Remembering Elizaveta Svilova: A Forgotten Voice of Soviet Cinema
By Nina Gibb, Edited by Micah Slater
Elizaveta Svilova is perhaps most recognized as the wife of Dziga Vertov, a pioneer of Soviet documentary cinema during the 1920s best known for his film Man with a Movie Camera (1929), but she also stands as a core voice of Soviet cinema and early female pioneers of world cinema. As the editor of many of Vertov's films, including Man with Movie Camera, and director of her own, she was a key contributor to editing techniques of early cinema, and revolutionized the movie montage technique that was first showcased in Vertov’s films. Her legacy has long been tied to her husband's accomplished career, but her career spans decades longer and includes over 100 forgotten credits as editor and director, marking a sufficient but not surprising lack of research and documentation of a female trailblazer's contributions to cinema history and development.
Born in Moscow in 1900, Svilova began working in the film industry as an apprentice at the age of twelve. She began her career cleaning and sorting film and negatives, aiding the selection of film in laboratories, and working as a cutter for photo printer, a common job for women of this time period. She received a number of editing jobs early on, when there was a slim understanding of what editing was and what could be done with it. After working for Goskino, she began collaborating with Vertov on his newsreel series, Kino-Pravda (“cinema truth”), where she revolutionized the artistry of editing newsreels with a voice. Through their focus on capturing everyday life, Svilova’s use of the montage cemented her as a fundamental editor. When speaking about her experience in her early editing days, she stated that “film directors would make a film by putting it together in the order of the scenes, give instructions where to stick in the intertitles, look at it on screen, “and the picture would be considered ready, that is to say, edited” (Kaganovsky). There was a lack of cohesive artistry within early editing, and Svilova worked to change that. Working in newsreels, which had not been considered candidates for artistic editing, in “such a way as to produce a work of art, but Svilova brought the artistic newsreel to the surface through her techniques” (Kaganovsky). The use of the montage within the newsreels proved fundamental, as the “artistic montage [had been] reserved for feature-length films in the late teens and early twenties, but through Vertov and Svilova’s collaborations, the newsreel became a significant element of early avant-garde montage theory and practice” (Kaganovsky). Svilova’s work, therefore, became a crucial development of early documentary filmmaking.
Svilova and Vertov at the cutting table, Pearlman (Courtesy of Alamy Stock Photo)
Working with Vertov at the height of his career, Svilova was responsible for the introduction of the cinematic montage through experimental documentary filmmaking. Working within Vertov’s descriptions of filmmaking, we can understand “that Svilova’s actions are necessarily creative, since they are the actions of making significant form from “miles of film strips” (Pearlman). Her innovative understanding of filmmaking helped push the montage as the operative form of cinema. Upon her first work with Vertov, Svilova noted the “shift in the very idea of film editing that took place precisely between the 1910s and 1920s. Whereas earlier, film was merely “assembled,” it could now be artistically constructed” (Leyda). Svilova’s account, while exaggerated to draw attention to the work of Vertov and their ‘kinoki’ avant-garde film movement, nevertheless highlights the shift in the very idea of film editing that took place precisely between the 1910s and 1920s. Whereas earlier, film was merely assembled, it could now be artistically constructed.
Thinking about the lack of representation of Svilova’s work and artistry, it is worth noting that Vertov acknowledged Svilova’s underrepresentation, writing bitterly in his diary in 1934,
‘Comrade Svilova is the daughter of a working man who died at the front in the Civil War. She has twenty-five years of work in cinema and several hundred films under various directors to her credit. She can claim among her achievements the creation, through many years of effort, of a film heritage of Lenin. On the fifteenth anniversary of Soviet cinema, when all her students and friends were rewarded, Comrade Svilova was used as an example, punished with conspicuous disregard, and received not even a certificate. Only a serious offense could justify her lack of recognition. Yet Comrade Svilova’s only crime is her modesty!’” (Vertov, 147-153)
In comparison, Mikael Kaufman, Svilova’s brother-in-law and a subsidiary collaborator through Vertov, did not view Svilova’s contributions the same way. In an interview with Kaufman, he once stated that “Svilova was an editor. She spliced, distributed material, and made selections. But she was an assistant editor, not a coauthor” (Kaufman, 54-76). Vertov’s recognition of Svilova’s work is a rare instance of a man pushing for accreditation of their female colleague, or in this case partner. But Kaufman’s disregard for the depth of her work falls more closely in line with the general consensus and behavior towards women in cinema, especially the treatment of wome in the USSR during this time period.
Along with Kaufman and Vertov, Svilova was a member of the “Council of Three,” spearheading the Kinoks' filmmaking group which sought to capture the reality of everyday life in the Soviet Union. Throughout their time together, Svilova was left to rely on her male collaborators for work without recognition or power in her own pursuits, despite her crucial contributions. The Kinoki group relied on the montage technique for every part of the film process and Vertov “relied on her [Svilova] editorial eye to choose locations and subjects to be filmed” (Kaganovsky). The group radicalized montage techniques and ‘introduced the notion that the camera could produce a deeper understanding of the truth than the human eye” (Molcard). Svilova’s experimental techniques and unique film insertions–such as her inclusion of herself and the editing process in Kino-Pravda and Man with a Movie Camera–“presents a self-referential explanation of the task of editing” and a unique highlight of her “filmic vision” (Molcard). Without the opportunity to have herself highlighted in the eyes of male filmic contributions, Svilova took the rare step to showcase her own work and give audiences—and herself—a moment of recognition.
