Not just censorship, but looking at what happened with Tarkovsky, being exiled for simply not returning to the USSR. I know Hollywood did the same at the time regarding film 'guidelines', I'm just curious if there's more context to the USSR's rather strict attitude with film? Or is this just western propaganda I'm swallowing?
Kinda, it’s like you make a script and studio buys it to make a movie. If script is shit (I suspect majority of whining) or it’s completely antithetical to soviet system, they don’t get money. Tarkovsky, somewhat famously, wasted a shitton of labor to film his movies, which were not popular, exactly.
Usual case was they would either blunt or change scenes around to not get censored: like you can make movie “everything is shit”, but then make some remark it was shittier/this was 20 years ago/stamp some lenin quote in there and be good to go
That makes sense. The last part sounds very similar to how Hollywood works nowadays. It is sad to hear about how strict it was though, even Come and See had struggles getting made originally.
It’s one of those things, some part censorship, but some part like editing in creative process. You always hear about auteurs who has struggled, but won, with implied how many didn’t, but at the same time how much shit didn’t get made :shrug-outta-hecks:
Studio system was kinda interesting, they have fixed rates for everyone salary wise, so basically monetarily calculation on studio was: will this be popular? Will it pass censorship? Tarkovsky was kinda (if I remember correctly) in same position as war and peace director, make popular shit to have good will to make his own stuff