Marlen Khutsiev’s Early Theoretical Views and His Subsequent Directorial Practice

The article presents materials from Marlen Khutsiev’s explanatory note to the lost joint grad- uation film of Khutsiev and Feliks Mironer Town Planners (1950). The theoretical part of the graduation film from the collection of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art contains the aspiring filmmaker’s detailed account about the circumstances of the development of the shooting script, filming, editing, and the use of music in Town Planners, as well as his early views on the theory and practice of cinema. Due to this text, we can understand how the fundamental work principles of the future classic of Soviet cinema were formed in their general parameters, what connection exists between his graduation project and the films Spring on Zarechnaya Street, Ilyich’s Gate, July Rain, and It Was in May, and why Khutsiev did not write theoretical works subsequently, even after starting to teach at VGIK. The arti- cle contains previously unpublished excerpts from various texts about the work of Marlen Khutsiev (Victor Demin’s unfinished book Khutsiev, Leonid Kozlov’s unfinished interview with Khutsiev on the topic of “the language of cinema”, etc.).