Reflecting back on our class discussion today, I kept thinking about what was said about Kuleshov’s piece on montage and how he believes cinema can define reality. The point was made that perhaps the reality Soviet’s sought to portray was more mundane than that of the bourgeoisie American reality, with the in class comparison being Soviet photography in the 1970s that showed people standing in a field. Thinking about it more, and at the risk of sounding overly pretentious and critical, I think it is important for us to consider what “reality” means to an author when they write about cinema’s relation to it. Additionally, I think it is important for us to keep both the time period and place that a piece of film theory was written. Surely Baudry, Mayne, and Kuleshov would all agree that cinema works within an ideological framework. However, Kuleshov distinguishes himself from the rest of the authors we are reading because he does not criticize exclusively American films. The issues that Baudry and Mayne seek to address, as well as their shared point about cinema’s inability to portray reality, focus only on how it applies to classic Hollywood films.

Kuleshov, on the other hand, addresses American, European, and Soviet films. When speaking about the reality that film can portray, I believe he is speaking exclusively about Soviet film’s ability to do just that; given his background and the analogy he used about the capitalist vs. communist newspapers in the beginning of the piece, I think it is logical to conclude that he writes from a pro-Soviet, anti-capitalist perspective, and therefore believes that only Soviet films are rooted in any sort of reality. Additionally, I think it is important to remember the time period that he is writing in: 1935. During this time in the Soviet Union, socialist realist was the predominant genre of art, whether it was painting, literature, or film. Socialist realism as a genre sought to show the bright “reality” that the future held once communism became fully entrenched in society. Thus, art that fell under the socialist realist genre, which was most art that was available to the public at this time, created a reality that people believed was achievable, but did not necessarily reflect the reality that they were experiencing at the time. I would argue, therefore, that by asserting that cinema reflected reality, Kuleshov was not employing the same definition of reality as those who examined exclusively American cinema.

I’m not entirely sure what this rant all adds up to, but I think it speaks to the importance of keeping both the author’s mindset and the period each piece was written in in mind.