Svilova bent over the film strip as it whirs by. Man with a Movie Camera (frame capture),
The primary issue that has plagued Svilova’s legacy is that it has not been separated from that of her husband. Her life in cinematic history is so closely tied and attached to Vertov that her contributions have been nearly completely forgotten, leaving her as another underreasearched cinema pioneer. In comparison, her husband's legacy has remained greatly important and is only as abundant and recognized as it is today because of her contributions and dedication to archiving, recording, and preserving his cinematic legacy and life’s work. Once Vertov’s career began to dwindle in his later years, and his formalist projects were rejected by the Communist government, she began devoting herself to preserving and recording his theoretical and filmmaking legacy, even secretly sending materials out of Russia to the Austrian Film Museum, ensuring that his place in film history was cemented, ultimately becoming a key archivist in Soviet cinema. Working as a key historical archivist, her story is one of great depth and importance. Svilova was a key character in the progression of cinema, the world of Soviet cinema, the legacy of early experimental and documentary cinema, and the montage tradition.
Before her time as an archivist, Svilova’s documentarian work from the 1940s, often overlooked, played a crucial role in the development of twentieth century cinema. After migrating into more directors roles, she directed and co-directed such films as For You at the Front (1942), Fall of Berlin (1945), Auschwitz (1946), and Atrocities (1946), receiving accolades like the Stalin Prize and premiering at the “Filming the War: Soviets and the Holocaust 1941-1946” Festival in Paris. Svilova’s editing techniques during this time included sufficient archival footage and documentary evidence. For her 1946 film Auschwitz, Svilova “edited together documentary material of Auschwitz and Majdanek, including images of mass graves, piles of human remains, and camp barracks, alongside intimate footage of individual victims, such as stolen belongings, survivors’ tattoo numbers, and women weeping” (Molcard). She continued the Kinok tradition of capturing or preserving real life as it has happened, using editing to bolster her art. Like Vertov, Svilova was a key player in the documentary form, both successful yet forgotten for her decades-long, expansive and deeply influential career.
Prior to the 1960s, women receiving due credit for their roles in [documentary] filmmaking were few and far between. The “longstanding tendency within film criticism to marginalize female artists” permeated every aspect of the filmic form. Svilova’s “reductive treatment” has been the result of “professional ambiguity—[her] role as a devoted partner [is] somehow inseparable from the professional partnership with [her] husband” (Pearlman). Given the gender politics of the USSR during the peak era of Soviet cinema, Svilova has remained “hidden behind the historical neglect both of women and of editors” and has remained tied to her husband's status, her gender, and the unequal preservation of Soviet cinema (Pearlman).
Svilova and Vertov at the cutting table, Pearlman (Courtesy of Alamy Stock Photo)
Cinema as a medium of expression often forgets the crucial aspect of film editing. The silent art has become a fundamental aspect of showcasing the visual possibilities and opportunities of film throughout its development. It is often devalued compared to directorial techniques of film, but has proved itself to be fundamental to the films we view and how stories are told. Measuring the contributions of editing means looking at the historical implications of what it means to fill the role of an editor. Historically, editors, or cutters, “were often women, and unlike the professions of director or cinematographer, editing was always considered “suitable for the female sex,” because of its “similarity to sewing, weaving, and other forms of female handy work (Kaganovsky). The narrative surrounding editing began to change around 1910, when D.W. Griffith and others began to “understand filmmaking as first and foremost an art of editing, that could literally mean the difference between a film’s success and its failure (Kaganovsky). Another husband and wife duo similar to Svilova and Vertov, James and Rose Smith, perfected many of the editing techniques that radically altered film art, including dynamic “crosscutting to build suspense, the strategic use of a close up to intensify drama, the variation between medium and long shots to move the narrative forward (Kaganovsky). Understanding the shift from basic to dynamic editing techniques and the people who were instrumental to this development creates a more accurate and equal representation of female editors and the progression of editing techniques. Despite the contributions of Svilova during the Soviet Montage Era, her name is barely mentioned in Soviet history. Filmmaker Sergei Einstein, who was heavily inspired by the work of the Smith pair, is solely noted for developing soviet montages and noted for how he “helped spur the development of Soviet montage theory, and the notion that film is simply raw material until it is assembled on the editing table” (Kaganovsky). Svilova is not given the same recognition.
