Alexander Fedorov
Over the past hundred years, a huge amount of scientific literature has been published about Soviet cinema of the 1920s, both in USSR, Russia and abroad. At the same time, data on the distribution of Soviet films of the 1920s in these publications are either absent altogether or very scarce. For example, for many years I could not find data on the attendance of the film “Battleship “Potemkin”, and only this year in one of the rare editions (materials of the First All-Union Party Conference on Cinematography) - I found that 2.1 million spectators watched this famous film by Sergei Eisenstein during the first year of the demonstration in the cinemas of the USSR (Krinitsky, 1929: 18).
There is an opinion that it is impossible to compare films at the box office, since this is a changeable value over the years, while attendance is a constant value. However, is it possible to give at least one example when in Soviet times a film was the leader in terms of attendance, but at the same time it was not the leader in terms of box office receipts (naturally, in terms of one-two years of film distribution)?
Therefore, I believe that attendance and box office are closely related. And it is almost impossible to imagine that at any particular period of time (for example, the year of film distribution) a film was in the lead in terms of attendance, but was not included in the number of leaders in terms of box office receipts. So the most visited Soviet films, of course, were at the same time among the highest grossing films. Another thing is that if data on the attendance of many Soviet films exist, then data on their box office receipts are usually not available.
It is for this reason that the statistical data of the operational department of “Sovkino” (Sovkino, 1929) are of particular interest, since they contain specific figures not only for the production cost of almost a hundred Soviet films of the 1920s, but also for their box office receipts and percentages of the full cost of film production amount.
Plus, in the statistical data given in the materials of the First All-Union Party Conference on Cinematography (Krinitsky, 1929: 18), it is noted that the famous film “Battleship “Potemkin” was viewed in the USSR by 2.100.000 viewers; “Miss Mend” - 7.960.000; “Love Threesome” - 1.260.000 viewers” (Krinitsky, 1929: 18).
Based on these data of A. Krinitsky (of which, however, it is difficult to understand whether the attendance figures for the film “Miss Mend” are given per one part or for the entire film as a whole), I, firstly, supplemented the list of "Sovkino", and, secondly, I calculated the number of viewers according to the nine dozen Soviet films of the 1920s given in the statistical table "Sovkino" (1929).
The range of prices for cinema tickets in the USSR in the 1920s was quite significant - for screenings for an ordinary audience - from 25 kopecks to 2 rubles per ticket, depending on the time period of the 1920s, the status of the city and cinema, weekends, holidays) and 5 -10 kopecks for the audience of children's sessions (Boltyansky, 1929: 21, 214; Yusupova, 2016: 31 and other sources).
Taking into account that the vast majority of films from the “Sovkino” list (Sovkino, 1929) and the short list published in the materials of the First All-Union Party Conference on Cinematography were intended for an adult audience, when calculating the number of viewers, I used the following ratio, found when comparing these two sources.
The well-known film by A. Room “Love Threesome” ("The Third Meshanskaya"), according to “Sovkino”, received 116.1 thousand rubles of cash profit (Sovkino, 1929), and, according to the data given in A. Krinitsky's report to the First All-Union Party Conference in cinematography, the same film, following the results of the first year of distribution, gathered an audience of 1.26 million viewers (Krinitsky, 1929: 18). Using this ratio between the data of "Sovkino" and A. Krinitsky for the film “Love Threesome”, it was possible to calculate the approximate number of viewers for other films, the box office for which is indicated in the reference "Sovkino" (1929).
As a result, I compiled the following table (Table 1):
Of course, the data of this table 1, alas, are far from completeness: they do not contain, for example, either the box office or the number of viewers for such recognized hits of the Soviet film distribution of the 1920s as “Aelita”, “Cutter from Torzhok”, “Red Devils”, etc.
However, they give an idea that, contrary to popular opinion not based on facts, in the top ten grossing Soviet films of the 1920s from the list given in Table 1, the overwhelming number was filmed in the genre of drama (7), plus one action / adventure film and two melodramas. True, to a certain extent the dominance of the drama genre can be explained by the lack of statistics on box office receipts and attendance of such popular entertainment films as “Aelita”, “The Cutter from Torzhok”, “Red Devils”, and others.
