Amsterdam University Press

Chapter Title: Co-Producing Cold War Culture East-West Film-Making and Cultural
Diplomacy
Chapter Author(s): Marsha Siefert

Book Title: Divided Dreamworlds?

Book Subtitle: The Cultural Cold War in East and West
Book Editor(s): Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-Smith, Joes Segal
Published by: Amsterdam University Press. (2012)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wp6mh.8

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4 Co-Producing Cold War Culture
East-West Film-Making and Cultural Diplomacy

»» Marsha Siefert

Cinema has long been claimed as a producer of ‘dreamworlds’, and more than one
commentator has noted the chronological coincidence between the industrialisa-
tion of the film industry and the Bolshevik Revolution.1 Film scholars have also
documented the dialogic aspects of Hollywood and Soviet Goskino film rivalry
and their images of each other as reflecting the state of international relations
throughout the Cold War. Hollywood offers a range of such landscapes from Red
Danube to Red Dawn.2 Soviet cinema too has its cinematic Cold War scenarios
and stereotypes, such as the American journalists who engage in The Russian
Question (1947), or Night on the 14th Parallel (1971).3 This chapter addresses a
related development within the post-war international film industry – the rise
of films produced by more than one nation. Between 1953 and 1985, the Soviet
Union realised well over 100 co-produced films, many across the ‘curtain’ with
France, Italy, Norway and Japan. Building on one of the themes of this volume
– investigating those cultural agents who desired to escape the rigidity of East-
West divides – this chapter will focus on the dynamics and dilemmas of Soviet
co-produced films.
Soviet attempts to co-produce films, especially with the West, represent a chal-
lenge that is in part shared with European film industries – the competition with
Hollywood. Even when they are formally introduced as part of the Soviet film

1 The author would like to thank Sergei Dobrynin and Sergei Kapterev, two fine scholars of Russian and Soviet
film, for their invaluable help with archival documents. The interest of Denise Youngblood and of Tony Shaw,
whose Cinematic Cold War: The American and Soviet Struggle for Hearts and Minds (Lawrence, ks: University
Press of Kansas, 2010) breaks new ground in this topic, has been much appreciated. This chapter is part of
the author’s book project on Soviet film co-productions.
2 Harlow Robinson, Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians: Biography of an Image (Boston: Northeastern
University Press, 2007); Michael Strada and Harold Troper, Friend or Foe? Russians in American Film and For-
eign Policy, 1933-1991 (Lanham, md.: Scarecrow Press, 1997); Tony Shaw, Hollywood’s Cold War (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
3 For examples see Stephen Hutchings (ed.), Russia and its Other(s) on Film: Screening Intercultural Dialogue
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Sergei Dobrynin, ‘The Silver Curtain: Representations of the West
in Soviet Cold War Films’, History Compass 7, no. 3 (2009), p. 862-878.

73

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74 | Divided Dreamworlds?

bureaucracy, co-productions are presented as an economic arrangement, as a way

to compete with Hollywood’s market dominance. Of course co-production is nei-
ther merely ‘an economic initiative (…) nor is it simply a means of spreading costs.
It is also a symbolic intervention.’4 Once a nation moves to make a film collabora-
tively with another nation, the representation of one’s own national heritage and
culture in relation to the other is called into question and requires negotiation.
The complications come not just in the choice of film subjects or scenarios, but
also from different traditions of storytelling. In these traditions, again, the Soviet
Union may share with Europe an ideal more akin to art than commerce. Added to
this pressure is the economic model of a successful – popular and profitable – film,
which demanded the recognisable stars and blockbuster elements that Hollywood
had perfected. The Soviet film bureaucracy wanted to control its own representa-
tions, themes and messages, especially in projecting its image abroad, but periodi-
cally recognised that some compromise might be necessary to penetrate the global
film market. Their centralised system of production and bureaucratic control over
film topics and scripts made working with another country even more compli-
cated. In spite of these obstacles Soviet interest in producing films with the West
persisted and in turn introduced the participation of non-state actors, like private
film companies and producers, into the Cold War contest. The Soviet efforts to
co-produce films on their own terms exhibit a multilayered dynamic process in the
negotiation and export of cultural influence during the Cold War.
The idea of film co-production recapitulates other types of treaty negotiations
and co-operation in Cold War diplomacy between the Soviet Union and other
nations. The equality of each partner was crucial to Soviet aims, as exemplified by
several collaborative projects in science, including the famous joint space flight in
1975.5 The Soviet rhetoric of ‘peaceful co-existence’ emphasised such parity, while
times of trouble saw tit-for-tat responses. Soviet officials described cinematic coop-
eration as ‘joint film’ to emphasise that the partnership was more than produc-
tion but also included script and artistic expertise. That phrase was diplomatically
enshrined in the 1958 us-ussr Lacy-Zarubin cultural exchange agreement and
used in most Soviet documents.
This chapter begins with an exploration of how co-producing films fits into
the international film industry and the practice of Cold War cultural diplomacy.
The next section examines the Soviet motives and intentions – both economic

4 Graham Murdock, ‘Trading Places: The Cultural Economy of Co-Production’, in Sofia Blind and Gerd Hallen-
berger (eds.), European Co-Production in Television and Film (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1996), p. 103-114, quota-
tion p. 107.
5 The mutual reinforcement of different types of Soviet-American ‘collaborative’ projects is suggested by an ar-
ticle in Soviet Film (July 1975) in which their correspondent interviews Cosmonaut Alexey Elseiev, head of the
Soviet-American flight, about his relations with the cinema both as a viewer and as a ‘star’.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 75

and political – for film co-production through archival documents and attention
to the institutionalisation of a specific department – Sovinfilm – during the late
1960s. The chapter closes by discussing three co-produced ‘biographical films’
from 1969-1971 to illustrate Soviet experience in co-operating with Europe and
‘filming with the enemy.’

Co-productions, Europe and the International Film Industry

Co-produced films must be situated within the context of the international film
industry in which national film industries compete for prestige and market share.
Film co-productions are just one of several formulae for multiplying a film’s poten-
tial to cross national boundaries – for audience, profits and cultural politics –
that developed over the twentieth century. Much of this effort exploited the export
potential of films made for a domestic audience. Before the coming of sound film
in the late 1920s, film could be transformed for export by substituting subtitles in
the language of the receiving country. Sound film brought many experiments in
multiple language films, such as the Paramount studios in France and the German
studio Ufa’s expansion in the German sphere of influence during the 1930s and
early 1940s.6 These co-operative ventures might feature a star or locations from a
second country, a storyline shared by one or more countries, or a genre like melo-
drama or musical that more easily crossed national lines. Often films were shot
twice on the same set, each time in a different language with variations in stars,
dialogue or plot adapted for the receiving audiences. Film finance also took many
forms, depending upon the role of the state in supporting and regulating the film
industry. The range of options for how various components of film production
and distribution could be divided or shared, therefore, were already present in the
interwar years.
The onset of the Cold War coincided with hard times for all film industries,
including Hollywood. Faced with rising competition from television, a loss of nec-
essary profits from all-but-destroyed European markets, and the legal dismember-
ment of its oligopoly of production and distribution, post-war Hollywood began to
produce films in Europe and elsewhere as ‘runaway’ productions, benefitting from

6 Richard Maltby and Rush Vasey, ‘The International Language Problem: European Reactions to Hollywood’s
Conversion to Sound’, in Hollywood in Europe: Experiences of a Cultural Hegemony, David W. Ellwood and
Rob Kroes (eds.), (Amsterdam: vu University Press, 1994); Chris Wahl, ‘“Paprika in the blood”: On ufa’s
Early Sound Films Produced in/about/for/with Hungary’, Spectator 27, no. 2 (Fall 2007), p. 11-20; Thomas
Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (London/New York: Routledge, 2000),
p. 120; Sibylle M. Sturm and Arthur Wohlgemuth (eds.), Hallo? Berlin? Ici Paris!: Deutsch-Französische Film-
beziehungen, 1918-1939 (Munich: Edition Text+Kritik, 1996).

