people-from-georgia-country

"To accompany the transformations I wanted a completely unrealistic sound. First I tried rhythmic beats, like a heartbeat. We tried every sort of drum, but they all sounded like drums. Then I recorded my own heart beating, and it was perfect, marvellous. Then we recorded a gong, took off the actual impact noise, and reversed the reverberations. Finally we painted on the sound track; and I think that was the first time anyone had used synthetic sound like that, working from light to sound."

"[In 1927] Porgy made me overnight. In it I tried all my ideas of a dramatic integration of many elements ... At this time I felt it should be possible, in a stage production, to take a snapshot of the stage picture at any moment, and record an artistic composition. So each movement and grouping was minutely rehearsed. The actors were often required to adopt poses which were neither comfortable nor natural, but which looked right on the stage. That's stage truth."

"[Mamoulian] "[T]he majority of the films in the future will be done in color. Perhaps not immediately. Perhaps it will take three years or five years. But there must be progress and development in the cinema. Color will enrich it. It is part of that progress."

"I lifted the sound-proofed camera off its feet and set it in motion on pneumatic tires. Scenes moved out of one room and into others without halt. I tried to introduce what I call counterpoint of [a]ction and dialogue. The camera flew, jerked, floated and rolled, discarding its stubborn tripod-legs for a set odfwired wheels that raced over the studio floors. "The camera here becomes descriuptive in a new sort of way. Where a break in the ordinary film to allow for a close-up has been the modus-operandi, I now guide my lens along a strraight and continuous line, without breaks in continuity, without needless exolanatory speeches and also sans the printed subtitle."

"Garbo asked me: "What do I play in this scene?" Remember she is standing there for 150 feet of film – 90 feet of them in close-up. I said: "Have you heard of tabula rasa? I want your face to be a blank sheet of paper. I want the writing to be done by every member of the audience. I'd like it if you could avoid even blinking your eyes, so that you're nothing but a beautiful mask." So in fact there is nothing on her face: but everyone who has seen the film will tell you what she is thinking and feeling. And always it's something different. Each one writes his own ending to the film; and it's interesting that this is the scene everyone remembers most clearly."

"There was a blue lamp on the table. Mr Mamoulian placed an orange against it for contrast. He shoved a green chair in front of a red curtain. He made caustic remarks about the visitor's tie, pointed out that it wouldn't look well against a yellow drape. He spoke of mosaics and color progression; of red for excitement, dark blue for dignity and rosemary for remembrance. "If blood was green it wouldn't be exciting," he said."

"As soon as you use an element on the screen it becomes subject to dramatic laws. This is as true of colour as of everything else. So I wanted to shoot everything from the start. I took four or five weeks to prepare my plans. My idea was to build up the colour dramatically. I wanted to start with black, white, grey; then ooze into colour. And I wanted the dramatic climax of the film to coincide with the colour climax, which would be predominantly red, because that is the nature of red."

"Shakespeare used the soliloquy to give oral expression to thoughts. Since then the soliloquy had become obsolete. But it was a wonderful device: so I wanted to use a close-up of Sylvia Sidney, alone, in prison, and superimpose over it all her impressions and recollections. Again, everybody insisted it was impossible and that the audience would never understand what was going on. I argued that in the silent cinema they had used – and the audience had accepted – stylisation: simile, visual poetry. So why not in sound? That’s what I wanted to do with sound and, later, with colour. Now, of course, this use of audible thoughts over a silent close-up has become a convention."

"Colour cinematography tends to brighten and cheapen natural colour. The problem was to counteract that. I realised that colour in films is nearer to painting than to the stage. Now if you look, for instance, at a crimson cloak painted by El Greco, you’ll find that what first appears as a mass of colour is in fact a subtle blending of all sorts of shades, with patches of pink and blue and purple and green. So I treated the colour the way a painter would."

