet cinema was needed. The same general issues faced both arts: how to find a balance between elite and mass cultures, between ‘proletarian’ art and that of non-proletarian writers and filmmakers, whether or not writers and filmmakers should be forced to join organisations and what the Party's role should be.

In the early 1920s filmmakers such as Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein and Vertov were keen to find new forms of expression in the cinema which would ensure that film was treated as an art form quite distinct from literature. Formal experimentation with filming and editing techniques to convey meaning was their main concern, rather than questions of plot. However, parallel to the activities of these directors there were also many other filmmakers turning out more conventional films, whose purpose was precisely to tell a story. The great problem these directors faced was the fact that they had to rely on a script as the basis of their narrative films, and there was a serious shortage of these.

Scripts tended to be written, in the early 1920s, by specialist scriptwriters (stsenaristy), many of whom were not particularly talented. The authorities attached much importance to the script, and ultimately the scriptwriter was considered to be the person responsible for the failure or success of a film. The script was supposed to convey the ideological message, and it had to be passed by the censorship authorities before the film could be made; the director was then expected to follow it closely. The problem, therefore, was how to produce scripts worth realising as films. For this, there were bodies of scriptwriters and so-called ‘script-doctors’, working in the ‘literary departments’ of film studios, who would try to improve other people's scripts. Yet even these writers were often second-rate, or worse. The problem was so bad that in the mid-1920s competitions were held for scenario-writers, but the majority of submissions were rejected, either on ideological grounds, or because they were incompetent in a technical sense.

One solution to the ‘script crisis’, as it was called, was to try to attract the best writers to the world of film. Although, on the whole, many writers had initially felt the cinema to be unworthy of their contributions, and some, no doubt, had seen it simply as a means of earning money, the number of those who perceived it as a challenge and a chance to try something new grew to include some of the best-known figures of the 1920s and 1930s.¹

From the early days of cinema in Russia, writers have shown an interest in the medium of film manifested, for instance, in Lev Tolstoi's statement that he wished to write something for the cinema, Andrei Belyi's script for a film of his Peterburg and Vladimir Maiakovskii's scripts for and acting roles in the cinema. It is not until the 1920s, however, that one sees a trend amongst writers of using literary techniques which are clearly inspired by film, such as those of the close-up, the fragmented narrative, and ‘cinematic’ visual metaphors. Several important writers of the period, such as Evgenii Zamiatin, Isaak Babel', Viktor Shklovskii, Iurii Tynianov and Il'f and Petrov, were influenced by techniques of this kind, and became actively involved in film work by writing scenarios.² Among the most interesting of these are Shklovskii's Tret'ia meshchanskaia (known as Bed and Sofa in English) of 1927, Tynianov's Poruchik Kizhe (Lieutenant Kizhe) of 1927 and 1934 (originally intended as a silent film to be directed by Sergei Iutkevich, but the script was subsequently revised for Aleksandr Faintsimmer's sound film of 1934³), and Iurii Olesha's Strogii iunosha (A Strict Youth) of 1936. The following discussion focuses on Strogii iunosha.

The writer of the script Strogii iunosha, Iurii Olesha, is best known for his novel Zavist' (Envy), a book which brought him praise from some quarters and serious condemnation from others, for its unusual style and content. Here, Olesha experimented with fragmentation of narrative, unexpected angles of vision and striking similes, while conveying an ambiguous attitude to the changes wrought by the Bolshevik Revolution, and the direction in which the Soviet Union was heading. However, Olesha also wrote many short stories, a memoir, plays and film scripts, as well as journalistic pieces and film reviews. Throughout his work there is great emphasis on the visual, lending his work a cinematic quality, which is sometimes explicitly evoked. The culmination of this technique was the decision to try to create a new genre, a hybrid of film script and literary text in its own right, something to be used as the basis for a film, but also to be read for pleasure. The result was Strogii iunosha, published in 1934, which was made into a film by Abram Room in 1936. Strogii iunosha is of particular interest because it was an experiment in mixing film and literature, an attempt to break down barriers. In a speech to ‘scenario writers and writers working in film’ in 1936, Olesha expresses his enthusiasm for working in the world of cinema, because he considers it ‘a very significant, necessary and pleasant activity for a writer’. He explains that in writing the screenplay Strogii iunosha he worked ‘as if I were writing a novel, a novella or a short story’.⁴ Olesha implies that he feels film work to be as significant, and demanding, as any other literary endeavour. Although Olesha's text provoked much criticism, again, of both form and content, at least it reached the public. Room's film was shelved for more than thirty years. In part, the difference in fates is due to changes in political circumstances, but it was also due to the differing reception of each medium, to the greater immediacy of film's impact.

OLESHA, FILM AND LIGHT

Iurii Olesha was fascinated by the cinema. This fascination operates on multiple levels: the most fundamental of these is that of technology. This forms part of a broader interest in the modern and the mechanical. As a schoolchild Olesha was enthralled by one of cinema's precursors, the Magic Lantern, which he found the most enticing object in a toy shop:

you were simply awestruck, looking at them! … and if you had been able to light the lamp inside it, and if it was dark in the place, then you could have put it into action right away: the plate would appear on the wall in the form of a rosy, greenish, carmine illuminated picture of some fairy tale which all children knew.⁵

The device is referred to in Olesha's Tri tolstiaka (The Three Fat Men), when Doctor Gaspar looks down from the top of a tower, thinking: ‘all this looked like a Magic Lantern picture. The sun was shining brightly, the green was blazing’.⁶ Olesha is captivated both by what he sees, and by the Lantern itself, as a technological invention.

As with the Magic Lantern, so with the cinematograph. Olesha admires moving pictures as an art, but he is also impressed by the requisite paraphernalia of cinema, which enables these pictures to move.⁷ He describes how intrigued he was by the rays of light coming from the projector, as well as how he would watch both the events on screen and the actual projection of the films with equal fascination, dividing his attention ‘between what was taking place on the screen and the rays moving above my head’.⁸

In 1896, Gorky famously referred to the cinema as the ‘kingdom of shadows’, thereby summarising its essence in the interplay of light and shade, which occurs both on the film itself, and subsequently on the screen.⁹ Just as light is the life force of cinema, without which there could be no shadows, so it is a crucial factor in Olesha's literature. For Olesha, the sun is the ultimate light, and the closing words of Ni dnia bez strochki (No Day Without a Line) confirm how obsessive his attitude to the sun is, in life, as in art: ‘There was nothing in my human life which could have taken place without the sun's participation, whether fantastic or concealed, whether actual or metaphorical.’¹⁰

The sun, and light in general, work in two different ways in Olesha's scheme of things, as they often do in the cinema; light either plays with the surface of objects, or people, or appears to radiate from within.¹¹ Olesha's eye for tricks of the light, his detailed observation and eloquent recording of what he sees, steer his prose towards the diametric realms of poetry and science in terms of content, and towards that of cinema in terms of form.

