EARLY SOUND FILMS IN THE SOVIET UNION

Dmitri Shostakovich

Kozintsev's and Trauberg's The New Babylon had allowed Shostakovich the opportunity to compose out substantial and elaborate musical conceptions free from the conflicting demands of dialogue and sound effects. As with all composers who had worked in silent film and progressed to the sound film, the sonic competition presented by other elements of the pre-recorded soundtrack forced him to reconsider his approach. The same directors' Alone (1931) saw Shostakovich in less expansive mode, though typically indulging in both grotesque parody and simple leitmotivic techniques; rather bitty music had been added to this initially silent film in preference to speech and sound effects because reproduction of the last two were notoriously deficient in early Soviet sound technology (Egorova 1997, 15–16). Shostakovich was able to provide fuller cues for The Golden Mountains (dir. Sergei Yutkevich, 1931), for which he wrote the popular song ‘If Only I Had Mountains of Gold’; the score's instrumentation featured a Hawaiian guitar, sitting strangely alongside a neo-classical fugue for organ and orchestra accompanying a scene depicting strikes (Riley 2005, 15–17). Organ music was later to feature prominently in The Gadfly (dir. Alexander Faintsimmer, 1955), with its ‘Romance’ winning popular success.

The Counterplan (dir. Yutkevich and Fridrikh Ermler, 1932), the soundtrack for which included an ondes martenot and a creative use of factory noises of which Clair and Vigo might have approved, spawned another Shostakovich hit tune: the banal, diatonic and patriotically uplifting ‘Song of the Counterplan’.