Social Criticism in Eastern European Film - (By Michael Jon Stoil - 1974) - Movies - http://maxpages.com/czechcinema/2_Social

A spirit of criticism inherited from de-Stalinization and the relatively successful 1956 revolt in Poland existed in Eastern Europe during the late 1950's. This was the beginning of the end of Stalinist unity in the area and the birth of intellectual reaction against State-directed orthodoxy in both politics and the arts. In film, the older, pre-war directors may have instilled some of their criticisms of the new regimes into their students. It is certain, however, that Eastern European writers and philosophers during the late 1950's were heavily engaged in criticism of the Communist regimes as 'dehumanizing'. The works of Milovan Djilas were widely read by the intellectuals of the more advanced states- without official permission, of course- and even the neo-Stalinist society of Czechoslovakia bred a strong humanist movement spearheaded by the philosophers Karel Kosik and Ivan Svitak.
In the Soviet Union, these factors were either absent or greatly diminished in influence. By 1955, all of the truly creative directors of the Eisenstein-Pudovkin-Dovzhenko period had been dead for years and repression against 'bourgeois humanism' was far more severe. The new Soviet directors were trained in orthodox schools of film-making by the survivors of the Stalin era and, unlike directors in other Eastern European states, had to prove their orthodoxy by being Party members. Censorship was, in general, much tighter and, if the new generation had crticisms of their society, they were not given the opportunity to voice them. This was not true in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
Not all Eastern European films demonstrate intellectual reaction against the regimes. Those of Bulgaria, for example, seem to be as strictly censored as Soviet films; their most elaborate themes involve nothing more controversial than anti-fascism. Yugoslav feature films tend to be high in entertainment value, increasingly high in technical expertise and as frank in the portrayal of sex and violence as French cinema, but they lack social criticism. "Murder of a Switchboard Operator" (1967), for example, is a well-executed melodrama of sordid reality climaxed by a grisly murder, but the setting could have been West Germany or France equally as well as Yugoslavia. While this is in itself an important statement about the nature of Yugoslav society- that it is becoming indistinguishable from the bourgeois societies of the West- the purpose of the film is to entertain, not to analyze a social problem. "The Twelve Chairs" (1970), a screen adaptation of an NEP-period Soviet satire (which has recently been made into a long, chaotic Russian comedy film), was primarily an American film, although all of the technicians, locations and extras were Serbian. Even in Poland and pre-invasion Czechoslovakia, the two centers of 'relevant' film-making in Eastern Europe, a majority of the films produced have been either purely entertainment 'froth' or pro-regime propaganda.
It must also be observed that not all of the problems of Eastern European society make interesting or marginally acceptable material for the cinema. The failures of Communist agricultural policy, for example, could conceivably be a theme for a critical Eastern European film, but no regime in the area- including Yugoslavia- has become so tolerant that an artist can freely comment on the subject. Expressions of local nationalism, however, are almost universal throughout the area, despite the anti-Russian overtones of some of these works. The problems of the individual in a heavily structured society have been occasionally examined by Eastern European directors, particularly in Czechoslovakia before the 1968 invasion. Perhaps the most daring criticisms of post-war society to be explored by the film-makers of the area have been of the alienation of the post-war generation. This has been reflected primarily in Hungarian and Czech works.
(Copyright - Michael Jon Stoil)

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