Beyond Identity:

A Chronotopic Analysis of the Soviet Latvian Film Divi (1965)

Author

Marija Weste

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of a Soviet Latvian short film Divi / Dvoe / Two in Love (Mikhail Bogin, 1965, Latvian SSR). The analysis is based on the chronotopic approach to text analysis invented by Mikhail Bakhtin and suggested for film analysis by Robert Stam. Prior to chronotopic analysis of the film, different approaches to Soviet film heritage in Latvian cinema and film studies are discussed. Traditionally, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and up until now, Soviet films have been interpreted from an “identity perspective", that is, the ethnic identity of the filmmakers and the location of filming, which form a binary opposition of ‘Soviet’ versus ‘Latvian’as categories applicable to any element of each film produced in Latvia in the period of Soviet occupation. This approach appeared logical and feasible after Latvia regained its independence from the USSR. In contrast, the chronotopic approach allows us to view films as embedded in timespace. It opens critical possibilities that take into account various, at times contradictory, aspects of film production and existence. This case study of a review of a script for the short film Divi / Two in Love demonstrates that Soviet Latvian film can be understood as a multilayered product, i.e., the result of competition and the confluences of cultural, political and administrative forces.

Keywords

Mikhail Bogin, Giorgi Danelia, Latvia, Latvian SSR, Riga, Moscow, national cinema, identity, chronotope, occupation, Soviet film, Soviet film production, Divi / Dvoe / Two in Love, disability.

Introduction

Soviet Latvian film existed in a narrow time frame in the second half of the twentieth century – from the Soviet occupation of Latvia, in 1940 to the proclamation of Latvian independence in 1989. Almost three hundred fiction films were produced during this period. These films are both products of the Soviet Union and part of the Latvian past. Approaching these films raises two sets of questions: on the one hand, there is the question of how to deal with those films that were celebrated in Soviet culture and are now considered important to the post-Soviet nation-building project. For instance, Purva bridejs / Swamp Wanderer (released as Edgar and Kristina) (Leonids Leimanis, 1965, Latvian SSR) was appreciated in Soviet Latvia for its box office success, dubbed into Russian for general release in the Soviet Union, and then released internationally as a Soviet film. Today, it continues to be appreciated nationally and has been included in the canon of Latvian culture. From this vantage point, we can view the film in terms of its expressions of nationhood. On the other hand, the question of how the successor states relate to the Soviet period is an important aspect of the post-Soviet nation-building process, thus the evaluation of these cultural artefacts from the past is crucial to understanding the present. Such an approach does not focus on identity but on the relevant contexts. In this article, I argue that perceiving the films as bearing one distinct identity over another might not be a fruitful way of interpreting them. An ‘identity approach’ is anachronistic and ignores the motivations and conditions of the filmmakers at the time of production. Construing Soviet Latvian films as anticipating a post-Soviet Latvian identity projects later intentions onto the filmmaking, thus colonising the past with teleological narratives. In light of these issues, it is not only important to reappraise the existing critique of these films: rather, we need a more nuanced methodological approach to unpack their content and meaning: the contextual or – as will be shown later – the ‘chronotopic approach’.

Although contextual and decolonising studies have been undertaken for some time, the identity approach is still widespread. In her lecture “Kira Muratova: A Ukrainian Filmmaker with Multiple Identities”, Mariia Lihus discusses the representation of Muratova’s filmmaking in film scholarship (Lihus 2024). Lihus applies a lens that foregrounds the filmmaker’s national identity, an approach to studying films which is widely applied in films produced in post-Soviet/post-Socialist countries. Scholars of contemporary post-Soviet culture claim that Muratova’s films are part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. These films are also perceived as products of Soviet culture by film researchers and historians working outside of the Ukrainian, Western European, and Russian contexts, albeit for different reasons. Latvian film studies (Perkone, Balcus and others 2011) are also focused on the filmmakers' national identity and commonly seek to trace a Latvian heritage within Soviet films produced in the Latvian SSR. Once we take into account the complex historical conditions of the film’s production, the insufficiency of this ‘identity approach’ is palpable. The Riga Film Studio, located in the Latvian capital Riga, was part of the Soviet filmmaking system: film production was financed, controlled, and supervised by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, organised hierarchically from the local level of each Soviet Socialist Republic to the all-union level located in Moscow. Local republican film studios formed the bottom level of Soviet film production. Communication between the centre in Moscow and film studios in the republics was conducted in Russian. However, despite ideological pressure emanating from the centre, locally produced films managed to have a relatively distinct, autonomous vision of Soviet Latvian society and construct unique cinematic worlds.

In what follows, I will outline the identity approach, present the chronotopic approach, and provide a case study to show how the latter approach exposes a film initially labelled as ‘non-Latvian’ as defying a ‘Soviet’ label.

The ‘Identity Approach’

The ‘identity approach’ varies depending on the political and philosophical positioning of the researchers. The common feature to the various identity approaches is their reliance on binary oppositions such as Soviet/Latvian, conformist/dissident, authoritarian/liberal, and Soviet/Western, etc. In spite of the limitations of their methodological approach, these analyses provide great resources for the reconstruction of context, reception, and data, which is why my appraisal of them is not wholly critical.

I will begin my interrogation of the ‘identity approach’ by outlining the more recent Latvian critical texts before reviewing the earlier Soviet approaches. Soviet Latvian film studies began to flourish after 1991 in the wake of Latvian independence from the Soviet regime. This research is still conducted by a close circle of researchers and film historians who work in a small number of institutions that are geographically, financially, and ideologically related. Latvian film researchers consider films to be Latvian if they conform to at least two of the following criteria: they were filmed at the Riga Film Studio (RFS); they were produced in the Latvian language; they were produced (written, filmed, directed) by ethnically Latvian people; or, alternatively, they were film adaptations of Latvian literature. In these scholars’ view, in order for a film to be defined as a ‘Soviet Latvian’ film, it had to be produced at the Riga Film Studio. Thus, the identification of a film as Latvian is strongly linked to its filming location.

Films with ethnically Latvian actors could only be considered Latvian if filmed in Latvia. This is the case of a film starring Vija Artmane Dzimtas Asins/Rodnaya Krov (Mikhail Yershov, 1964, Lenfilm, USSR). The only ethnic Latvian in this film is Vija Artmane. The film is written, filmed and spoken in Russian. Therefore, a film in which Latvian actors were cast may not necessarily be considered a Latvian film. A different instance is Tri plyus Dva/Three plus Two (Genrikh Oganisyan, 1963, coproduction RFS and Mosfilm, USSR) a film produced in Latvia, but not filmed in Latvia, written or spoken Latvian. So, in spite of its success (35 million in the USSR, and in Latvia five hundred thousand viewers by 1970 (these numbers are drawn from a 1971 letter by chairman of Riga Film Studio deputy Harijs Kinstlers to Committee on Cinematography of Minister Council of Latvian SSR.LVA, 1405. f., 1. apr., 392. l., 35. lp.), it is not the most successful Latvian film. The most successful Soviet Latvian film in terms of viewership was the detective film, 24–25 neatgriezas/24–25 Does Not Return, directed by Aloizs Brencs and Rostislav Goryayev. It was viewed by 28.5 million spectators in the Soviet Union and over two hundred thousand spectators in Latvia (Ibid).

Purva Bridejs was seen by 26,6 million people in the USSR and over six hundred thousand viewers in Latvia by 1970 is not only popular up to now, but it also meets all criteria to be considered a Latvian film. It is based on a book by a renowned Latvian author, it is filmed at RFS, Latvian is spoken both in the film and on the film location, and the actors and crew are ethnically Latvian. This film is included in the list of Latvian culture canon (a state funded project for preservation of Latvian culture). It can be assumed that a film made by a Russian director at the RFS, employing Latvian crew and staff, as well as filmed in Latvia is considered by these same scholars to be a Latvian film as it fulfils most of the criteria. However, it is not as straightforward as the identity approach may suggest; the short film Divi represents ambivalence. Written and spoken in Russian, this film captures Riga, was produced by Latvian cinematographers, and discussed by Latvian filmmakers, who suggested changes in a film, as a part of the creative production process at the Riga Film Studio and still it is not considered as a candidate for the list of Latvian culture canon, in spite of its origin and its aesthetic similarity to other films considered by Latvian creative artists to be instances of the Latvian poetic documentary school. This evaluation leads to neglect of this film.

