French Literature Reviews - 2026
V. Shklovsky, Writings on Cinema
Art and Visual Culture
Viktor Shklovsky, Writings on Cinema
Selected and introduced by Valérie Pozner.
Lausanne / Paris: L'Age d'Homme, 2011.
358 p.
Price 29.00 EUR
EAN 9782825140871
Publisher's overview: Viktor Shklovsky (1893–1984), a leading 20th-century literary theorist and founder of the Russian Formalist movement in 1914, is known to English-speaking audiences primarily for his prose works (A Sentimental Journey, Zoo, or Letters Not about Love, Third Factory), a number of incisive essays and theoretical works (Art as Device, Knight's Move, The Resurrection of the Word, Theory of Prose, The Technique of the Writer's Craft), a later collection of autobiographical writings (Once Upon a Time), and a few other volumes (Marco Polo, Leo Tolstoy). However, his contribution to film literature remains largely overlooked: the previously published material (Literature and Cinematography) is far too concise to gauge the true scope of his impact on film theory, critical discourse, and reflections on cinematic practice. This volume bridges that gap by offering readers a substantial selection of his writings dedicated to cinema.
Shklovsky sought to lay the foundations for a poetics of film, running parallel to his pioneering work in the literary field. This theoretical inquiry was accompanied by extensive critical activity, leading him to engage with the works of his contemporaries: Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, as well as Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, and Fairbanks. Furthermore, working as a screenwriter and collaborating with numerous filmmakers, Shklovsky actively participated in the major debates of Soviet cinema during the 1920s. He focused particularly on the issues of screenwriting and acting, as well as the challenges of film production and distribution. While several of these texts were previously published in French (Poétique du film : les Formalistes russes et le cinéma – reissued by L’Age d’Homme in 2009), the sheer scale of Shklovsky's contribution called for a dedicated collection. As these texts reveal, the theoretical writings of Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, or Vertov cannot be fully understood apart from Shklovsky's contributions to film poetics and his ongoing, engaged interventions in contemporary debates.
Drawn from the complete corpus of original period periodicals, the selection spans the most dynamic period from 1918 to 1931. Readers will also encounter a literary dimension that is by no means secondary to the work of the screenwriter of By the Law, The Third Stop, and The House on Trubnaya—namely, his distinctive style, characterized by a joyful erudition imbued with constant irony and a taste for paradox.
Valérie Pozner, a specialist in Russian and Soviet cinema, translator (Pasternak, Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Meyerhold, etc.), is a researcher at the CNRS and president of the French Association for Research on Film History. The author of a doctoral dissertation on Shklovsky as a screenwriter, she recently published Le Muet a la parole. Cinéma et performance à l’aube du XXe siècle, along with works on Tolstoy on screen and Kinojudaica.
Viktor Shklovsky stands as one of the central figures of Russian Formalism, a movement that revolutionized literary studies in the early twentieth century by emphasizing the formal and aesthetic properties of texts. While his theoretical essays on prose and poetry remain widely studied within Slavic studies and comparative literature, his engagement with the burgeoning medium of film has often received less attention in broader cultural histories. This collection gathers period writings that reflect the intersection of theory and cinematic practice during a formative era of film history.
The texts selected by Valérie Pozner document Shklovsky's participation in the intellectual and artistic debates surrounding Soviet silent cinema, detailing his interactions with prominent directors and theorists of the period. Readers interested in the history of film theory and the application of formalist concepts to the moving image may find this volume a relevant addition to discussions on early cinema. The selection illustrates how critical frameworks developed for literature were adapted to analyze screenwriting, acting, and the broader institutional structures of film production.