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76 | Divided Dreamworlds?

the lower costs, exotic locations, and local personnel, and spending the export film
profits that could not be taken out of the country. ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’ is the
most famous example.7
European film industries began to revive by the late 1950s, and they, too, began
to look to co-production as a way to boost productivity, to share production costs
and to increase the number of cinema-goers. Between 1949 and 1964, clustering
toward the 1960s, European film industries co-produced over 1,000 films, prima-
rily through bilateral national agreements emphasising cultural affinities.8 France
and Italy led the European co-producers, although Spain also was highly active.9 In
many cases these co-productions were official, commencing with a treaty of coop-
eration whereby each participating government recognised the film as a product
of ‘national culture’ and might therefore offer subsidies or tax breaks. Less formal
arrangements might be made between international partners, especially when a
Hollywood studio wanted to invest in a film. The key variables were how the film
production divided responsibility for creative decisions, from casting and script to
the finished film, including stars, locations, and stories, as well as how territories
for distribution and revenue were allocated. Often films that started as co-produc-
tions turned out to be more about acquiring an international star, engaging less
expensive labour and/or locations in another country, and obtaining European
financing, rather than collaboration in terms of subject, script and style.10

Soviet Films and Cold War Cultural Diplomacy

The Soviet film industry confronted similar problems in attempting to make and
export technologically sophisticated and appealing films in their bid for ‘cultural
supremacy’ in the Cold War.11 During Stalin’s last years the Soviet studio system

7 Toby Miller, Global Hollywood 2 (London: bfi, 2005).

8 Anne Jäckel, European Film Industries (London: bfi, 2003); Marsha Siefert, ‘Twentieth-Century Culture,
“Americanization”, and European Audiovisual Space’, in Konrad Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger (eds.),
Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), p. 164-193.
9 George Michael Luyken, ‘The Business of Co-Productions: Simply Sharing Costs or Building a New European
Audiovisual Culture?’ in Blind and Hallenberger, European Co-Production in Television and Film, p. 115-126,
116; Alejandro Pardo, ‘Spanish Co-Productions: Commercial Need or Common Culture’, in Sandra Barriales-
Bouche and Marjorie Attignol Salvodon (eds.), Zoom In, Zoom Out: Crossing Borders in Contemporary European
Cinema (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), p. 89-127.
10 Recent examples have been called ‘Euro-puddings’ due to less-than-satisfactory cinematic results. For post-
1989 European co-production financing in Eastern Europe, see Anne Jäckel, ‘Cultural Cooperation in Europe:
The Case of British & French Co-productions with Central and Eastern Europe’, Media, Culture & Society 9,
no. 1 (1997), p. 111-120.
11 David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2003).

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 77

had been crippled by doctrinal supervision.12 Film trade with the West had virtu-
ally come to a halt, with the dearth of domestic films being supplemented by old
Hollywood films and ‘trophy’ films from the war years. After 1953, Soviet film-
makers had some leeway to boost the numbers and quality of films, so they wanted
access to the latest Western films and techniques and to re-enter the international
film world.13 Film was discussed at the 1955 Geneva meeting of Foreign Min-
isters in which France, the uk and the us proposed a seventeen-point plan for
exchanging media with the Soviet Union. While the ussr rejected the initiative,
they remained open to bilateral or multilateral agreements.14 Bilateral agreements
were to become the norm in film projects and the ussr signed a cultural agree-
ment with France the next year.
Arranging film ‘co-operation’ with the us proved more difficult, however.
Exchange visits of Soviet and American delegations resumed in 195515 and Boris
Polevoi, the Pravda correspondent who led the Soviet journalistic delegation, pub-
lished his American Diaries in 1956. Polevoi’s confidential 16-page report was writ-
ten for the Central Committee. Amidst the advice he offered about how to better
communicate the socialist message to Americans, he commented specifically on
the film industry. ‘In the course of our meetings in Hollywood,’ he wrote, the idea
arose of corresponding American and Soviet film festivals of each others’ films,
an idea ‘ardently supported by filmmakers, by studio executives, and by the so-
called Hollywood “tycoons”.’ Polevoi thought it would be ‘the right thing to do.’16
In August of the following year, a similar two-week trip was made by the Soviet
deputy minister of culture in charge of film – ‘the highest ranking cultural emis-
sary to visit the United States in the last decade.’ In an interview he stated that
his ministry was ‘open-minded’ about ‘barter’ in the entertainment field, offering
three propositions. One was again reciprocal film festivals and another was the
exchange of actresses and actors to star in each other’s films – when asked, he

12 Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (Cambridge/New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2001).
13 For an excellent analysis, see Sergei Kapterev, ‘Illusionary Spoils: Soviet Attitudes toward American Cinema
during the Early Cold War’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, no. 4 (Fall 2009), p. 779-
807.
14 Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park, pa: Pennsylva-
nia State University Press, 2004), p. 14-15.
15 On Moscow’s initiative in these years see J.D. Parks, Culture, Conflict and Coexistence: American–Soviet Cultural
Relations, 1917-1958 (Jefferson, nc: MacFarland, 1983), chapter 10.
16 Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii [hereafter rgani], f. 5, op.15, d.734, p.131-145, here p. 140-
141. The meaning of this trip for cultural diplomacy is nicely elaborated by Rósa Magnúsdóttir in ‘Mission
Impossible? Selling Soviet Socialism to Americans, 1955-1958’, in Jessica C.E. Gienow-Hecht and Mark C.
Donfried (eds.), Searching for a Cultural Diplomacy (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), p. 50-74. I thank her
for sharing this document with me.

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78 | Divided Dreamworlds?

‘wouldn’t mind trading for Marilyn [Monroe].’ The last was a ‘joint production’ by
both motion picture industries.17
The idea was also raised by visiting film-makers in Moscow. The most dra-
matic anticipation was publicity surrounding Hollywood producer Mike Todd’s
visit in April of 1956, when he boasted that he would shoot ‘War and Peace’ in
Russia as a co-production, a claim that was later denied by Soviet authorities.18
The idea was kept alive, however, in a long letter by a well-known Soviet play-
wright published in Literaturnaia Gazeta the following year.19 ‘Let’s Make a Film
Together,’ he wrote Mike Todd, and suggested an epic film depicting Russian-
American relations during the American Civil War featuring Abraham Lincoln
and Alexander ii among others. He had a scenario ready. ‘I don’t know who is to
blame’ for the failure to reach an agreement, he stated. ‘But that is not the main
thing. No big venture ever started without difficulties and even some disappoint-
ments. However that may be (…) at this particular time it is essential that cultural
ties between our countries be broadened in every way (…). The wider the world,
the more interesting the life.’20
The Soviet press continued to promote the idea of joint films. Sovetskaia Kul-
tura, writing on 1 January 1958, declared that ‘such films are one of the many
aspects of cultural co-operation. In spite of the intrigues of reaction, cultural ties
are growing and being expanded. Ever louder sounds the voice of art; it knows no
boundaries, it opens to people perspectives, paths for the future, it speaks great
goals. Art serves the cause of peace.’21 On 23 January Izvestia published a list of
‘Jointly Produced Films,’ several – with India, Finland, Czechoslovakia and Yugo-
slavia – already completed. A list of films in process, primarily with socialist part-
ners, demonstrated the breadth of their efforts: literary adaptations with Bulgaria,
Hungary and Greece, heroic tales with Egypt and Romania, a scenario ‘of great
interest’ entitled ‘Moscow-Peking’, and with France a story of ‘the fighting friend-
ship’ of wartime aviators.22
Thus it is not surprising that Soviet negotiators continued to press for joint
films in their cultural negotiations with the United States. A very general provi-
sion to that effect was included as part of the us-ussr cultural exchange agreement
signed on 27 January 1958: ‘To recognize the desirability and usefulness of organ-
izing joint production of artistic, popular science and documentary films and of

