Cinema's "Miracles": Film Tricks and the Production of Soviet Wonder

ABSTRACT:This article investigates the treatment of cinematic special effects or kinotriuki (film tricks) in Soviet cinema of the 1930s, focusing on the film The New Gulliver (1935), an adaptation of Gulliver's Travels by director Alexander Ptushko that used cutting-edge techniques to combine live action and stop-motion animation. It argues that film tricks in both fantastic and dramatic genres of Soviet cinema served to generate a form of wonder akin to that inspired by the religious miracle, but transferred to the miraculous feats of the party-state, with implications for the comparative study of special effects and cinematic experience.