"In this unhappy, fragmented world of ours, overflowing with mutual suspicions, hostilities, violence, and destruction, we need a constructive force. Politics, economics, religions seem to fail. I think our best hope is in the arts. Today, the most powerful and universal and powerful medium of art and communication is in the film. In the last few years I've done a great deal of traveling to many countries, and I've been amazed at the impact of films on both the individuals and the societies of different nations. The influence is enormous. So we must all strive to elevate the quality of motion pictures. We must affirm and insist that the ultimate goal of a film, no matter what subject matter it deals with, is to add to the beauty and goodness of life, to the dignity of human beings and to our faith in a better future."

"The wood is decked in light green leaf. The swallow twitters in delight. The lonely vine sheds joyous tears Of interwoven dew and light. Spring weaves a gown of green to clad The mountain height and wide-spread field. O when wilt thou, my native land, In all thy glory stand revealed?"

"Ah here, O mother is thy task, Thy sacred duty to thy land: Endow thy sons with spirits strong, With strength of heart and honor bright; Inspire them with fraternal love, To strive for freedom and for right."

"O mother! hear thy country's plea: Nurture thy sons with spirits strong Led by the torch of truth whose flame Will banish ignorance and wrong."

"No sound doth great the still of night; My mother land in silence lies; Yet oft is heard an anguished moan As Georgia in her slumber sighs. I stand alone … the mountains, shades The slumber of my land caress. O God! O God! when will we wake And rise again to happiness?"

"If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore we must continue propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general and of teen-agers in particular."

"By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known."

"The dilemma between satisfying workers' pent up demands and defending the socialist state was precisely the challenge of the new Soviet leadership after Stalin. The group that had come to power—Georgii Malenkov as premier, Lavrentii Beriia as head of the secret police, Nikita Khrushchev as party first secretary, Viacheslav Molotov as foreign minister, Nikolai Bulganin as defense minister—feared the collapse of Communist rule as much as they feared and distrusted each other. Through his brutality and the respect he commanded, Stalin had been the guarantor of Communist rule and the final adjudicator of all things political. With him gone, his Kremlin successors all agreed that tension had to be reduced and compromises found if the Soviet state and its alliances were not to be seriously threatened. The first signal of new policies was the sudden release of the Jewish doctors arrested by Stalin, who were accused of trying to murder him and other Soviet leaders. Beriia, as the former head of the secret police, may have tried to cover his own tracks by announcing that this and other cases were violations of “socialist legality.” Unnerved by Beriia’s vigorous involvement in policy-making, the other leaders conspired against him, and he was arrested in July 1953 and executed by the end of the year. According to several witnesses, General Pavel Batitskii, the commander of the Moscow Air Defense Region, shot the most feared man in Russia through the head at close range when he would not willingly walk to the execution ground."

"The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable."

"Do you know that there’s hardly anyone left of last year’s Caucasian governments? I’ve tried to stop it, but in vain. Yet they can’t all be Trotskyites and traitors."

"To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses."

"In a Capitalistic state you are aided on all sides by the corruption of the philosophy of man and the times. You will discover that everything will aid you in your campaign to seize, control and use all "mental healing" to spread our doctrine and rid us of our enemies within their own borders."

"He stands with one foot on Mont Blanc and with the other on the Elbrus. His voice out-thunders thunder. What is the wonder that…the proportions of earthly things vanish and that no difference is left between the small and the great?…No doubt this hyperbolic style reflects in some measure the frenzy of our time. But this does not provide it with an overall artistic justification. It is impossible to out-clamour war and revolution, but it is easy to get hoarse in the attempt."

"Hey, you! Heaven! Off with your hat! I am coming! Not a sound. The universe sleeps, its huge paw curled upon a star-infested ear."

"He was perhaps the only tolerable propaganda poet of all time: he meant it, and the energy he put into it was, as is frequently said, demonic."

"In parade deploying the armies of my pages, I shall inspect the regiments in line. Heavy as lead, my verses at attention stand, ready for death and for immortal fame."

"Agitprop sticks in my teeth too, and I'd rather compose romances for you – more profit in it and more charm. But I subdued myself, setting my heel on the throat of my own song."

"No gray hairs streak my soul, no grandfatherly fondness there! I shake the world with the might of my voice, and walk – handsome, twentytwoyearold."