17 ‘Russia Ready for Talks on Film “Barter”’, Chicago Daily Tribune (27 August 1956), p. 16.
18 ‘Todd Seen Shooting “War and Peace” in Russia as Co-Production’, Variety (11 April 1956).
19 ‘Let Us Make a Film Together: Open letter to Mr. Michael Todd’, Literaturnaia Gazeta (3 October 1957), 4, trans.
in Current Digest of the Post-Soviet Press [hereafter cdsp] 40, no. 9 (13 November 1957), p. 16-17.
20 Op. cit, ‘Let Us Make a Film’. Variety also reprinted this letter.
21 Open Society Archives, Budapest. r.r.g., ‘Films and “Guided Creativity”’, Office of the Political Advisor, Radio
Free Europe/Munich, Background Information ussr (8 August 1958). Citation on p. 20, footnote 9.
22 ‘Jointly Produced Films’, Izvestia, 23 January 1958, p. 4. cdsp 4, no. 10 (5 March 1958), p. 45.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 79

the conducting, not later than May 1958, of concrete negotiations between Soviet
Union film organizations and u.s. film companies on this subject (…). The subject
matter of the films will be mutually agreed upon by the two parties.’23 These con-
crete negotiations turned out to be quite protracted. According to a us participant,
the us delegation ‘must have appeared to the Soviets as a scene straight from a
Hollywood movie,’ as they entered the Ministry of Culture conference room sport-
ing dark sunglasses and deep tans.24 Nonetheless a further agreement on film
exchange including the approval of joint productions was signed on 9 October of
that year.25
A skeptical analysis of the meaning of the Soviet co-production effort was pro-
vided by Radio Free Europe’s Office of the Political Advisor in a 25-page August
1958 report on the Soviet film industry called ‘Films and Guided Creativity’.26 Call-
ing co-productions ‘one of the propaganda vehicles used by the Communists for
some time,’ the analyst sees them becoming more numerous and more important
within the framework of the steadily growing ‘Soviet cultural offensive.’27 Their
value to all the ‘Communist countries’ included their access to funds, facilities and
technical skills from the West, specifically France and Italy. The rfe analyst also
affirms Western interest – the large and virtually untapped market, the competi-
tion from domestic television, and the Soviet willingness to co-produce with any
country, including the United States, and lists the number of ongoing and planned
Soviet and East European co-productions with other countries.
In spite of these pronouncements, Soviet co-productions were rare during the
Khrushchev years, with fewer than twenty co-produced films completed before
1965. One might attribute this absence to many causes, not the least of which
is the difficulty of realising any film co-production. From the socialist side, film
industry personnel from Hungary and Poland would have been less likely to
seek co-productions with the ussr for some time after 1956. The 1958 concept of
‘guided creativity’ suggested already a more cautious approach to approved films,
a conservatism that intensified with the ‘literary ferment’ that ensued after the
October 1961 Communist Party conference and spread to the film industry by

23 Section vii, item 5, ‘United States and u.s.s.r. Sign Agreement on East-West Exchanges’, [us] Department of
State Bulletin (17 February 1958), p. 243-247, quotation on p. 245.
24 Hans N. Tuch, Communicating with the World: u.s. Public Diplomacy Overseas (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1990), p. 134.
25 ‘United States and u.s.s.r. Agree on Films To Be Exchanged’, [us] Department of State Bulletin (3 November
1958), p. 696-698.
26 R.r.g., ‘Films and “Guided Creativity”’, p. 19-21.
27 This phrase became codified in early Cold War parlance with the publication of Frederick C. Barghoorn, The
Soviet Cultural Offensive: The Role of Cultural Diplomacy in Soviet Foreign Policy (Princeton nj: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1960).

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80 | Divided Dreamworlds?

spring of 1963.28 Internally the Soviet film bureaucracy was more concerned with
repertoire control and retained the complex hierarchical administrative system
of film theme and genre plans along with multilayered script approval, which
made the process of obtaining approval for a film long and cumbersome. Also, the
Soviet film industry was state-supported and film directors were paid according
to the prestige of the film they were allotted in the plan, and so the rewards and
incentives were internal to the system. Economics mattered, however. All movie
theatres throughout the ussr had to contribute a portion of their receipts to the
government to finance future films, and so they programmed films that the audi-
ence would pay to see. Often these were foreign imports or genre films that were
not so highly regarded by the Soviet film bureaucracy.29 During the years of the
‘thaw’ the 1930s idea of ‘cinema for the millions’30 had re-emerged along with the
other demands of the global marketplace and East-West rivalry to produce condi-
tions for cautious experiments in co-produced films.

Soviet Co-Produced Films from 1965

With the exception of two films produced with Germany in the late 1920s,31 the
Soviet efforts to co-produce films began in 1953.32 Despite the flurry surround-
ing the 1958 exchange agreement with the us, subsequent Soviet co-productions
numbered only one or at most two films a year.33 The topics and partners were

28 See, for example, Priscilla Johnson, Khrushchev and the Arts: The Politics of Soviet Culture, 1962-1964 (Cam-
bridge, ma: mit Press, 1965), p. 95-101; Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London:
I.B. Taurus, 2000), p. 103-111.
29 Marsha Siefert, ‘From Cold War to Wary Peace: American Culture in the ussr and Russia’, in Alexander
Stephan (ed.) The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy and Anti-Americanism After 1945 (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2006), p. 185-217; Sudha Rajagopalan, Indian Film in Soviet Cinemas: The Culture of Movie-
Going after Stalin (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Kristin Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time: How
the Soviet Union Built the Media Empire That Lost the Cultural Cold War (Ithaca, ny: Cornell University Press,
2011), chapter 2.
30 Richard Taylor, ‘Ideology as Mass Entertainment: Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinema in the 1930s’, in Rich-
ard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds.), Inside the Film Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema (Lon-
don/New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 193-216.
31 Moscow’s Mezhrabpom Film Studios made these first two co-productions with Prometheus Studios in Berlin
(Salamander, 1928 and Zhivoi trup [The Living Corpse] 1929). Louis Harris Cohen, The Cultural Political Tra-
ditions and Developments of the Soviet Cinema from 1917 to 1972 (New York: Arno Press, 1974), p. 547.
32 See Sergei Kapterev, Post-Stalinist Cinema and the Russian Intelligentsia, 1953-1960: Strategies of Self-Representa-
tion, De-Stalinization, and the National Cultural Tradition (Saarbrücken: vdm Verlag, 2008), p. 285-288 for an
analysis of one of the earliest Soviet co-productions, The Heroes of Shipka, made with Bulgarian filmmakers in
1954.
33 To put this number in perspective, in 1965 France was involved in about 100 international co-productions.
Luyken, ‘The Business of Co-Productions’, p. 116. For the 8 July 1967 version of the French-Soviet Film

