Screening Coldicutt: introduction

Turksib: building a railroad
Cinema and capitalism

Ken Coldicutt

Screening Coldicutt: introduction
Deane Williams

Uploaded 8 December, 1997 | 3800 words

From the thirties to the early fifties, Ken Coldicutt was a major contributor to the flowering of a vibrant film culture in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, that is best understood in relation to a similar fecundity on the international sphere. Coldicutt's articles, "Cinema and capitalism" and the later "Turksib : building a railroad", display some crucial aspects of his criticism, specifically his knowledge of the writings and films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Grierson. This interest in "political" film form was inseparable from Coldicutt's promulgation of film culture as it was informed by the Progressive Movement. "Cinema and capitalism " and "Turksib : building a railroad" display an early consideration of some of the issues that Coldicutt was to devote his life to: film distribution, censorship and the criticism of capitalist cinema. These writings also provide an indication of an Australian contribution to the international left film culture's response to 'Hollywood' in the light of the emergence of the Soviet cinema of the likes of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko.

Coldicutt's earliest encounters with film criticism were through film journals of the 1930s such as Experimental cinema, Close up, Film, Film art, Cinema quarterly, Sight and sound and through the publications from the New Theatre network in particular New York's New theatre and film. These journals enabled Coldicutt to obtain reviews, details of film titles, names of distributors and access to the burgeoning world of film criticism, and formed the basis of a formidable personal library of film theory and criticism .(1) Coldicutt devoured anything and everything written about film. "Cinema and capitalism", written in 1935 for the Melbourne University Labour Club's magazine Proletariat, of which he became editor, was, however, his first article on film. (2)

(1) Borchardt Library, La Trobe University, Melbourne, now holds Coldicutt's collection.

(2) K. Coldicutt. "Cinema and capitalism", Proletariat: University Labor Club magazine. (April-June 1935): 11-15.

It was at University that, like many intellectuals of his time with a social conscience, he joined the Communist Party. Later in 1935 Coldicutt became the full time film manager for the Friends of the Soviet Union in Melbourne. In 1936 he imported what are said to be the first prints of Eisenstein's Ten days that shook the world to reach Australia, an action which occasioned the first of many battles with Commonwealth and State censors.(3) Coldicutt's work for the FOSU gave him first hand practical experience in film importation, distribution and screening, experience that would prove invaluable to the film society movement in Melbourne in later years.

(3) This date is mentioned in "Sergei Eisenstein", Guardian (Melbourne). (March 1948): 12. This article was most probably written by Coldicutt. For similiar events occurring in Britain in the thirties see Bert Hogenkamp. Deadly parallels: film and the left in Britain 1929-39. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986), in particular chapter three, "The battle over Potemkin".

In 1937 Coldicutt heard about the success in Britain and South Africa of the film Defence of Madrid (1936) made by Ivor Montagu and the Progressive Film Unit. (4) Defence of Madrid is "anything but a masterpiece" yet its international reputation grew out of the successful fund raising campaign organised around its screening in Britain and subsequently, Australia. (5) film's success also "introduced" Kino, the United Kingdom left film distributor, "to the kind of 'Popular Front' audiences it had been anxious to reach: constituency Labour clubs, Trade Councils, Clarion clubs etc." (6)

At this time Coldicutt was contemplating joining the International Brigades to fight the Fascists in Spain. Through some Australian contacts in London, Coldicutt imported a copy of the film which he screened initially at the Kelvin Hall, Melbourne and later in many suburban venues. Admission price was a donation to the Spanish Relief Committee. The importation and screening of Defence of Madrid proved to be a turning point in Coldicutt's thinking about political action and film. He abandoned thoughts of entering the International Brigades, believing that raising money for the Spanish Relief Committee and raising awareness of the war in Spain would be of greater service to the fight against fascism. It also began a period of his life which would mark Coldicutt's name as legendary in left political circles in Australia.

(4) Amira Inglis. Australians in the Spanish Civil War. (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 87.

(5) Hogenkamp. 156.

(6) Hogenkamp. 157

The Sydney branch of the Spanish Relief Committee was initially suspicious of the value of film as a propaganda device: this was an early example of the disregard in which film was held by some left wing organisations. The Melbourne branch, however, imported more films about the struggle in Spain (7) including They shall not pass (1937), News from Spain (1937), Attlee in Spain ( 1937), Behind the Spanish lines, and (1938)Modern orphans of the storm (1937). (8)

(7) Inglis. 88

(8) Charles Merewether. Preface to Ken Coldicutt, "The Party, films and I" Sixty years. no.2. Communist Party of Australia (1980), 60.

In 1937 Coldicutt left the FOSU to take up an appointment as national film organiser for the Spanish Relief Committee. He convinced the Committee to buy one of the first 16 mm sound projectors imported into Australia, and toured with it around the Melbourne suburbs and the country towns of Victoria. In early 1938 he set off on an east coast tour which went as far north as Cairns and Townsville where the films were received with much enthusiasm by the Italian, Spanish and Yugoslav cane cutters who donated large amounts of money. (9) During eight months of screenings, 25,000 people in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland saw the films, Coldicutt travelled 8851 kilometres raising £500 for the SRC. Coldicutt's efforts are more remarkable when we consider that the tour was done by rail with Coldicutt lugging a 16mm projector, a 56 pound transformer, cans of film, literature and luggage by himself for months on end in often severe weather conditions.(10) These screenings and Coldicutt's singular vision of political activism is still revered by his contemporaries today.(11)

(9) Inglis. 92.

(10) Inglis. 91.

(11) At the opening of a memorial to the Australians who fought with the International Brigades (11 December 1993), Coldicutt was singled out for his contribution to the Spanish Relief Committee.