Olesha conveys fleeting instances of sunlight-play on the page, in the same way that a photographer might capture it on film. This can be seen in numerous examples. Simple versions, such as the image of ‘a bright summer's day’ recur in variations in many works.¹² In ‘Natasha’ we read: ‘the day was bright and hot’ (‘iarok i svetel den'’); in ‘Pervoe maia’ (‘The First of May’) the boulevard is described as ‘sun-drenched’ (‘Zalityi solntsem’); in ‘Zrelishche’ (The Spectacle) we read that ‘The whole picture had a very summery quality’ (‘Vsia kartina nosila ochen' letnii kharakter’).¹³ Yet, for all the ‘cinematic’ qualities of this device, Olesha gives literature as the source of inspiration for it; in ‘Pervoe maia’ he recalls stories he liked as a child, explaining that ‘The colouring of these stories is summery’ (‘Kolorit etikh skazok—letnii.’)¹⁴ In ‘Beseda s chitateliami’ (A Conversation with my Readers) he says that Wells' The Invisible Man is the influence behind the summer colours which pervade Zavist' (Envy).¹⁵

In addition to the examples above, there are more complex scenes involving light being refracted through or being reflected from objects. In the story ‘Natasha’ Olesha describes, as if in passing, a domestic still-life: ‘the glass in its holder with a blindingly burning ray of sun on the spoon’ (‘stakan v podstakannike s oslepitel'no goriashchei v solnechnom luche lozhechkoi’).¹⁶ Two other instances of beautifully observed detail, which convey the magical quality of the sun, seem particularly filmic. The first comes from his memoirs: ‘And in the blaze of the setting sun a spider's web burns into my eye socket—and it burns like a rainbow … A tiny, short rainbow on the circumference of my eye …’ (‘I v bleske zakhodiashchego solntsa zagoraetsia v glaznitse pautina—i ona gorit radugoi … Malen'kaia korotkaia raduga stoit na kruge glaza …’).¹⁷ The second is part of ‘Ia smotriu v proshloe’ (‘I Look into the Past’): ‘I open my eyes and in the midst of the blue sky I see a rainbow, because I have tears on my eyelashes’ (‘Ia otkryvaiu glaza i sredi sinego neba vizhu radugu, potomu chto na resnitsakh u menia slezy’).¹⁸ In Olesha's eyes, and in those of his perceptive characters, the everyday becomes special simply through the effect of light. This, as emphasised above, is a device typically employed by painters and filmmakers.

The foregoing discussion focuses on superficial radiance. The following discussion will show the significance of the sun and light, on a metaphorical level, in the work of Olesha. In Zavist', and subsequent works, Olesha uses the sun as an emblem of the ‘radiant future’, the Communist future. He realises the metaphor by having the sun shine dazzlingly on its representatives (see below). However, Olesha's portrayal of these supposedly ideal young people is not always entirely free from irony. This led many to suppose, rightly, that the writer's sympathies lay more with the older, doubtful generation, that is, with those who were by no means convinced that the future would be ideal and who knew that it would have no place for them.

In his introduction to the play extract ‘Chernyi chelovek’ (‘The Black Man’), which deals with questions of creativity and literature, Olesha sets out the problem of writing for propagandistic purposes, as opposed to creating spontaneously, in the context of his character Zand. Like the post-Zavist' Olesha, Zand wants to (or feels under pressure to) write ‘a great work about construction, the proletariat, the new man, the life of the young world’, which means renouncing a whole series of themes ‘which for our times […] are harmful, reactionary even if only because they are pessimistic’.¹⁹ The key to Olesha's sun-symbolism lies here, in the statement that the book Zand longs to write should have a ‘“sunny” theme’ (‘“solnechn[aia]” tem[a]’), and be ‘a work in which the whole of our new life would shine’ (‘tvorchestv[o], v kotorom siiala by vsia novaia zhizn’).²⁰

Olesha's cinema style of lighting, whereby certain characters are associated with certain kinds of light, is reflected in his frequent use of the verbs ‘blestet'’ and ‘blistat'’—meaning ‘to shine’ (in the literal and the figurative sense)—and related words, which are not solely sun-inspired.²¹ So, for instance, the description in Zavist' of the young Communist, Volodia Makarov, being lifted up after the football match is as follows: ‘Diagonally over the crowd the shining, splashing nakedness of a body flew up.’²² This is related to the idea of the ideal komsomolets as healthy, handsome and ideologically pure. Valia, the idealised female of the future, is linked to the sun in a similar way. Moreover, in the play based on Zavist', Zagovor chuvstv (A Conspiracy of Feelings), Ivan Babichev explains that woman was the ‘light’ of the past, and that Valia had seemed to him, erroneously, to be the bridge between the future and the dying past. Although the image here is of light in general, not of the sun specifically, the symbolism is closely related in that Valia was to play the part of a guiding light. He had hoped that ‘Valia will illuminate the dying age, she will light up its path to the great cemetery. But I was mistaken.’²³ She does indeed shine and radiate light, but not for him and the past, solely for the future.

FROM CRITICISM TO SCRIPTWRITING: OLESHA'S MOVE INTO FILM

In the context of Olesha's use of cinematic devices in his literature, it is worth trying to understand the way in which he read other people's writing, and made connections between writing and cinema. An example of film and literature merging applies to a scene by Ernest Hemingway: ‘The pace of this scene, the foreshortening, the colouring is so strangely attractive, that you cannot even work out whether you are reading a book, watching a film, dreaming a dream or witnessing an event which is actually taking place.’²⁴ Here, Olesha uses the terminology of the visual arts in speaking of foreshortening, as well as explaining how the images become moving pictures in the reader's mind.

Olesha is deeply interested in the relationship between film and literature, discussing it in various pieces of writing. In ‘Razgovor v foie kinematografa’ (‘A Conversation in a Cinematograph Foyer’), the narrator expresses his view that cinema would kill the book.²⁵ This is explained by the idea that the cinema can do for us what we now do for ourselves—imagine. His logic goes as follows: ‘We read and ask ourselves: what was it like? In the cinema I also read a book. And what I imagine is on the screen. The viewer in the cinema is a reader with a good imagination. Imagination is sold at the box office. The cinema will render the book redundant.’²⁶ In an unpublished text of the 1920s, ‘Kino-filosofiia’ (‘Film-philosophy’), Olesha uses the same words, which indicates how important he felt them to be.²⁷

In the article ‘Beseda s chitateliami’ Olesha speaks about the visual aspect of his prose, explaining that ‘when I write, I think only about how to get across what I see with the maximum clarity’.²⁸ Elsewhere he says that while reading, when you close your eyes and imagine what it was like, ‘you are working in a similar way to a camera. The imagination works cinematically—it creates frames.’²⁹ This is why Olesha feels that ‘the cinema experience is closer to the act of reading than to that of watching a play’.³⁰

Olesha was actively involved in the world of film from the 1920s onwards, as a scriptwriter. In 1921, he wrote two short film scenarios, ‘Zolotoe iabloko’ (‘The Golden Apple’) and ‘Svoeiu sobstvennoi rukoi’ (‘By His Own Hand’), for the Khar'kov provincial political educational committee (gubpolitprosvet). These were not published, and the films were not made, but they show that Olesha was already writing for the screen before incorporating ‘cinematic’ techniques in Zavist' and in his short stories. Most significantly, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s a growing body of writers moved into script-writing in response to pleas that writers came to work for the screen, as there was a shortage of good filmscripts. The writers who responded include Il'f and Petrov, Isaak Babel', Iurii Tynianov (who, like Olesha, had already been writing scripts in the 1920s) and Iurii Olesha, with Strogii iunosha, in 1934. The same year in a speech on writing for the cinema, at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers, the prominent director and scriptwriter Natan Zarkhi defined the script as a literary work, and as the main factor determining the success of Soviet film. At the Congress, Zarkhi discussed Olesha's scenario in particular, commenting that although the dialogues work on the page, and would work on stage, ‘they need a scriptwriter to translate them into cinema language’.³¹ Olesha, for his part, published an article about screenplays, ‘Kardinal'nye voprosy’ (Cardinal Questions), in 1935, in which he explained that he felt he was inventing a new genre with his play for the cinema: ‘When I write a scenario, […] I am writing a completely independent work of literature. […] This is […] neither drama nor fiction. It contains too much illustration for drama, and the composition is too bared for fiction. It is a form of its own.’³²

In ‘Kardinal'nye voprosy’ Olesha writes that more and more films are being made on the basis of screenplays by writers, meaning that ‘the sphere in which those people who paid less attention than anyone else to how the word used to work, is now under the influence of precisely those who specialise in words’.³³ In this essay, too, Olesha raises the question of whether or not a screenplay should be a work of literature in its own right. He gives various existing responses to these questions; for example Béla Balázs feels that a screenplay can never be considered a work of literature to be read in the same way as a short story or novel. There are those who believe a screenplay should be just the bare bones of a film, leaving the details to be decided by the director and cameraman; others, however, believe that a writer should give the director as complete a picture as possible, to provide him/her with a full vision to realise on screen.