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 81

predictable, with safe genres like historical dramas, war films and children’s films.
The co-producers were usually from the ‘bloc’ or countries friendly with the Soviet
Union.34 The numbers of co-produced films showed a marked increase in the mid-
1960s, with five co-productions appearing in 1965, two in 1966 and six in 1967.
Publicity stressed the co-operation at all levels of the film, from screenwriting to
location shooting. For example, the Soviet-Romanian co-production of the World
War ii film, The Tunnel, was directed by a Romanian who co-wrote the screenplay
with a Soviet writer, with Soviet actors in the cast, location shooting in Romania
and studio shooting in the Soviet Union: ‘[The] Tunnel is a psychological film (…)
about friendship and unity of ideals born in unity of struggle.’35 Soviet Film, the
glossy export magazine translated into six languages (but not Russian) and sent
only abroad, announced a new round of joint films in early 1966. The Chief Edi-
tor at Mosfilm proclaimed that they were ‘an important means for promoting
cultural ties’ and were sometimes ‘unavoidable’ because the ‘destinies of different
nations are bound up closely.’ Prominent among the announced films were two
with the West – And They Marched to the East with Italy and Normandie-Nieman
with France.36 This renewed attention and small but significant increase in the
number of film co-productions must be understood in light of the new leadership
in the ussr and the Soviet film industry.

The Soviet film industry in 1965

In October 1964, Khrushchev had been ousted and Alexei Kosygin took over
Khrushchev’s position as Soviet Premier, while Leonid Brezhnev became Gen-
eral Secretary. Kosygin’s economic reforms included a move from heavy industry
and military hardware to light industry and consumer goods, and the principle of
‘material interest’ [or profit motive] was officially recommended by the 1965 Ple-
nary of the Central Committee.37 Although Brezhnev disagreed with this policy
and emerged as the man in power by 1970, Kosygin remained in his post.

Co-Production and Exchange agreement, see <http://www.cnc.fr/cnc_gallery_content/documents/uk/

Film_coproduction_agreement/239_agreement_Russia_08_07_1967.pdf> (accessed October 2010).
34 A us-ussr co-production had been in the works since 1962 but was halted at the end of 1965. For this story
see Marsha Siefert, ‘Meeting at a Far Meridian: American-Soviet Cooperation in and on Film in the 1960s’,
in Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (eds.), Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange in the
Soviet Bloc, 1940s-1960s (College Station, tx, forthcoming).
35 Anne Jäckel, ‘France and Romanian Cinema 1896-1999’, French Cultural Studies 11, no. 33 (October 2000),
p. 409-425.
36 ‘In Collaboration with’, Soviet Film 112 (September 1966), p. 5.
37 Steven P. Hill, ‘The Soviet Film Today’, Film Quarterly 20, no. 4 (Spring 1967), p. 33-52, here p. 44.

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82 | Divided Dreamworlds?

This period opened up opportunities for the film industry in various ways.
First, between 1953 and 1963, there was no separate ministry for film, which was
subordinated to the Ministry of Culture. In 1963, film once again was adminis-
tered by a separate bureaucratic entity, the Cinematography Committee at the
ussr Council of Ministers (Goskino), which in 1965 was again reorganised and
raised in status.38 Second, during the ‘thaw’ most ‘film workers’ belonged to other
unions, in particular the Writers Union, and had no union of their own. In the
late 1950s, film-makers began taking steps to create a separate organisation and
finally succeeded in establishing the Union of Film Workers at the First National
Congress of Film Workers held in Moscow in 1965.39
Also in 1965, the values of commerce and ‘entertainment’ returned to the Soviet
film industry, as represented by the Experimental Film Studio, which was set up
in the second half of 1965 to make films with potential for export as well as for
domestic appeal.40 The studio’s artistic supervisor was Grigorii Chukhrai, director
of Ballad of a Soldier (1959) and the executive producer was Vladimir Pozner Sr.,
a frequent player in co-production stories given his international experience as
a 1940s Hollywood screenwriter and Paris correspondent. Konstantin Simonov,
a prominent author who visited Hollywood in 1946, headed the script depart-
ment.41 The Experimental Film Studio was described as similar to the American
film entity United Artists, with no formal studio facilities and with directors and
actors hired on a film-by-film contract basis. Films were to be initiated by writ-
ing a film script rather than the usual literary scenarios. The proportions of time
spent on films were reassigned, with less shooting time and more time for prepa-
ration and editing. Compensation schemes also built in a percentage of profit,
with a special consideration of film genre. As Chukhrai stated in an interview:
‘The existing “planning” of the creative process causes direct harm to quality,’
and a new system would be instituted whereby ‘the economic effectiveness of the
studio will depend entirely on the people’s evaluation of the finished product.’42
Although the Experimental Film Studio ended in 1976, it represented an attempt
to minimise bureaucratic interference and depart from the ‘gray genres’ favoured
by the authorities.43

38 Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time, p. 58.

39 Val S. Golovskoy with John Rimberg, Behind the Soviet Screen: The Motion-Picture Industry in the ussr 1972-
1982, trans. Steven Hill (Ann Arbor mi: Ardis, 1986), p. 37.
40 Hill, ‘Soviet Film Today’.
41 Anna Lawton, Before the Fall: Soviet Cinema in the Gorbachev Years (Washington dc: New Academia, 2004),
p. 82.
42 ‘The Future of an Experiment: Lenin Prize Winner Grigori Chukhrai Speaks’, Sovetskaia Rossia (19 May 1965),
3, trans. cdsp 17, no. 22 (23 June 1965), p. 31-32.
43 George Faraday, Revolt of the Filmmakers: The Struggle for Artistic Autonomy and the Fall of the Soviet Film Industry
(University Park pa: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 125; Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time, p. 57-62.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 83

Yet, as always in the Soviet Union, there were countervailing tendencies. When
Alexei Romanov from the Central Committee’s Department of Propaganda and
Agitation44 was dramatically named head of the Cinematography Committee by
the ussr Council of Ministers in March 1963,45 he brought strong ideological
expectations for Soviet film to promote ‘the political enlightenment and aesthetic
education of the people’ in accordance with ‘the interests of communist construc-
tion and the Soviet nation.’46 This appointment had come in the midst of Khrush-
chev’s crackdown on the arts, which for film culminated in the controversy sur-
rounding the awarding of first prize at the July 1963 Moscow Film Festival to
Fellini’s 8 1/2; Romanov was forced to declare in a press conference: ‘We reject
any implication that the jury’s verdict marks a retreat in our own ideological strug-
gle – contrary to misleading comments in the foreign press.’47 Thus the change
in leadership and atmosphere must be interpreted cautiously. While certainly the
Experimental Film Studio provided an opportunity for talented film-makers, as
well as an attempt to improve the recognisably laggard film production, its viability
and longevity were never secure.
From 1965, the emphasis within Goskino appeared to be expansion, both in
the numbers of films made for mass audiences and in popular genres, as well
as in terms of its own power. As popular movies increased economic rewards
and also migrated to or were made for television, so too did the departments and
activities related to film, including film distribution, advertising and international
relations, grow and prosper.48 The new atmosphere of striving for popularity and
power through industry-building was displayed at the fifth International Moscow
Film Festival held from 5-20 July 1967, coincidentally the 50th anniversary of the
Revolution, and attended by several international stars and directors. In his report
to the us Secretary of State, the Chair of the us delegation, Jack Valenti – the
recently appointed Head of the Motion Picture Association of America – found the
Moscow theatre at 10 o’clock in the morning ‘filled and jumping with people (…)
applauding and cheering response from the moment that the trademark of a u.s.
film appeared on the screen.’ Noting the interest of the Soviet public in American
films, he adds that ‘creative artists in films speak a common language which most
of the time rises above doctrinal and transitory stereotypes,’ with film offering ‘a
most promising and fruitful channel of communications.’ He also had ‘private
conversations’ with ‘Chairman Romanov’, which ‘led to improved understanding

