Word: potemkin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Marshal Grigory Potemkin, one of the more artful lovers of Catherine the Great, accomplished many things during his long domination of Russia, but he is best remembered for an illusion. To impress Catherine with the prosperity that he had brought to her subjects, he is said to have built handsome fake villages all along the route of her tour through southern Russia in 1787. Historians doubt this tale, which they blame on malicious court gossip, yet there is something about the idea of "Potemkin villages" that lingers in the memory as a symbol of political craft...
...almost indiscriminately democratic in the range of his friends and interests. He glows with intimidating self-assurance. The true snob sometimes has an air of pugnacious, overbearing self-satisfaction, but it is usually mere front. The snob is frequently a grand porch with no mansion attached, a Potemkin affair. The essence of snobbery is not real self-assurance but its opposite, a deep apprehension that the jungles of vulgarity are too close, that they will creep up and reclaim the soul and drag it back down into its native squalor, back to the Velveeta and the doubleknits. So the breed...
...irrational, which is history as it endlessly reveals itself: "A vicious circle develops as each side suspects the other of superior technical performance. Lacking any means to validate this performance, the claims become even more outrageous and expensive ... In Russia, where the spirit and practice of the Potemkin village (a false front, as in motion picture sets) still lives, the national mania for secrecy only makes the problem worse. The possibilities are endless, as is the expense. Even more dangerous is a national leader believing the illusions...
This episode alone is not what makes Napoleon memorable. That quality derives from its shooting and editing. D.W.Griffith demonstrated the limitless scope of the screen's ability to tackle big scenes in Intolerance (1916). Eisenstein, in pictures like Battleship Potemkin (1925), showed how the juxtaposition of disparate images could create, through montage, meanings that were more felt than consciously understood. Gance's great contribution was to set the camera free of the tripod, making it a participant in, as well as an observer of, the action. His tracking shots were unprecedented...
...prosperous collective silk-spinning plant near by. The peasants have radios, watches, bicycles, money in the bank, food on the table. Some of them treasure framed red certificates, whose bold black characters commend them for having achieved "wealth through diligent labor." Clearly, the Jin Ma commune was no Potemkin...