Soviet cinema during the war. Part 2. When art helps to survive
Is it possible to assess the role of skin-visual women - actresses, singers, dancers during the Great Patriotic War? They could not stand the fighters from the battlefield, just as their skin-visual friends, the sisters of mercy, did not crawl through the snows and swamps, hurrying to repair the broken line in the conditions of an intense battle, like communication girls.
They had their own purpose. They healed the psyche. They treated them with lofty feelings that permeated all their work.
Part 1. When art strengthens the spirit
The foundations of the heroism of the Soviet people were laid in their natural mentality, manifested by the passionate idea of restoring universal justice. What could be higher and more significant than the urethral mission, if not distribution of shortages to those in need, even at the cost of their own lives?
It is known from Yuri Burlan's System-Vector Psychology that the essence of culture is to evoke sensory experiences: mercy and love. The art of Soviet cinema, as an important component of culture, was called upon to convey a high moral message to the people, helping them survive in "that merciless war."
The fighters, who were a stone's throw from death, reacted unusually emotionally to the films, empathized with the heroes, ready, like them, to defend their country and people to the last drop of blood.
During the war, the great power of art was reappraised. Airplanes and tanks were named after famous Russian writers, they went on the attack with the names of their favorite actresses, and the front-line friendship remained for the rest of their lives.
Veterans of the Great Patriotic War recalled that the most favorite film in the war was the film by director Leonid Lukov "Two fighters". The story of two soldiers who do not abandon each other in the most difficult moments of life has become a symbol of male friendship in the war.
For most films about the war, songs were written that are known and loved to this day. Thus, the songs "Dark Night" performed by Mark Bernes became an integral part of the film "Two Soldiers", and the song "Scows Full of Mullets" became a hit of all times and a musical symbol of Odessa.
"Go to art, as in a refuge"
Sergey Eisenstein
In the conditions of the most difficult war, courage and heroism were required from the entire Soviet people for the sake of victory, for the sake of preserving the people, therefore works of art that even remotely hinted at a decadent or pessimistic mood in a script or picture became unacceptable.
That is why the guardianship of culture was included in the circle of Stalin's tasks to preserve the state. Through books, performances and films, the consciousness of Soviet people absorbed and consolidated a heroic-patriotic mood based on the urethral values and deeds of the heroes of the Russian Land.
The Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein became known far beyond the borders of the USSR even before the war. He entered the world of art as an innovator who abandoned the traditional ways of working on a film and found a new cinematic device: to shoot a work of art using documentary methods. The special value of creativity and skill of Sergei Mikhailovich consisted in the fact that he was the first to create the image of the people in cinema.
Eisenstein very accurately understood the collectivist psychology of the Russian man, his ability to merge into a single fist when the homeland was in danger. None of the directors before him had the opportunity to shoot mass scenes so effectively and convincingly, in which the urethral-muscular mentality of an entire people is very accurately conveyed.
The first episode of his film "Ivan the Terrible" was released in 1944, when the long-awaited Victory was approaching. The viewer who looks at the picture on the front line or in the rear does not need to understand the historical intricacies and understand the intrigues of the boyars acting against Russia in the 16th century. The film was not accidentally approved by Stalin, although the historical facts did not directly echo the events of 1941-1945.
It is important that Ivan IV from Sergei Eisenstein's film "Ivan the Terrible" through the mouth of Boris Cherkasov speaks of a single, integral kingdom. Using the example of Russia in the time of Ivan IV, the director shows the danger of losing the state and depriving the sovereignty of an entire people with restrained, meager artistic means.
"If someone enters us with a sword, he will die by the sword."
Most of the pre-war works in poetry, songs and films glorified the Red Army and the Air Force. The professions of pilots and military men came into vogue. Men with a skin vector found their highest degree of realization in the USSR of that period. Fit, slender, disciplined skin or skin-sound youths, impressed by the images of movie heroes, impeccably played by Nikolai Kryuchkov, Nikolai Cherkasov, Yevgeny Samoilov, went to nautical, military and flight schools. In a few years they will fight the enemy in the skies over Stalingrad and Sevastopol, perish without surrendering to the enemy, in the Baltic and the Black Sea, at an unnamed height, in the catacombs of the Brest Fortress.
All of them, who did not return from the war, are young and those who are older, as "Our Father" repeated after the main character of Eisenstein's film "Alexander Nevsky": "If someone enters us with a sword, he will die by the sword."
This phrase, like the image of the victorious Russian prince himself, managed to penetrate deeply into the consciousness and became an example of national pride and responsibility for the country at the same time. The film Alexander Nevsky, shot by the director in 1938, was a huge success. He found a second life in 1941. He was shown both in the rear and at the front in order to raise the morale of the people.
Prayer for love
From the very beginning of the war, Soviet people lived in anticipation of Victory over fascism and a meeting with their dear and loved ones. Soldiers and officers left their families, mothers, wives, and girlfriends at home, so every film about the home front workers, about those who were waiting for them, was no less important than documentaries and special news broadcasts.