Coldicutt's work for the SRC echoes two moments in cinema history. The first was the Soviet agit-trains that Alexander Medvedkin was in charge of at around the same time. (12) Medvedkin travelled to various locales such as Ukrainian collective farms to "produce critical films on local conditions". These included instructional films on topics such as "overcoming winter conditions to speed up freight shipments" as well as what have been called "barbed film vaudevilles", a style that Medvedkin put to use in his feature film Happiness (1935).(13) The Soviet trains of this period included projection facilities, as well as a film laboratory and animation equipment recalling the earlier and less sophisticated 'agit-trains' of the civil war period of the infant Soviet Union.(14) These trains contained leaflet printing machinery and a theatre company as well as the cameraperson, Edward Tisse, who would film regional events and send the footage back to Moscow to be edited by the young Dziga Vertov.(15) Coldicutt would most likely have read about the Soviet initiatives and, insisting on the agitational effect on a target audience such as the immigrant rural workers, provided an antipodean mirror to Medvedkin and his forebears.

(12) see Jay Leyda. Kino: a history of the Russian and Soviet film . (London: Allen and Unwin. 1973), 286-287.

(13) Chris Marker has made two filmic tributes to Medvedkin:The train rolls on (1971) and The last Bolshevik (1993)

(14) Leyda. 132-133. See also 'Interview with Alexander Medvedkin' in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds.) Inside the film factory: new approaches to Russian and Soviet cinema . (London: Routledge, 1994), 165-175.

(15) Leyda 132.

Second, Coldicutt was carrying on a tradition of the touring showman,who was initially the prime moving picture exhibitor for Australian rural areas. During the first two decades of this century, moving pictures were brought to isolated areas by horse and cart, then motorised truck with a combination of newsreel, scenic and dramatic vignettes that formed a 'show'. This era, prior to and parallelling the establishment of permanent rural exhibition circuits, is the subject of John Power and Joan Long's feature narrative film The picture show man (1977).

Coldicutt's experiences with the SRC confirmed his belief in the political efficacy of film. During the period 1937-9 he:

spoke and wrote about the need for a left wing film organisation which, unlike ad hoc bodies such as the Spanish Relief Committee, would develop expertise in film, would not compromise on censorship, would plough back money into more films and equipment, and which would make its own films.(16)

The wealth of theoretical knowledge from his reading of the film journals and books, as well as the practical knowledge obtained from his work for the Spanish Relief Committee, enabled Coldicutt, along with Worker's Theatre stalwart Bob Matthews, to set up the Realist Film Unit towards the end of 1945, to distribute and exhibit films which would not have obtained a release in the commercial circuits. The headquarters, and screening venue, of the RFU was Melbourne's New Theatre, a small but centrally-located venue which housed a left-wing theatre group of the same name.

(16) Ken Coldicutt. "The Party, films and I." 62.

Matthews theatrical experience and his possession of a 16 mm camera led to the establishment of a film production arm of the Unit, while Coldicutt's forte was the setting up of a network for screening, discussion and writing about film which later came under the aegis of the Realist Film Association.(17) Coldicutt's article on Turksib, which reached Lewis Jacobs through the International New Theatre network, is one example of thousands of reviews, discussions and criticisms that Coldicutt and his international counterparts, wrote for various newsletters, circulars and bulletins. In Australia such publications were produced by Coldicutt under the banner of the Realist Film Unit and, later, the Realist Film Association. Although Jacob's dating of the article is inaccurate ( it is most likely to be from the late 1940s), Coldicutt's writing is an early example of film comment by an Australian on a Soviet production. This review is the only Australian representation in Jacob's seminal collection The documentary tradition (1971) . (18)

(17) Some of the Realist Film Unit film projects include: A place to live (1946), In my beginning (1947), Beautiful Melbourne (1947), These are our children (1947), Prices and the people (1948).

(18) Lewis Jacobs. The documentary tradition . 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1979), 45-48.

Both articles included here have their theoretical underpinnings in fairly standard Soviet film theory. Turksib is discussed in terms of "the control of tempo" and that "each part deals with a separate and clearly defined aspect of the subject", notions which were part and parcel of Soviet film theory, especially its Eisensteinian variant which was popular at the time (Coldicutt was also a mathematics teacher later in life). This piece also displays a tension within Coldicutt's approach to documentary. He attends to Grierson's criticism of Turksib that initially appeared in The arts today in 1935, from which comes the quote: "Turksib gave every impression of building a railway, but the approach was again too detached to appreciate just how precisely or humanly it was built".(19) Grierson believed that the film hadn't paid enough attention to the process of the construction of the railway in Turksib. Coldicutt responds by drawing attention to the importance of the film's form in relation to the practical demands of the recently formed Soviet State, that is, he sees the film's importance as propaganda, where Grierson would say that the film lacked educational value. This is a reiteration of the communist critical practice that informed every aspect of Coldicutt's work emanating from Lenin's call for the cinema to serve the state as propaganda. (20) For Coldicutt the capitalist system is anathema to artistic endeavour and it is only in the service of revolution that the cinematic artist is able to produce worthwhile works of art. Grierson's ideals for cinema were seen by many communists to be in the service of the capitalist State and for this reason were met with Coldicutt's criticism.

(19) John Grierson. "Summary and survey: 1935" The arts today . London 1935 reprinted in Forsyth Hardy ed. and comp. Grierson on documentary. (London: Faber, 1966) 182.

(20) see Vladimir Lenin. "Directive on cinema affairs" in Richard Taylor, ed. and trans and Ian Christie, co-ed. and intro. The film factory: Russian and Soviet cinema in documents 1896-1939. (London: Routledge, 1988), 56.

