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American Femininity in Soviet Films during the Early Cold War (1946—1955) Discussed Movies The Russian Question (Mikhail Romm, 1947) is an adaptation of Konstantin Simonov play of the same name. The film depicts New York in 1946: MacPherson and Gould, owners of reactionary right-wing newspapers, send their correspondent Harry Smith to the Soviet Union. His task is to write a scaremongering report about “Soviet expansionist intentions” in order to further a campaign of anti-Soviet propaganda. However, having returned from the USSR, Smith writes the ‘truth about the Russians. His bosses fly into a rage. Harry is deprived of everything: job, money, home, and his wife Jessie deserts him. But Smith keeps on fighting against media tycoons and their bosses on Wall Street and becomes a mouthpiece for the opinions of progressive Americans. Meeting on the Elbe (Grigori Aleksandrov, 1949) is set in the immediate postwar period and describes relations between the population of an imaginary German town, Altenstadt, and Soviet and American troops. Major Nikita Kuzmin and Major James Hill meet each other on the Elbe in April 1945 and become friends. Later they are made commandants of the Soviet and American sectors of the town respectively. The Nazis, with the help of an American journalist, Janet Sherwood, hatch a plot in the Soviet sector. Hill tries to fulfil his duty to his Soviet allies and fight against the Nazis hand in hand with Kuzmin. The conspiracy is unveiled, but Sherwood turns out to be an emissary of the CIA. Because of his prevention of her efforts Hill is fired from the American army and awaits summoning before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Farewell, America! (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1950) describes American diplomats’ activity in Moscow in the late 1940s. One of them, Anna Bedford, an idealistic American girl, discovers that practically the entire staff at the embassy is engaged in espionage and slandering the Soviet state. Speaking at a discussion of the script at an artistic council, Dovzhenko announced his intention as “to represent Americans as our opposites” (Trybmach 2002). The Silver Dust (Abram Room, 1953) is an adaptation of a Soviet Estonian playwriter August Jakobson’s play The Jackals. It shows life in an American city where the Steal family lives. Professor Steal invents a radioactive silver dust, a weapon of mass destruction, and tries to test it on six African Americans who were falsely accused of the attempted rape of a white woman. His stepchildren, Ann and Alan, together with other American champions of peace ruin this plan and fight against the invention. In 1953 The New York Times called this film “probably the most venomous anti-American movie in the history of the film industry” (quoted in Caute 2005: 158). The Cinematic Cold War from a Gender Studies Perspective The post-war confrontation between the USSR and America became a unique event in world history largely due to the important role of culture, convincingly 295