Elizaveta Svolova was ultimately a creative and driving force of early Soviet cinema. “Given that this era is known for its innovations in editing, there is perhaps a correction required to the assumption that all of the innovations were the sole work of the men” (Pearlman). The Soviet montage ultimately arose from practice, “the actual practice was done by women” (Pearlman). With the cultural weight of her work and its lack of sufficient record, “Svilova’s work ultimately shows us why we need to pay closer attention to women’s contributions to Soviet cinema (and world cinema, more broadly), while her role as editor helps to shift our focus from the director-auteur, always already conceived as male, in another direction” (Kaganovsky). Her groundbreaking and controlled command of the editing table established the vigor of Soviet avant-garde cinema. “As more film scholars begin to examine her rich career, Svilova’s legacy will be that of a committed filmmaker and documentarian, whose intellectual and creative approach to film editing continues to reach audiences today” (Molcard). By analyzing and contemplating Svilova’s artistic contributions to Soviet cinema, cinematic developments, paired with the research surrounding her life's work, we can see how under researched and underrecognized women film pioneers are and attempt to shed light on the fundamental contributions of women that have changed the course of cinema in endless realms.
Svilova credited on Vertov and others film posters
Reflection
When researching Elizaveta Svilova, it is quite difficult to draw up extensive information on her life and work, considering her lack of recognition, remembrance, and recording of her contributions to cinema. She is uncredited in many of her works, or undercredited for the significance and power of her roles, often known simply as Dziga Vertov’s wife and a contributor to her husband's work. But upon further investigation, her work in cinema has reached far beyond even her husband's success. She was an editor and director in over 100 films and a key figure in Soviet cinema through her decades-long career. She started working in the film industry in her early teens and her career outlived even her husbands, and she even later devoted herself to preserving his work and transcribing his legacy.
Several articles and papers read on Dziga Vertov, noting how his filmmaking and editing techniques greatly contributed to the advancement of cinema, thoroughly neglected the crucial work of Svilova. They noted his genius techniques as solely his own. However, the lack of recognition goes deeper into the preservation and research around her: there has long been almost none. The women of Soviet cinema are significantly under researched and documented for their work. It seems that the women in front of the cameras were more highly regarded than those behind it. The creativity that went into film production was reserved for men and the women who equally, or more significantly, contributed to such creativity. Larger creative roles and power seemed to lie completely in the hands of men. The collaborative nature of filmmaking did not include revealing collaborations with women.
Looking at Svilova’s work, we can see how it was ultimately absorbed into her husband's legacy. Considering the forgotten legacy of a crucial voice in early cinema, as a key historical figure of Soviet cinema and the growth of cinematic editing techniques, it is important to rethink film history and how we remember the women of film, specifically women off the screen. Even actresses who made the leap to writing, directing, editing, or owning their own studios are often more remembered for their on screen performances, being attributed to the looks that brought them their fame first. The difficulty in finding resources about Svilova is only indicative of how persistent overshadowing women can be, and how this continues to be a significant problem in the world of cinema, and art in general. As Pearlman’s in-depth multi form analysis states, “if we can demonstrate that editing is thinking in Svilova’s case, perhaps this model can be used by future researchers to reveal some of women editors’ creative contributions to the revolution in montage that characterizes this era” (Pearlman). There are still many female artists who remain uncredited for their contributions to cinema. Thinking about the creative contributions of Svilova can help reveal the greater contributions of women in cinema, the arts, and nearly every field that uplifts its male creators and forgets its female trailblazers.
Works Cited
Kaganovsky, Lilya. 2018. “Film Editing as Women’s Work: Ėsfir’ Shub, Elizaveta Svilova, and the Culture of Soviet Montage.” Women at the Editing Table: Revising Soviet Film History of the 1920s and 1930s (ed. by Adelheid Heftberger and Karen Pearlman). Special Issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 6. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2018.0006.114
Pearlman, Karen, John MacKay and John Sutton. 2018. “Creative Editing: Svilova and Vertov’s Distributed Cognition.” Women at the Editing Table: Revising Soviet Film History of the 1920s and 1930s (ed. by Adelheid Heftbrger and Karen Pearlman). Special Issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 6. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2018.0006.122
Michelson, Annette. “An Interview with Mikhail Kaufman.” October , Winter, 1979, Vol. 11, Essays in Honor of Jay Leyda (Winter, 1979), October 11: 54-76.
Leyda, Jay. 1960. Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. Princeton.
Penfold, Christopher. 2013. “Elizaveta Svilova and Soviet Documentary Film.” PhD
Dissertation, University of South Hampton.
Vertov, Dziga. 1984a. “About Love for the Living Person [1939].” In Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, edited by Annette Michelson, 147-157. Berkeley.
Molcard, Eva. "Elizaveta Svilova." In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2020.
“Elizaveta Svilova.” Women Film Editors
https://womenfilmeditors.princeton.edu/svilova-elizaveta/
“Elizaveta Svilova.” The Movie Database
https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1057498-elizaveta-svilova
“Elizaveta Svilova: the woman behind The Man With a Movie Camera.” New East Digital
Vertov, Dziga. (1929) Man with a Movie Camera. All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration.
Vertov, Dziga. Kino-Pravda No. 19. Goskino.
“Dziga Vertov Film Museum.” Sammlung Dziga Vertov, https://vertov.filmmuseum.at/en/films
“Elizaveta Svilova,” “Man with a Movie Camera.” IMDb.