Olesha's personal feeling is that he himself is unable to write an inspired screenplay without doing it as an independent literary work. He hastens to add that ‘of course […] I do not forget for a second that what I am writing must be transformed into visual images’.³⁴ It is precisely through this dual aim that, in Olesha's view, a new genre comes about: ‘This is neither drama nor fiction. There is too much painting here for drama, and the composition is too exposed for fiction.’³⁵

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Olesha attempted a cinematic plan for Zavist' (in 1928-9). The treatment was never published and the film was never made, but brief extracts of the plan do exist. These reveal something of Olesha's vision.³⁶ As in the novel, the writer emphasises the play of light on objects, as well as reflections and unusual perspectives. What appears to be the opening scene features a white door: ‘A white high door, taking up almost the whole of the screen’; bright lighting and the use of a close-up are the significant factors here.³⁷ A few lines further on light again plays a key role: ‘A wall, with a sink next to it. […] a thick mirror […] a strong lamp. Everything sparkles in this light: the sink, the mirror, metal bits and pieces on the sink, scent-bottles.’³⁸ Finally, although crossed out by Olesha, the following lines further indicate that for him perspective and light are of major importance to the composition of a shot: ‘A bright sunny background of sky. At the bottom of the screen, on the side, taking up only part of this empty background, a little platform is visible, evidently, at a great height.’³⁹ In the novel the equivalent scene is indicated, less graphically, but effectively, simply by: ‘The balcony hangs in mid air.’⁴⁰

Although many critics and readers were impressed by Olesha's striking literary style in Zavist', and many sympathised with his ambiguous attitude to the Communist world being built up around him, the book quickly came to be seen by the authorities as ideologically subversive and its style overly complex for the general reader and therefore elitist. Olesha was shocked by the severity of the criticism, and decided that he would try to write a more ideologically straightforward and positive work, one which would be more accessible to a broader readership in terms of structure and imagery. Consequently, in his speech at the Congress of Soviet Writers, Olesha said: ‘I want to create a type of young man who will represent the best of my own youth […] Communism is not only an economic but a moral system as well, and this aspect will be embodied predominantly in its young men and women.’⁴¹ He proclaimed: ‘I personally have set myself the task of writing about young people. I will write plays and stories in which the characters solve problems of a moral nature.’⁴² This is precisely what Olesha did in Strogii iunosha.

STROGII IUNOSHA AND OLESHA'S FILMIC LITERARY STYLE

Strogii iunosha, Olesha's film script of 1934, is the culmination of the writer's decades-long enthusiasm for film; the text is an anthology of Olesha's cinematic techniques, and a demonstration of the metaphorical resonance of these.

With Strogii iunosha, Olesha set out to write a work whose atmosphere would be suffused with sunlight; however, like Zand in ‘Chernyi chelovek’, he was unable to escape the darkening shadow of troubling questions, the ‘chernaia tema-iashcheritsa’ ‘the black lizard-theme’, as he called it.⁴³ Despite, or because of, such ideological shadows, Olesha declared, in various public interviews (most famously in his Speech at the Soviet Writers' Congress of 1934) that he would try to look forward, to write about young people as the hope of the future, in short, to be positive.

Typically, in Strogii iunosha, Masha's first encounter with the handsome young Communist, Grisha, takes place in the sun, where it is specifically and symbolically associated with him: ‘a young man stands in front of Masha now, on the grass, amongst the daisies, in the bright glare of the sun’.⁴⁴ To the same end, Grisha's friend ‘Diskobol’, another example of the perfect komsomolets, and therefore a man of the Communist future, is vividly bathed in sunlight: ‘His tanned body shines in the sun’.⁴⁵ Also in 1934, in a journalistic article, revealingly entitled ‘Krasota sily’ (‘The Beauty of Strength’), Olesha describes a festive parade full of beautiful young people, about to work on constructing the metro system, and the whole scene is sun-drenched:

The town, the factories, the construction sites, the metro tunnels—and right in the middle of town, on the square, drenched in sun, are the young people, many of whom today will go down into the tunnels to perform something which is equal, in its beauty, gracefulness and accuracy, to the circus or the ballet.⁴⁶

Significantly, in Olesha's Strogii iunosha, Masha's husband, the bourgeois intelligent Dr Stepanov, never shines. In a transparently symbolic scene, Grisha and Masha catch sight of each other in a crowd, outside. Stepanov sees Masha and wonders ‘Why is her face shining? […] Stepanov wants to know what is making Masha's face shine.’⁴⁷ This is because a boy is directing rays of sunlight with a mirror. He shines it on to Stepanov's face, but instead of reflecting it, the Doctor is temporarily blinded, and cannot see Grisha when he tries to see what Masha is looking at. All this light play led one critic to mock Olesha's obsession: ‘the stunning game with brilliant and dazzling objects, that is what captivates Olesha, like a child. He has rushed to the cinema to captivate everyone with this game.’⁴⁸ This scene is omitted from the filmed version, perhaps because it is too obvious as an image, or perhaps because it is too complex to film.

One of the most frequent applications of Olesha's cinematic style of writing is to descriptions of stadiums, as the subject-matter offers obvious opportunities to play with perspective and sunlight.⁴⁹ The sports stadium plays a significant role in Strogii iunosha, as it is where the young people gather to train and talk; it is a symbol of striving towards mental and physical perfection. In Olesha's text the size of the playing field is emphasised by the description of Diskobol and Masha, on separate occasions, appearing to be small figures in the distance to someone looking down at them. In the filmed version, the stadium is filmed from above, looking huge and deserted, as a lone figure walks across it. Such cinematic vision is typical of Olesha's prose, and recalls his description of some film footage of a Spanish bullfight. The bullfight film draws his attention both for its content and for the way in which it is shot. His description of it is revealing as much for what Olesha focuses on as for the imagery with which he chooses to describe what he sees. Many elements which characterise Olesha's style of writing can be found in this extract, from the mention of sunlight to the interest in perspective.

Olesha introduces the recollection with a general observation on contemporary documentaries: ‘Contemporary documentary films are shot very epically, employing the techniques of feature films (foreshortening, close-ups).’⁵⁰ This already reveals the writer's eye for camera techniques, and what they can achieve. As for the content, Olesha describes it using metaphorical language to maximum visual effect. Describing the stadium, Olesha sees it in a way others would be unlikely to: ‘At first I saw a section of a circus, of some sun-drenched coliseum, which, since it was shown in wide-angle view, resembled a cut watermelon with swarms of seed people.’⁵¹ Moving on to animate objects, cinematic devices continue to feature in the analysis as the scene becomes still more vivid: ‘Then there was a fleeting close up of two near-naked, sun-drenched Spanish women fanning themselves. Then I saw a medium shot of a picador on a horse, which he was making stand almost on the spot, and take compressed, springy steps in anticipation of the bull.’⁵² Finally, Olesha shows how disorientating a close-up can be, making the objects almost unrecognisable because of their unnatural size: ‘And suddenly almost the entire length and breadth of the frame was taken up by two figures—that of the bull and the matador!’⁵³ This is the kind of perspective Olesha uses in his own work.

