The Satanic Cycle in the Cinema of Russian Modern

Abstract

Having descended from the pages of philosophical treatises and works of art as a religious and spiritual constant and as a full-fledged hero, the image of the Antichrist gained special popularity among Russian filmmakers associated with Modern. Despite the fact that the existence of the "Satanic cycle" in Russian cinema is a well–known fact, little attention has been paid to the study of this phenomenon. In the works of Russian film critics, the appearance of such films was most often explained either by the dead-end thinking of the bourgeois artist, or by the general decadent "background" of the culture of the Silver Age in general. Be that as it may, both positions converged in understanding the crisis of the phenomenon that arose at the break of the epochs. The author does not dispute this statement, but attempts to consider the image of the devil in Russian cinema of modern as a new form of broadcasting the ancient heretical teachings of the Gnostics, expressed in discrediting the physical world created by God. If, within the framework of traditional Christian doctrine, the devil is never equal to the Creator and is doomed to eternal defeat, then the Gnostics divided the one God of Christians into the "evil god" of matter and the "good god" of spirit. In such world, the victory of good is fundamentally impossible. The relevance of the research is determined not only by the low level of study of the designated issue, but also by the fact that such a topic is one of the artistic forms of expression of one of the basic conflicts of existence — the struggle of good against evil, the acuteness of which is especially evident in the "era of change".
The article examines the main ways of existence of the image of the devil on the Russian films in 1911–1919 — from the first unsystematic appearances to representation in the so called the "Satanic cycle": "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (dir. Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "The Maiden Mountains" (dir. Alexander Sanin). Special attention is paid to films that were previously either not included in the sphere of special interest of researchers, or were not considered within the framework of the designated as a part of the "Satanic cycle": "The Death of the Gods" ("Julian the Apostate") (dir. Vladimir Kasyanov) and "Father Sergius" (dir. Yakov Protazanov).