44 Golovskoy, Behind the Soviet Screen, p. 13-14.

45 Peter Johnson (Reuters), ‘New Film “Czar” Names In Red Cultural Shakeup’, Washington Post (24 March
1963).
46 Quoted in Woll, Real Images, p. 225.
47 This story has been related in several contexts; see e.g., Caute, The Dancer Defects, p. 235-239, quotation on
p. 237.
48 Woll, Real Images, p. 226-227.

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84 | Divided Dreamworlds?

and perhaps cleared the way for more substantive results of benefit to both coun-
tries in the future.’49 Just one week after the end of this festival Alexei Romanov
addressed a long and comprehensive memo to the cpsu Central Committee in
support of a new unit to deal directly with joint film productions.50

The Soviet Case for Film Co-productions – East and West

The July 1967 memo begins by recounting several of the coproductions (or ‘joint
productions’) completed or in the works for the ‘socialist countries,’ tactfully one
from each. The titles listed included those genres likely to find favour with the
Party leadership: socialist biographies like Lenin in Poland (Lenin v Pol’she, Sergei
Iutkevich, 1965), historical dramas from the Russian Civil War, like The Red and
the White (Csillagosok, katonák, Miklós Jancsó, 1967) co-produced with Hungary,51
and World War ii dramas with Romania (The Tunnel, Francisc Munteanu, 1966)
and Yugoslavia (Checked – No Mines, Zdravko Velimirovic and Iurii Lysenko, 1965).
Documentaries about the Soviet Union from film-makers of socialist countries
and Soviet use of technical facilities of film studios in socialist countries were also
mentioned. ‘The volume and the variety of forms of such work have significantly
increased in recent years.’
The memo next elaborates the advantages of recent Soviet co-productions with
Western countries, specifically mentioning France, Italy and Japan. New agree-
ments had been signed with Italy in January 1967 and with France during the
visit of the French Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou. ‘The business and artistic
circles of France and Italy have great hopes for these agreements,’ says Romanov,
‘since they see in them an opportunity, to break free, to an extent, from the domina-
tion of the American film monopolies and to strengthen their national cinemas.’52
Throughout the memo, the language of cultural contest and presumed shared
alliances in the struggle against Hollywood are emphasised. Romanov’s analysis
was not dissimilar to complaints made by the Europeans themselves. He provides

49 Jack Valenti, ‘Report of the United States Delegation to the V. International Film Festival, Moscow, u.s.s.r.,
July 5 through July 20, 1967.’ Unpublished report submitted to the us Secretary of State, Foy Kohler Papers,
Manuscript collection no. 036, Canaday Center, University of Toledo Libraries.
50 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, ll. 136-142 [Stamped 27 July 1967].
51 Jancsó’s film was not finished at the time of the memo; his ‘ambiguous and distinctly non-heroic portrayal
of events’ displeased the Soviet authorities who made changes to the film for the premiere and later banned
it. Jancsó still managed to have his own version distributed. See John Cunningham, Hungarian Cinema from
Coffee House to Multiplex (London: Wallflower, 2004), p. 111-112; Mira and Anton J. Liehm, The Most Important
Art: Eastern European Film after 1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 395.
52 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, l.137.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 85

data about American investment in English and French films and explicates fully
his perception of the situation in Italy:

In Italy, the American film monopolies have managed to capture both the distri-
bution and production of Italian films. More than three-fourths of Italian films
are made on American money; Italian actors, directors, and even producers are
hired by representatives of American film companies. It is not rare that, due
to this, Sovexportfilm, wishing to buy one or another Italian film, has either to
negotiate with the American companies that own these films, or to cancel the
purchase altogether.
This situation in the Italian cinema has put some renowned Italian directors,
among them a number of communists, in a very difficult situation, and has left
them without work (De Santis, [Roberto] Rossellini, [Carlo] Lizzani). Some pro-
gressive Italian directors are forced to make films for American film companies
([Vittorio] De Sica, Nanni Loy, Dino Risi).

Romanov concludes that cooperation with Italy and France would help ‘the Soviet
film industry accumulate the experience these countries possess, and then use
the most progressive methods of modern film production in its own work,’ a key
concern for film-makers and also perceived as one of the reasons that Soviet films
had difficulty penetrating the world market.
Romanov’s other reasons for pursuing joint films recognise additional aspects
of the cultural contest, even among their own socialist colleagues. For example,
he mentions that the Western countries are already co-operating with the other
socialist countries for joint films and mentions in particular Yugoslavia, Czecho-
slovakia and Poland. He relates this to ‘considerable interest in analogous co-oper-
ation with the Soviet Union’; presumably, the success of other socialist countries
would persuade the Soviet bureaucrats of a need to increase their influence. A
second and compelling reason he offers is the ‘huge artistic and commercial suc-
cess’ of the Soviet filmed version of War and Peace (Bondarchuk 1966) in Europe
and Japan. In film industries success breeds imitation or at least multiplication.
Thirdly, Romanov importantly places Soviet cinema within the global industry: ‘It
must be noted that in recent years a general tendency has formed and is developing in
the world cinema toward international co-operation in film production, and it would be
sensible to use it.’53 This sentence is underlined in the document, presumably by a
member of the Central Committee who also presumably found the idea ‘sensible’.
To sum up, Romanov articulates what might be considered the most positive
formula for combining economic gain with ideological goals.

53 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, l.139. An accompanying note in the margin says ‘Eto zdorovo’, a colloquial Russian
expression meaning roughly ‘This is great’, or ‘This is cool’.

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86 | Divided Dreamworlds?

The implementation of the opportunities opening up in the area of Soviet inter-

national co-productions (on subjects acceptable to us) will allow the Soviet motion
picture industry to combine the commercial goals with the tasks of international
ideological influence in a more flexible way, will bring in additional hard-cur-
rency profits, and will act as another important channel through which we will be
able to more actively propagandise the communist world-vision, the Soviet film
art and the masters of our cinema on the world screens.54