In 1991, Kristine Matisa wrote the first book-length publication on Soviet Latvian film after the Republic of Latvia was re-established. It paved the way towards the notion of a Latvian identity, where Soviet Latvian films were appreciated as landmarks of Latvian identity. The 2011 book by Perkone, Balcus et al. defined Soviet Latvian films produced at the Riga Film Studio as ‘classical Latvian cinema’, arguing that they were formed in the one (Soviet) administrative and aesthetic system during the period 1944 to 1990 (Perkone et al. 2011: 7). In this period, film production and distribution were controlled by the Soviet state and all films depicted class struggle, a positive image of the Soviet people, and a realist style. In the analysis and discussion of the development of the Soviet Latvian film industry and film aesthetics, the authors focus on 'Latvianness', its articulation, visibility, and verisimilitude. The Soviet period in Latvian cinema is treated from the standpoint of a Latvian/Soviet binary opposition. Latvians are presented as hungry for a national movement and the preservation of ethnically Latvian cultural values developed prior to Soviet occupation. The term 'okupacija'/'occupation' defines the central perspective on Latvian history in the second half of the twentieth century. It comprises binary oppositions of occupant/occupied, aggressor/victim. Framing Latvian identity in terms of victimhood, however, reveals potential contradictions, where the victim is presented as inhabiting a passive, subdued position and is deprived of agency. To the contrary, the position of the occupied, as Kevin M. F. Platt suggests, allows for self-preservation and interaction with the occupant regime, not accepting Soviet/socialist world’s imposed institutions and ideologies, but reclaiming their “native” identity (Platt 2024: 81). Film research relies on the binary opposition of occupant and occupied, and thus seeks to hold on to the idea of a Latvian identity represented in Latvian films.

The reliance on the identity approach is also found in Latvian historian Daina Bleiere’s analysis of the Soviet period (2015). Bleire claims that Soviet power in Latvia was characterised by attempts to control citizens’ contact with the outside world and influence their lifestyle and worldviews. According to Bleiere, these attempts to influence life choices and lifestyle failed: Latvians perceived the Soviet regime as alien, enforced, and something to be resisted. She writes that Latvians were immune to Soviet ideology (Bleiere 2015: 157). These approaches construe the relation of Latvian and Soviet as a polar opposition; by contrast my chronotopical approach integrates both perspectives.

Natalija Arlauskaitė has a similar view of the Soviet regime as an occupation that did not deeply impact Lithuanian national culture (Arlauskaitė 2020). In her view, the only interpretation of the Soviet regime as a colonising force in Lithuania appears in works of the historian Almantas Salamavicius, who gives his own periodisation of Lithuanian history in which he defines the Soviet period as a period of dependency. In her own research into documentary films about memories of the Soviet past, Arlauskaitė introduces the idea of memories that can be described by a metaphor of a fabric, where threads are both material and imaginary, simultaneously interwoven and broken, extending into present and oscillating between occupation and colonisation (Arlauskaitė 2020: 351). In addition to Salamavicius, Arlauskaitė references the work of Kevin M. F. Platt, who devotes his research to the concepts of colonisation and occupation in Latvian mapping of history, where the Soviet era is considered ‘occupation’, while ‘colonisation’ is applied to the history of Russian rule in the Baltic region (Platt 2024: 76). In so doing, Arlauskaitė confirms his findings on Latvian case as applicable to Lithuanian experience.

Platt argues that Latvia was colonised rather than occupied, since he considers the Soviet regime to have been forced upon Latvia. Both concepts – occupation and colonisation – describe the situation in which a foreign power gains control over a territory for economic, or political reasons. However, the concepts 'occupation' and 'colonisation' differ existentially in the evaluation of the impact these processes have on the way of living and the local population. An occupied land is traumatised, humiliated, violated, but it nonetheless preserves its identity, so, this term supposes the existential historical continuity of identity (Platt 2024: 76). In most cases, the ‘occupier’ leaves the identity of society or nation untouched. Colonisation works in another way – it either forcibly integrates the local population into the economic, societal, and political system of the coloniser, possibly changing the very nature of the colonised population and territory platt 2024: 76-77). Thus, colonisation impacts identity at the most profound level. According to Platt, both of these processes are typically described as ‘modernising’ by colonial regimes (Platt 2024: 77). That is, occupation is rationalised as protection against an external, or in some cases an internal, enemy, which cannot be defeated by the occupied nation alone. Colonisation is legitimised with the ‘gift’ of progress that is the material, societal, and cultural ‘progress’ of the coloniser. The question of whether Latvia was occupied or colonised has no clear answer, according to Platt.

What both of these projects have in common is the demand to identify distinct binary oppositions of victim and perpetrator, colonised and colonising, occupied and occupant. Platt analyses the ideas produced by Latvian cultural artefacts in different historical periods and places them in a broader historical context. In his view, in order to discuss Latvian culture, one must clarify who is speaking and from which position. In this way, he identifies the voice in order to find the basis for the ideas that the particular voice articulates. Perceiving Latvia as occupied, liberated, or colonised varies depending on the age and ethnicity of the onlooker and the historical moment analysed. In his recent article, Platt reveals the co-existence of different perceptions and definitions of historical events by studying the history of a Russian Imperial monument to Peter the Great that was created, installed, reconstructed, rejected, and displaced. This ‘biography’ of a monument represents the shifts in the understanding of Latvian history (Platt 2024: 81). The analysis of the monument is framed in terms of the debate over whether Latvia was colonised or occupied.

Oksana Bulgakowa (1998) interprets Soviet cinema as not only a vehicle of propaganda but also a tool for active colonisation. She argues that the Soviet regime also appealed to the concept of national identity. As an example, Bulgakowa highlights the role of commercial film studios in the Baltic states before occupation. The radical changes brought with and by the Soviet invasion first affected the production of films and then the self-perception of the filmmakers (Bulgakowa 1998: 202). Bulgakowa compares the process of founding film studios in the 1920s in the Central Asian republics for ‘ethnic’ film production to the establishment of socialist film studios in Eastern Europe after 1945. The processes followed the same bureaucratic procedure: a Soviet Russian, Ukrainian or Jewish director would be sent to manage a new or established film studio and produce the first Soviet films (Bulgakowa 1998: 201-203). The reason for this influx of non-local professionals was the scarcity of scripts and of filmmakers. Beyond these practical concerns, Bulgakowa emphasises, the filmmakers had the task of transcending national borders in their works. She theorises the reasons for this: national differences were meant to dissolve into one historic destiny that defined one mission for all – to change the world order (Bulgakowa 1998: 203). In this way, the identity of the protagonists, filmmakers, and films was defined through the lens of social class struggle, while antagonising classes defined the identities of the authors, viewers, and heroes. This lens had no limits in scope: any film could be evaluated and appropriated by assigning it this Soviet or an anti-Soviet identity. The notion of a Latvian cinematic heritage created within the distinct conditions of the Soviet film industry and then forming part of a national struggle against Sovietisation mirrors the idea of social identity precluding a national one.

The idea of a clearly demarcated Latvian identity pervaded Latvian film studies in the first decades of Latvian independence from the Soviet regime. For instance, in her 2011 study, Inga Perkone shows how a clear delineation between Soviet Russophone people 'sent' from Moscow, on the one side, and Latvian local cinematographers, on the other, was formulated discursively, i.e., thematically and linguistically (Perkone 2011: 128). The first Soviet Latvian films made at the end of the 1940s were produced in Russian and later dubbed into Latvian. Only by dubbing, according to Perkone, did the film Deli (1945, Viacheslav Ivanov, Latvian SSR), obtain its national qualities (Perkone 2011: 128). Ivanov recalls that films were made by two teams: every incoming filmmaker had a local understudy (Perkone 2011: 129). Perkone quotes Latvian filmmaker Pavils Zile who states that Riga to the incomers was an unknown space: "We [local cinematographers] were fooled, we were just couriers and makers, who did not get any money" (Perkone 2011: 129). Here, the binary oppositions of us/they, true/false, paid/unpaid, intelligent/stupid are used to present Latvian filmmakers as forced to work without pay or recognition. That is, they are shown as oppressed by the Soviet system in the 1940s. However, Perkone portrays the further development of Latvian filmmaking as emancipatory: she argues that Latvian cinematographers liberated their films from the ‘intrusion’ of incomers. Latvian themes, culture, and literature gained increasing attention and were interpreted as resistance against the censorial and financial influences of the Soviet system. The expression of the binary opposition of us/them thus shifts: Latvian filmmakers are represented as being as equally capable as cinematographers in other Soviet republics and as capable of acting within and engaging with the Soviet system. Moreover, in her study of the traces of modernism as an artistic movement in Latvian films, Perkone presents Latvian films as part of a resistance to Soviet traditions in cinema alongside other Eastern European cinemas (Perkone 2013). She argues that, in spite of the political, cultural, and social isolation of the Soviet Union and the so-called Warsaw Pact countries, this unconventional artistic movement – East European Modernism – developed cautiously and incompletely in films from the 1960s onwards (Perkone 2013).

