From View to Gaze: Bela (1913) at the Centre of the Screen

Abstract

Oriented by visual, gender and ethnographic studies, and broadening the focus from the film itself to the reviews in the cinema press of the period, this article offers a new interpretation of the Russian film Bela, a work that has been largely overlooked by critics, directed by Andrej Gromov and written by Marija Kallaš in 1913. Despite being a cinematic adaptation of a 19th century short story composed by Michail Lermontov bearing the same title, and therefore presenting itself as a paradigmatic example of classic narrative cinema, Bela challenges the typical features and conventions of the genre, reversing the standards and experimenting with the peculiarities of the documentary genre, particularly with the aesthetics of the coeval cinematic travelogues. Additionally, Kallaš’s screenplay puts the female character at the very centre of the narrative, and transforms Bela, an exotic Circassian princess depicted through ethnic and gender stereotypes, from a passive icon into an active and mobile figure, immersed in the landscape, able to observe the world around her.

Keywords

• early russian cinema
• lermontov
• visual culture
• caucasus
• marija kallaš