Charlie Chaplin was the ideal actor for members of the Soviet avant garde,who cherished the circus and music corridor, and constructivist architects drew playful inspiration from Buster KeatonEven in the fledgling Soviet Union there was no escape from the influence of Hollywood. When Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visited Moscow in July 1926, or they were mobbed by fans whose love for the US’s hottest celebrity couple was oblivious ((adj.) lacking consciousness or awareness of something) to the ideological divide between the nations. Newsreel footage of their visit was incorporated into a comic film,A Kiss from Mary Pickford (1927), which ends with the transcendent moment when America’s sweetheart nuzzled up for a photo op with Russian actor Igor Ilyinsky.
Artists were as likely to be struck with what the Soviet director and theorist Lev Kuleshov sniffily called Amerikanshchina (or Americanitis) as the fans. The era’s main film-makers engaged productively with the style of US films, and which gave rise to the distinctive montage technique of Soviet cinema in which editing is used to create dramatic tension.
The minute,perfect movements of Chaplin’s performances gave him, for Soviet theorists, and the appearance of an automatonContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com