Coldicutt incorporates Eisenstein's adoption of Hegelian/ Marxist dialectical principles found in Ivor Montagu's translation of the essay entitled 'Principles of film form' that appeared in Close up in 1931.(21) The reference to Pudovkin's words "the camera sees with the eyes of a beaten boxer rendered dizzy by a blow" is a direct quotation from Montagu's (22) translation, Pudovkin on film technique published in 1929.This translation was part of the emergence of English and French language books on Soviet cinema in the late twenties and early thirties which were advertised in journals such as Close up and Experimental cinema to which Coldicutt subscribed. A significant publication at this time was Winifred Bryher's 1929 book Film problems of Soviet Russia , which includes a lengthy discussion of Pudovkin's Mechanism of the brain (1925) which Coldicutt extends here to an early discussion of psychoanalysis in relation to cinema combining references to Pudovkin, Pabst and Henry King. (23) Film problems of Soviet Russia includes, in English, discussions of Kuleshov, Dovzhenko and Abram Room, whose writings and films were not available to Coldicutt in 1935, some not until the late 1940s.

(21) Sergei Eisenstein. "Principles of film form," Close up. vol. VIII no. 3 (September 1931), 167-181.

(22) V.I. Pudovkin. Pudovkin on film technique. (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1929).

(23) [Winifred] Bryher. Film problems of Soviet Russia. (Territet Switzerland: Riant Chateau, 1929).

It is possible to see in the earlier "Cinema and capitalism" an engagement with the fervour around Soviet cinema that appeared in the seminal film journal of the period, Close up and was stimulated by the appearance of books such as L'art dans la Russie nouvelle: le cinéma by René Marchand, Le cinema Soviétique. by Pierre Weinstein and Léon Moussinac and Soviet cinema edited by A. Arossev with design and photomontage by V. Stepanova and A. Rodchenko to commemorate the First Soviet cinema festival.(24)

(24) René Marchand and Pierre Weinstein. Líart dans la russie nouvelle: le cinéma. (Paris: les editions Rieder) , 1927. Léon Moussinac. Le cinema soviétique. (Paris: Librarie Gallimard, 1928). A. Arossev (ed.). Soviet cinema (1935).

In the 1935 article Coldicutt insists on drawing dialectical principles out onto the wider sphere of the capitalist production of cinema. This is done most obviously in the title of the article. Cinema, proposed here as the supreme art form, is juxtaposed with capitalism, and to the Hollywood film. In this conjunction it is possible to see a reflection of two articles, "Hollywood " and "Hollywood II " that Bryher had written for Close up in 1931.(25)

(25) [Winifred] Bryher. "Hollywood" Close up. vol. 8 no.3 (September 1931) 234-237. [Winifred] Bryher. "Hollywood II" Close up. vol. 8 no.4 (December 1931) 280-282.

For Coldicutt, Hollywood's evils include its exploitation of workers and its employment of what he understood to be bourgeois social conventions such as the happy ending and the star system. "Cinema and capitalism" also remains true to prevalent left criticisms of authorship and the authenticity of the work of art when Coldicutt decries firstly, the employment of novels, plays and musical comedies and secondly, the diminished role of the "film artist" in the capitalist system of production. Capitalism is aligned with everything that is conventional and mass-produced, suppressing artistic endeavour. Bryher in "Hollywood" had written of how the American studio system had "lowered the standards" of cinema set by the Soviets and her concern was for the effect that this "lowering" would have for the English cinema and the "acceptance of the code" and how art, in the same conception that Coldicutt employs, is diminished in the studio system. In her conclusion, Bryher envisages Hollywood making Potemkin'. In recasting some of the images and narrative conventions she writes that the film would be given over to a happy ending and females would be imaged "in sex appeal promoting dresses". Ultimately, for Bryher, the difference between Hollywood and good cinema, such as that of the Soviets, is " the difference between kitsch and art". (26)

(26) Bryher, "Hollywood" 238.

Paralleling the concern expressed in the pages of Close up and other film journals, Coldicutt, in "Cinema and capitalism", includes censorship as one of the ways in which criticism of bourgeois society is stifled. In the many reviews and articles written for the Realist publications, as well as for the left press such as the Guardian and New theatre review , Coldicutt pointed to the banning and cutting of imported films. In a 1948 review of Rossellini's film Open city , Coldicutt appended the following note:

There is evidence from publicity stills from the film that Open city is another example of an important film which has been insolently hacked by censorship authorities. (27)

(27) Coldicutt. "Film notes: Open city ". New theatre review. (December 1948) 7.

Coldicutt also kept a close eye on the state of film censorship in Australia. He reported in 1949, again in New theatre review that "the Commonwealth Film Censor is insisting on cuts" to The blue angel (1930), Metropolis (1926) and Dimitri Kirsanov's French silent, Menilmontant (1924), all of which had already been tampered with. He noted with approval that the National Library had withheld their release rather than allow them to be cut. (28) The blue angel and Metropolis had already been released in Australia; Lang's film in "the silent days", Von Sternberg's in 1932 at the Majestic in Melbourne. Coldicutt's comment was that "filmgoers will want to know what has happened to make these films now unfit for Australian audiences." (29)

(28) Coldicutt. "Fine films banned" New theatre review. (May 1949) 8.

(29)"Fine films banned" 8.

The year before had marked Coldicutt's best known censorship battle.

As secretary of the Realist Film Association, Coldicutt fought the Victorian State Government who, on 16 June 1948, in a thinly veiled attempt to outlaw the Association, attempted to push through Parliament the Cinematograph Films Bill, a bill designed to amend the Theatres Act (1928) and the subsequent amending acts (1932) and the Cinematograph Films (Australian quota) Act (1935). The new bill could be seen as a two pronged attack on the activities of the Realists and the State Film Library.