The memo closes with a bold evaluation of the Soviet film bureaucracy that forms
the basis of his request. ‘The Soviet cinema at present is not fully prepared to con-
duct a wide joint film cooperation with foreign countries.’ Romanov enumerates
the challenges in practical terms, from how to get sufficiently quick decisions from
the authorities when negotiating with foreign film companies to how to pay for
visiting foreign film dignitaries to the fact that Soviet studio representatives arrive
for business meetings ‘later than scheduled.’ He even ventures economic com-
parisons like the difference in the costs of film production and its organisation,
as well as in the salaries of actors and film personnel in the studios of the ussr
and other socialist countries. He ends with a request ‘to allow the Committee to
create a special creative artistic unit that would centralize work on co-productions
with foreign countries, as well as production services to foreign film companies.’
On 1 March 1968, the Deputy Chairman of the cpsu Central Committee’s
Department for Culture ‘recalled’ the letter, with the statement that ‘at present,
the Cinematography Committee at the ussr Council of Ministers is at work on a
long-term plan of joint film productions which will be presented to the cpsu Cen-
tral Committee. After this plan is confirmed, it will become possible to review the
question of the Committee’s rights and of the order in which joint film produc-
tions with foreign countries should proceed.’55 The promise of ‘new suggestions’
did in fact materialise in December 1968. The All-Union Corporation of Joint Pro-
ductions and Production Services for Foreign Film Organizations, or Sovinfilm,
was created as one of the units under the Administration for External Relations of
the ussr State Cinema Committee (Goskino), which also supervised Sovexport-
film for foreign trade and Sovinterfest for international film festivals. This organi-
sation was to encourage co-productions and help integrate Soviet film-making
into the global cinema marketplace. According to its President, Sovinfilm was first
and foremost an ‘economic organization. We are here to organize coproductions
between the Soviet Union and any other country that has an interesting proposi-
tion.’ The goal of Sovinfilm was to give aid, especially if a foreign producer wanted

54 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, l.140-141; emphasis added.

55 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, l.145. At this time the State Committee for Cinematography answered to the ussr
Council of Ministers. Roth-Ey, Moscow Prime Time, p. 30, fn1.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 87

to shoot footage, etc. – ‘all the services – naturally, for a price.’56 In another inter-
view Sovinfilm Chairman S.A. Kuznetsov listed a number of ongoing projects, but
argued that the most important were those in which ‘our film studios participate
as equal partners.’57 Striving for this type of arrangement created the greatest chal-
lenge for the Soviet Union.
Soviet protestations about the importance of economics did not of course
negate the problems of finding a suitable topic and developing an acceptable script
for a co-production. Other European co-productions of the time, especially those
aiming for artistic consideration, were also made on topics that were ‘politically
consensual, aesthetically conventional, and rooted in high cultural traditions,’
with stories based on literary classics, grand historical narratives and cultural
heroes.’58 An early co-ordinated project for European co-production sponsored by
the Council of Europe had hoped to use the films to demonstrate the ‘historical
process of [European] interchange which had been taking place throughout the
centuries by less deliberate and conscious methods,’ but in the end each country
contributed only one film, the styles so highly varied that the films had little cir-
culation.59 Throughout Europe in these years, prestige products adapted ‘great
literature’ or the lives of ‘great men’ but genre films like melodrama and history
crossed borders most easily.

Soviet Co-Produced Films after 1965

Foreign film-makers or entrepreneurs interested in working with the ussr read-

ily understood that the choice of film subject ought to favourably project Soviet
achievements, even if the suggestions elided the imperial Russian past and com-
munist present.60 Romanov’s memo affirms this choice:

The subjects suggested for co-productions are, as a rule, acceptable for our side
(adaptations of Russian and Soviet classics, films based on the music of Russian
composers). In recent times, they also include the events of the October revolu-

56 Otari V. Teneyshvili, quoted in Vladimir Pozner, ‘Sovinfilm, New ussr Body, to Oil Machinery for Co-Prod.
with West’, Variety 257, no. 13 (11 February 1970), p. 29.
57 B. Vaulin, ‘At the Joint Production Headquarters’, Novosti ekrana (Vilnius), no. 47 (1969).
58 Tim Bergfelder, International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s
(New York: Berghahn Books, 2005), p. 53-58.
59 C.H. Dand and J.A. Harrison, Educational and Cultural Films: Experiments in European Co-Production (Stras-
bourg: Council of Europe, 1965).
60 The complexities for the Soviet interpretation of imperial Russian culture appeared long before the Cold War.
See Kevin F. M. Platt and David Brandenberger (eds.), Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalin-
ist Propaganda (Madison wi: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).

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88 | Divided Dreamworlds?

tion and the Second World War (…). For large-scale joint film projects such sub-
jects can be used as, e.g., the historical events of the Second World War or historic
connections between the ussr and particular countries.61

As Romanov predicted, War and Peace (1968) literally and figuratively aided the
Soviet desires to co-produce a large historical epic with the West. Sergei Bondar-
chuk, favoured Soviet actor and director of War and Peace, used the Red Army as
extras in this and in Waterloo (1970), an Italian/Soviet production in which the
French were once again defeated. The Italian company Dino De Laurentis Cin-
ematografica was provided with shooting locations, extras and pyrotechnics and
featured many Soviet actors.62 International stars were also recruited to expand
market potential. Waterloo starred Christopher Plummer as Wellington and Rod
Steiger as Napoleon. Claudia Cardinale and Sean Connery appeared in the 1969
Italian/Soviet co-production The Red Tent.63
Thus, the economic model of epic films and big stars, action and adventure,
exciting locales and historical costumes was realised relatively soon after Sovin-
film’s creation. By 1981, the Soviet co-production with France and Switzerland
– Teheran 1943 – starring Alain Delon, was the top-grossing film in the ussr for
1981.64 Its description epitomises the thriller Soviet style:

The leaders of the German Reich are planning the assassination of Stalin, Roo-
sevelt and Churchill. Carefully prepared by the aces of the German intelligence,
the act was to take place in the autumn of 1943 during the Teheran conference
of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. The film tells how that criminal political
operation was uncovered and foiled. The action takes place in Germany, France,
Britain, Switzerland, Iran, the usa and ussr.65

For reasons of solidarity the Soviet Union pursued co-productions with other
socialist countries in the socialist bloc and by the time of perestroika the Soviet
Union had produced at least one or two films with each of the bloc countries,
including Cuba, Vietnam, China and Mongolia. While the topic of socialist co-

61 rgani, f. 5, op. 59, d. 64, l.139.

62 B. Vaulin, ‘At the Joint Production Headquarters’.
63 Paula Michaels, ‘Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Red Tent: A Case Study in International Coproduction across the
Iron Curtain’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 26, no. 3 (August 2006), p. 311-326. Connery ap-
parently had just fallen out with the James Bond film producers and few in the ussr had seen the Bond films.
Maria Kuvshinova, ‘Film Scholar Sergei Lavrentiev on the History of Coproductions in the Soviet Union….’
Interview, 5 January 2011; available at <http://openspace.ru/cinema/projects/70/details/19612>; (accessed 17
February 2011).
64 Available at <http://encyclopedia.quickseek.com/index.php/> (accessed 29 May 2006).
65 Advertisement in Soviet Film (April 1981).

