Symbol of Death and the “Mortal Cinematic Code” in Yakov Protazanov’s Works

Abstract

The article represents a cultural study, which gradually discloses the issues of film thanatology. The study is based on the screen version of L. Andreev’s story “Gubernator” (1905), filmed by Yakov Protazanov under the name “Bely Orel (White Eagle)”(1928), which became a classic of the Early Soviet and world silent cinema. It describes the representative cinematic text of a city, its local features in the cinematic texts of Saint-Petersburg and Kiev, thanatological and cinematic interpretations of the works by Leonid Andreev - a Russian writer and decadent. The author introduces the concept of specific thanatochronotope of the total Saint-Petersburg cinematic text. The thanatochronotope is defined as an artistic chronotope with the element of death integrated into it on the both levels - of sign and locus, and of rhythm. It is a chronotope passed through the prism of death, cinematic one in this case. It is noted that the free-style adaptation by Protazanov is more interesting for its cinematic representation of the culture of Art Nouveau than for the screen reconstruction of Leonid Andreev’s reality type. The White Eagle’s symbolism overpasses the political framework; its topological and identificational connotations are associated with a metonymical game - that is why the film’s supporting construction is clearly structured on all levels of visual narrative. The death as an action and the fight as an action - those are the main points of difference of the texts by Protazanov and by Andreev, as a screen version and an original version. Another difference can be rightfully noticed as well: the death as a dimension and the death as a sign - the sign of the white eagle incorporating all the death of cinematic text. The list of filmed works by Leonid Andreev for the century they have been created - from 1912 to 2012 - is thoroughly systemized by means of the currently available sources.