These examples reveal Olesha's use of cinematic techniques to some extent, but his most explicit use of cinematic imagery occurs in a simile, in which he compares a moment in a football match, when the ball has been kicked into the crowd and the players watch in utter surprise, to a freeze-frame from a film: ‘Thus a motion picture stops all of a sudden at the moment of a break in the film, when the light has already been switched on in the auditorium, but the projectionist has not yet managed to turn off the light, and the audience sees the strangely whitened screen and the contours of the hero, absolutely motionless in that pose, which speaks of the most rapid movement.’⁵⁴

Further evidence of Olesha's interest in film techniques can also be found in a particularly effective passage from Strogii iunosha, which adopts the characteristics of early, silent, moving pictures. Here, a jealous Dr Stepanov watches Masha and Grisha flirting in the distance, through binoculars, longing to know what they are talking about. On the page, as on screen, it is his view which is given: ‘He sees: lips moving. Masha is laughing. One would suppose loudly. But Stepanov cannot hear anything. For him it is silent cinema.’⁵⁵ In a different vein, in Liubov' (Love), Olesha has Isaac Newton (in a dream) see ‘his grey, photographic world through glasses’.⁵⁶ The words which describe his vision echo those of Olesha's narrator from ‘Razgovor v foie kinematografa’, as he identifies a paradox of early films, the ability to make what looks artificial seem natural: ‘nature, people, objects, everything is bathed in one and the same grey, photographic colour, and everything is silent, everything is grey and everything is silent—and this does not disturb us, does not amaze and irritate us? Herein lies the power, the secret of art. A lie becomes truth.’⁵⁷ This passage reveals much about Olesha's intentions in his own work, as well as intensifying the underlying link with film. If early films seem unreal because of their lack of colour, Olesha's descriptions sometimes seem unreal because of their intensity of colour. Yet, ultimately, at their best, both are convincing.

STROGII IUNOSHA

The film Strogii iunosha was the result of a collaboration between a writer and a filmmaker, both of whom had achieved a certain notoriety in the late 1920s in their respective fields. The collaboration between filmmaker and writer was initiated by Olesha. He wrote the screenplay with Room in mind and expressly chose him to direct it. This may seem strange, given that Olesha was explicitly trying to reach an accommodation with political demands. Room had already had some difficulties, as a film director, with the authorities of the time. Nonetheless, Olesha's political and artistic ambitions were met with some degree of goodwill in the official film world and the picture was given the biggest budget of the year at Kiev's Ukrainfil'm studio.

As in Olesha's case, with Zavist', 1927 was the year Room made his first impact on the public, with the excellent film Tret'ia Meshchanskaia.⁵⁸ Like Olesha, again, his work is about the old and the new, and the struggle to change bourgeois attitudes. Co-scripted with Viktor Shklovskii, it concerns a ménage-à-trois, in which the pregnant heroine chooses freedom over both possible fathers, her husband and her lover, leaving them to live together happily ever after without her. Questions of contemporary morality, social and sexual issues are all present here, as in Strogii iunosha, although in the latter film political ideology plays the greatest role.

After Tret'ia Meshchanskaia Room made nineteen more films. In 1933 he began work on Odnazhdy letom (One Day in Summer), Il'f and Petrov’s adaptation of their novel Zolotoi telenok (The Golden Calf), but in March 1934 The Ukrainian Directorate for the Cinema and Photographic Industry, VUKFU, removed Room from Odnazhdy letom and struck him off the list of filmmakers intended for future projects.⁵⁹ Then, when it came to Strogii iunosha, the State Directorate for the Cinema and Photographic Industry, GUKF, warned Ukrainfil'm that they were taking a risk by allowing Room to make such a serious film, but the studio supported him—to its cost.⁶⁰

The plot of Strogii iunosha concerns a romantic triangle, in which a young komsomolets, Grisha, is in love with Masha, wife of a celebrated surgeon, Doctor Stepanov. This is no mere private issue, however, since it is complicated by ideology. Seeing that the doctor is favoured by the authorities, Grisha feels that it would be anti-Soviet to steal his wife. His friends, fellow Komsomol members, try to persuade him that the doctor is committing a crime against socialism by abusing his power over another man, in trying to keep Grisha away from Masha (such ‘possessiveness’ was also considered to be a negative, bourgeois trait). However, Grisha disagrees, claiming that the doctor's power is pure, because he is a genius and therefore deserves special treatment. There is also a parasitical hanger-on, Tsitronov, who lives at the Stepanovs', who represents the worst of decadent bourgeois lifestyles. The culmination of the film's ideological message comes when one of the young women falls ill and the doctor saves her life, thereby serving Communism. During her recovery he talks to the young people and is won over by their words. He is amazed to hear that Komsomol members, who talk about aiming to raise themselves to the level of the best, include in this category not just engineers, but also those who create science, technology, music and who struggle with nature, such as doctors. This is the real message, that the intelligentsia have a place as long as they work with, rather than against, the creators of the radiant, socialist future. The notebook kept for Room by his assistant Lelekov during the filming of Strogii iunosha suggests that the film recounts how the moral and ethical outlook of an old member of the intelligentsia, Stepanov the doctor of genius, is transformed under the influence of the new young people.⁶¹

CRITICAL RESPONSES TO STROGII IUNOSHA

Olesha often said he wanted people to debate his work, but perhaps even he would have wished for less controversy. His screenplay Strogii iunosha was discussed in Moscow and Kiev even before being published in Novyi mir in August 1934. In Moscow there were meetings at both the Dom sovetskogo pisatelia and the Dom kino. The participants of the former included Vsevolod Meierkhol'd, to whose then wife Zinaida Raikh the work was originally dedicated, and who, it was hoped, would play a minor part in the film (which he did not), Aleksandr Fadeev and Viktor Shklovskii. Shklovskii felt that the work would be fine if only Olesha were not trying to pass it off as a scenario. Meierkhol'd, with a touch of playfulness, said Olesha must be implored not to work directly for the cinema, but to write a story and get those who understand the nature of film better to translate it into the language of the screen. Yet the article in Sovetskoe iskusstvo of July 1934 reporting on this meeting claimed that all those taking part unanimously stressed that Strogii iunosha was a great creative success. The journalist explained that in his cine-play Olesha had for the first time examined the important issue of the new person, new socialist feelings and relations, concluding that in terms of his concept Olesha's cine-play was a literary work of profound philosophical significance.⁶² Olesha was trying to create a new literary genre with his ‘play for the cinematograph’. It was to have a dual function, acting as a guideline to the filmmaker, but also serving as a work of literature, worthy of being read in its own right.

As soon as it was published, Olesha's Strogii iunosha provoked much more negative criticism than this. In 1935, in an article entitled ‘O geroiakh’ (‘On heroes’), although praising Olesha for understanding that the new hero needs new moral and philosophical principles, the critic N. Zhdanov condemned him for making the characters so unlifelike and abstract.⁶³ That same year, in ‘O chuvstvakh sotsialisticheskogo cheloveka’ (‘On the feelings of socialist man’), another critic, Kulikov, said: ‘Instead of the richness and brightness of socialist individuality, instead of living people, Strogii iunosha has dead outlines, dry abstractions, shadows with no flesh. Their spiritual life is extremely simplified and primitive. They are neither worried nor joyful and do not stir the reader.’⁶⁴ He also pointed out that the characters' abstraction was emphasised by the generalised names some of them are given, such as ‘the discus thrower’, ‘the girl’, ‘the sailor’. Clearly these were meant to represent ‘types’ of idealised Soviet youth, but it was considered a problem because it was thought young people would not be able to identify with these characters, and the script's propagandistic potential would be lost.

