俄罗斯电影史英文MLA格式论文.doc

Friedrich 1Friedrich (Feng Xin)Prof. BillFCWR 161.1022 May, 2012A New Film EmpireAfter the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Russian economy got into trouble. Film industry was an important source of national economic income in the past, but in the process of transferring from planned economy to a market economy, Russian films experienced crises. The script creation got into confusion, film production regressed and the original distribution and projection system were damaged. The number of film audience was reduced a lot. As Baidu Encyclopedia shows, in 1988, 2.5 billion Russians went to cinemas, but this number changed to only 75 million in 1997. (“Contemporary Russian Film”) At the same time, foreign films took up the Russian office box quickly, so domestic films had lost competitiveness and audience. To solve these problems, the Russian film makers, denied the traditions of the past, fully followed Western film. When learning from the West, due to lack of techniques and finance, the attempt was ineffective and what is worse, it resulted in a decline of the quality of Russian film. So the film makers came back to the tradition, paid attention to narrative language and image modeling. In the 70 years between the October revolution and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Soviet film makers created a unique aesthetic style with beautiful poetic implication and lyrical prose rhythm. Soviet literary works affected film Friedrich 2industry a lot, and many famous Soviet films were based on those literary works. What is more, Soviet film had paid more and more attention to exploring deep meaning of film themes and opening up new subject matters. Night Watch was an example of the films which came back to the tradition. This film was based on Sergei Lukyanenkos famous novel The Night Watch. It was the first international standard Russian film after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. What is more, it was also the first Hollywood-style Russian operation and created a large business miracle at last. Night Watch achieved better ratings than Spider-Man 2 and Troy in Russia. (“Contemporary Russian Film”)Night Watch features a dark otherworld, a cursed virgin, a giant vortex hovering over an apartment complex in Moscow, vampires, shape-shifters, seers, and a millennia-old struggle between good and evil. Kevin A. Ranson said, “The entire production seems intent on creating a mood and trapping the audience in it until the very last frame is shown, and for a fantasy film, thats how it should be done.” (Ranson) Former music-video director Timur Bekmambetov cleverly toys with moral ambiguities and demoniac CGI effects like a death-metal puppeteer. I think Night Watchs demoniac CGI effects were big success and attracted a lot of audience. Its plot was not very excellent, but the perfect scene made it a famous and successful film. Although one films success could not represent the whole development trend of Russian films, Night Watch proved to the world that Russian film industry began to Friedrich 3recover after the 15-year stagnation.Besides Night Watch, Russian film makers also produced several good films with excellent CGI effects, such as Paragraph 78 (Oleg Pogodin, 2008), Hooked on the Game (Pavel Sanayev, 2009) and so on.As we know, Russia has a very long history, so some directors found inspiration from Russian history. It was also an action that film makers came back to the Russian tradition.From the Soviet era, court drama has being the most important part of Russian historical film. Besides introducing the basic information of Russian history, Russian court drama also analyzed the qualities of all kinds of people, including tsars, officers and even palace guards. In 1990s, New Russian film makers, committed to the integration of subject matters and performance practices. This made the films have a greater artistic appeal.Poor Poor Pavel in 2003 was based on Pavel I, a tsar from 1801 to 1825. This film was directed by Vitali Melnikov. Pavel had subjected to the regent of her mother, Catherine for a long time, what nearly drove him mad and resulted in his depression mentality. Soon after ascended the throne, Pavel managed the country with his personal fantasy. Eventually he was murdered by his ministers. In this film, several characters were hard to analyze and it would cost you lots of time to understand their qualities. So I think the best part of the film is actors performance. Their perfect performance made the characters much more vivid. And Friedrich 4Robert Denerstein said, “The actors performed really well, especially Pavel, he treated Paul and Alexander with rational compassion, although in fact to be considered for the Russia country.” (Denerstein) I agree with Denerstein and Pavel is my favorite role in the film. Pavel seems to be a madman on the surface, but I think his strange actions and decisions were resulted from lack of ability of feel someone elses joy and pain empathy. So in certain circumstances he may make extreme and outrageous responses. Compared with excellent CGI effects in modern action films, Russian historical films pay more attention to the portraying of characters. So Russian historical films are more like exquisite and meticulous works of art in the museum. Russian film makers also produced some war films related to World War, but in a different view from the Soviet-era films. Soviet-era war films often promoted political and ideological and sang the praises of Soviet Union leaders when narrativing the story. This may undermine the beauty and rhythm of the film. So new Russian war films did not talk too much about political and ideological education any more. They discussed more about human nature and valuable of life as westerns did. But Russian film makers kept the superiorities and some characteristics of traditional war films.The Star in 2004 told the story of a Soviet reconnaissance squad. Its director is Nikolai Lebedev. In 1944, German troops were being prepared to counterattack, in order to beat German troops, a Soviet reconnaissance squad consist of some bestFriedrich 5soldiers was set up and dispatched to the enemy positions in the forefront. It is a film that the Russian president Putin likes very much. As a war film, The Star not only inherited some advantages of Soviet-era films, but also absorbed the American films qualities of smooth plot and strong sense of rhythm. Roger Moore regarded it as “The bright spot is also in the works can not be denied.” （Moore）So we can see that Russian films have achieved satisfying development in many fields. And more Russian films have got international film awards, including Academy Award (America), Golden Palm (France), Golden Bear (Germany) and so on. (“Contemporary Ru