The Bill was understood by the Realists to have three major changes which would affect film exhibition. First, the term "theatre" would be given a broader meaning. In the 1928 and 1932 Acts the "provisions state that no person shall exhibit any film in a theatre unless it has been approved by the censor". In the proposed amendment the term "theatre" was to have included all film screenings "in connection with which any collection is taken up". The Realists saw this amendment as directly affecting the burgeoning film society movement's use of 16mm film, as well as their own film screenings. Second, the Bill's amendments would make it necessary for all organisations screening films, and collecting any monies, to register with the State government , as an exhibitor. Although no mention is made of the possibility of the denial of an exhibition licence, the Bill's amendments imply this possibility, again making the RFU's screenings vulnerable. Third, the Bill was to double up on the Commonwealth censor's powers. The proposal was to "give the State censor power to over-ride a favourable decision". (30)

(30) "Information on the restrictions imposed on the state film centres and on the state government's cinematograph films bill". Realist Film Unit circular . July 1948.

In response, the Realists embarked on a campaign including the distribution of "1,000 forms of a petition... issuing 50,000 copies of an open letter to the State Government" and the organisation of public meetings. At one of these, Mr. Cremean, M.L.A., was quoted as saying "It may - and I hope it will - be a check on the activities of the Realist Film Unit, which up to now has played merry hell with its propaganda exhibitions..." (31): but he did not take up the invitation to view the films he named in Parliament as subversive. Eventually the legislation was abandoned by the government in the face of pressure exerted by church groups and other organisations such as film societies that had been alerted by the Realists to the possible ramifications of these bills. (32)

(31) "Restrictions imposed". Realist film unit circular . July 1948.

(32) The parliamentary discussion of this legislation is outlined in Ina Bertrand (ed.) Cinema in australia: a documentary history. (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 203-207.

In keeping with Coldicutt's understanding of international cinema publications in relation to the political demands he made on film texts, it was Mikhail Chiaureli's The fall of Berlin (1949) which was the catalyst for his falling out with the Communist party and the Soviet Union. The fall of Berlin dismayed many Communist party members because of its depiction of Stalin greeting the Soviet troops as they entered Berlin towards the end of the war when it was understood that Stalin was in Moscow. (33) The factual discrepancy was irritating, but more importantly for Coldicutt, the film dismissed what was for him the greatness of Soviet film - the manner in which the films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin gave "expression to the crowd" : instead, Stalin had become an omnipotent figure above and beyond the people. Soon after this Coldicutt resigned as Secretary of the Realist Film Association, continuing his interest in film theory in a private realm.

(33) Gerry Harant. Personal interview. 27 April 1994.

The effect of The fall of Berlin on Coldicutt is curious given the strength of the cult of Stalin by as early as the mid 1930s, and prior to this the cult of Lenin and the even more general cult of personality which existed in Soviet cinema. Coldicutt's assumption that the real Soviet cinema was represented by people like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, meant that he was ignorant of how the "Red Star" system operated: although it was set up in opposition to the likes of Hollywood and Australia, it maintained the Soviet Union's popular film industry and the personality cult that fed into the way that Stalin employed the cinema. To be fair to Coldicutt it has been said that the portrayal of Stalin in Chiaureli's films The great dawn (1938), The vow (1946) and The fall of Berlin were the "apotheosis of the Stalin cult in film" and that in terms of their status as overt propaganda "no words can adequately describe the full effects of these films: they quite literally have to be seen to be believed". (34) It may be that Coldicutt's insistence on positioning Hollywood as the antithesis of great film art, may have prevented him from recognising that the Soviet cinema of the thirties also churned out what he considered "narcotics". Writing about such American cinema in "Cinema and capitalism", he explains that:

(34) Richard Taylor. "Red stars, positive heroes and personality cults" in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring. eds. Stalinism and Soviet cinema. (London: Routledge, 1993), 88.

these narcotics are supplied in the shape of standardised adventure films, slick comedies, lavish song and dance shows, and sentimental melodramas.(35)

Yet even if Coldicutt wasn't aware of the Soviet cinema of the 1930s it still seems surprising that someone who was in regular contact with left international film culture hadn't responded earlier to events such as the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939.

(35) Coldicutt, "Cinema and capitalism" 13.

Similarly, Coldicutt's ideas, in "Cinema and capitalism", about censorship and capitalism seem naive, as he sets up his argument by addressing artistic expression and the ways that capitalism "throttles" the cinema with restrictions. Given the problems that Soviet artists were faced with in the 1930s, Coldicutt's attack on the Hollywood system, as well as the British and Australian censors, as somehow being on the opposing side of the creative spectrum from the Soviets again relies on that particular moment in the country's film history: the montage cinema. Yet if, for Coldicutt, the Soviet cinema he is using as a reference point is the pre-1928 cinema of Eisenstein, Pudovkin et. al. there is little recognition of the role censorship, like the star system, played in shaping and leading to Stalin's utilisation of the medium. The Soviet cinema displayed a tradition of censorship that escalated with the rise of Stalin and as early as 1928 "a great deterioration" in diversity and creative freedom began.(36) Peter Kenez points out:

(36) Peter Kenez. Cinema and Soviet society, 1917-1953 . (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), 140.

The cultural revolution in cinema meant a purge in every film organization and a merciless attack on artistic experimentation in the name of the struggle against "formalism". (37)

For Coldicutt, 1935 was a very different period to the one that he seems to be celebrating and using as a lever to prise apart what he calls the "illogicalities and exaggerations" of the capitalist cinema.

(37) Kenez, 140.

Coldicutt's ideas about cinema, as displayed in these two articles, emanate from the debates about the role of cinema in the early Soviet State and a fervour met by the international film community at the new Soviet cinema. In translating these ideas to the Australian setting, Coldicutt and the Realist film Unit/Association brought to the production, screening, distribution and criticism of cinema a theoretical background that was informed by participation in the vibrant international left film culture of the 1930s and '40s as it responded to the early Soviet cinema. (38)

(38) Although Australia and New Zealand are not considered, see Jonathan Buchsbaum. "Left political filmmaking in the west: the interwar years" in Resisting images: essays on cinema and history. Robert Sklar and Charles Musser Eds. (Philadelphia, Temple UP, 1990), 126-148.