A further problem was that although the script was meant to be set in the future, it portrayed a world very close to contemporary reality. This upset those who felt there could be no place for the intelligentsia in the future. The discussions about genius and equality were considered pretentious. One supremely biting reviewer, Dmitrii Maznin, wrote a long review in Literaturnaia gazeta in the style of the screenplay. Here the characters bemoan the lines and roles they have been given. For example, Stepanov, discussing who the reader will worry about at the end of the play, says it will be ‘about me. That's clear. Ol'ga has recovered now, Grisha Fokin has stopped being stubborn, it's clear Masha loves him […] but what will become of the old intelligent, of the husband who had so recently been a happy husband, whose dazzling wife has betrayed him?’⁶⁵ Elsewhere Masha says that it is ridiculous that the problem should be whether Grisha might be destroying the happiness of a genius—in such a situation it is not Grisha's and Stepanov's characters which are being tested. For it is not they who can settle the question, but Masha alone.⁶⁶

In 1936, in a speech to ‘scenario writers and writers working in film’, Olesha looks back on the fate of his script and Room's film. Here, under still greater political pressure than at the time of writing, he explained that he came to realise the script's flaws in the subsequent two years, but that he felt that the film based on it did contain worthwhile elements. For this reason, Olesha felt that the film should not have been taken off the screen. The writer further explained that neither he nor Room know why the film was not shown, but Olesha puts it largely down to the change in political circumstances between his starting the script in 1933, and the film's making in 1935: ‘In two years much had changed. There was much I had not understood when I wrote the scenario. All the same, it seemed to me that it was worth showing it, because there were some accurate things there.’⁶⁷ It is clear, therefore, that although the idea of a sophisticatedly literary, yet functional, ‘play for the cinematograph’ was exciting, particularly for a writer who had hitherto been working to ‘improve’ other people's second-rate film scripts, in practice it very soon came up against significant problems.

On reading Olesha's work for the production department at Ukrainfil'm, Iukov, the official responsible for guiding the filmmakers who were making the film, produced his ‘Conclusion regarding Iu. Olesha's scenario Strogii iunosha’. This contains complaints that the moral code discussed by Grisha is too removed from social concerns; the character of Masha is too superficial; the ending is too ambiguous (Masha and Grisha kiss, then she goes back to her husband); there is too little emphasis on Stepanov's behaviour as a leading representative of the intelligentsia.⁶⁸ The criticism, then, is that ideologically the film does not convey the desired, inspiring message, that it does not convince the viewer of a radiant Communist future. More seriously, Olesha's characters' discussions about genius and equality were considered pretentious, and, in general, Strogii iunosha's underlying idea that suffering is part of the human condition under any political system was deemed to be ‘philosophical pessimism directed against the Communist ideals of the revolutionary proletariat’, as phrased by the director of Ukrainfil'm, Tkach.⁶⁹

Nor was the scenario the only controversial element in Strogii iunosha. On a page headed ‘Reshitel'no borot'sia s brakom v kinoproizvodstve’ (‘Doing decisive battle with shoddy workmanship in the film industry’), the newspaper Kino published a piece on the film Strogii iunosha in July 1936, entitled: ‘Pouchitel'naia istoriia’ (An instructive story). It explained that the screenplay's thematic complexity and its weaknesses should have instigated the head of Ukrainfil'm to ensure that Abram Room was particularly careful in his work as director, and corrected the failings of Olesha's text. But, the commentary continues, not only did Room not improve Olesha's text, but the film actually emphasised the text's ideological shortcomings. It celebrated ‘the idea of a technocracy, of mankind being doomed to suffer, the opposition between the hero and the masses’. He summed up by stating that ‘The director realised the film's impoverished ideological content in an extremely aestheticised form. As a result, the film, which has taken nearly two years to make and cost about two million roubles, has turned out to be ideologically and artistically shoddy.’⁷⁰ Similar views are expressed in Radians'ke kino, where the commentator Iurchenko also argued that the positive aspects of Olesha's script had been removed, yet the faults remained. He added that even the cameraman Ekel'chik's professional expertise and skill had only played a negative role in the film.

We can see, then, that Room's Strogii iunosha, like Olesha's, was severely criticised for its form, as well as its content. Just as the writer's prose was seen as overly stylised and metaphorical, so the look of the film was regarded as excessively decorative and glamorous. A large part of the film's generous budget went towards the construction of magnificent sets. These included a swimming pool, expertly used in Grisha's dream sequence. This scene was very much in the extravagant style of Hollywood, designed to achieve a fantastic, impressive effect. Ultimately, however much guidance Olesha gave to Room in his text, it was the director who had to find ways to realise such seemingly impossible visions, and to convey the ethereal quality of the scene in a way not necessary for Olesha. It was the stylised sequences, such as the dream, which provoked criticism of the film's style, and caused some to brand it ‘formalist’. Ideologically, therefore, many critics deemed it pointless and empty, although there were those who admitted that, aesthetically, the film had spectacular moments.⁷¹

FROM THE ‘CINEMATIC’ TO THE CINEMA: ROOM AS INTERPRETER OF OLESHA'S TEXT

With all adaptations, one of the key factors which alter the author's original conception is the director's agency.⁷² Any film version of a literary text is an interpretation, adding something of the director's vision to the text. Often, literary commentators see this in terms of a loss of sophistication; but, in fact, a gifted director (like any other talented individual) interprets creatively, not only stripping away detail, but also enhancing and augmenting the original text.

With the case of a writer whose work is itself self-consciously ‘cinematic’, a very particular process of collaboration comes about. Olesha's language centres on creating visual images, revolving around optical points of interest, particularly unusual perspectives and light play, which would, to the uninitiated eye, appear to act almost as directions and natural bridges to the director and the lighting and camera operators. Yet, in practice, any attempt to recreate such effects on screen is likely to be problematic. This is partly because ‘cinematic’ effects drawn from pre-existing film may seem hackneyed and predictable when transferred to the screen, but it also emanates from the status of ‘cinematic’ devices in the literary text, the fact that they are perceived as ‘quotations’ from another artistic mode. Such citations of cinematic language in the literary text are an important case of what Bakhtin named as chuzhoe slovo, or ‘the word of the other’; the identical device, put back on the screen, becomes merely part of the everyday language of film. Finally, there is the fact that ‘cinematic’ light effects may make technical demands that are in fact unrealisable in terms of actual cinema technology.

It is important to remember that Olesha intended Strogii iunosha not only as a guide to the filmmaker, but also as a text suitable for private reading. This explains why it contains several entirely unfilmable passages. The clearest example of this is the description of the characters. With Olesha's characteristic admiration of the male body, Grisha is described as follows:

‘There is a type of male appearance which has developed as a result of the evolvement of technology, aviation, sport. From under the leather peak of a pilot's helmet, a pair of grey eyes, as a rule, look out at you. And you may be sure that when the pilot takes off his helmet it will be fair hair that gleams before you. […] Light eyes, fair hair, a thin face, a triangular torso, a muscular chest—such is the modern type of male beauty. This is the beauty of the young men who wear the ‘GTO’ badge on their chests. It comes about from frequent contact with water, machines and gymnastic equipment.’⁷³

Only some of this can be conveyed on screen, although much is typical of literary and filmic stereotypes of the 1930s.

