Bookvica

[RODCHENKO + STEPANOVA] Krupnym planom [i.e. In Close-Up]

Shub, E.

Item #2107

Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1958. 253, [2] pp.: ill., 24 ills.+6 part-title leaves. 23x18 cm. In original full cloth with stamped Shub’s facsimile, in original dust-jacket with letterpress design on front
part and spine. Tears of dust wrappers, one of them repaired, minor fragments lost, pale water stain. Last two leaves faded, contemporary ink inscription on front flyleaf, otherwise mint.

First and only lifetime edition. One of 5000 copies.

Design was created by Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956) and Varvara Stepanova (1894-1958).
The edition was published a few months after Stepanova passed away. Being prepared that late, the project most likely involved their daughter Varvara Rodchenko.
The book collects memoirs by one of the pioneers of Soviet full-length documentary films, camera woman and film editor, Esfir Shub (1894-1959). She is best known for re-editing of foreign films for ideological purposes as well as her trilogy of documentary films, “Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” (1927), “The Great Road” (1927), and “The Russia of Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy” (1928). She was among the founders of Soviet visual propaganda. Since criticism of formalism had started, her figure stood out more and more, pushing Vertov into the shadows. Born into a Jewish family in the Chernihiv region, she studied Russian literature at the Higher Courses for Women in Moscow in 1911–1917. In the newly formed state Esfir Shub first was a secretary of Vsevolod Meyerhold at the Theatrical Department of the People’s Commissariat for Education and became involved in constructivist theater. Her spouse was an ideolodist of constructivism, Alexei Gan who published the film journal Kino-Fot. She turned to cinematography in the early NEP period and witnessed all the changes of the 1920s. Her memoirs were profusely flavored with ideological phrases, but the texts still remained a description of events that happened. Being close to Dziga Vertov, she differed from Kinooks. In 1926, the newspaper “Kino” published her words “it is necessary to remove the futuristic sign, turn to authentic chronicle material and make revolutionary stories of it”. Soon after that, she really did it. In the USSR, it was she who first used reels stored in state archival funds to create the film “Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” (1927). Contrary to the criticism of her contemporaries, she picked up the archives of pre-revolutionary films and used them profitably in revolutionary cinema. What lay dead weight was skillfully combined and presented for the purposes of early Soviet propaganda, and the non-fiction nature of the footage strengthened the socialist condemnation of autocracy and capitalism. An impression from the film was colossal.
Mayakovsky put Shub on a par with Eisenstein. Along with Dziga Vertov, she was considered the pride of Soviet cinematography.“Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” became the canon of its genre, and S. Eisenstein, A. Kapler, M. Romm and others tried to equate subsequent documentary works with it. The work was a significant event for another reason. Only directors and screenwriters had the right to receive royalties in the USSR. The original order for financial payment for the film didn’t name Shub as a “director”. This outraged Mayakovsky and he staged a protest. He achieved. a change in the order, the title of Shub as a director and the payment of all the money due to her. This served as a precedent for changing attitudes towards documentary creators.
Of the early trilogy, two films aren’t preserved up to this day. Shub made negative copies of the originals and returned the reels themselves to archives. However, other directors frequently cut out pieces of tapes, in order to use the same footage in their works. Cases of selfish consumerism led to the loss of the main copies. Most likely, a similar fate befell “The Russia of Nicholas II and Leo Tolstoy” and “The Great Road”. Stills from them are published in the book.
The book includes Shub’s memoirs on early years of Bolshevik rule, semi-destroyed Moscow, new organizations, new artistic tendencies, film production, contemporary filmmakers: S. Eisenstein, D. Vertov, V. Pudovkin, A. Dovzhenko, S. Yutkevich, A. Zarkhi, et al. Separate chapters are dedicated to V. Mayakovsky, S. Eisenstein, V. Vishnevskii – the last was a scriptwriter for Shub’s film “Spain” (1939).
The text is illustrated with newsreel stills featuring Lunacharsky in front of propaganda train and Lunacharsky with Mayakovsky; a photo of director Lev Kuleshov with cameraman Alexander Levitskii during production of “The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks” (1924); photos of Vertov, Kaufman, Svilova, Shub with Shostakovich; a group photograph of Soviet filmmakers toured to Berlin in 1929. There are also two film stills from “The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks”, a still with Vsevolod Pudovkin as an actor (The Death Ray, 1925), a still from “The Symphony of Donbas”, a still from “Battleship Potemkin” with Rodchenko’s program to the film, theater exterior design dedicated to it and the film crew. A reproduction of Charlie Chaplin’s approving letter to Vertov and a reproduction of an advertising poster for “Fall of the Romanov Dynasty” are included.
In 1975, the book was reprinted with the title “Cinematography, My Life”.


Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, Stanford, Cornell, Chicago, Notre Dame, Texas Tech Universities, Davidson College.

Price: $650.00

Status: On Hold