Coldcutt's articles: 1. Turksib 2. Cinema and capitalism

From the thirties to the early fifties, Ken Coldicutt was a major contributor to the flowering of a vibrant film culture in Australia, and particularly in Melbourne, that is best understood in relation to a similar fecundity on the international sphere. Coldicutt's articles, "Cinema and capitalism" and the later "Turksib : building a railroad", display some crucial aspects of his criticism, specifically his knowledge of the writings and films of Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Grierson. This interest in "political" film form was inseparable from Coldicutt's promulgation of film culture as it was informed by the Progressive Movement. "Cinema and capitalism " and "Turksib : building a railroad" display an early consideration of some of the issues that Coldicutt was to devote his life to: film distribution, censorship and the criticism of capitalist cinema. These writings also provide an indication of an Australian contribution to the international left film culture's response to 'Hollywood' in the light of the emergence of the Soviet cinema of the likes of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Dovzhenko.
Coldicutt's earliest encounters with film criticism were through film journals of the 1930s such as Experimental cinema, Close up, Film, Film art, Cinema quarterly, Sight and sound and through the publications from the New Theatre network in particular New York's New theatre and film. These journals enabled Coldicutt to obtain reviews, details of film titles, names of distributors and access to the burgeoning world of film criticism, and formed the basis of a formidable personal library of film theory and criticism .(1) Coldicutt devoured anything and everything written about film. "Cinema and capitalism", written in 1935 for the Melbourne University Labour Club's magazine Proletariat, of which he became editor, was, however, his first article on film. (2)	(1) Borchardt Library, La Trobe University, Melbourne, now holds Coldicutt's collection. (2) K. Coldicutt. "Cinema and capitalism", Proletariat: University Labor Club magazine. (April-June 1935): 11-15.
It was at University that, like many intellectuals of his time with a social conscience, he joined the Communist Party. Later in 1935 Coldicutt became the full time film manager for the Friends of the Soviet Union in Melbourne. In 1936 he imported what are said to be the first prints of Eisenstein's Ten days that shook the world to reach Australia, an action which occasioned the first of many battles with Commonwealth and State censors.(3) Coldicutt's work for the FOSU gave him first hand practical experience in film importation, distribution and screening, experience that would prove invaluable to the film society movement in Melbourne in later years.	(3) This date is mentioned in "Sergei Eisenstein", Guardian (Melbourne). (March 1948): 12. This article was most probably written by Coldicutt. For similiar events occurring in Britain in the thirties see Bert Hogenkamp. Deadly parallels: film and the left in Britain 1929-39. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1986), in particular chapter three, "The battle over Potemkin".
In 1937 Coldicutt heard about the success in Britain and South Africa of the film Defence of Madrid (1936) made by Ivor Montagu and the Progressive Film Unit. (4) Defence of Madrid is "anything but a masterpiece" yet its international reputation grew out of the successful fund raising campaign organised around its screening in Britain and subsequently, Australia. (5) film's success also "introduced" Kino, the United Kingdom left film distributor, "to the kind of 'Popular Front' audiences it had been anxious to reach: constituency Labour clubs, Trade Councils, Clarion clubs etc." (6) At this time Coldicutt was contemplating joining the International Brigades to fight the Fascists in Spain. Through some Australian contacts in London, Coldicutt imported a copy of the film which he screened initially at the Kelvin Hall, Melbourne and later in many suburban venues. Admission price was a donation to the Spanish Relief Committee. The importation and screening of Defence of Madrid proved to be a turning point in Coldicutt's thinking about political action and film. He abandoned thoughts of entering the International Brigades, believing that raising money for the Spanish Relief Committee and raising awareness of the war in Spain would be of greater service to the fight against fascism. It also began a period of his life which would mark Coldicutt's name as legendary in left political circles in Australia.	(4) Amira Inglis. Australians in the Spanish Civil War. (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 87. (5) Hogenkamp. 156. (6) Hogenkamp. 157
The Sydney branch of the Spanish Relief Committee was initially suspicious of the value of film as a propaganda device: this was an early example of the disregard in which film was held by some left wing organisations. The Melbourne branch, however, imported more films about the struggle in Spain (7) including They shall not pass (1937), News from Spain (1937), Attlee in Spain ( 1937), Behind the Spanish lines, and (1938)Modern orphans of the storm (1937). (8)	(7) Inglis. 88 (8) Charles Merewether. Preface to Ken Coldicutt, "The Party, films and I" Sixty years. no.2. Communist Party of Australia (1980), 60.
In 1937 Coldicutt left the FOSU to take up an appointment as national film organiser for the Spanish Relief Committee. He convinced the Committee to buy one of the first 16 mm sound projectors imported into Australia, and toured with it around the Melbourne suburbs and the country towns of Victoria. In early 1938 he set off on an east coast tour which went as far north as Cairns and Townsville where the films were received with much enthusiasm by the Italian, Spanish and Yugoslav cane cutters who donated large amounts of money. (9) During eight months of screenings, 25,000 people in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland saw the films, Coldicutt travelled 8851 kilometres raising £500 for the SRC. Coldicutt's efforts are more remarkable when we consider that the tour was done by rail with Coldicutt lugging a 16mm projector, a 56 pound transformer, cans of film, literature and luggage by himself for months on end in often severe weather conditions.(10) These screenings and Coldicutt's singular vision of political activism is still revered by his contemporaries today.(11)	(9) Inglis. 92. (10) Inglis. 91. (11) At the opening of a memorial to the Australians who fought with the International Brigades (11 December 1993), Coldicutt was singled out for his contribution to the Spanish Relief Committee.