In her book, Perkone focuses on documentary films but also notes the traces of modernism in some fiction films. Her conclusion is that the tendencies of modernism in cinema, dominant in Western European films, can also be found in Eastern European films. In her view, the traces of modernism are apparent in Soviet Latvian films that employ similar tools of artistic expression as the films from neighbouring and Western European countries. Dita Rietuma follows this vein of argument and goes as far as stating that Latvian cinema echoed the artistic developments of Western European films of the 1950s and 1960s (Rietuma 2021: 45). This view of Latvian cinema as demonstrating some broader trends in cinematic artistic expression has a twofold effect: firstly, it respects and values Latvian films, and secondly, it negates the exceptionalism of Latvian films as exclusively national cultural texts. It does not go as far as questioning the ‘national identity approach’ to films, but it places Latvian films in a different context by changing the focus from the national to aesthetic expressions and viewing the films as a part of cinematic dialogue. Applying a national identity lens to film study limits analysis to merely cataloguing a list of national features. Its aim is the protection and preservation of Latvian cultural signifiers and values.

The binary opposition of Latvian/Soviet is not, however, limited to film analysis as filmmakers may also employ this opposition as means of representation in their works. Vita Zelce and Andrejs Plakans' article The Fading of Enemy Images in Contemporary Latvian Cinema warns against using the ‘identity approach’ with respect to both film production and its analysis (Zelce and Plakans 2020). These scholars conclude that any analysis of cinema from the perspective of its national elements renders it a part of a cultural history and must take into account all conceivable contexts of its creation. As Zelce and Plakans suggest, the subject of Soviet Latvian film is dominated by the idea of self-definition. The question of what any given film (re)presents is decided by positioning the (re)presented world between two poles: ‘Latvian’ and ‘Soviet’. For instance, in Laila Pakalniņa’s film Kurpe/Shoe (1998, Latvia), Soviet soldiers are dimly lit figures, while protagonists who speak Latvian are brightly lit, and wear light, flowing summer outfits. A sunny summer day is contrasted with soldiers in full uniforms that carry dark, heavy weapons. This opposition represents the Soviets not only as an intrusive threat, but also as the Other, that is, they are non-Latvian – an essential counterpart to the identity construction of Latvians. For filmmakers and film researchers the problem of the present moment is that if the Other disappears, the Soviets are not treated as an enemy because there is no longer a Soviet Union, its absence in the binary opposition leaves the subject with no markers of identity, thus a new source of identity is required. Zelce and Plakans argue that Latvia and Latvian film faced issues of self-identification after the collapse of Soviet system:

The dominant concern now was what the nature of a 'Latvian national cinema’ needed to be. Politically speaking, the renewed 1991 Latvian state was conceived of as a continuation of the interwar Republic, with the Soviet period thought of as an unwelcome interruption. (Zelce and Plakans 2018: 273; original emphasis)

The connection of Latvian film to the Soviet era was "logically available" due to the temporal proximity of the Soviet period in Latvian history (Zelce and Plakans 2018: 273). While the presence of the Soviet past is treated carefully in respect to the political consciousness of the contemporary Latvian state, it remained essential for filmmakers and film researchers.. The binary opposition of Soviet/Latvian is used by film researchers to categorise films, at the same time, Zelce and Plakans state that it has also been present in Latvian filmmakers’ own designations. The ‘identity approach’ based on opposition of coloniser versus colonised is limited when applied to any films made outside of the national tradition, and ultimately leads to a dead end in terms of filmic representation and film analysis.

The ‘Chronotopic Approach’

My aim in this section is to leave behind dichotomies of colonisation and/or occupation when thinking about Soviet Latvian films. Instead of narrowing the focus, I suggest broadening the analysis of these films by including a multiplicity of forces and factors at work in the artistic creation of Soviet Latvian films, or the production and political motivation within the Soviet system. The term ‘Soviet system’, used here, was introduced by Alexei Yurchak (Yurchak 2005) in order to escape the use of binary categories in discourse about life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and countries in its influence and broadening the focus on everyday experience, values and internal paradoxes of life under socialism (Yurchak, 2005: 8). Similarly trying to escape the limiting dualism of ‘Latvian’ versus ‘Soviet’ categories in discussing Latvian films, I suggest the ‘chronotopic approach’, as it borrows its name from the notion of the chronotope as a dialogical understanding of cinematic representation (Bakhtin 1981).

The ‘identity approach’ does not account for the fact that each film made within the Soviet film industry had to negotiate limits and expand the formerly understood borders of form, plot, themes, technology, and content. This aspect of negotiation, or dialogue, is not covered by the ‘identity approach’, but is one of the aspects necessarily included in analyses that apply the ‘chronotopic approach’. The 'chronotopic approach' is based on philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of ‘the chronotope’ and draws attention to the inseparability of time, space, and meaning made in texts, emphasising the importance of the unity of these elements. Following Bakhtin’s theory presented in his article Forms of Time and Chronotope in European Novels (The essay is referred to as FTC, in the translated edition by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Bakhtin, 1981, The Dialogic Imagination)), the chronotope as the unity of time, space and evaluation in the novel is both the condition of meaning production and its content. In the same way, the chronotope in film describes the unity of time, space and value in the world that is represented. In his essay on the forms of time and the chronotope in novels, Bakhtin demonstrates that the changes in the world represented and the changes in the world of representation are related in the sphere of literature via availability of the means of representation, for instance, on one hand fairy tales were part of oral literary tradition and became part of written literature as literacy and education spread in society, on the other: fairy tales became part of children literature as value of children and necessity of perpetuating certain values in this group gained on societal importance. In living artistic contemplation, a chronotope of a text is perceived as a unity, wholeness and fullness. In spite of the 'membrane', separating the represented and the representing worlds, a text is not perceived as alien and strange. It takes an intellectual effort to separate these two worlds, which dialogically affect one another. It follows that changes in the conditions of production of meaning effect meanings articulated in and by representation, thus the changes in film production brought to Latvian film by the Soviet regime changed Latvian film.

The chronotope allows us to study the worlds (re)presented in film and the world of film representation (the actual historical situation of film production) in a dialogue, where all ‘stakeholders’ (filmmakers, audience, industry, researchers, critics, and protagonists) interact, co-exist, and pervade various planes of meaning-making. Chronotope, as the word construction indicates, is a unit of time and space that takes a form of expressing meaning. Bakhtin developed the idea in the framework of literary studies with the potential for it to be included in all other artistic forms.

There are several scholarly works that use a similar perspective on film as the ‘chronotopic approach’. For instance, Inga Perkone examines links between the changes in filmic representation in Latvian cinema and the changes in the actual social reality. Perkone's monograph on the image of women in Latvian cinema includes films made as early as 1920 and ends with Latvian productions made in 2007. It is a chronologically organised historical analysis of Latvian fiction films from a gender studies perspective. Perkone states that in fiction films, gender as an artistic and ideological concept is manifested both as a representation of the 'current' and 'desired' state of affairs (Perkone 2008: 120). These manifestations are defined by historic time. Perkone defines historic time as the dominating criterion that has a more important role in the meaning created in and by the film than the role of the film's auteur ).

While defining Latvian identity in opposition to the Soviet identity presented in Soviet Russian-language film productions, Perkone emphasises the role of Latvian theatre actors in Latvian filmmaking in the 1940s and 1950s (Perkone 2011: 132). Latvian theatre actors casted in films after their successes on stage shaped for the development of a distinct of Latvian cinematic identity “by guiding both young and experienced filmmakers” (Perkone refers here to a 1974 essay by Latvian cinematographer Maris Rudzitis (Perkone 2011: 133). It is not surprising that the end of the USSR was perceived as an identity crisis by Latvian filmmakers and scholars alike. The collapse of the Soviet system in Latvia had a major effect on both film production and film research due to the general liberalisation of discourse, changes in the flow of capital, the opening up of the film market, and the newfound accessibility of archives. These changes took place in addition to technological developments, the disruption of state control, and newly available funding for both film production and film studies. Soviet Latvian films were able to express subtle non-conformity, i.e., deviations from dominant Soviet expectations. The ‘identity approach’ prevents other possible interpretations and only allows films to be framed in terms of national, social, or political ideologies. The ‘chronotopic approach’, however, places film analysis in broad historical and intertextual contexts. It allows us to identify historic moments of film production and viewing, the creativity in tools used, and the interplay of filmmaking and its interpretation, thus acknowledging the complexity of each film.

