Performing Femininity

Oriental dancers ballerinas actresses and opera singers the figure of the female performer is ubiquitous in the cinema of pre-Revolutionary Russia. From the first feature film Romashkov's Stenka Razin (1908) through the sophisticated melodramas of the 1910s to Viskovsky's The Last Tango (1918) made shortly before the pre-Revolutionary film industry was dismantled by the new Soviet government the female performer remains central. In this groundbreaking new study Rachel Morley argues that early Russian film-makers used the character of the female performer to explore key contemporary concerns from changing conceptions of femininity and the emergence of the so-called New Woman to broader questions concerning gender identity. Morley also reveals that the film-makers repeatedly used this archetype of femininity to experiment with cinematic technology and develop a specific cinematic language.