Composing for the Screen in Germany and the USSR: Cultural Politics and Propaganda (review)

Although not acknowledged in its introduction, this volume, or at least the inspiration for it, derives from a pioneering conference on film and music that Robynn Stilwell and others organised for the Royal Musical Association at the University of Southampton in 2001. Some very interesting papers were delivered at that conference but, for whatever reason, regrettably few of these have found their way into this book. In the eight years since then, the study of film music has made a quantum leap forward, and one of the clearest indicators of this progress is the publication of the present journal. So the delay in the release of this book has created its own further problems and exaggerated others. The ‘dearth of scholarship’ lamented on the dust jacket is no longer quite as dire as it was in 2001, and it should therefore have been possible to produce a volume with both greater coherence and consistently higher quality of contributions. This is particularly important in a new subject area because quality and consistency deny those who knee-jerk in reaction to any new approach the opportunity to carp and cavil.

The editors have chosen to compare and contrast the screen music of two countries, Germany and the USSR, predominantly during the inter-war period. According to Stilwell’s introduction, one of the factors influencing this choice was that these were ‘the two countries that produced the highest concentration of serious writings on the subject of film music’ (2). That is a good starting point, although it undoubtedly overlooks a considerable body of similar writing in France, which influenced practitioners in both Germany and the Soviet Union. But a starting point is not enough: arguments have to be developed and events contextualised – also in a consistent and coherent fashion. One way to do this would have been to establish a much tighter chronological, theoretical or even ideological framework for comparison between the two countries: Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1941 on the one hand, and Stalin’s Soviet Union between 1929 and 1941 on the other, would have furnished one such framework. Conversely, a tighter thematic approach would have legitimately permitted the looser ideological and chronological framework that the editors have opted for here. One theme that is missing from this volume is that of the most popular genre of film music in both countries in the 1930s: the musical, often called Tonoperetten (sound operettas) in German and muzykal’nye komedii (musical comedies) in Russian. Another theme might have been the musical illustration of the cult of the leader, carrying Reimar Volker’s analysis of Triumph of the Will over into German and Soviet newsreels or Soviet cultic films such as Padenie Berlina (The Fall of Berlin, 1949–50). The editors have made no attempt to impose such coherence or consistency on their contributors, and the resulting volume is, like the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts but distinctly variable in others.

The volume begins with a solid introduction by Stilwell, lamenting the state of film music studies, tracing its history, and outlining the contents of this collection. There are six essays devoted to ‘composing for the screen’ in Germany, and only three on Soviet Russia. This is in itself an unfortunate imbalance. Three of the contributions sit uneasily with their fellows. In the German section Ed Hughes writes about Regen (Joris Ivens, 1929), even though Ivens was Dutch-born and the film was made in Amsterdam – its principal German connection being a score written by the German-Austrian composer, Hanns Eisler. This piece is peripheral, as is the film itself to the book’s remit. Ivens’ next film, Pesnia o geroiakh (Song of Heroes, 1932) was made in the USSR and a comparison between the two might have been more useful. (Much of his subsequent career was spent in the United States, but that is another story!) Hughes’s piece is followed...