"If you wish, I shall grow irreproachably tender: not a man, but a cloud in trousers!"

"Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it."

"One evening Ilyich (Lenin) wanted to see for himself how the young people were getting on in the communes. We decided to visit our young friend Varya Armand who lived in a commune for art school students. I think that we made the visit on the day Kropotkin was buried, in 1921. It was a hungry year, but the young people were filled with enthusiasm. The people in the commune slept practically on bare boards, they had neither bread nor salt. "But we do have cereals," said a radiantfaced member of the commune. With this cereal they boiled a good porridge for Ilyich. Ilyich looked at the young people, at the radiant faces of the boys and girls who crowded around him, and their joy was reflected in his face. They showed him their naive drawings, explained their meaning. and bombarded him with questions. And he, smiling, evaded answering and parried by asking questions of his own: "What do you read? Do you read Pushkin?" -- "Oh, no," said someone, "after all he was a bourgeois; we read Mayakovsky." Ilyich smiled. "I think," he said, "that Pushkin is better." After this Ilyich took a more favourable view of Mayakovsky. Whenever the poet's name was mentioned he recalled the young art students who, full of life and gladness, and ready to die for the Soviet system, were unable to find words in the contemporary language with which to express themselves, and sought the answer in the obscure verse of Mayakovsky. Later, however, Ilyich once praised Mayakovsky for the verse in which he ridiculed Soviet red tape."

"Love's ship has foundered on the rocks of life. We're quits: stupid to draw up a list of mutual sorrows, hurts and pains."

"I want to be understood by my country, but if I fail to be understood – what then?, I shall pass through my native land to one side, like a shower of slanting rain."

"Art must not be concentrated in dead shrines called museums. lt must be spread everywhere – on the streets, in the trams, factories, workshops, and in the workers' homes."

"Love for us is no paradise of arbors — to us love tells us, humming, that the stalled motor of the heart has started to work again."

"I understand the power and the alarm of words – Not those that they applaud from theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break from bearers and on their four oak legs walk right away."

"Incomprehensible rubbish."

"On the pavement of my trampled soul the steps of madmen weave the prints of rude crude words."

"A rhyme's … a barrel of dynamite. A line is a fuse that's lit. The line smoulders, the rhyme explodes – and by a stanza a city is blown to bits."

"Tramp squares with rebellious treading! Up heads! As proud peaks be seen! In the second flood we are spreading Every city on earth will be clean."

"With this man, the newness of our times was climatically and uniquely in his blood. His very strangeness was one with the strangeness of the age, an age still half unrealised."

"Mayakovsky was and is the best and most talented poet of our Soviet era. Indifference to his memory and works is a crime."

"You don't have to be a poet, but you do have to be a citizen. Well, Mayakovsky was not a citizen, he was a lackey, who served Stalin faithfully. He added his babble to the magnification of the immortal image of the leader and teacher."

"[Melua] makes music that's easy on the ear and even easier on the brain. She's the perfect good girl in the middle of the road. I'm not keen to make things too easy for anyone."

"The only trouble is that there's absolutely no passion, no soul and no excitement to be found here...Yet all good music should provoke some sort of emotion, and this [Nine Million Bicycles] provokes none whatsoever."

"I've got a ticket, To the fast city, Where the bells don't really ring, Getting off the plane the cold air, Rushes like bullets through my brain, And I'm divided between penguins and cats, But it's not about what animal you've got, It's about being able to fly, It's about dying nine times."

"She enjoys extremes, but in life her emotions are always in check."

"She is one of the most intelligent singers I've worked with for a very long time, - there are little reminders in her voice, of all sorts of other singers like Eartha Kitt and Edith Piaf, - of whom she has never heard. She exudes a modest confidence, she is completely sure of herself and has a maturity far in advance of her age."

"I'm a songwriter but she [Melua] has her songs written for her... She must think it's her fucking lucky day... It's not like she's singing old songs like Jamie [Cullum], she's singing shit new songs that her manager writes for her."

"Because the line between, Wrong and right, Is the width of a thread, From a spider's web. The piano keys are black and white, But they sound like a million colours in your mind."

"Wanking housewives"