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 89

productions goes beyond the scope of this chapter,66 one example can illustrate
how a socialist co-production attempted to involve western film-makers and ended
up with a Soviet partner in attempting to make a film considered artistic in form,
socialist in content, and yet still a commercial success – the 1971 biopic, Goya.
Usually discussed within the oeuvre of its prestigious director, Konrad Wolf,
Goya is notable as a socialist co-production initiated by defa, the film studio of the
gdr. The story is based on the 1951 novelised biography by Leon Feuchtwanger, a
German exile in Hollywood. Goya’s transformation from a court portrait painter
to an artist of revolution seemed a perfect socialist biography. Its history as a co-
production, as narrated from German documents,67 describes the hopes of the
director and his colleagues in 1963 for a coalition with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia,
with the partners to provide both locations and ‘actors with darker hair and eyes.’
By 1964, defa managers for financial reasons also sought Western partners from
Madrid, Paris and Munich, as well as government support for the plan ‘to open
up countries and markets for our cinema’ as well as to gain more control over the
development of German literary heritage to be adapted ‘according to our national
concept and duty.’ Only with the failure of deals with a West German studio, a
French actor and a Yugoslav studio, was a Soviet partner pursued, even though
the idea had been broached as early as 1962 by the novelist’s widow; translations
of Feuchtwanger’s work had a checkered but noticeable status in the ussr follow-
ing his 1937 visit. In July 1966, Konrad Wolf discussed the possibility of a future
joint film with Alexei Romanov during a trip to the Soviet Union and the next year
attempted to negotiate a contract with Mosfilm, supported by the Soviet director
Mikhail Romm, but the agreement failed.68 The acquisition of Soviet partnership
(and their large ruble contribution) only succeeded after Erich Honecker person-
ally wrote to the Soviet minister of culture in 1971. In addition to defa and the
Soviet studio Lenfilm, who supplied its star Donatas Banionis, the Sofia Feature
Film Studio of Bulgaria and Bosna Film of Yugoslavia participated.
The appearance of the film in 1971 seemed to fit the more liberal artistic envi-
ronment69 and the interest in the pre-socialist cultural traditions and the appropri-

66 The dynamics of film co-operation, involving the rivalry and resistance of the countries in the Soviet bloc, is
a much larger topic. Each country had its own film traditions and desire for independence from Moscow in
their film-making efforts. This led them to negotiate their own co-production deals with each other and the
West. For more see Marsha Siefert, ‘East European Cold War Culture(s)? Commonalities, Alterities and Film
Industries’, in Annette Vowinckel, Thomas Lindenberger and Marcus Payk (eds.), Cold War Cultures: Perspec-
tives on Eastern and Western European Societies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012).
67 Mariana Zaharieva Ivanova, ‘defa and East European Cinemas: Co-Productions, Transnational Exchange and
Artistic Exchange’, Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin, 2011, p. 59-73.
68 Ivanova, ‘defa’, 71, cites the veto by the Soviet Vice Minister of Culture because the script ‘lacked resonance
with contemporary socialist reality.’
69 Seán Allan, ‘defa: An Historical Overview’, in Seán Allan and John Sandford (eds.), defa: East German Cin-
ema, 1946-1992 (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999), p. 15-16.

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90 | Divided Dreamworlds?

ation of the traditional literary canon that emerged in the gdr in the early 1970s.70
The lavish sets, the two-part story, the recreation of Inquisition Spain, the large
amount of film shot, the detailed 150-page book accompanying the production,
the potential marketing ‘tie-ins’ with Spanish concerts and the reproduction of
Goya’s works71 all suggest that indeed, as Liehm and Liehm state, Goya aimed to
synthesise three values that defa films [and Soviet films] had until then been try-
ing in vain to achieve: artistic quality, recognition abroad and box-office success.72
Although respected, the film did not quite meet these expectations.
The film also struggled as a co-production, with criticism from the Soviet part-
ners.73 Lenfilm’s managing director demanded substantial revisions to the tribu-
nal scene and shortened the ending by 20 minutes; their dramaturge objected
to the ‘modernised’ language of the dialogues and requested an introduction for
younger filmgoers.74 The Soviet critique had one other referent, though – the
Hollywood biopic about Goya that they had purchased and distributed in the late
1960s. Already in 1968, Sovetskaia Rossiya had complained about Ava Gardner’s
‘naked Maja’ when shown at the Red Sormovo Plant’s Palace of Culture,75 and a
prominent eight-page 1972 review of Goya led by ridiculing Gardner’s ‘lush pose’
one more time. In unifying ‘the artist and the life’,76 the history of the film Goya
also embodies Feuchtwanger’s subtitle – ‘the difficult road to knowledge’.

Cultural Export versus Co-Production

Two other examples that coincide with the creation of Sovinfilm and the renewed
push toward co-productions display the Soviet hopes and concerns in trying to
co-produce films on their own terms and especially on their own culture. These
two efforts embody two international successes of Russian musical culture – the
bass Feodor Chaliapin and the composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Mark Donskoi,
veteran Soviet director best known for his film trilogy on the life of Maxim Gorky,
made the case for why a filmed life of Chaliapin should not be a co-production in

70 Daniela Berghahn, ‘The Re-Evaluation of Goethe and the Classical Tradition in the Films of Egon Günther
and Siegfried Kühn’, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), defa: East German Cinema, p. 222-223.
71 Larson Powell, ‘Breaking the Frame of Painting: Konrad Wolf’s Goya’, Studies in European Cinema 5, no. 2
(2008), p. 131-141, here p. 133.
72 Liehm and Liehm, Most Important Art, p. 363.
73 Foreign comparisons of the film with Tarkovsky’s biopic of the icon painter Andrei Rublev, released that year
in the Soviet Union five years after its completion, would not have helped.
74 Ivanova, ‘defa’, p. 71-73.
75 I. Leshchevsky, ‘Why Buy Trashy Foreign Films? Newspaper Asks’, Sovetskaia Rossia (17 April 1968), p. 3; cdsp
20, no. 16 (8 May 1968), p. 17-19; excerpted in New York Times (21 April 1968), iv, p. 13.
76 Irina Rubanova, Review of Goya, Na ekranakh mira, 4 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972), p. 36-44.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 91

a 15 December 1971 letter – to Comrade Brezhnev himself. He had dreamed of

this film for over ten years and prepared a two-part script, he wrote; in fact the
film had been announced already in the export magazine Soviet Film in 1969.77
‘As soon as they learned that I was going to make a film about Chaliapin,’ writes
Donskoi, ‘foreign companies hastened to offer their services for a co-production. I
have refused, since I believe that such a film should only be made in our country.’78
He gives several reasons, among which are that his travels abroad reinforced the
subject’s necessity. He also argues that Soviet cinema must go on the offensive,
citing barriers put up against the distribution of Soviet films and the ‘billion dol-
lars’ the fbi has allocated for the ideological war through the art of cinema.79 He
offers what would appear to be an appealing theme, the way in which many Soviet
productions dealt with Russians who became famous abroad and did not return
after the revolution:

The first film, The Glory and the Life, shows how the powerful sons of the era – the
creators of a new, genuine art – were emerging from the depths of the people.
The second film, The Last Kiss, deals with the tragedy of a man separated from his
native land. The leitmotif is: ‘Russia can do without us, but we cannot do without
her.’ This results in the conclusion: ‘No matter how rich and famous you are, if
you don’t have native soil under your feet, if there are no dear eyes around – your
happiness is lonely, and a lone man cannot be happy. The sun doesn’t shine in
a foreign land!’

The request was ‘postponed’ and in spite of there being a full director’s two-part
script, the film was never made. The usual explanation is that the ‘postponement’
was due to Donskoi’s co-author of the film script, the well-known poet and writer
Alexander Galich.80 Already warned in 1969 after the Western publication of a
samizdat collection of his songs, Galich was expelled from the Writers’ Union on
29 December 1971, two weeks after Donskoi’s request. Soon thereafter he was
expelled from the Union of Cinematographers and he left the country in January
1974. His participation makes Donskoi’s suggestion that there was co-production
interest quite probable, since Galich had been to France twice as the writer for the
French-Soviet co-production of the biopic on Petipa, the French ballet master in
nineteenth-century Russia (Third Youth, Jean Dreville, 1965). Another potential

77 ‘A Great Singer’, Soviet Film (October 1967), p. 12. The imdb also lists this film as a 1969 production, and as
late as August 1971 the Musical Times (112, no. 1542, p. 759) lists its subject and director.
78 TsKhSD, f.5, op. 63, d. 152, ll. P. 1-2; reprinted in V. Fomin (ed. & commentary), Kinematograf ottepeli: doku-
menty i svidetelstva (Moscow: Materik, 1998), p. 171-172.
79 Donskoi also cites the newly formed pen as part of this effort.
80 Fomin’s editorial comment confirms this reason.