Discussing Latvian film from a chronotopic perspective also allows us to acknowledge that in addition to interacting with other Latvian (film) texts, Latvian films made in the second half of the twentieth century were in active dialogue with other Soviet texts produced next door: next door in the same studio or in the film studio of a neighbouring Soviet republic, not to mention the all-union studio productions in Moscow. This might appear provocative to some – if Latvian film is created in dialogue with other texts, including Soviet films. In the same dialogical manner Soviet films must be created to a degree in dialogue with Latvian ones, so in turn Soviet film bears traces of Latvian film. This perspective is revealed by the chronotope approach. Understanding of chronotope as a metaphoric membrane between the world of representation and the represented world. Accepting Latvian and Soviet films as part of the world of representation leads to respecting mutual influence of these films. Worlds of representation and worlds represented do not mix or replace one another, the membrane between these is unbreakable, but these are related: the relation of these worlds as any changes on either side of the metaphorical membrane inevitably bend, incurve, convex the other side. This means that Latvian film has had an effect on Soviet film and vice versa. This effect is not proportionate, but it is an important factor that is ignored applying solely the identity approach.

The identity approach overcomes this politically and ideologically sensitive issue by representing the ensuing interaction of Latvian and Soviet values and identities as a clash. Soviet film studies, in turn, even without bearing a clear national identity to oppose a Soviet identity, also employs binary oppositions. Soviet film studies frame binary oppositions of Soviet/notSoviet (this slot can be filled with any national or political category) as a conflict of identities. As Denise J. Youngblood, in response to this article, rightly noted, “Soviet cinema” was not supposed to have “national identity”, but rather an identity that transcended “nationality”. This question of identity for “Soviet cinema” is solved within Soviet ideology by assigning societal groups, or ‘class’ in Marxist understanding, a decisive value that overweights nationality, or belonging to an ethnic group. In Soviet film studies the binary opposition of Soviet/notSoviet is expressed as politically and artistically motivated conflicts between the Soviet regime and certain Soviet filmmakers, between Soviet films and Soviet censorship, Soviet and national cinemas and so on. The emancipatory quality of the ‘chronotopic approach’ is in treating all these sides as being in dialogue instead of conflict. What film represents, according to this approach, are all these elements in coexistence. This emancipatory approach also solves the problem of the simultaneity and coexistence of texts and meanings: Soviet films and Latvian films are different chronotopes for their readers, heroes, and authors. The ‘chronotopic method’ of film analysis, allows, or even requires, references to other texts (films, books, etc.) not only to those of the given production and cultural moments, but also to others that are available today. In a comparable manner, my interpretation of the documents, images, and tropes of film production alludes to different artworks and other cultural texts. My analysis is enriched by intertextual references and allusions to other texts that in due course help not only to place the films within historic and filmic traditions, but also to grasp the ’Zeitgeist’ and the construction of time and space in these films with respect to meaning creation.

Case Study

In this third part of my essay, I present a ‘chronotopic approach’ to analysing a document tied to the production of the Soviet Latvian short film Divi at Riga Film Studio that was made between 1964-65. This analysis is based on Maria Belodubrovskaya’s (2017) approach to Soviet film history, exploring how ideology operated in that cinematic context. In my analysis, I explain how the Soviet system of filmmaking operated. I provide a short background to the film and continue with an analysis of a review of the script preserved at the Riga Film Studio archive and now available to the general public at the Latvian State Archive. In the following analysis of Divi, I demonstrate how I use the ‘chronotopic approach’ by first analysing a document concerning its production and then by discussing the dominant ideas within this short film.

On 20 August 1964, Riga Film Studio received the literary script Divi from Mosfilm (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 119). The director's script was presented at Riga Film Studio’s makslas padome/art council on 8 October. RF music editor Olegs Zolotonoss’ protests about improper procedure (the artistic council discussed the director's script without seeing the previous literary version) were ignored. Arvids Grigulis, the head of the editorial board for scripts, explained that the script arrived directly from the Moscow State Committee of Cinematography (LVA 416, 4, 31: 35). The formal procedure of responding to scripts at Riga Film Studio was a one-way street: scripts selected on the spot in Riga were reviewed and discussed according to a formal procedure, the selected scripts were then sent to Moscow, and the scripts selected by Moscow arrived in Riga having disregarded the formal procedure that had usually taken place on the periphery. Mikhail Bogin and Boris Chuliukin attended the artistic council sessions devoted to the film Divi and spoke in Russian. At the first session, Bogin defended his script as ‘not pathological’, that there was nothing ‘unhealthy’ about the events in the script, because ‘health’, especially psychological health, was a key feature of Soviet heroes. He also spoke at the artistic council session five days later. At this session, Bogin presented a new version of the director's script that incorporated all previous recommendations. According to him, the script was shortened and the ending was changed in a way that made the script more interesting (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 31-32). Divi was filmed in five months – from October 1964 to February 1965. Most likely Bogin seized the opportunity to finally film his script and was eager to work with the artistic council at the Riga Film Studio.

The review of the script by literary critic Aleksandr Dymshits, who was employed by the Central Committee of Cinematography in Moscow, arrived in Riga at the beginning of September (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 46-47). Dymshits, former head of the Culture Department of the Propaganda Directorate of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin, was editor-in-chief of the editorial board of the State Committee for Cinematography in 1964. He evaluated the Divi script positively and recommended it for production. In his review, he pinpointed the areas that would be brought up in every subsequent discussion:

1. The balance of comic and tragic elements in the film.

2. The duration of narrative events.

3. The representation of disability on screen.

According to Dymshits, the film’s central theme was a deaf girl's youth, which ought to be filmed in a concentrated, briefway. The representation of a deaf person on screen should not be realistic, but conceptual. The sadness and tragedy of the disability in the film is to be interrupted by whimsical and comical sequences and dialogues that aimed to distract the audience's attention from the drama and trauma evoked in the film. Dymshits highlighted three aspects of the artistic chronotope to be found in the script and film made in the 1960s. I analyse how these aspects were handled in the film production, including the crucial changes made during the production of the film. The time-space of the script changed because the script was filmed one year after it was written, with a partly different film crew and in a different location – mostly in Riga, instead of only in Moscow. I then examine each of the three points mentioned by Dymshits in relation to the film as produced, discussions that filmmakers had about the film, and intertextual references.

The interrelation of the comic and tragic elements

Following Dymshits’ review, one of the key problems identified in the script was the balance of comic and tragic elements. The discussion hinged on the fact that Soviet fiction films were expected to convey an inspiring and positive message while (re)presenting the current Soviet reality. Divi’s filmmakers Bogin and Chuliukin proclaimed that the portrayal of a deaf person would be the main focus of their project. The (re)presentation of a disabled person was perceived by censors and filmmakers, not to mention the audience, as potentially tragic and negative. A character impersonating a disabled person in a Soviet fiction film is a rare occurrence. Unwillingness to produce a film about a disabled person might have been the main reason Bogin’s script was sent to Riga Film Studio. This can be interpreted as a political move: a potentially subversive and ideologically ambivalent film must not be made at the central Soviet film studio, but rather in a Soviet province. Russian sociologists Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova and Pavel Romanov analysed Soviet visual discourse in feature and documentary films and on posters (Iarskaia, Romanov, 2009). Speaking of Soviet feature films produced in 1940ies, 1950ies and even 1960ies (about 20 films) the authors conclude that disabled persons on the screen are male (Iarskaia, Romanov, 2009: 306). The invisibility of female disability is explained by traditional gender order in Soviet society, where women appeared as assistants of men. Iarskaia and Romanov mention Divi as an instance of a new emotionally ‘warm’ approach to disability representation, that is the private life of a disabled person is portrayed. While praising new dimensions in representation, the authors point out that Viktoriya Fyodorova is not deaf and does not use sign language and is poor in gesturing, moreover the actually deaf actress, Marta Grakhova, appears only in an episode (Iarskaia, Romanov, 2009: 311). The tragedy in Divi is contained only in the reference to Romeo and Julia in the episode of theatre performance (00:16:33).