However, Room's interpretation indicates his determination to remain faithful to the visual world of Strogii iunosha in a broad sense and to the governing motifs in Olesha's imagery.

Instances of how Room and his cameraman, Iurii El'chik, adapted and intensified Olesha's ‘cinematic’ devices are made manifest by the notes taken by Room's assistant following viewing of the rushes for the opening scenes, which provide insights into the process of achieving the film's idiosyncratic style. One note comments that plot elements should be cut in favour of atmospheric shots of water and light-play. A case in point is the scene of Masha bathing:

Move away from the impression that Tsitronov is observing Masha bathing and significantly shorten this in favour of her bathing and her walk in favour of the sea and ‘shadows’.⁷⁴

A second instance of creative adaptation concerns close-ups. In keeping with the writer's affection for this device per se, rather than any specific directions at given points of his script, the director and cameraman make use of this technique at various stages to great effect. As the note book puts it, the desired effect was ‘a pictorial hermeticism of elements, so for example the dog can be incomplete in the frame, the head incomplete, the hand incomplete, the cigar incomplete […] but just the start of them, a part of them, half of them, so that there is a world beyond the frame, so that objects do not end in the frame and so on. The next frame is linked to this one.’⁷⁵

Other visually striking aspects of the film are also adapted from hints in Olesha. For example, the description of the Stepanovs' luxurious surroundings is broken down shot by shot: ‘Through the interlacing wrought-iron bars of the fence, he sees: an orchard. Clumps of trees. A dacha. A kitchen-maid, running with a tray. On the tray there gleams a bucket containing ice and bottles of wine’.⁷⁶ This method is explained in the following way: ‘Although it is transparent, the style of filming gets across the confused lines of the subjects' contours: it recalls Japanese drawings on silk.’⁷⁷

If the visual richness of Olesha's text is still further enhanced by Room's filming, the psychological atmosphere of the household is also conveyed through the music. Like the other elements of the film, this is very carefully chosen for its metaphorical resonances: ‘Waltzlike jazz. The tender, resounding strains of harps interweave. It is a musical characterisation of the dacha, of Tsitronov, which reflects the confusion and opacity of relations in the Stepanov household.’⁷⁸ Like the music, the light creates an atmosphere which perfectly conveys the emotional and psychological timbre of Olesha's text: ‘The light must convey an impression, the emotional side, the colour of the film—which is poetic. It is realistic, yet unrealistic. The hot day does not penetrate. Evidently, we need something sort of dappled, moving trees, something a little fantastic.’⁷⁹

The technical mastery of Room's Strogii iunosha is apparent in many instances, including the task of filming white on white. For example, this meant white plates on a white tablecloth, or figures dressed in white against a white background. Such scenes require great lighting and photographic skill, in order to avoid looking washed out or simply indistinct. Even the critics who condemned the content of such aesthetic scenes as politically pointless usually did not fail to acknowledge the masterful photography and technique.

Room's and Ekel'chik's cinematographic skill and imagination are, though, most evident in Grisha's daydream sequence, where he kisses Masha. Although there is no specific description of the dreamlike atmosphere, only of people and objects, in Olesha's text, Room conveys the unreality and beauty of the shimmering fantasy (see ill. 8.2). To this end, chairs and columns were mounted on to poles rising from the pool, and a ‘path’ was similarly supported, so that when the water was still it looked like a mirror. Then the water rippled, by means of a kind of water-mill, the furniture folded and was submerged and metal flowers attached to cork were released from the bottom of the pool. The sets were more than six storeys high; over 5000 metres of gauze were used to film through to achieve a surreal, hazy effect, more than 400 lights were used. At the centre of this mirror-like platform are Masha and Grisha, and Dr Stepanov by a piano, which is being played. When Stepanov tells his wife to leave as she is in the way, Grisha comes to her defence, saying she cannot be in the way as ‘She is music itself.’⁸⁰ To prove this he lifts her arm: ‘Her arm sings’; he strokes her hair: ‘Her hair sings’; he lays his head on her breast: ‘Her heart sings’ and he kisses her, revealing that ‘Her kiss sings.’⁸¹ When he kneels at her feet, kissing and embracing her: ‘All of her sings’, and the music becomes ‘Masha's melody’.⁸²

An important aspect to be considered in regard to the transformation from book to film is the abstract nature of the word. Perhaps the most characteristic trait of Olesha's prose is his use of imagery, simile and metaphor. His comparisons are often quite idiosyncratic, impossible to realise on screen (other than in surreal animation, perhaps), intended for the individual imagination alone. Faced with such a text, the film director must do what he can, sometimes keeping to the original idea, at other times inventing filmable equivalents of his own.

Given that one of the main criticisms of Olesha's screenplay was its abstraction from reality, it had generally been expected that Room would correct these perceived errors of the script. Instead, Room intensified them, making the characters still more symbolic. In the written text, for example, Grisha is described as getting off the train ‘brushing off, as it were, traces of the crush in the railway carriage. It's as if he were straightening out his crumpledness.’ As contemporary critics were quick to point out, this passage could not be filmed as it was, with its metaphoric language. More than this, one would expect there to be crowds at the station. Instead the young man is shown emphatically alone, in quite an unnatural way, partly to emphasise his outsider status in the world he has come to visit. This can be compared to the scene showing Masha swimming. In the written text other bathers are mentioned walking past her as she goes home. In the film, again, she is strikingly alone. With both Masha and Grisha, the viewer's first glimpse of them is from behind, therefore faceless, symbolically generic rather than realistically specific.

Grisha is further shown as less ‘real’ than in the text, because he does so little. In the ‘silent cinema’ scene described above, Grisha fixes the Stepanovs' car when it breaks down as Masha is driving him to the station. Room, on the other hand, makes the young man watch passively, as Masha repairs the engine. As the critic Iurchenko mocked, Grisha is always impeccably shaven, his trousers carefully pressed, and is afraid to dirty his hands and ruin his suit!⁸³ Finally, in Olesha's text, Grisha is shown fixing a tram cable. To paraphrase Iurchenko again, Room, the director, and Ekel'chik, the cameraman, deprive Grisha of this possibility of rehabilitating himself. Instead, they show him and his friend chariot racing, in a scene totally absent from the literary original. This emphasises them as classical ‘types’, removing them further from everyday existence.⁸⁴

A key scene, in which Grisha expounds his ideas of morality, is filmed as a series of tableaux, with semi-naked, athletic, young men and women posing as they talk. Iurchenko condemns Room's use of retardation of movement in this scene, as well as its statuesque quality. He says the figures turn into pseudo-classical sculptures in light and shade. This makes them unreal and ineffective as images of Soviet youth. Their dialogue is unnatural and unconvincing; likewise, their athletic posturing and idealised physiques.

The undertone of irony that both Olesha and Room employed with respect to their portrayal of these supposedly idealised young people suggests that any public statements about embracing the new world wholeheartedly should be carefully considered, rather than taken at face value. One example of an ironic depiction of the young protagonist involves Grisha, who is less than the ideal courageous komsomolets, hiding from the woman he loves out of fear. His friend, Diskobol, asks him: ‘Which moral quality, according to your theory, are you putting into practice at this moment? Shyness? In my opinion it's cowardice.’ He then decides to carry out Grisha's principle of honesty and tells Masha and her husband, who have turned up at the stadium, that Grisha is in love with her. As Grisha arrives and hears what is going on, Doctor Stepanov points out with dignity: ‘Masha, I think this conversation is stupid’,⁸⁵ leaving the young people looking foolish.