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92 | Divided Dreamworlds?

co-producing country was Italy, as evidently urged by Chaliapin’s son, Fedor Fedor-
ovich Chaliapin. Galich’s daughter tells a story that might also explain Donskoi’s
protests against co-production. Presumably a rich American offered to finance the
film and Galich had no choice but to advise him to contact the Minister of Culture,
E.A. Furtseva, who refused. ‘When Donskoi joined the discussion, arguing that it
would be nice to film in Paris and in America (…) Madam Minister cut him short:
“You can very well shoot everything in Riga.”’81
A contrast to the Chaliapin example comes with a concurrent attempt initiated
by the successful Russian émigré Hollywood composer, Dmitri Tiomkin,82 to film
a life of Tchaikovsky. He obtained a pledge of support from an American studio
and their co-operation was announced in 1966. According to Alexander Slavnov,
the head of the Foreign Section of the Moscow Cinema Committee, ‘though made
at a Soviet studio, [the film] is designed for the world market. Dmitri Temkin [sic],
eminent American composer, will participate in the making of it. Warner Brothers
have already signed a contract with Sovexportfilm for its distribution.’83 In what
might be considered a typical distribution agreement, Warner Brothers would
release the film in all countries outside the Soviet bloc and Finland. Mosfilm, the
major Soviet studio, would supply the star, director, script and technicians while
Warner Brothers was to pay for any international stars and to give advice on ways
to give the Russian script more international appeal. In the us press Tchaikovsky
was publicised as part of the renewal of the us-Soviet film exchange deal that had
expired at the end of 1965.84 Later that year, the film was discussed at the first
World Congress of the Screen Writers Guild in Hollywood, with representatives
from 14 countries including the ussr, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. ‘Warner-
Soviet Film Plan seen as Help in Easing Tensions’ read the 1966 headline. The
article noted that the usual problem with co-productions was ‘the trouble of find-
ing a topic acceptable to both the Americans and the Russians,’ but concluded that
Tchaikovsky ‘will not ruffle anyone’s feathers.’85
By the time of its Russian premiere in the fall of 1970, Tchaikovsky’s role as
cultural ambassador had been undermined by the sale and resale of Warner Broth-
ers, with the new management looking for sure moneymakers. When the film was

81 Alena Galich, quoted at <http://www.bard.ru/article/24/07.htm> (accessed 21 August 2010). Given that So-
viet Film in October 1967 had advertised that filming would be done in Italy, France and America along with
Russia, the events in this story must have occurred later.
82 His Hollywood success was notable for its American character. Tiomkin received Academy Awards for High
Noon, The High and the Mighty, and The Old Man and the Sea, and composed the musical score for many other
Westerns, including Duel in the Sun, Giant, and The Alamo plus the theme song for television’s ‘Rawhide’.
83 ‘in Collaboration With…’, Soviet Film no. 9 (September 1966), p. 5.
84 Vincent Canby, ‘u.s.-Soviet Deals on Films Pending’, New York Times (26 February 1966), p. 14.
85 Harry Bernstein, ‘Warner-Soviet Film Plan Seen as Help in Easing Tensions’, Los Angeles Times (12 October
1966), A1.

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Co-Producing Cold War Culture | 93

ready for distribution, ‘Warners walked away.’86 Tiomkin tried again. He acquired
the English-language rights and created a new version, which premiered in the
fall of 1971. The film was trimmed from 157 minutes to just over 90 minutes and
used a prologue and voice-over narration read by Lawrence Harvey plus subtitles.
In his many interviews Tiomkin reiterated his hopes that the film ‘will improve
us-ussr relations and is sure it will establish the Soviet film industry as a major
force.’87 But even with all Tiomkin’s efforts, including the nomination by the Acad-
emy Awards committee for 1971 and support from the Minister of Culture, E.A.
Furtseva, on her own trip to the United States (and Hollywood) in January 1972,
the film was considered a foreign language entry and did not fulfil the dreams of
its makers, either in the ussr or the us.88

Conclusion

While the ‘Party line’ is a major feature of Soviet cinema, the ussr shared vari-
ous concerns with other European cinemas vis-à-vis Hollywood and faced similar
problems in developing its film industry, including the challenge of television
and the requirements for blockbusters. European countries, especially France and
Italy, were leading the way in co-productions not only for economic gain but also
for their own interests in cultural diplomacy89 and film was part of that effort.
The interest in reinforcing European connections, seeking a common denomina-
tor in European art as compared to Hollywood plots, and forging some economic
solidarity in the ongoing efforts at European integration are sufficiently important
that they should be considered as part of the story of Cold War cultural diplomacy,
European style.
In what way do these efforts represent a form of cultural diplomacy in the cul-
tural contest writ large, that is, the East-West rivalry? In spite of well-publicised
attempts to put together a Soviet-American co-production from 1960 onwards, the
only one officially completed during the Cold War period was a version of Maeter-
linck’s play, The Blue Bird, released in 1976. The New York Times critic cynically
observed that ‘peace treaties and trade pacts are international agreements arrived
at through compromise. Movies are not. The Blue Bird, the first (and possibly the
last) American-Soviet motion picture co-production, isn’t good and it isn’t a dis-

86 Steve Toy, ‘Tiomkin Bullish On Producing Films With Bearish Russia’, Variety (20 December 1971), p. 3.
87 Mary Blume, ‘Tiomkin Goes Home for Film’, Los Angeles Times (14 December 1969), R 34.
88 For a more complete history of this film see Marsha Siefert, ‘Russische Leben, Sowjetische Filme: Die Film-
biographie, Tchaikovsky und der Kalte Krieg’, in Lars Karl (ed.), Leinwand zwischen Tauwetter und Frost: Der
osteuropäische Spiel- und Dokumentarfilm im Kalten Krieg (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), p. 133-170.
89 On French efforts to use Europe as a means to export French culture abroad, see Anthony Haigh, Cultural
Diplomacy in Europe (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1974), p. 28.

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94 | Divided Dreamworlds?

grace. It’s not much of anything.’90 But that pronouncement perhaps misses the
essence of cultural diplomacy, which is not necessarily the product but the process
itself and the larger context in which any given film must be understood. In the
realm of negotiation about individual films, archival evidence suggests that each
scene was carefully scripted and styled, debated back and forth through endless
revisions, and argued at the highest levels while aiming for a mass-market film
with artistic resonance. Such discussions, even among well-intentioned film-mak-
ers at the level of filming and editing decisions, exhibit a kind of diplomacy that
does involve cultural values and negotiation. The deal-making, the official visits,
and the publicity about the process also chronicle frustrations and intersect with
high politics. Co-productions, along with all the other foreign films exchanged,
seen, debated and analysed, form part of a larger portrait of attempts at co-oper-
ation amid the crises of the Cold War decades. The process kept a line open, a
possibility alive, even if it seemed that most of the time each country preferred its
own image and version of the other.

90 Vincent Canby, ‘This “Blue Bird” Has a Right to Sing the Blues’, New York Times (16 May 1976), p. 77.

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