Women in Soviet Film

<p>This book illuminates and explores the representation of women in Soviet cinema from the late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the 1970s, a period when Soviet culture shifted away, to varying degrees, from the well-established conventions of socialist realism. Covering films about working class women, rural and urban women, and women from the intelligentsia, it probes various cinematic genres and approaches to film aesthetics, while it also highlights how Soviet cinema depicted the ambiguity of emerging gender roles, pressing social issues, and evolving relationships between men and women. It thereby casts a penetrating light on society and culture in this crucial period of the Soviet Union’s development.</p> <p>List of Figures; List of contributors; Preface; Introduction; Part I: Actresses, On-Screen Personas, and Their Evolution through the Years; Chapter 1: Tatiana Samoilova and the Search for a New Soviet Woman <i>(Anthony Anemone);</i> Chapter 2: Liudmila Gurchenko: Stardom in the Late Soviet Era <i>(Rimgaila Salys); </i>Chapter 3: Nina Ruslanova: Traversing the Spaces of Late Socialism <i>(Tom Roberts);</i> Part II. Genre as Device in Mainstream Cinema; Chapter 4: Femininity, Patriarchality, and Anti-Stalinism in Vladimir Chebotarev’s Wild Honey <i>(Tatiana Mikhailova); </i>Chapter 5: Melodrama’s Womanly Face: Femininity Redefined in the Soviet Cinema of the Late 1960s-early 1970s <i>(Natalia Klimova); </i>Chapter 6: A Laughing Matter: El’dar Ryazanov and the Subversion of Soviet Gender in Russian Comedy <i>(Michele Leigh); </i>Part III. New Soviet Wave Cinema and Auteurism; Chapter 7: Marlen Khutsiev’s July Rain, Cultural Liberation, and a New Soviet Woman <i>(Tim Harte); </i>Chapter 8: "What Can Be Done about It—I’m a Woman, not a Pet." The Non-Heroic Heroines in Romm’s <i>Nine Days of One Year</i> and Shepit’ko’s <i>You and Me (Marina Rojavin); </i>Chapter 9: Gender, Sex, and the Fantasy of the Non-Expressive in Sergei Parajanov’s <i>The Color of Pomegranates (Justin Weir);</i> Index</p>