A further example of such irony shows Stepanov coming to apologise to Grisha for having jealously banned him from his party, and re-inviting him. Once more, Grisha hides, leaving his comrades to deal with the situation. Eager to let him hear the good news that Masha also wants him to come, his friend reveals his hiding place: the wardrobe, as in all good farces:

[Grisha] Fokin: I will not come. A Komsomol member should have pride.

Stepanov: A man is standing in a cupboard and talks about pride. A Komsomol member should have a sense of humour …⁸⁶

The future has little chance of radiating moral and physical perfection if this is a typical example of the young Communist building it.

Another tongue-in-cheek scene involves Doctor Stepanov, who is due to go to a medical conference in London, and his assistant, who asks the doctor to bring him back a hat. Stepanov is outraged at the suggestion that he should be racing around the shops, ‘Me, a member of the English Academy.’⁸⁷ The real offence here, in the eyes of Tkach, director of Ukrainfil'm, was that Stepanov invokes the English Academy as a symbol of his standing, as if the Soviet Academy of Sciences were not impressive enough!⁸⁸ Olesha's and Room's sense of irony was far from being shared by all.

Given the ‘formalist’ character of Room's film, and its failure to ‘correct’ Olesha's text in an ideological sense, it is entirely predictable that the official ‘Decision of the Ukrainfil'm Trust on the banning of the film Strogii iunosha’ includes criticism of Room for not improving Olesha's script, but rather adding to its flaws. In addition to this, the ‘Decision’ condemns the work for ‘the crudest deviations from the style of Socialist Realism’. It states that Room is to be dismissed from the post of director; Ekel'chik is to be reprimanded, and Neches, director of the studio while the film was in production, is to be brought before the ‘direktivnye organy’ (directive bodies). The studio's deputy director was also removed from his post. In spite of all the problems caused for him by the banning of Strogii iunosha, Abram Room did not leave Kiev, but he did not make any films in 1937 or 1938, having been demoted to assistant. Room directed his next film, a war film, Eskadril'ia N^o. 5 (Squadron no. 5), in 1939.⁸⁹

CONCLUSION

Iurii Olesha was clearly fascinated by film, and the influence of cinematic techniques can be found throughout his work. Having taken the bold step, with Strogii iunosha, of trying to create his own type of film script, which he intended to stand as an independent piece of literature too, Olesha raised important questions regarding literary adaptation. Room's film of Strogii iunosha confirmed that there were difficulties in transposing a work from one medium to the other, yet it also proved that, if inspired and determined, a director and cameraman can create their own vision, which is at once independent from and close to the original source.

The literary critic V. Pertsov wrote of Olesha's text that: ‘The play for the cinematograph Strogii iunosha awaits its adaptor, some great artistic director. A. Room's interesting attempt has not exhausted its profound content’;⁹⁰ however, he does not provide any convincing substantiation for this, and from a non-ideological viewpoint there is no doubt that Abram Room did succeed in making a visually ravishing film, developing stylistic qualities which Olesha merely hinted at. At the same time, Room took up Olesha's sense of irony and humour and used them to great effect, retaining the playfulness which made the original story more than a mere schematic outline of moral and political issues. Yet, when political constraints are imposed, from without and within, as they were on Olesha, and to an even greater degree on Room, and the artists constrained, aesthetic qualities cannot fail to be severely threatened. If, in such circumstances, the artists attempt to put creative experimentation before ideological content, as Olesha and Room did, they risk denying their public access to their work, since it is likely to be banned. A ‘safer’ film might have been a more successful one; a diluted version of formalism would have reached the public more easily than Room's and Olesha's collaboration.

But this would have been to deny the experimental ambition of this creative team. The greatest significance of both these versions of Strogii iunosha, then, lies not in their content, or even in their form, although both are formally innovative, but, above all, in the fact that they mark transitional stages in their creators' lives, and are courageous and complex attempts to reconcile art and politics, as well as to fuse literature and film.

Notes

1. On this and related issues see Peter Kenez, Cinema & Soviet Society 1917-1953 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 79-83.

2. For detailed surveys see S. D. Gurevich, Sovetskie pisateli v kinematografe (20-30-e gody) (Leningrad, 1975) and Jerry Heil, ‘Russian writers and the cinema in the early 20th century—a survey’, Russian Literature 19 (1986), 143-73.

3. See Jerry Heil, ‘Jurij Tynjanov's film-work. Two filmscripts “Lieutenant Kize” (1927, 1933-34) and “The Monkey and the Bell” (1932)’, Russian Literature 21 (1987), 353-5.

4. ‘Stenogramma soveshchaniia kinodramaturgov i pisatelei, rabotaiushchikh v kino. Sektsiia dramaturgov. 23 November 1936’. RGALI, SPSSSR (Soiuz pisatelei SSSR), f. 631, op. 2, ed. khr. 173.

5. Iurii Olesha, Izbrannoe (Moscow, 1974), pp. 359-60. For a more detailed account of Olesha's experiences of, attitude towards and influence by the cinema see Milena Michalski, ‘Iurii Olesha: Cinematic Interests and Cinematic Influence’, Slovo (London), 8/2 (November 1995), 33-43.

6. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 100.

7. The physical and technological aspects of early cinema-going are vividly described in an unpublished article by Olesha: Iu. Olesha, ‘Zhizn' moia zamechatel'na uzhe tem …’, RGALI, f. 358 (Olesha), op. 2, ed. khr. 451.

8. Ibid.

9. ‘Maxim Gorky, The Lumière Cinematograph (Extracts)’, in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds.), The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema Documents 1896-1939 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 25.

10. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 558.

11. Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour suggests that the difference in meaning is as follows: ‘Surface light is laughing light, but real blessedness is usually represented by Olesha in terms of an object's or person's ability to absorb light, hold it, and thus possess it. Surface light is playful.’ See The Invisible Land: A Study of the Artistic Imagination of Iurii Olesha (New York and London, 1970), p. 60. Beaujour also discusses H. G. Wells' image of the idyllic garden in ‘The Door in the Wall’, seeing it as using light in a similar way. As will be shown, Olesha cites Wells as an influence in this very respect too.

12. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 310.

13. Ibid., pp. 221, 218, 262 and 274 respectively. In the last of these quotations, the word ‘kartina’ could suggest a film as well as a painting.

14. Ibid., p. 259.

15. Olesha, ‘Beseda s chitateliami’, Literaturnyi kritik 12 (1935), 157.

16. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 263.

17. Vstrechi s proshlym. Sbornik materialov Tsentral'nogo Gosudarstvennogo Arkhiva Literatury i Iskusstva SSSR 6 (Moscow, 1988), p. 310.

18. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 225.

19. Olesha, ‘Chernyi chelovek’ in Iu. Olesha, P'esy. Stat'i o teatre i dramaturgii (Moscow, 1968), p. 272.

20. Olesha, P'esy, p. 272.

21. The Oxford Russian-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1985), p. 33. This also offers: ‘to glitter’, ‘to sparkle’, again not only in the literal sense.

22. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 87.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., p. 509.

25. Kazimiera Ingdahl, A Graveyard of Themes: The Genesis of Three Key Works by Iurii Olesha (Stockholm, 1994), p. 147. Here, Olesha explains that Victor Hugo saw buildings as having been like books in that they were repositories of knowledge, they used to be decorated with statues, basreliefs, characters, and people used to learn from buildings.