Tragedy and comedy are not just aesthetic categories that determine genre, but are also ethical categories that determine the portrayal of human beings. Within the framework of socialist realism, these ethical and aesthetic categories were fundamentally related: the basic tenet was that 'the content defines the form', thus, the ethical category had to prevail and determine the aesthetics. Hierarchically organised and imposed by governmental directives, in socialist realism, politically motivated tragedy was considered the most important artistic genre (Chegodaeva, 2003: 13). Comedy as the binary opposition of tragedy was considered the least important genre since it had a comparably loose political motivation.

The historian Grigorii Zaval’ko outlines three key aspects of the tragedy genre in Soviet cultural production: 1. An awareness of the tragic, 2. The influences of the societal and historical contexts 3. The personality of the tragic subject (Zaval'ko 2012: 96). Divi’s heroine, Natasha, is a tragic figure because of her disability that was caused by an injury she got during the war as a child. Thus, the tragedy she evokes is an 'unheroic ' one (Zaval'ko, 2012: 95), in which Natasha is a helpless and unaware victim. The tragedy of the victim was repudiated in socialist realism. In my view, Dymshits's demand to include comic elements in the script is rooted in the Soviet, ideologically motivated understanding of the genre. Comic elements in the script not only divert attention from the 'unheroic' tragedy, but also validate its presence in public discourse.

Comic elements in the script are denoted by words such as 'joyful', 'happy', 'laughing', and other adjectives that convey positive emotions. A comic character appears in the script right after the description of the film's setting. He is a short man, hardly taller than his cello case, and therefore is 'amusing' (LVA, 419, 4, 31: 121). His name is Dima and he appears throughout the film, consistently maintaining and embodying its comedic essence. Natasha's description in the script contains the word 'smile' (LVA, 419, 4, 31: 121). In the script Sergei has to smile on noticing Natasha's jockey hat. This episode can be interpreted as a joke made at the expense of Natasha's outfit. In the film, however, Natasha does not wear a hat, thus Sergei's smile at her becomes genuine romantic delight at seeing a beautiful woman.

Besides words, the script contains sequences that are intended to amuse the film viewers. For instance, there is a sequence in which Natasha encounters an orchestra from a military school. One of the oboe players is a funny and enthusiastic young boy in uniform who is intended to amuse Natasha and, by extension, the audience. At the artistic council's discussion, Kalniņš demanded that this sequence be excluded from the script. This episode reveals the mechanisms of the film’s production and demonstrates changes that crucially altered the film’s overall meaning. In the original version of the script, in the episode in which Natasha encounters the Moscow Suvorov Military School orchestra, she appears happy and joyful, especially on seeing one of the performers, a freckled little student playing the oboe (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 140). According to the script, Natasha then thinks of Sergei and smiles: this was the moment she realises she is in love with him. This 'joyful' and 'funny' encounter with the comic figure of a toy soldier thus demonstrates Natasha's emotional attachment to Sergei and distracts film viewers from the sadness of her incurable hearing impairment. This sequence was not filmed. Rolands Kalniņš stated that if the script were filmed in Riga, there would not be a marching band of students from the Nakhimov Junior Military School, since there was no such school of that kind in Riga (LVA, 416. 4. 36. pp. 113-115). For Kalniņš there was no meaningful or film-related necessity for the appearance of any military school on the streets of Riga. It would not only be inappropriate and illogical but would carry additional meanings and negative historical connotations of occupation and war, unintended by the film's director, but obvious to Latvian filmmakers and audiences. This sequence did not make it into the film. The film’s new location (Riga, not Moscow) altered sequences, shifting the balance of comic and tragic elements. There are no other comic figures in the final scene of the film – it ends with Natasha and Sergei smiling in a snow-covered park. In contrast to the first sequence in the park (00:19:06) as Natasha and Sergei try to get closer (Figure 1).

In the last sequence they are not shown in any single shot together: they smile at the camera. The montage of medium shots of the protagonists, juxtaposed with one another, is interpreted by the film's audience as the two of them being in one space at the same time and smiling at each other. The element of comedy in the plot was eliminated, but a sense of joy was created by employing a film editing tool that condensed the time and space of the protagonists.

In the first discussion of the script, Grigulis called it “pathological” and lacking in humanism. Kuniaev agreed with Grigulis that the script was pathological and added that the concept of love as a heroic deed was not present there (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 37). Bogin replied that pathology was not intended and that the script did not aim to show a deaf person as an invalid or incomplete human being; instead, the deaf person's life was to be represented as beautiful and sunny (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 35-39). Divi was inspired by the representation of people in Ia shagaiu po Moskve / Walking the Streets of Moscow (1964, USSR), Giorgi Danelia's landmark Thaw-era film, as it deviates from the conventions of socialist realism.

Joy, vitality, and happiness characterised the mood of the protagonists in Danelia's film. Although there are also themes of unfulfilled love, separation, and infidelity, these are interrupted by comical events. For instance, children were used in Danelia's film on several occasions to provide an element of comedy or distraction. A toddler appears in the director’s version of the script for Divi as well. At the beginning of the film, Sergei follows Natasha, but she does not notice that she has lost an apple, which the toddler almost takes, but Sergei is faster and retrieves it. He 'jokingly' threatens the toddler before returning it to Natasha (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 56). At the artistic council session at the Riga Film Studio, Rokpelnis, the editor, suggested that the episode where apples fall out of Natasha's bag was humiliating to her. The filmmakers regarded this minor misfortune of losing an apple as ‘degrading’ to the Soviet hero, and the episode was not filmed. Instead, the shop assistant at a kiosk accidentally misses Natasha’s open bag, and Sergey seizes the opportunity to offer the wayward apple to her (Divi 00:02:32). In general, it seems to be the case that events that were part of everyday life could not appear on the Soviet screen. In the representational system of socialist realism, a hero appearing on the silver screen as clumsy or awkward posed a threat to the dominant ideology. It seems that Natasha’s ‘clumsiness’ had to be made 'right' by Sergei in a comic manner. The sequence with a toddler was not filmed, but the sequence of Natasha losing an apple was kept in the film. Therefore, the encounter between the two protagonists was represented in a direct way and was uninterrupted by an artificially imposed element of comedy. Another comic episode that did not make it from the script into the film was the episode in which Natasha tells Sergei about her hearing impairment. In the course of their conversation, Sergei invites Natasha to his concert. This obviously awkward and tragic moment in the dialogue is followed by a comedic sequence. A babysitter on a bench next to Sergei and Natasha laughs out loud while reading Zolotoi telenok / The Little Golden Calf (1931), the famous comic novel by Il’ia Il'f and Evgenii Petrov, as the joyful toddler under her supervision walks into a puddle (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 91-92). Thus, Soviet literature and children combine to create a comic element within the scene. In socialist realism, smiling children represented a joyful future. Ideologically, the undeniable joy of Soviet children is portrayed and received as contagious for both the protagonists in the film and the audience. Nevertheless, this sequence was not filmed: neither toddlers nor Soviet literature appear in Divi.

In Danelia's film, the children appear alongside the protagonists. Children play, ride toy cars, and carry balloons, and the protagonists help them and buy them sweets. Children also appear in Bogin's script, but ultimately, almost all of these episodes were not filmed. A child appears in Divi only once when a schoolboy serves as a referential figure to Danelia's movie. In the sequence in which Sergei looks for Natasha in the courtyard of her building, the refrain from the song “Ia shagaiu po Moskve” /I Walk Around Moscow/ written by Georgii Shpalikov (the film’s scriptwriter) and composed by Andrei Petrov, can be heard. Sergei asks a boy in the courtyard for directions. The boy in Divi sings the title song of Danelia's film, mocks the sign language that Natasha uses, and because he is a child, his mockery is lightly scolded rather than reprimanded. The boy acts as an indexical figure gesturing towards Bogin's referential text and directing attention to Sergei's object of desire. Whereas military students belonged in Moscow and not in Riga and thus were not acceptable in the film, the melody sung by the boy was referential rather than indexical. The figure of this boy in the film functions as a marker of time in the script; he represents a link between the new Soviet cinematography of the 1960s (Danelia's film) and the new Soviet hero of the same era.

The Duration of Narrative Events

According to Dymshits' review, the script was too long. Divi was supposed to be a short film, no longer than four to five parts, i.e. 1200-1500 metres. Bogin's film, intended to be made in three parts, ended up in four parts. The script was focused on creating a story similar to that of Danelia and Shpalikov’s in Walking the Streets of Moscow. It included a family-centred narrative of the main female character and several episodic encounters. These elements were not filmed leaving only one direct reference to the film of Danelia. In spite of cuts of the script, the film appeared longer than allowed. The unintended extension of the film with sequences that were not described in the script can be found in its time-space: the change of location and the new film crew brought their own perspective on their home city.