Coldicutt's work for the SRC echoes two moments in cinema history. The first was the Soviet agit-trains that Alexander Medvedkin was in charge of at around the same time. (12) Medvedkin travelled to various locales such as Ukrainian collective farms to "produce critical films on local conditions". These included instructional films on topics such as "overcoming winter conditions to speed up freight shipments" as well as what have been called "barbed film vaudevilles", a style that Medvedkin put to use in his feature film Happiness (1935).(13) The Soviet trains of this period included projection facilities, as well as a film laboratory and animation equipment recalling the earlier and less sophisticated 'agit-trains' of the civil war period of the infant Soviet Union.(14) These trains contained leaflet printing machinery and a theatre company as well as the cameraperson, Edward Tisse, who would film regional events and send the footage back to Moscow to be edited by the young Dziga Vertov.(15) Coldicutt would most likely have read about the Soviet initiatives and, insisting on the agitational effect on a target audience such as the immigrant rural workers, provided an antipodean mirror to Medvedkin and his forebears.	(12) see Jay Leyda. Kino: a history of the Russian and Soviet film . (London: Allen and Unwin. 1973), 286-287. (13) Chris Marker has made two filmic tributes to Medvedkin:The train rolls on (1971) and The last Bolshevik (1993) (14) Leyda. 132-133. See also 'Interview with Alexander Medvedkin' in Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (eds.) Inside the film factory: new approaches to Russian and Soviet cinema . (London: Routledge, 1994), 165-175. (15) Leyda 132.
Second, Coldicutt was carrying on a tradition of the touring showman,who was initially the prime moving picture exhibitor for Australian rural areas. During the first two decades of this century, moving pictures were brought to isolated areas by horse and cart, then motorised truck with a combination of newsreel, scenic and dramatic vignettes that formed a 'show'. This era, prior to and parallelling the establishment of permanent rural exhibition circuits, is the subject of John Power and Joan Long's feature narrative film The picture show man (1977). Coldicutt's experiences with the SRC confirmed his belief in the political efficacy of film. During the period 1937-9 he: spoke and wrote about the need for a left wing film organisation which, unlike ad hoc bodies such as the Spanish Relief Committee, would develop expertise in film, would not compromise on censorship, would plough back money into more films and equipment, and which would make its own films.(16) The wealth of theoretical knowledge from his reading of the film journals and books, as well as the practical knowledge obtained from his work for the Spanish Relief Committee, enabled Coldicutt, along with Worker's Theatre stalwart Bob Matthews, to set up the Realist Film Unit towards the end of 1945, to distribute and exhibit films which would not have obtained a release in the commercial circuits. The headquarters, and screening venue, of the RFU was Melbourne's New Theatre, a small but centrally-located venue which housed a left-wing theatre group of the same name.	(16) Ken Coldicutt. "The Party, films and I." 62.
Matthews theatrical experience and his possession of a 16 mm camera led to the establishment of a film production arm of the Unit, while Coldicutt's forte was the setting up of a network for screening, discussion and writing about film which later came under the aegis of the Realist Film Association.(17) Coldicutt's article on Turksib, which reached Lewis Jacobs through the International New Theatre network, is one example of thousands of reviews, discussions and criticisms that Coldicutt and his international counterparts, wrote for various newsletters, circulars and bulletins. In Australia such publications were produced by Coldicutt under the banner of the Realist Film Unit and, later, the Realist Film Association. Although Jacob's dating of the article is inaccurate ( it is most likely to be from the late 1940s), Coldicutt's writing is an early example of film comment by an Australian on a Soviet production. This review is the only Australian representation in Jacob's seminal collection The documentary tradition (1971) . (18)	(17) Some of the Realist Film Unit film projects include: A place to live (1946), In my beginning (1947), Beautiful Melbourne (1947), These are our children (1947), Prices and the people (1948). (18) Lewis Jacobs. The documentary tradition . 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1979), 45-48.
Both articles included here have their theoretical underpinnings in fairly standard Soviet film theory. Turksib is discussed in terms of "the control of tempo" and that "each part deals with a separate and clearly defined aspect of the subject", notions which were part and parcel of Soviet film theory, especially its Eisensteinian variant which was popular at the time (Coldicutt was also a mathematics teacher later in life). This piece also displays a tension within Coldicutt's approach to documentary. He attends to Grierson's criticism of Turksib that initially appeared in The arts today in 1935, from which comes the quote: "Turksib gave every impression of building a railway, but the approach was again too detached to appreciate just how precisely or humanly it was built".(19) Grierson believed that the film hadn't paid enough attention to the process of the construction of the railway in Turksib. Coldicutt responds by drawing attention to the importance of the film's form in relation to the practical demands of the recently formed Soviet State, that is, he sees the film's importance as propaganda, where Grierson would say that the film lacked educational value. This is a reiteration of the communist critical practice that informed every aspect of Coldicutt's work emanating from Lenin's call for the cinema to serve the state as propaganda. (20) For Coldicutt the capitalist system is anathema to artistic endeavour and it is only in the service of revolution that the cinematic artist is able to produce worthwhile works of art. Grierson's ideals for cinema were seen by many communists to be in the service of the capitalist State and for this reason were met with Coldicutt's criticism.	(19) John Grierson. "Summary and survey: 1935" The arts today . London 1935 reprinted in Forsyth Hardy ed. and comp. Grierson on documentary. (London: Faber, 1966) 182. (20) see Vladimir Lenin. "Directive on cinema affairs" in Richard Taylor, ed. and trans and Ian Christie, co-ed. and intro. The film factory: Russian and Soviet cinema in documents 1896-1939. (London: Routledge, 1988), 56.
