Editing Cinema of the Soviet Union (section)

===Trophy films===
Movie theaters in the postwar period faced the problem of satisfying the growing appetites of Soviet audiences for films while dealing with the shortage of newly produced works from studios. In response, cinemas played the same films for months at a time, many of them the works of the late 1930s. Anything new drew millions of people to the box office, and many theaters screened foreign films to attract larger audiences. Most of these foreign films were "trophy films", two thousand films brought into the country by the [[Red Army]] after [[Military occupations by the Soviet Union|the occupation]] of Germany and Eastern Europe in World War II.<ref>Peter Kenez, ''Cinema'', 191–192.</ref> In the top secret minutes for the [[CPSU Central Committee|CPSU Committee]] Meeting on August 31, 1948, the committee permitted the Minister of the Film Industry to release fifty of these films in the Soviet Union. Of these fifty, Bolshakov was only allowed to release twenty-four for screening to the general public, mainly films made in Germany, Austria, Italy, and France. The other twenty-six films, consisting almost entirely of American films, were only allowed to be shown in private screenings. The minutes also include a separate list of permitted German musical films, which were mainly German and Italian film adaptations of famous operas.<ref>Richard Taylor, ''Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany'' (New York: I.B.Tauris, 1998), 212–214.</ref> Most of the trophy films were released in 1948–49, but somewhat strangely, compiled lists of the released films include ones not previously mentioned in the official minutes of the Central Committee.<ref>M. Turovskaia et al. (eds), ''Kino totalitarnoi epokhi'' (1933–1945) (Moscow, 1989), 45–46, quoted in Taylor, ''Film Propaganda'', 238.</ref>

The public release of these trophy films seems contradictory in the context of the 1940s Soviet Union. The Soviet government allowed the exhibition of foreign films which contained far more subversive ideas than any a Soviet director would have ever attempted putting in a film at a time when Soviet artists found themselves unemployed because of censorship laws. Historians hypothesize many possible reasons why the Soviet government showed such seemingly inexplicable leniency toward the foreign films. The government may have granted cinemas the right to show the films so they could stay in business after the domestic film industry had declined. A second hypothesis speculates that the government saw the films as an easy source of money to help rebuild the nation after the war.<ref>Kenez, ''Cinema'', 191–192.</ref> The minutes of the CPSU Central Committee meeting seem to support the latter idea with instructions that the films are to bring in a net income of at least 750 million [[Soviet rouble|roubles]] to the State coffers over the course of a year from public and private screenings, and 250 million roubles of this were supposed to come from rentals to the trade union camera network.<ref>Taylor, ''Film Propaganda'', 213.</ref>

In addition to releasing the films, the committee also charged Bolshakov and the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the CPSU Central Committee "with making the necessary editorial corrections to the films and with providing an introductory text and carefully edited subtitles for each film."<ref>Quoted in Taylor, ''Film Propaganda'', 212.</ref> In general, the captured [[Nazism and cinema|Nazi films]] were considered apolitical enough to be shown to the general populace. Still the Propaganda and Agitation Section of the Central Committee ran into trouble with the censoring of two films slated for release. The censors found it impossible to remove the "[[Zionism|Zionist]]" ideas from [[Jud Suss (1940 film)|''Jud Suss'']], an anti-Semitic, Nazi propaganda film. The censors also had trouble with a film adaptation of [[Of Mice and Men (1939 film)|''Of Mice and Men'']] because of the representation of the poor as a detriment to society.

There is very little direct evidence of how Soviet audiences received the trophy films. Soviet magazines or newspapers never reviewed the films, there were no audience surveys, and no records exist of how many people viewed the films. To judge the reception and popularity of these foreign films, historians have mainly relied on anecdotal evidence. The German musical comedy ''[[The Woman of My Dreams (1944 film)|The Woman of My Dreams]]'' received mixed reviews according to this evidence. ''[[Kultura i zhizn]]'' published a supposed survey compiled of readers' letters to the editor in March 1947 which criticize the film for being idealess, low brow, and even harmful. [[Bulat Okudzhava]] wrote a contradicting viewpoint in ''{{ill|Druzhba Narodov|ru|Дружба народов (журнал)}}'' in 1986, saying that everyone in the city of [[Tbilisi]] was crazy about the film. According to him, everywhere he went people were talking about the film and whistling the songs. Of the two accounts, film historians generally consider Okudzhava's more reliable than the one presented by ''Kultura i zhizn''. Films such as ''[[His Butler's Sister]]'', ''[[The Thief of Bagdad (1940 film)|The Thief of Bagdad]]'', ''[[Waterloo Bridge (1940 film)|Waterloo Bridge]]'' and ''[[Sun Valley Serenade]]'', although not technically trophies as they had been purchased legally during the wartime alliance with America, were highly popular with Soviet audiences. In ''[[Vechernyaya Moskva]]'' (October 4, 1946), M. Chistiakov reprimanded theaters and the Soviet film industry for the fact that over a six-month timespan, sixty of the films shown had been tasteless Western films rather than Soviet ones. Even in criticism of the films and the crusading efforts of the [[Rootless cosmopolitan|anti-cosmopolitan campaign]] against the trophy films, it is clear to see they had quite an impact on Soviet society.<ref>Kenez, ''Cinema'', 192–193.</ref>