Cinema w/o Russian Revolution?

What would movies be like in a world without the USSR? OTL, Soviet filmmakers like Eisenstein and Vertov had incalculable impact on the very grammar of film; would a non-Marxist Russia mean this influence is entirely absent?
 
It depends what happens instead Bolshevik revolution. Movie industry would be very different in surviving Imperial Russia, fascist Russia and democratic republican Russia.
 
A lot of Russian filmmakers were very much tied to the Bolshevik party, which was really smart in realizing the potential of cinema quite early on. If the Russian Revolution fails it is likely a lot of Russian intellectuals (including filmmakers) will make their way out of Russia into the west (especially America). Filmmakers like Eisenstein and Vertrov will make their way into the Hollywood factory the same way German Weimar-era filmmakers made their way when the Nazi's took over Germany.

This means the Hollywood of the 1930s 1940s (which in OTL borrowed heavily from German Expressionist/Surrealist Cinema) would be borrowing from Soviet Realism. Styles like film-noir might be replaced something that looks like New Hollywood earlier on.

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In his "TL 191 After The End" David kinda speculates on this (though it is based off in TL 191). There because the Russian Revolution failed (and the German Empire survived) it was the Russian filmmakers that made their way into the US. Compared to OTL, the films David describes tend to be lengthier (3hrs +), much more contemplative in nature, and nihilistic in themes. It takes up to the 2000s for Hollywood to actually start adopting the business practices and producing the type of films OTL Hollywood began with in the 1970s.

While cinema in Europe appears to remain much more approachable (it is not stated but it can be assumed that this is in part due to Italy's industry surviving and adopting German conventions)
 

Stolengood

Banned
Jean Vigo might not be politically inspired. He aspired to revolutionary cinematic solutions; his cinematographer was Boris Kaufman, Dziga Vertov's brother -- and it's highly possible that Vigo met Vertov around the time that Vertov gave Kaufman his first camera when Vertov visited France in 1929, said camera being the one used to shoot the scathing satirical film critique A propos de Nice.

That's just one example... :)
 
Obviously this would affect style & tone of movies etc

But I don't buy the idea of (much) longer movies.
There might be more very long films than OTL, but they will still be the exception.

There are good reasons for the great majority of movies being in the 1-2 hour interval.
Among other things long movies are harder for people to fit into weekday evenings or other natural breaks, generally reserving them for the weekend.

Hollywood is first and foremost a business, and long films are more expensive to make and distribute than short ones and generally don't make enough extra cash to justify the expense.

Hollywood will support anything that makes (lots of) money, but will also ruthlessly kill anything that doesn't.

Just look at what happened to von Stroheim's Greed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_(film)
 
Let's see if we can track the earliest visible impact of OTL's Soviet cinema on Western filmmakers. I would say among the earliest changes of note is going to be in the style of Alfred Hitchcock, whose use of the Kuleshov Effect is of course well known.
 
For one such editing like that seen in the film Battleship Potemkin will be far less likely to have such a wide use in film or will at least appear differently in film. Additionally you'd have less of if not an absense of cuts to invoke feeling by matching things that wouldn't ordinarily be matched, (I.e. A field of running people cuts to a cow at slaughter, or showing an officer and then cutting to a peacocks feathers, etc.)

I think the Russian contributions are more in line with the fundamentals of editing that we know today and not so much with the content. Without the Russians it may have taken us much longer to create the same ideas.
 
I think the Russian contributions are more in line with the fundamentals of editing that we know today and not so much with the content. Without the Russians it may have taken us much longer to create the same ideas.

Now we're getting somewhere. My question then is, with these fundamental ideas taking longer to surface, what does cinema look like in the meantime? For example, according to a Wikipedia page (on Andre Bazin) "film theory of the 1920s and 1930s... emphasized how the cinema could manipulate reality", which was likely in large measure the influence of Soviet theorists and filmmakers; without this critical context, do more films tend towards (what OTL became) Bazin's ideal of cinematic realism?
 
While I'm by far not an expert on this subject, we could likely see a longer stint of the strict "Stage view" in film. Where we see the actors on a set or in an area of some kind and they, and the objects and scenery they are reacting with are all viewed as they would be on a theater stage... while we would see cuts to different scenes we would likely for some time have an absence of the Kuleshov effect, which is utilized more than we ever realize.

