TALK: Ian Christie 'Soviet Cinema – Not just great directors but great designers too!'

𝚂𝚘𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚝 𝙲𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚊 – 𝙽𝚘𝚝 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚒𝚛𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚜 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚒𝚐𝚗𝚎𝚛𝚜 𝚝𝚘𝚘
𝐴 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝑏𝑦 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑒, 𝐸𝑚𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑓𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑜𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑖𝑙𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦, 𝐵𝑖𝑟𝑘𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑔𝑒, 𝑈𝑛𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝐿𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑛
Some of the greatest production designers of the studio and classic eras in the USA and Europe have begun to win belated recognition, thanks to scholars and historians – not least Ian Christie, the most wide-ranging British film critic-historian of the past 30 years, and a champion of the work of John Box, featured in Kent MOMI’s new design exhibition (‘Terence Marsh & Production Design’), and a renowned expert on Soviet cinema.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Professor Christie unfolds a penetrating analysis of the obscured designers of such major Soviet classics as Kozintsev and Trauberg’s The New Babylon, Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky & Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 and 2, and Kozintsev’s great Shakespeare films. In the case of Eisenstein, a prolific draughtsman, it’s perhaps understandable to believe that effectively he designed Nevsky and Ivan. But the production designer of record for those films was actually Iosif Shpinel, who had forty other credits between 1928 and 1956, and also designed some key films by Barnet, Pudovkin and Ermler. Is it too late to start reclaiming credit for those who designed and built these enduring classics?