Coldicutt incorporates Eisenstein's adoption of Hegelian/ Marxist dialectical principles found in Ivor Montagu's translation of the essay entitled 'Principles of film form' that appeared in Close up in 1931.(21) The reference to Pudovkin's words "the camera sees with the eyes of a beaten boxer rendered dizzy by a blow" is a direct quotation from Montagu's (22) translation, Pudovkin on film technique published in 1929.This translation was part of the emergence of English and French language books on Soviet cinema in the late twenties and early thirties which were advertised in journals such as Close up and Experimental cinema to which Coldicutt subscribed. A significant publication at this time was Winifred Bryher's 1929 book Film problems of Soviet Russia , which includes a lengthy discussion of Pudovkin's Mechanism of the brain (1925) which Coldicutt extends here to an early discussion of psychoanalysis in relation to cinema combining references to Pudovkin, Pabst and Henry King. (23) Film problems of Soviet Russia includes, in English, discussions of Kuleshov, Dovzhenko and Abram Room, whose writings and films were not available to Coldicutt in 1935, some not until the late 1940s.	(21) Sergei Eisenstein. "Principles of film form," Close up. vol. VIII no. 3 (September 1931), 167-181. (22) V.I. Pudovkin. Pudovkin on film technique. (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. 1929). (23) [Winifred] Bryher. Film problems of Soviet Russia. (Territet Switzerland: Riant Chateau, 1929).
It is possible to see in the earlier "Cinema and capitalism" an engagement with the fervour around Soviet cinema that appeared in the seminal film journal of the period, Close up and was stimulated by the appearance of books such as L'art dans la Russie nouvelle: le cinéma by René Marchand, Le cinema Soviétique. by Pierre Weinstein and Léon Moussinac and Soviet cinema edited by A. Arossev with design and photomontage by V. Stepanova and A. Rodchenko to commemorate the First Soviet cinema festival.(24)	(24) René Marchand and Pierre Weinstein. Líart dans la russie nouvelle: le cinéma. (Paris: les editions Rieder) , 1927. Léon Moussinac. Le cinema soviétique. (Paris: Librarie Gallimard, 1928). A. Arossev (ed.). Soviet cinema (1935).
In the 1935 article Coldicutt insists on drawing dialectical principles out onto the wider sphere of the capitalist production of cinema. This is done most obviously in the title of the article. Cinema, proposed here as the supreme art form, is juxtaposed with capitalism, and to the Hollywood film. In this conjunction it is possible to see a reflection of two articles, "Hollywood " and "Hollywood II " that Bryher had written for Close up in 1931.(25)	(25) [Winifred] Bryher. "Hollywood" Close up. vol. 8 no.3 (September 1931) 234-237. [Winifred] Bryher. "Hollywood II" Close up. vol. 8 no.4 (December 1931) 280-282.
For Coldicutt, Hollywood's evils include its exploitation of workers and its employment of what he understood to be bourgeois social conventions such as the happy ending and the star system. "Cinema and capitalism" also remains true to prevalent left criticisms of authorship and the authenticity of the work of art when Coldicutt decries firstly, the employment of novels, plays and musical comedies and secondly, the diminished role of the "film artist" in the capitalist system of production. Capitalism is aligned with everything that is conventional and mass-produced, suppressing artistic endeavour. Bryher in "Hollywood" had written of how the American studio system had "lowered the standards" of cinema set by the Soviets and her concern was for the effect that this "lowering" would have for the English cinema and the "acceptance of the code" and how art, in the same conception that Coldicutt employs, is diminished in the studio system. In her conclusion, Bryher envisages Hollywood making Potemkin'. In recasting some of the images and narrative conventions she writes that the film would be given over to a happy ending and females would be imaged "in sex appeal promoting dresses". Ultimately, for Bryher, the difference between Hollywood and good cinema, such as that of the Soviets, is " the difference between kitsch and art". (26)	(26) Bryher, "Hollywood" 238.
Paralleling the concern expressed in the pages of Close up and other film journals, Coldicutt, in "Cinema and capitalism", includes censorship as one of the ways in which criticism of bourgeois society is stifled. In the many reviews and articles written for the Realist publications, as well as for the left press such as the Guardian and New theatre review , Coldicutt pointed to the banning and cutting of imported films. In a 1948 review of Rossellini's film Open city , Coldicutt appended the following note: There is evidence from publicity stills from the film that Open city is another example of an important film which has been insolently hacked by censorship authorities. (27)	(27) Coldicutt. "Film notes: Open city ". New theatre review. (December 1948) 7.
Coldicutt also kept a close eye on the state of film censorship in Australia. He reported in 1949, again in New theatre review that "the Commonwealth Film Censor is insisting on cuts" to The blue angel (1930), Metropolis (1926) and Dimitri Kirsanov's French silent, Menilmontant (1924), all of which had already been tampered with. He noted with approval that the National Library had withheld their release rather than allow them to be cut. (28) The blue angel and Metropolis had already been released in Australia; Lang's film in "the silent days", Von Sternberg's in 1932 at the Majestic in Melbourne. Coldicutt's comment was that "filmgoers will want to know what has happened to make these films now unfit for Australian audiences." (29)	(28) Coldicutt. "Fine films banned" New theatre review. (May 1949) 8. (29)"Fine films banned" 8.
The year before had marked Coldicutt's best known censorship battle. As secretary of the Realist Film Association, Coldicutt fought the Victorian State Government who, on 16 June 1948, in a thinly veiled attempt to outlaw the Association, attempted to push through Parliament the Cinematograph Films Bill, a bill designed to amend the Theatres Act (1928) and the subsequent amending acts (1932) and the Cinematograph Films (Australian quota) Act (1935). The new bill could be seen as a two pronged attack on the activities of the Realists and the State Film Library. The Bill was understood by the Realists to have three major changes which would affect film exhibition. First, the term "theatre" would be given a broader meaning. In the 1928 and 1932 Acts the "provisions state that no person shall exhibit any film in a theatre unless it has been approved by the censor". In the proposed amendment the term "theatre" was to have included all film screenings "in connection with which any collection is taken up". The Realists saw this amendment as directly affecting the burgeoning film society movement's use of 16mm film, as well as their own film screenings. Second, the Bill's amendments would make it necessary for all organisations screening films, and collecting any monies, to register with the State government , as an exhibitor. Although no mention is made of the possibility of the denial of an exhibition licence, the Bill's amendments imply this possibility, again making the RFU's screenings vulnerable. Third, the Bill was to double up on the Commonwealth censor's powers. The proposal was to "give the State censor power to over-ride a favourable decision". (30)	(30) "Information on the restrictions imposed on the state film centres and on the state government's cinematograph films bill". Realist Film Unit circular . July 1948.