Love is an emotion that overcomes animal fear, preventing it from splitting the collective psychic of the people fighting for their liberation.
The poem "Wait for Me", written in 1941, became the most famous work of the Great Patriotic War and made the name of the poet, novelist, playwright, screenwriter and war correspondent Konstantin Simonov immortal.
"Wait for me" - the letter-poem was dedicated to the Soviet actress Valentina Serova. Still unpublished, it was already copied by hand, becoming for every soldier a spell, a prayer to his beloved.
The publication of the poem "Wait for me" on the first page of the newspaper "Pravda" could mean only one thing - an urgent need for it. It had already been read by the author himself on the radio and had such an impact that a central and purely political newspaper publishes it on the front page, where the country's most important news usually go.
The simple but soulful text "Wait for Me" very accurately corresponded to the perception of the world. Such a poem should have appeared, and if it had not been written by Konstantin Mikhailovich Simonov, someone else would have written it. It filled the shortage that had formed among the soldiers at the front, among those who were waiting for them in the rear. It was a lack of love in all its manifestations, which is able to save and preserve. It was the need for emotional bonds, severed by the war.
Cinema responded to this shortage immediately. They also continued to shoot military films and newsreels that raised patriotism and talked about the heroism of Soviet people, as the poem "Wait for Me" gave a new burst of ideas.
A stream of scenarios about love went for approval. And soon there were the best films of this period "Wait for me" (1943), "At six o'clock in the evening after the war" (1944) and many others.
Is it possible to assess the role of skin-visual women - actresses, singers, dancers during the Great Patriotic War? They could not stand the fighters from the battlefield, just as their skin-visual friends, the sisters of mercy, did not crawl through the snows and swamps, hurrying to repair the broken line in the conditions of an intense battle, like communication girls.
They had their own destiny. They healed the psyche. They treated them with lofty feelings that permeated all their work.
Even from the screen, they inspired the warriors before the battle, leading them into a state of noble rage, with which they then went to the enemy, giving their lives for our future. After the battle, they removed psychological suffering, calmed and pacified.
Even the screen image of a faithful wife and friend, invented by the scriptwriters, who hopes and waits, warmed the harsh men's hearts in cold trenches and dugouts, forced them to launch an attack not only shouting “For the Motherland, for Stalin!”, But also with the names of dear and loved ones …
“The war was still going on, and we were shooting films about the Victory,” recalled the director of the film “At 6 pm after the war,” Ivan Pyriev.
The audience believed in the sincerity of the acting and the director's intention that after the screening of the film on the front line, one soldier wrote to Marina Ladynina, the leading actor in the film At 6 pm After the War: “Now you can die, even if in the cinema, but still saw the end of the war …"
"The hour of courage struck on our watch …"
A. Akhmatova
The Great Patriotic War became an hour of courage for the entire Soviet people. The Russian urethral mentality has determined the priority of the public over the private in the entire multimillion and multinational country. From the first day of the war, everyone in his place brought Victory closer - a soldier at the front, women, children, old people in the rear.
The working day lasted 11-12 hours, factories and factories worked non-stop, one shift followed another, vacations were canceled. The front-line soldier could get home, visit relatives only in case of injury and treatment in the hospital.
To survive and not break down under such psychological stress, people needed relaxation. It was at this hour that the voices of the dermal-visual Muses sounded loudly. Creativity and, above all, cinema, as the most accessible of all types of art, became a therapy for the Soviet people.
Film distribution was organized throughout the USSR, except for the occupied regions. The films were transported to the front on transporters and shown to the soldiers.
There were already Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, but the battles for Prague and Berlin were still ahead, and the soldiers from the front, after watching Soviet films in letters-triangles, appointed their girls a date "at six in the evening after the war."
In the occupied territories of Ukraine, Belarus and part of Russia, the Germans carried out active anti-Soviet propaganda activities, filming and showing films with Russian actors in Russian.
Even if the inhabitants of the cities and villages occupied by the Nazis were forcibly rounded up for screenings, German newsreels and feature films still did not succeed. Neither well-played roles, nor colorful shots about a well-fed and clean life in Germany, where local youth were recruited, nor anti-Soviet cinema showing the horrors of collectivization and the NKVD, convinced the audience.
They simply "did not fall" into the mental shortage of a Soviet person, therefore they did not catch on either with their theme, content or excellent play of the actors who had gone over to the Germans.
Fascism sought to destroy Russian civilization, its mentality and its culture, and as a result destroyed itself. Because in culture there can be no hatred of man, no striving for the total eradication of peoples for the sake of the superiority of one race over another. Culture is created to preserve human life by all means. The chimera of the sick sound will never become the prevailing ideology in the world, sooner or later it will be defeated. Moreover, she will never cope with a healthy Russian urethral spirit, living according to the principle of mercy and justice for all.