26. Ibid., p. 147.

27. Olesha, ‘Kino-filosofiia’, RGALI, f. 358, op. 2, ed. khr. 407.

28. Olesha, ‘Beseda s chitateliami’, 155.

29. Iurii Olesha, ‘Zakaz na strashnoe’, 30 dnei 2 (1936), 34.

30. Ibid.

31. ‘First Congress of Soviet Writers (Extracts)’, in Taylor and Christie (eds.), The Film Factory, p. 332; Pervyi Vsesoyuznyi s″ezd sovetskikh pisatelei 1934. Stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1934), pp. 464-6.

32. Iu. Olesha, ‘Kardinal'nye voprosy’, 30 dnei 12 (1935), 46.

33. Ibid., 45.

34. Ibid., 46.

35. Ibid.

36. See Jerry Heil, No List of Political Assets: The Collaboration of Iurii Olesha and Abram Room on “Strogii iunosha”, [A Strict youth (1936)], Slawistische Beiträge, vol. 248 (Munich, 1989), p. 97. Heil writes that the plan was written with Evgenii Cherviakov, who was supposed to direct it, in the late 1930s, but the extract at RGALI is dated as 1928-9 by the archivists. For more on Evgenii Cherviakov (director, actor and scriptwriter, 1899-1942), see S. I. Iutkevich (ed.), Kino: entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Moscow, 1986), p. 482.

37. Iurii Olesha, ‘Belaia vysokaia dver', zanimaiushchaia pochti ves' ekran’, RGALI, f. 358, ed. khr. 199, op. 2, p. 1.

38. Ibid., p. 2.

39. Ibid.

40. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 15.

41. Pervyi vsesoyuznyi s″ezd sovetskikh pisatelei, p. 236.

42. Ibid. Strangely, Olesha did not mention his screenplay Strogii iunosha here; an extract had already been published a month earlier in Novgi mir, and the complete work was to appear there six days later.

43. Olesha, P'esy, p. 272.

44. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 304 (section 11). Hereafter, references to Strogii iunosha will be given using page and section numbers, but omitting the word ‘section’.

45. Ibid., p. 311 (22).

46. Iurii Olesha, ‘Krasota sily’, Vecherniaia Moskva 169 (25 July 1934), 1 (unnumbered).

47. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 331 (40).

48. Dmitrii Maznin, ‘Grisha Fokin otmezhevyvaetsia. Konferentsiia geroev “Strogogo iunoshi”’, Literaturnaia gazeta 143 (459) (24 October 1934), 2 (unnumbered).

49. For example, in the story ‘Stadion v Odesse’ (‘A Stadium in Odessa’), a stadium is explicitly linked to the idea of optical special effects (Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 258). Similarly, in Zavist ', a football pitch viewed from above is vividly bright and filmic (Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 82). Finally, in the unpublished article ‘Doroga na stadion’ (‘The Way to the Stadium’), Olesha again gives a view of a stadium from above and uses the idiosyncratic play of sunlight to give the impression of waching a film. Yet Olesha uses a simile which could never be adequately conveyed on screen, despite sounding cinematic: ‘The stadium suddenly opens out in all its glory. Through one of the arches you go out onto a stand and the stadium lies before you. It is below you and in the distance and all around. It is a giant place full of people. The side opposite you looks like the high bank of a river, strewn with shining pebbles. Those are the spectators’ (Iurii Olesha, ‘Doroga na stadion’, RGALI, f. 358, op. 2, ed. khr. 375, pp. 4-5).

50. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 462.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., p. 86.

55. Ibid., p. 308 (19).

56. Ibid., p. 200.

57. Ingdahl, A Graveyard of Themes, p. 148. This was part of a draft chapter for Zavist', but was not included in the final version.

58. For more on Abram Room's life and works, see I. Grashchenkova, Abram Room (Moscow, 1977).

59. ‘Reshitel'no borot'sia s brakom v kinoproizvodstve. Pouchitel'naia istoriia’, Kino (28 July 1936), 2.

60. Ibid.

61. Lelekov's notebook is in Room's files at the Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev.

62. ‘“Strogii iunosha”—Pervaia kinop'esa Iu. Oleshi’, Sovetskoe iskusstvo (5 July 1934).

63. N. Zhdanov, ‘O geroiakh’, Literaturnyi sovremennik 9 (1935), 159-60.

64. I. Kulikov, ‘O chuvstvakh sotsialisticheskogo cheloveka’, Volzhskaia nov' 8-9 (1935), 88.

65. Maznin, ‘Grisha Fokin otmezhevyvaetsia’, 2.

66. Ibid.

67. ’Stenogramma soveshchaniia kinodramaturgov i pisatelei, rabotaiushchikh v kino. Sektsiia dramaturgov. 23 November 1936’. RGALI, SPSSSR (Soiuz pisatelei SSSR), f. 631, op. 2, ed. khr 173.

68. Iukov, ‘Zakliuchenie na stsenarii Iu. Oleshi “Strogii iunosha”’ (28 July 1934) in ‘Partitura postanovki fil'ma “Strogii iunosha”’ held at the Dovzhenko Film Studios.

69. Tkach, ‘Postanovlenie tresta Ukrainfil'ma o zapreshchenii fil'ma “Strogii iunosha”’, Kino (28 July 1936), 2.

70. Ibid.

71. Scenes in Grigorii Aleksandrov's 1936 film Tsirk were also similar to those created in Hollywood; the cameraman on Tsirk, Vladimir Nil'sen, and some other members of the Soviet film industry had actually been taken to Hollywood, in 1935, by Boris Shumiatskii, head of the film union and notoriously anti-‘formalist’, to see how things were done. However, there is a crucial difference between the use of a Hollywood style in these two films: the content of Aleksandrov's scenes ‘proved’ that the Soviet Union was not only as developed, artistically and technologically, as the United States, but even better, because it was ideologically superior. In Strogii iunosha the desired effect was purely aesthetic pleasure.

72. For consideration of this question with reference to the theatre, see Cynthia Marsh's chapter in the present volume.

73. There were many films made about pilots during the 1930s, the most famous of which is Raizman's Letchiki of 1935, reviewed by Olesha, which also glorified such ‘types’. The ‘GTO’ (Gotov k Trudu i Oborone: Ready for Labour and Defence) was a young Communists' physical training group; Olesha has Grisha invent a list of moral qualities which all ‘GTO’ members should adhere to; this is fictitious.

74. ‘Partitura postanovki fil'ma “Strogii iunosha”’, p. 3.

75. Ibid., p. 97.

76. Ibid., p. 47.

77. Ibid., p. 22.

78. Ibid., p. 22.

79. Lelekov's notebooks on the filming of Room's ‘“Strogii iunosha”’, p. 99.

80. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 322 (32).

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid. A similar image and concept is used seven years earlier by Olesha, in Zavist', as Kavalerov hallucinates feverishly about Valia being literally transported by an orchestra into his arms: ‘The sound of the instruments held her in the air. The sound carried her … The last passage threw her to the top of the stairs and she fell into Volodia's arms. Everybody stepped aside. The two of them alone remained in the circle’ (Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 92). This passages seems absurd on the page, yet it is easily visualised by the reader.

83. I. Iurchenko, ‘Za sotsialisticheskuiu narodnost' kinoiskusstva’, Radians'ke kino 6 (1936), 7.

84. Ibid.

85. Olesha, Izbrannoe, p. 313 (23).

86. Ibid., p. 333 (41).

87. Ibid., p. 327 (37).

88. M. Tkach, ‘“Strogii iunosha” i ne strogie rukovoditeli’, Kino (26 July 1936).

89. Grashchenkova, Abram Room, p. 175.

90. V. Pertsov, ‘My zhivem vpervye’. O tvorchestve Iuriia Oleshi (Moscow, 1976), p. 63.