Giovanni Vitrotti and Other Exotic Aesthetes
(or The Caucasus in Early Russian Cinema)

Our beloved cinema has passed the century mark, and yet, because we can still discover aspects of its history, we tend to feel that it is still the youngest of the arts. One sign of the maturity of the cinema is that it is no longer simply a wonderful ribbon of dreams, but has now become a multi-faceted object of research and study. Increasingly, film archivists annoy the "purists" among the film makers by a tendency to regard cinema not solely as an Art, but also as historical documentation. Nevertheless, the nature of this kind of document is peculiar. It is as if the image of an era is transmitted through a complex prism with many facets; sometimes this image is very close to our conventional idea of some "original" (in which we regard it as a variety of realism), and at other times, we cannot correlate the image with any of our preconceptions.

The Caucasus, Russia's southern border, has been a problematic zone throughout recorded history. The events of the last several years make the word "Caucasus" synonymous with instability and modern historical tragedy. For the entire world, the region is like a volcano that has been periodically aroused from slumber and menace the societies of inner Asia and beyond. But the Caucasus is not only renowned as the home of many independent-minded and bellicose societies. This mountainous region is also recognized as a place of intense and sublime natural beauty. Many important and wonderful works of literature are devoted to the Caucasus, and the early Russian cinema, full of ambition to realize its promise and to embrace unembraceable, was strongly attracted to the region.

Sten'ka Rasin (1908), generally considered to be the first Russian feature film, is an adaptation of a popular Russian song about a brigand who drowns his girl friend, throwing her into the waves in the name of male friendship. The film is shot outdoors on the banks of the Moskva river. One could expect Russian cinema, thus born, to gravitate toward location shooting. Russia's natural beauty has always attracted both the hunter and the cinematographer to its vast lakes and rivers, mountains, forests and steppes. But access to natural beauty was not always easy in a country with vast distances and few roads, and especially in 1910, ventures more than about 100 kilometers from Moskva were definitely not for the faint of heart. Determination, preparation and motivation were mandatory for such excursions.

For the fledgling cinematographer, one of those motivations was light. The metropolis of Moscow lacked both adequate natural sunlight and safe and reliable artificial lighting for film making. To increase productivity, the film makers had to go south, to the regions of the Caucasus and the Crimea. The Crimea had acceptable living conditions, a mild and relatively sunny climate, and enough hills to suit production companies. The early Russian cinema was not particularly obsessed by the idea of authenticity; as A. Khanzhonkov blithely noted, "The sky and the soil look the same everywhere." So it is not surprising that the first cameraman to capture the beauties of the Caucasus, in 1911, was the Italian Giovanni Vitrotti, representing the interests of Ambrosio in Russia through the Russian film company Timan and Rheingardt.