In response, the Realists embarked on a campaign including the distribution of "1,000 forms of a petition... issuing 50,000 copies of an open letter to the State Government" and the organisation of public meetings. At one of these, Mr. Cremean, M.L.A., was quoted as saying "It may - and I hope it will - be a check on the activities of the Realist Film Unit, which up to now has played merry hell with its propaganda exhibitions..." (31): but he did not take up the invitation to view the films he named in Parliament as subversive. Eventually the legislation was abandoned by the government in the face of pressure exerted by church groups and other organisations such as film societies that had been alerted by the Realists to the possible ramifications of these bills. (32)	(31) "Restrictions imposed". Realist film unit circular . July 1948. (32) The parliamentary discussion of this legislation is outlined in Ina Bertrand (ed.) Cinema in australia: a documentary history. (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1989), 203-207.
In keeping with Coldicutt's understanding of international cinema publications in relation to the political demands he made on film texts, it was Mikhail Chiaureli's The fall of Berlin (1949) which was the catalyst for his falling out with the Communist party and the Soviet Union. The fall of Berlin dismayed many Communist party members because of its depiction of Stalin greeting the Soviet troops as they entered Berlin towards the end of the war when it was understood that Stalin was in Moscow. (33) The factual discrepancy was irritating, but more importantly for Coldicutt, the film dismissed what was for him the greatness of Soviet film - the manner in which the films of Eisenstein and Pudovkin gave "expression to the crowd" : instead, Stalin had become an omnipotent figure above and beyond the people. Soon after this Coldicutt resigned as Secretary of the Realist Film Association, continuing his interest in film theory in a private realm.	(33) Gerry Harant. Personal interview. 27 April 1994.
The effect of The fall of Berlin on Coldicutt is curious given the strength of the cult of Stalin by as early as the mid 1930s, and prior to this the cult of Lenin and the even more general cult of personality which existed in Soviet cinema. Coldicutt's assumption that the real Soviet cinema was represented by people like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko, meant that he was ignorant of how the "Red Star" system operated: although it was set up in opposition to the likes of Hollywood and Australia, it maintained the Soviet Union's popular film industry and the personality cult that fed into the way that Stalin employed the cinema. To be fair to Coldicutt it has been said that the portrayal of Stalin in Chiaureli's films The great dawn (1938), The vow (1946) and The fall of Berlin were the "apotheosis of the Stalin cult in film" and that in terms of their status as overt propaganda "no words can adequately describe the full effects of these films: they quite literally have to be seen to be believed". (34) It may be that Coldicutt's insistence on positioning Hollywood as the antithesis of great film art, may have prevented him from recognising that the Soviet cinema of the thirties also churned out what he considered "narcotics". Writing about such American cinema in "Cinema and capitalism", he explains that:	(34) Richard Taylor. "Red stars, positive heroes and personality cults" in Richard Taylor and Derek Spring. eds. Stalinism and Soviet cinema. (London: Routledge, 1993), 88.
these narcotics are supplied in the shape of standardised adventure films, slick comedies, lavish song and dance shows, and sentimental melodramas.(35) Yet even if Coldicutt wasn't aware of the Soviet cinema of the 1930s it still seems surprising that someone who was in regular contact with left international film culture hadn't responded earlier to events such as the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939.	(35) Coldicutt, "Cinema and capitalism" 13.
Similarly, Coldicutt's ideas, in "Cinema and capitalism", about censorship and capitalism seem naive, as he sets up his argument by addressing artistic expression and the ways that capitalism "throttles" the cinema with restrictions. Given the problems that Soviet artists were faced with in the 1930s, Coldicutt's attack on the Hollywood system, as well as the British and Australian censors, as somehow being on the opposing side of the creative spectrum from the Soviets again relies on that particular moment in the country's film history: the montage cinema. Yet if, for Coldicutt, the Soviet cinema he is using as a reference point is the pre-1928 cinema of Eisenstein, Pudovkin et. al. there is little recognition of the role censorship, like the star system, played in shaping and leading to Stalin's utilisation of the medium. The Soviet cinema displayed a tradition of censorship that escalated with the rise of Stalin and as early as 1928 "a great deterioration" in diversity and creative freedom began.(36) Peter Kenez points out:	(36) Peter Kenez. Cinema and Soviet society, 1917-1953 . (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), 140.
The cultural revolution in cinema meant a purge in every film organization and a merciless attack on artistic experimentation in the name of the struggle against "formalism". (37) For Coldicutt, 1935 was a very different period to the one that he seems to be celebrating and using as a lever to prise apart what he calls the "illogicalities and exaggerations" of the capitalist cinema.	(37) Kenez, 140.
Coldicutt's ideas about cinema, as displayed in these two articles, emanate from the debates about the role of cinema in the early Soviet State and a fervour met by the international film community at the new Soviet cinema. In translating these ideas to the Australian setting, Coldicutt and the Realist film Unit/Association brought to the production, screening, distribution and criticism of cinema a theoretical background that was informed by participation in the vibrant international left film culture of the 1930s and '40s as it responded to the early Soviet cinema. (38)	(38) Although Australia and New Zealand are not considered, see Jonathan Buchsbaum. "Left political filmmaking in the west: the interwar years" in Resisting images: essays on cinema and history. Robert Sklar and Charles Musser Eds. (Philadelphia, Temple UP, 1990), 126-148.