1924 marks the birth of the Soviet film avant-garde. For several years, various experimental studios (or rather “factories” and “groups,” as they preferred to call themselves) were building up energy and knowledge. 1924 was the year of the Big Bang: Dziga Vertov made Kino-Eye (Kino-glaz), Sergei Eisenstein debuted with Strike (Stachka), Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg with The Adventures of Oktyabrina (Pokhozdeniya Oktyabriny), Fridrikh Ermler with Scarlet Fever (Skarlatina), Abram Room with his experimental shorts. Kuleshov’s Mr. West was the very first of them, released half a year before Kino-Eye and exactly one year and one day before Strike. That alone is reason enough to be in the Canon.
The title of the film is self-explanatory. Mr. West is the story of a clichéd simple–minded American (he is carrying a pair of star-spangled socks, and salutes them with the National Anthem each time he sees them) who travels to Russia. He is captured by a gang (consisting of former aristocrats and other dropouts) who stage “the horrors of Bolsheviks” to ransack his pockets. An American western (there is even a cowboy played by a very young Boris Barnet) transplanted to Russian soil inevitably turns into a comedy.
Goskino was eager to ridicule the American bourgeoisie, but Kuleshov had a specific interest in the United States. After carefully studying audiences in Moscow cinemas, he came to the conclusion that American films got the most enthusiastic reception. From then on his goal was to make a “Soviet American” picture. Fast-paced editing was one of the main characteristics – so Kuleshov aimed for “American montage”. However, the editing in Soviet avant-garde films turned out to be so rapid that in Europe and America it was termed “Russian montage”. Likewise, aspiring to emulate the lucid simplicity of American acting, he came up with an entirely new acting style.
Kuleshov is known today as the founding father of Soviet montage. Yet one should remember that his group was first and foremost concentrated on acting. His aim was succinctness and expressiveness: each emotion, he thought, is linked to an exact corresponding movement. Rather than working out a perfect empathy (the core of Russian theatrical acting and Stanislavsky’s Method), Kuleshov’s pupils had to memorize something like a catalogue of movements, and function like perfect acting machines. (They never even used the word “actors,” preferring to be called “models” [naturschiki] instead.) Each situation was meant to summon up a specific movement, which should automatically put the spectator (not the actor) in the desired psychological state. Particularly good at this were Vsevolod Pudovkin and Kuleshov’s wife Aleksandra Khokhlova (criticized by contemporaries for being “skinny and ugly,” today she is considered one of the icons of elegance).
The authorities had little trust in Kuleshov’s experiments, so the budget for his pictures was miserable. Besides, the Kuleshov group itself was eager to attract as little intervention from Goskino as possible. So every actor was obliged to learn the basics of splicing, working in the chemical lab, and preparing props and sets (along with the standard training disciplines: boxing, acrobatics, horse-riding, car-driving, etc.). Another issue was the lack of film stock: none was produced in Russia, and the import was thus considered a luxury, to be conserved. Each shot was rehearsed meticulously in order to avoid multiple takes, and the actors knew precisely which seconds of their performance were to remain in the final picture; so they developed an “editing mentality,” one might say.
No wonder all of Kuleshov’s leading actors became film directors themselves. Vsevolod Pudovkin and Boris Barnet need no introduction. Even considering the lofty standards set by that pair, although the films of Sergei Komarov, Aleksandra Khokhlova, Pyotr Galadzhev, and Leonid Obolensky might not be recognized masterpieces, their work was still high-class. Let alone the fact that Galadzhev was an outstanding set designer, Obolensky was one of Soviet cinema’s pioneer sound engineers (Kuleshov’s The Great Consoler [Velikii uteshitel] and Barnet’s Outskirts [Okraina], both from 1933, are among his finest achievements), and Khokhlova was for half-a-century one of the best teachers at VGIK, the Moscow film school.
Kuleshov was consistent in his search for American cinema. It is not by chance that four more of his films (including the two other best-known ones, By the Law [Po zakonu], 1926, and The Great Consoler, 1933) were set in the US. He was a Columbus of sorts: sailing for the American mainstream, he discovered the Soviet avant-garde, entirely without realizing it for years.
This Soviet avant-garde was diverse. There was Eisenstein’s sophisticated pathos, Dovzhenko’s pantheistic poetry, Ermler’s Freudian vivisection. But it’s both symbolic and logical that the “first sparrow” of this incredible movement was a lighthearted comedy with strong roots in Hollywood. “The Bolsheviks” may have intended to ridicule “Mr. West,” but they were in fact imitating him, and quite lovingly too.

Peter Bagrov