Arnolds Serdants (1904-1980), who was employed as an advisor on ideology and executed censorial control at the Studio, was concerned that the film would exceed its budget, and suggested shortening the list of sets to be built and the number of actors employed (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 36). At the final session of the – artistic council, demands to shorten the film were repeated. In his last speech at the artistic council on February 3, 1965, Bogin defended the necessity of including all narrative events. He expressed his gratitude to the crew and the Riga Studio and prevented his film from being shortened. The episodes suggested for reduction (those depicting an ice hockey game, the theatre, and a café visited by the amorous young couple) were important for the meaning of the film as a whole (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 16). Bogin emphasised the importance of the café scenes as embodying the ultimate representation of Sergei's love. The demands to make cuts in the film, although targeted at certain sequences, impacted the whole film. The film ended up being longer in spite of multiple demands to shorten it. This was likely due to the personal intervention of Fridens Korolkevics, then the head of the Riga Film Studio. Perkone characterises Korolkevics as an unexpectedly freethinking bureaucrat who took the side of the “creatives” and opposed the censorship and administrative institutions of Soviet film (Perkone 2011: 85). Therefore, it is most likely that he had the final word in the discussion of Divi.

The “prolongation” of the film lies not in the number of sequences but in its (re)presentation of cities as spaces of narration. Walking the Streets of Moscow is the story of a city characterised by exoticness. In Danelia’s film, the protagonists visit tourist sites: Red Square, GUM (the biggest department store in the Soviet Union), Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure, Patriarch Ponds, and the new metro system. Walking the Streets of Moscow is a film about exploring the city of Moscow. The protagonist asks a stranger for directions, and they end up walking together. On their way through Moscow, the characters meet different people and engage in various activities : a dog attacks one of them; they go shopping in GUM; they meet a girl, who becomes a romantic interest for them both; they visit a church; they give directions to an Asian tourist, and proceed to a park and a concert, and later on, visit in a police station. The film can therefore be seen as a list of places to visit and things to do in Moscow.

Walking the Streets of Moscow is a representation of encounters and interactions with various people. The film opens on an airfield. A conversation between the hero and an unfamiliar young woman introduces human interaction into an environment that is dominated by vehicles (aeroplanes and buses). A sequence depicting the construction of an underground tunnel is followed by aerial shots of Moscow. These scenes depict the city as the industrial achievement of the collective: this is denoted by a team of rowers on the Moscow River, a bridge over the river and the Kremlin in the far distance. In this way, Moscow does not appear as a city that can be explored on foot. The streets of Moscow do not support walking as a sequence of human steps; rather, walking in Danelia’s film means going further, both literally and metaphorically. The protagonists move through Moscow, visiting locations of importance (for the filmmakers, the protagonists, hence also for the audience). These locations are represented as steps in the development of Moscow as a city through time by contrasting the wide open space of the airport and dark narrow space of the church shown in the film. The movement of Kolia, who works under the earth surface, from the dark and dirty environment to the brightly lit and clean metro station symbolises the idea of progress and, by self-definition, belongs to the Soviet state and its capital city Moscow.

Divi is a representation of walking (alone, next to one another, or together) as an individual bodily experience. In this it contrasts with Walking The Streets of Moscow, which presents the capital city through a series of encounters and events. In Divi, after the establishing shots of the Conservatory, the camera follows the protagonist walking through the parks and streets of Riga, thus it establishes a horizontal rather than hierarchical relation to the film's characters. By moving about like a pedestrian and switching from medium shots to close-ups of the protagonists, the camera mimics the act of taking a stroll in the streets and of walking per se.

The camera shifts from an aerial shot to the protagonist’s perspective (over-the-shoulder view) to focus on the people taking a crowded metro. The camera observes the crowd, who are depicted like actors on a stage. Furthermore, in the metro, despite the lack of space, the camera does not enter the personal space of the protagonists – there are no close-up shots here. There is an invisible barrier separating the camera and the film's audience from the protagonists who enact their roles. The camera is placed in a taxi cab, a church, among tourists listening to their guide, and next to a shop assistant behind a counter, however, it never enters the personal space of the protagonists. Instead, it focuses on wide-angle shots of buses, cars, wheels, and buildings, re-creating these as mise-en-scènes for actors. In this way, the societal change in ‘the actual historic chronotope’ of the 1960s is represented as a space that contains a collective of people.

The protagonists in Walking the Streets of Moscow are shown as they walk, take a train, or a taxi cab, and run through Moscow. However, walking, as in, the act of taking steps, is not (re)presented as the main social practice in Danelia’s film.

Following Michel De Certeau, the act of walking is to the urban system what the speech act is to language or to the statements uttered (De Certeau 1988: 97). The protagonists and the viewers do not see the city in this sequence. In Bogin’s film, not only Sergei and Natasha walk, but also other unnamed and unmentioned pedestrians appear walking streets of Riga. They take their own paths, they walk next to each other, they watch other people walk and the camera does so too. In this way, Riga on the screen is created by pedestrians as a text is made by words. In the sequence of Sergei following Natasha and taking a tram this text ‘Riga’ is interrupted (00:06:46). The pedestrian viewpoints are continued through the rest of the film: Riga is painted/written by steps. Riga is also presented as seen through the flaneur, as philosopher Walter Benjamin describes this mode of perception. The flaneur ignores the historical sights and mementoes, concentrating on the feel of one single tile, on the scent of the threshold, as a priest of the spirit inhibiting the place (Benjamin 1987: 186). Filming in Riga is determined by the flaneur’s perspective (Figure 2)

The city in Walking the Streets of Moscow is portrayed from a different perspective - from a distance. There, where in Divi the camera view is determined by the perspective of walking the streets of Riga. In Walking the Streets of Moscow, the perspective of walking on a street is interchanged with an aerial perspective on Moscow. This view is comparable to what De Certau describes as the perspective one has viewing New York from the 10th floor of the World Trade Center (De Certeau 1988: 92). Becoming a voyeur, not a flaneur, viewers of Danelia’s film get ‘to see it whole’ in words of De Certeau (Ibid). In Moscow, viewers are taken up to the sky to see the city from a solar Eye perspective (00:03:17). The protagonists meet on a metro train (Volodia is on his way to visit relatives in Moscow, and Kolia is on his way home after a night shift constructing the Moscow metro). They stand and do not walk in the train; later they experience various, often comic, episodes. Talking is the social practice in which all the protagonists engage: in a church, on a train, in a shop, on a street, in a park, in a police department, in a cafe, and during a concert. In addition, the protagonists use telephones and speak in unison. The time-space of the film does not have any communicative barriers. In contrast, as Orlando Figes points out, Soviet society was for decades characterised by terror and the silencing of any personal communication (Figes 2007: xxxii); communication among Soviet citizens in Danelia’s film is represented as rainfall. The only non-verbal element of the film is a sequence of rainfall in which a girl walks in the downpour and a man tries to hold a useless and unwanted umbrella over her. This rain is often interpreted as a metaphor for renewal, and indeed, in Soviet cinema of the Thaw era, it often rains. Literary critic Aleksandr Arkhangel’skii believes that water in these films washes the world clean of all the mistakes of the past (Arkhangel’skii 2018). However, when one places the focus of analysis on the social practices of the time-space represented in the film, the rain is a symbolic replacement for words. Rain in the film does not stop communication. The sound of rain and music replace the exchange of words between characters, who still talk to each other even when it is not audible. The rain is just another type of conversation in the film. The film presents Moscow as a collection of tableaux vivants and locations where something other than the city and walking, as a social practice, takes place.

In contrast, Divi presents Riga as an anonymous Soviet city where social practices like dancing, making music, creating art, and going out are intermixed with walking through the city’s streets. Here, not only is Riga documented, but the city also appears as one of the film's protagonists. Camera work by Piks and Pilipsons includes documentary sequences of people walking the streets and looking straight at the camera. The sequences in parks were also filmed locally in Riga, just as sequences in a tram and even the protagonists’ strolls were filmed within city traffic. These anonymous people filmed by the lightweight camera outside of the studio allow space to become more trustworthy and realistic for both the protagonists in the represented world and for the audience. Sergei is shown covering his ears to gain an empathic perspective on Natasha’s plight since she cannot hear. Sergei (and the camera and audience) observe people walking and communicating when the whole represented world is put on 'mute'. Moreover, the camera 'walks' the streets of Riga along with the protagonists, who, in the course of the narrative, keep on returning to the places that they have visited before. The space of the park reappears in the film three times. Only the seasons shift, denoting the passage of time and the development of the relationship that gradually becomes intimate and warm as the weather becomes colder, transitioning from sunny autumn to snowy winter. The repetition of locations and the natural (repetitive) sequence of seasons gives the time and space of the film a cyclical quality.

