Late Stalinist Cinema and the Cold War: An Equation without Unknowns

Abstract

The article explores Soviet films of the cold-war period by Aleksandrov, Romm, Kalatozov, and Abram Room, as well as the unfinished Farewell America by Aleksandr Dovzhenko. These films focus on the juxtaposition between the USSR and the enemy (Fascist Germany or capitalist America); they reflect the destabilized world system in which the Soviet Union - victorious, but isolated after the war - asserts its moral superiority. The films restore an ideological equilibrium upset by the war, and thus create the illusion of stability and, for the Soviet Union, superiority. They cushion the viewer in a safe scheme of moral and political values, reassuring him of the world order. This accounts for the popularity of the films in their day.

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