The Sad Comedy of Èl'dar Riazanov: An Introduction to Russia's Most Popular Filmmaker - Hardcover

MacFadyen, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0773525890 ISBN 13: 9780773525894

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003

Synopsis

David MacFadyen investigates what made Riazanov's films so wildly popular and what - if any - relationship that popularity had to Soviet policy. Using the works of Deleuze, Lacan, and Kristeva, MacFadyen looks at how Riazanov's films relate to society, audience demand, and Soviet politics. In more than twenty love stories that have precious little to do with statecraft, Soviet or otherwise, Riazanov captures the willful inclusiveness of socialist culture.

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Review:

"This is a thorough, pioneering introduction to El'dar Riazanov. MacFadyen challenges the Cold War oppositions of state vs entertainment, dogma vs dissidence, and public vs private that have dominated Western academic discussion of Soviet and post-Soviet art and media, elucidating their much more complex emotional and psychological structure in the light of post-Freudian French analysis. He also provides an overview of Riazanov's work that allows readers to place each film within its own historical framework and which situates the filmmaker within the context of Soviet-Russian cinema." Christina Stojanova, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto "David MacFadyen's work here is much more than an introduction to the oeuvre of this artist and showman. MacFadyen traces the interplay between subjective, 'lived' life and the public rhetoric of the State. A close reading of more than a dozen films is informed by a tightly-argued deployment of psychoanalytic and postmodern ideas. The scholarship is exemplary. The writer draws widely on primary sources, almost all in Russian, comprising excerpts from the press and other media, specialized magazines, theoretical works, official statements, government edicts, etc. Equally importantly, his excerpts are shrewdly deployed to clarify the often highly-nuanced 'understanding' between the official culture and its practitioners in the field. This is an important contribution to research." Patrick MacFadden, School for Studies in Art and Culture, Carleton University

About this edition

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0773525890
• ISBN 13: 9780773525894
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 296