The construction of space here differs from Walking the Streets of Moscow, where space is like a line that goes from one point to the other. In this film, the protagonists move from childhood towards adulthood as though travelling from Moscow to Siberia, as in the case of Volodia Shatalov, who conquers the taiga, or Aleksandr, who joins the army. Their way is not straight, but still, it has a linear direction that symbolises their entering the age of maturity and leaving adolescence behind forever. Making any circular movements on this timeline is impossible. The narrative of the film is concentrated in one day – from a bright morning to a dark evening. Furthermore, the linear nature of the time represented in this film is emphasised by references to the 'natural' change of light outside, indicating the progression from morning to the afternoon and night.

Divi represents a longer period of time and the change of seasons, indicating a circularity of time that flows and is mirrored in the cyclical return to earlier locales . In this way, space itself is represented as a circle; even theatre sequences filmed in Moscow appear twice in Divi and demonstrate the circular movement of returning to several locations that function as fixed points in the narrative and in the represented cityscape. These elements of circularity and repetition create a space that allows time to proceed independently of visual circumstances. The repetition of locations changes the environment by representing time and space as a closed construct rather than a teleological development. Representations of time and space are strongly related: as Bakhtin puts it, chronotope is a unity of time and space in human culture and hence it encompasses a certain and a historic value (Bakhtin, 1981, FTC: 243). Time and space can be divided only by abstract thinking. This separation cannot be experienced, this connection between time and space is breakable only in abstract thinking about representation, not in the representation itself (Bakhtin, 1981, FTC: 243). Tools in the representation of time and space can be changed, causing alterations in what these representations articulate, as Danelia’s and Bogin’s films demonstrate.

The representation of disability

The central theme of the script is disability. Deafness is a partly invisible impairment; its cinematographic representation is not fixed, whereas blindness usually has a more fixed style of representation, typically coded through a specific kind of posture, gaze, and visual aids. Deafness was a new topic to filmmakers at the Riga Film Studio and was not a typical theme in Soviet cinema in general. Chuliukin intended the film to be the first film made about deaf people in the Soviet Union. In spite of this intention a hearing actress Viktoriya Fyodorova appears in the film as a person with hearing impairment. (Fig. 3)

According to the scriptwriter, the film’s central themes are love and the moral development of young people (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 35-39). The conflict between the protagonists derives from them belonging to opposite worlds. In this respect, it evokes Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, in which the titular young protagonists fall in love but their families’ rivalry prevents them from being together. In Divi, Sergei and Natasha attend a theatre performance of Romeo and Juliet performed by deaf actors. The reference to Shakespeare's tragedy is the second intertextual reference mentioned in the script and presented in the film in addition to Danelia's film subtitled as 'lyric comedy' (00:01:27). Viewing these two referential texts from a genre perspective would only allow for a discussion of their tragic and comic elements, but the extent and role of Shakespeare's play in the film requires further analysis beyond this. In referencing Shakespeare’s seminal play, Bogin (re)presents Sergei and Natasha not only in terms of tragedy, but also in terms of comedy due to Natasha's disability. The inclusion of two theatre sequences filmed in the actual theatre, suggests that Sergei and Natasha themselves mirror Romeo and Juliet, where feuding families are replaced with the conflict of audible and muted worlds.

The muted world is the world to which Natasha, her colleagues, and friends belong: these are people who all live with a sensory impairment. As Sergei notices Natasha's deafness (linking her communication via sign language to a sensory impairment), he walks away (00:07:09). Further on, after Sergei decides to proceed with a relationship with Natasha, he prevents her from revealing her deafness to his friend, at first, by not letting her talk at the table (00:27:12) and later by leading her off the dance floor (00:29:09). This could be interpreted as disguising Natasha's deafness, although Bogin emphasises that it indicates the couple’s true love. The hero and the scriptwriter perceive deafness as a human being’s incompleteness rather than as variation of the human body. Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov concluded that only mobility and communication disabilities caused by injuries or illnesses were represented on the Soviet screen, thereby portraying disability as transformable and caused by a named or (re)presented incident.

Disability in Soviet visual culture and society was a transformable signifier that revealed the possibilities of modernising the ‘imperfect’(Iarskaia and Romanov 2009: 290). The portrayal of disability as transformable was used as a metaphor for the notion of all lives being improved under Soviet rule. Physical and mental disabilities that were innate to the individual were rarely represented in Soviet discourse (Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov 2009: 289) because these kinds of disabilities did not offer the possibility of transformation. In the script, Chuliukin and Bogin presented the protagonist’s disability as a war injury. The first version of the script included scenes depicting Natasha getting injured as a child. The filmmakers at the artistic council session questioned the necessity of this sequence (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 35). Nikolajs Zolotonoss, the music editor at the Riga Film Studio suggested that this should not be filmed and that the war need not be mentioned as the source of Natasha’s injury (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 37). However, Vladimir Gorriker, the director, insisted on filming the war episode because it was necessary and emotive (LVA; 416, 4, 31: 37). Although the Second World War gained importance in the official discourse and greater visibility on the Soviet screen after Stalin’s death, the memories of the War and its representation in literature and on the screen were tightly controlled. Orlando Figes writes that the memory of the war was downplayed in the public discourse through the strict censorship of publications, the withdrawal of wartime newspapers, and subsequently, the commemoration of the Soviet victory as public displays of loyalty and political legitimacy for the regime itself (Figes 2007: 619). In this context, evoking the Second World War in a personal manner by presenting it as a traumatic experience in the protagonist's history was an ambiguous creative decision on the part of the filmmakers.

However, the filmmakers at the Riga Film Studio did not perceive the reason given for Natascha’s hearing loss to be logical. Janis Rokpelnis, poet and member of the script’s editorial board, questioned using the war to explain Natasha’s speech loss: if she talked when she was a child, why was her language lost later on (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 35). Although Chuliukin tried to argue for the logical necessity of the childhood memories,the sequence representing Natasha as a three-year-old child was not filmed. This does not mean that the war injury was not mentioned at all. The explanation for Natasha's condition was given in the sequence depicting Natasha and Sergei in the park. Natasha explains her deafness to Sergei using words: she writes about her memories of bomb explosions and winds. Her words appear on the screen as subtitles for the audience to read. At the same time, the sounds of wind blowing and bombs exploding are audible. Here deafness and Natasha’s memories are represented not visually but audibly – only for the film's audience – thus reconstructing Natasha's inner and sensory world.

The Soviet demand for disability to be represented as a short-lived condition that could be improved or overcome in the course of a single narrative determined its temporality, a phenomenon that Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov describe as the ‘visuality of disability’. In Soviet visual culture, disability always had a beginning, a ‘legitimate’ reason such as a heroic deed or war injury, (Iarskaia-Smirnova and Romanov offer the example of The Story of a Real Man/Povest' o nastoiashchem cheloveke (Aleksandr Stolper, USSR, 1948)) and a triumphant ending (Iarskaia-Smirnova, Romanov: 295). Although Natasha suffered an injury during the war, which was portrayed as the heroic struggle of the Soviet people against fascism, Soviet ideology did not allow for heroic ‘victims’. The protagonist does not retrieve her hearing in the course of the narrative. She does not get medical or spiritual treatment that can heal her and release her from her sensory and communicative impediment. Natasha’s injury is both life-altering and lifelong. The incurability of Natasha's condition was also the basis of the conflicting moods and ideas presented in the film. The filmmakers at the Riga Film Studio demanded that the protagonist undergo a transition and (re)gain her hearing. Grigulis suggested that Natasha should start ‘feeling’ music at Sergei's concert. In this way, curing the protagonist's deafness would permit the script to lose its “pathological qualities” (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 37) and gain more humanity. Furthermore, Rokpelnis and Kalniņš recommended against emphasising Natasha's hearing impairment in the narrative. By refusing to represent Natasha's sensory disability in the sequences where she loses apples and stops to look at musical instruments in a shop window, the filmmakers silence the representation of disability.