What I mean is, we would see the film world as more an extension of theater and not really a moveable window looking into another world.

I could be way off though.
 
While I'm by far not an expert on this subject, we could likely see a longer stint of the strict "Stage view" in film. Where we see the actors on a set or in an area of some kind and they, and the objects and scenery they are reacting with are all viewed as they would be on a theater stage... while we would see cuts to different scenes we would likely for some time have an absence of the Kuleshov effect, which is utilized more than we ever realize.

What I mean is, we would see the film world as more an extension of theater and not really a moveable window looking into another world.

To a certain extent, hadn't DW Griffith and other early filmmakers already ended that basic aesthetic? I would think that even without Soviet influence, things like the Establishing Shot, Close Up, etc would still become the norm.
 
To a certain extent, hadn't DW Griffith and other early filmmakers already ended that basic aesthetic? I would think that even without Soviet influence, things like the Establishing Shot, Close Up, etc would still become the norm.

I think you're right, the basic vocabulary was there. Even the idea of tying visuals together to make a metaphor was there (Greed comes to mind as a major example.)

Stolengood mentioned Jean Vigo, and I think that's closer to the mark of where we'd see major changes: Western Europe. Poetic Realism lacks one of its strong influences so Neorealism lacks one of its strong influences, and there goes the New Wave (though obviously butterflies in the 1910s are gonna take care of that anyway.)

Film-as-politics lacks a major early example in this world. Film-as-morality is already well-established, though, so perhaps that's an inevitable next step. The Futurists didn't make many movies, but there were a few...though perhaps butterflies keep the movement from becoming political in another TL.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Reminds me of discussion of evolution, Cambrian explosion, SETI, Fermi Paradox, etc. If we restarted the clock and did it all over again, would evolution turn out about the same?

Physicists tend to answer yes. But biologists tend to say, no way, too many little rambling and meandering aspects to evolution.

So, if the biologists are right, film would have developed fairly differently.
 
Reminds me of discussion of evolution, Cambrian explosion, SETI, Fermi Paradox, etc. If we restarted the clock and did it all over again, would evolution turn out about the same?

Physicists tend to answer yes. But biologists tend to say, no way, too many little rambling and meandering aspects to evolution.

So, if the biologists are right, film would have developed fairly differently.

Well we don't have to frame it as "do it all over again"; what I'd like to focus on are the traceable effects Soviet film had on OTL cinema, and speculate from there.
Stolengood mentioned Jean Vigo, and I think that's closer to the mark of where we'd see major changes: Western Europe. Poetic Realism lacks one of its strong influences so Neorealism lacks one of its strong influences, and there goes the New Wave (though obviously butterflies in the 1910s are gonna take care of that anyway.)

So does this mean that Golden Age Hollywood (1930's and early 40's) is largely unaffected?
 
The montage effect first started with Eisenstein and other Soviet directors. It would probably still emerge, but it might take a bit longer without the Russian Revolution.
 
Who would develop it, and when?
I'd bet on Hollywood. Griffith was already playing with editing - he was actually invited to the USSR to teach/give conferences/something like that, which he refused.

I think it's the sort of stuff someone else would end up developing. Maybe a bit later, but someone will. There are also no technological or economical limitations (as, let's say, developing a steadycam), so it's a matter of time.
 
I'd bet on Hollywood. Griffith was already playing with editing... There are also no technological or economical limitations (as, let's say, developing a steadycam), so it's a matter of time.

Interesting, as OTL Golden Hollywood was more known for "realist"/Bazin-esque styles like Chaplin, Hawkes, Ford, and Welles; here, they'd also be pioneering the counterpoint style as well. I imagine this would have profound influence of film criticism for decades to come.
 
I think the role of the Soviets as mechanical or even psychological innovators is often overstated- which has the effect of sometimes undervaluing their artistic accomplishments.

These tools were being explored around the world at the same time as the Soviets. Again, I would point to Stroheim as a potent example of a man who could use a montage, but also early newsreels did this constantly.

So again I posit that the techniques are not going to spread any slower. It's this lack of a body of cinema in Eastern Europe that's really got the potential to affect continental filmmaking.

What we're not talking about is the films that were made before the revolution and whether there are any interesting threads there that we might tug on. I must confess I know little about pre-war Russian cinema. Just from what wikipedia has to say, it doesn't sound particularly remarkable, but there are a few potential bright lights mentioned.
 
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