At the same time, S. Eisenstein's films “Battleship “Potemkin” (6th place) and “October” (10th place) managed to outstrip in box office such well-known comedies as “Girl with a box” (15th place) “The Kiss of Mary Pickford” (22st place), “Two friends, a model and a girlfriend” (26th place), “Don Diego and Pelagia” (49th place), “Doll with Millions” (58th place) and many melodramas.
At the same time, such famous films of the 1920s as “Love Threesome” (“The Third Meshchanskaya”), “The Descendant of Genghis Khan” (“Storm over Asia”), “The End of St. Petersburg” and “The Diplomatic Courier's Bag”, based on box office figures and the number viewers, were in the range from 34rd to 50th place.
Statistical information of “Sovkino” (Sovkino, 1929) also shows that out of nine dozen Soviet movies of the 1920s, only 44 films were able to recoup the costs and / or bring profit to the production (to this are added “Miss Mend”, “Bear Wedding” and “Battleship “Potemkin”. Among the unprofitable films (they were also not very popular among viewers of the 1920s) there were, for example, such famous films as “Your Friend” (“Journalist”) by L. Kuleshov, “House in the Snowdrifts” by F. Ermler and “Lace” by S. Yutkevich.
It is curious that, having received impressive (by Soviet standards of the 1920s) box office receipts, due to the high cost of their production, such famous films as “October” by S. Eisenstein (19% of the cost of the rental amount), “The End of St. Petersburg” by V. Pudovkin (58% coverage of the cost with the rental amount), “SVD” by G. Kozintsev and L. Trauberg (68% coverage of the cost with the rental amount), “Descendant of Genghis Khan” (“Storm over Asia”) by V. Pudovkin (76% coverage of the cost with the rental amount) were unprofitable.
At the same time, let's not forget that in the 1920s, Soviet films had to face serious competition in the box office with Western (primarily Hollywood) production, but even under such difficult distribution conditions, the films “Miss Mend”, “Bear Wedding”, “The Poet and the Tsar” and "The Man from the Restaurant" managed to outstrip such foreign hits as “Variété”, “Scaramouche” and “Three Musketeers” in terms of box office and the number of viewers.
Alexander Fedorov, 2021
Fedorov, A. Soviet box-office films of the 1920s: on the issue of cinema statistics. In: Fedorov, A. One thousand and one highest-grossing Soviet film: opinions of film critics and viewers. Moscow: Information for all, 2022.
This text is a fragment of the second edition of the monograph: Fedorov, A. One thousand and one highest-grossing Soviet film: opinions of film critics and viewers. Moscow: Information for all, 2022.
Reference Boltyansky, G.M. (1929). Cinema reference book. Mosxcow: Tea-Cinema-Print, 491 p. Krinitsky, A. (1929). The results of the construction of cinema in the USSR and the tasks of Soviet cinematography. In: Ways of cinema. First All-Union Party Meeting on Cinematography. Moscow: Tea-Cinema-Print: 18. Prokhorov A. Inherited Discourse: Paradigms of Stalinist Culture in Thaw Literature and Cinematography. SPb: Academic Project - DNA, 2007. С. 51. Sovkino (1929). A summary of the turnover of the rental of films. Statistics of the operational department of "Sovkino", 1929. RGALI. F. 645. 1. № 369. Taylor R. Boris Shumyatsky and Soviet Cinematography in the 30s: Ideology as Entertainment for the Masses" / / Film Studies Notes. 1989. № 3. Yusupova, G.M. (2016). "With great material and artistic success ..." Cash phenomena of popular art of the 1920s: Cinema. Literature. Theatre. Moscow, 268 p. Yusupova, G.M. (2013). The box office phenomena of the cinema of the 1920s and the legend of the “new spectator”. Film Studies Notes, 102-103: 151-167.
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