At the artistic council session on October 8, Chuliukin announced that the film would no longer focus on the representation of deaf people and would instead address the moral development of Soviet youth (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 35). At the end of the session, Grigulis demanded major changes in the narrative (LVA, 416, 4, 31: 39). It seems that Sergei's transformation through love was not what Grigulis had intended. In my view, Grigulis was, in fact, demanding that Natasha, rather than Sergei, be transformed. Transformation is a narratively determined process that has its own dramaturgy, from the loss that takes place in the beginning to the regaining that takes place in the end.. The representation of disability as transformable, if not reversible, was deeply rooted in the question of how Soviet viewers would interpret the film. The studio’s post-production team received a letter from a group of students who had seen the film and disagreed over its meaning. The majority of these students decided that at Sergei’s concert, Natasha had regained her hearing. Nikolai Astashenko, the author of the letter, argued that at the concert, Natascha merely recalls a treasured, lost memory of a lullaby. Irena Dambrane, editor of the information bureau at the Riga Film Studio, replied to Astashenko, confirming that Natasha's condition was, in fact, incurable. She offered a different explanation of the role of sound in the concert sequence. These sounds, she claims, were simply the song of Natasha's love because, in this sequence, she realises that she had fallen in love with Sergei. Evidently, the sounds of explosions, wind, and lullaby present in the concert sequence are not audible to the other characters, while the film's viewers can hear these and identify them not only as diegetic sounds but also as the representation of Natasha's inner world. This exchange of interpretations demonstrates how sensitive and conditioned the representation of disability as transformable or irreversible was in Soviet cinema. Bogin did not amend the script to suggest that Natascha or Sergei had undergone any form of transformation: Natasha remained deaf and mute, and her disability was not represented as transformable.

The representation of disability in Divi demonstrates that the protagonist's condition is a trauma that is irreversible and ongoing, unlike the war itself. In the film, the unfolding of an individual biographical narrative allows communication between the protagonists who are audibly separated and still manage to turn their encounter into a connection. In dialogue with other films and viewers, Divi introduced a new way of representing and considering disability on screen, i.e. not as stigmatising but inclusive – as just another human condition.

Conclusion

Instead of ending with a summary that risks repeating my analysis, allow me to conclude with an overarching interpretation of Divi. Although Natasha’s disability in Divi is not treated as a symbol or a metaphor, the ‘chronotopic approach’ argued for in this paper permits a discussion of the film in light of decolonisation. Divi represents a rhetorical complex ‘silence’ as a leitmotif of the narrative in depicting a deaf and mute girl, and simultaneously (and most likely unconsciously) points towards the themes that are silenced in Soviet culture, such as the disability and trauma of the Second World War. The 'muted' heroine clearly functions as a symbol of Latvia forcefully subsumed into the Soviet Union that consequently loses its 'voice', i.e. its national language and political independence due to Soviet occupation. This interpretation supports the initial idea that underlies a decolonial approach to interpreting the film. In spite of its (seeming) accessibility, this interpretation assigns the heroine a position of passivity as a victim of imposed violence and robs her of any possibility of overcoming this trauma.

The ‘chronotopic approach’ allows for this interpretation along with other readings and frames the years spent within the Soviet system as a period of dialogue without accepting the invasion, referred to as 'the Soviet occupation', itself. The film Divi is a bright instance of this dialogue.

The hearing protagonist of Divi, Sergei, speaks little. As a musician, his main instrument of communication is music. His minimal verbalisation is a choice. At the beginning of the film, Sergei demonstrates his talkativeness, he jokes and uses phrases in different languages in order to impress Natasha, who remains silent. Gradually, however, Sergei becomes more and more silent, and the metaphorical distance between the protagonists shortens. Natasha's silence, her 'coolness' and distancing, appear forced. She is pleased when Sergei follows her and is disappointed when he turns away and discovers her disability, a discovery made by Sergei and the audience at the same time It becomes clear that her silence is not a choice but was forced upon her. If we take Natascha as a metaphorical figure impersonating Latvia, we can see that ‘inclusion’ of Latvia in the Soviet Union caused Latvia to lose its voice. Realising this 'inclusion' in the Soviet Union as forced took Latvians roughly another twenty years. The return of Latvia’s 'voice' formed a part of this recognition process. It takes just a brief moment for Sergei to accept the status quo and for Natasha to (partially) reclaim her voice because both of them are invested in one another. Natascha’s tears in the concert scene are tears of regaining memories. Viewed as a metaphor for Latvia, this scene can be interpreted as regaining control over historical memory.

Hearing (whether physical or metaphorical) is important to Natasha and Sergei’s silence; it is important for them to hear each other, not to speak up or speak out. The sequence at the beginning of Divi introduces the park in an aerial shot. Sergei's path in the park is shown as a gradual movement from being part of a group of friends to solitude and silence. This happens in three stages. First, he walks among a group of students. Sergei's friends are musicians: one of them carries a cello. In the next episode, Sergei and a female episodic character leave the group. He puts his arm around her shoulders. Finally, he walks through the park alone. The whole journey takes twenty seconds. Sergei's procession is synchronised with the reduction of the distance between him and the camera, and with the gradual reduction of sounds. At first, one can hear chatter and jokes. Moving deeper into the park, Sergei talks to the girl so quietly that neither the camera nor the audience can hear their conversation – it has no narrative relevance. When Sergei walks alone, only the sounds of the environment – footsteps, cars, and buses – can be heard. Thus the disappearance of people and communication are shown in this film as interconnected events. The focus of attention is on the movement, not on communication, in this way, words have no priority in Divi.

The long episode in the park in the middle of the film mirrors the space of the cinematic world that expands the individual worlds of the characters. Like the temporal space of the road, the park is a temporal space open for (almost) everyone in the represented world: it offers the possibility of meeting socially and culturally diverse people, it is both a public and private space. Because of the dual nature of the park, a meeting there can be planned or accidental. Natasha and Sergei go to the park intending to continue their conversation and by chance to meet Natasha's friends. When his peers leave the park, Sergei makes a choice to stay with Natasha, noticing she and her friends are deaf. It is also in the park, when engrossed in a story about music, Sergei invites the deaf-mute Natasha to his concert; realising his mistake during his speech, he falls silent. Sergei breaks the boundaries between hearing and silenced spaces as he voluntarily falls silent in a moment of sympathy and empathy. The borders of the audible and muted worlds are breached several times during the film: when Sergei suggests they write instead of talk, when Natasha stands and contemplates a shop selling musical instruments, and when the film itself uses over-titles to denote the protagonists’ conversation. In the closing sequence, Natasha attends Sergei’s concert (Divi 00:35:05). Here, the film is silent, focusing instead on the dominant (in)audible world, i.e., on Natasha’s muted world; her perspective is represented by silenced footage of the concert (the notion of silencing the world represented in Divi is introduced when Sergei covers his ears after he realises that Natasha is deaf 00:07:10). She starts crying while ‘hearing’ a female voice humming a lullaby. This act can be interpreted as an act of reconciliation since she recalls the sound which she had previously described as forgotten. The film ends with close ups of Natasha and Sergei, they are smiling, but are not in the same frame. The end of the film demonstrates the desired mixture of tragic and comic elements without introducing any supportive characters or events.

The ‘chronotopic approach’, which considers more than just two mutually antagonistic sides, emancipates interpretation from the limits (de)colonisation as concept imposes on thinking about Soviet film in Latvia. Thinking in terms of a coloniser and a colonised subject that is deprived of autonomy and power may describe power relations in certain contexts and in distinct moments in time and be of essential importance. However, in the context of film studies, this approach limits interpretations by focusing on a conflict of identities and discourses that takes the focus away from dialogue and intertextuality and the interdependence and permeability of culture, denying the multiplicity of voices involved in film production and reception.

Marija Weste
Linköping University

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Denise J. Youngblood for the thoughtful commentaries and questions and to express my deep and sincere gratitude to Adelaide McGinity-Peebles, Irina Schulzki and Natascha Drubek-Meyer for their patience, support and fruitful suggestions.

Bio

Marija Weste holds a MSc in Communication Studies from the University of Latvia, and an MA in Baltic Sea Region Studies from Humboldt University, Germany. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Language and Culture at Linköping University, Sweden. She is also a reviewer for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television.

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Suggested Citation

Weste, Marija. 2024. “Beyond Identity: A Chronotopic Analysis of the Soviet Latvian Film Divi (1965)”. Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 19. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2024.00019.368.

URL:  http://www.apparatusjournal.net/

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