여성의 자리: <메샨스카야 3가>에 비친 안과 밖의 풍경

Abstract

Abram Room’s 1927 film Tret’ia Meshchanskaia, often dubbed as the first Soviet feminist film, offers a valuable insight into the period when the film was made. Unlike most of the mainstream movies of the time dealing with the past, this film captures the spirit of the time, particularly the woman question. Against the backdrop of a series of progressive reforms on women issues that were introduced in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the film touches upon the crucial issues any “new” Soviet woman had to grapple with, namely, in the realms of sexual relations, production (work), and reproduction (abortion). In this paper, I attempt to investigate the woman question from the vantage point of space. The film’s artistic narrative contains several dimensions of space, but first and foremost, the poetics of “in” and “out” permeates the entire work, shedding light on where Liuda, the heroine of the film, is and where she will be. The woman stays in a semi-basement flat, a condition comparable to confinement. By contrast, her husband symbolically occupies a work space out on the top of the Bolshoi Theater. The contrast of space rich in symbolism continues all the way throughout the film, including the three key episodes of Liuda’s outing. In the end, by means of a masterful utilization of space on various levels, the film portrays the process of a woman’s transformation into a truly positive “new” Soviet woman, in keeping with the social demands promoted by the Party.