V. Complete the passage with the following words from the box Translate the sentences:
lasted entertainment domestic attracted viewers adaptations range |
The moving picture age began in Russia on May 6, 1896, at the Aquarium amusement park in St. Petersburg. With its origins as a novelty in stalls at fairs, cinema was seen as ________ (1) rather than an art form.
Certainly, the experience of watching cinema was different: series of short films would run continuously and people would flit in and out as they fancied. The audience was often raucous and, despite the fact that cinema was "silent" (or "dumb" as Russians, perhaps more accurately, call it), a ______ (2) of the early films were based around songs that _______ (3) could sing along with. There were a number of historical productions and ________ (4) of well-known works of literature as well, since cinema was seen as working better when the audience was already familiar with the plot.
The real breakthough for Russian cinema was the start of the First World War. Imports were hindered, and demand for ________ (5) films rocketed. The first cinema house was open in 1906 by Alexander Khanzhonkov, the Russian representative of a foreign firm. And by 1913 Russia had 1,412 cinema houses where shows _______ (6) from ten minutes up to an hour.
Until 1908, however, the vast majority of movies shown in Russia were French. That year, Alexander Drankov (1880-1945), a portrait photographer and entrepreneur, opened the first Russian owned and operated studio, in St. Petersburg. His inaugural picture, Stenka Razin, was a great success and inspired other Russians to open studios. By 1916 Russia boasted more than one hundred studios that produced five hundred pictures. The country’s four thousand movie theaters _______ (7) an estimated 2 million spectators daily.
Unit 2. From war to revolution. Entertainment to agitation (1914-1917)
In July 1914, Austria-Hungary and Germany declared war on Russia. Pathè closed its Russian office in 1915 as rising anti-German sentiments led to houses being set on fire, and Thiemann – with a German-sounding name – came into precarious position, while his business partner Reinhardt left Russia for good.
T
he
rare foreign imports (facilitated by Ermoliev’s company, for
example) were the preferred viewing for upper classes: almost 80 per
cent of films shown prior to 1914 had been foreign. During the war,
Russian film production increased along with the proportion of
Russian films shown in cinemas. The war situation imbued the country
with a depressive atmosphere as the Russian army suffered defeats.
Production companies began to deflect from the war reality by focusing on melodramas centred on women and by adapting literature. The unhappy endings, which were so typical of Russian melodramas of the period, may be interpreted in terms of genre, but they were also an indirect reflection of a reality where women lost their men in the war. The melodrama was an emotionalized version of coping with the new role of women. Culturally, the decadence of the Silver Age period contributed to the key function that the ‘new woman’ assumed on screen.
Mirages (Mirazhi, dir. Chardynin, Khanzhonkov 1915) was one such film of a ‘new woman’. Marianna (played by Vera Kholodnaya) is a young woman with artistic talent who reads books to the millionaire Dymov (Bibikov).
W
hen
Marianna meets his handsome son (Vitold Polonsky, 1879-1919), she is
gradually more and more drawn away from her safe home and her fiancée
Sergei towards the ‘dark forces’ of the artistic, Bohemian world:
Marianna gives in to Dymov Jr. and when he eventually drops her, it
is too late: rejected by her family, she kills herself.
TASKS
Match the words on the left and on the right to make expressions. Find them in the text. Translate them.
business situation
upper imports
war age
foreign function
silver companies
key partner
production class