The Tramp in a Skirt: Laboring theRadiant Path

Abstract

In this article, Anna Wexler Katsnelson focuses on Grigorii Aleksandrov's musical comedy,'Svetlyi put'(The Radiant Path, 1940) as a way of investigating the modes of screening laughter in the USSR in the 1930s and exploring the reasons for the film's gradual disavowal of laughter. The key questions posed by the article are why does laughter disappear from the nominally comedic, purposefully merrySvetlyi put'?Where is its affective energy redirected? And, finally, is laughter on film at all possible under the conditions of high Stalinism?