the art of creating a harmoniously integrated stage or screen production that has a definite artistic unity; such a production may be a dramatic or musical performance, a motion picture, a television film, or a circus or variety performance.

The director interprets the play, scenario, opera, or ballet in his own way and thus imparts an aesthetic unity to the work of all those participating in the production. He ascertains the genre, form, and ideological content of the production and is responsible for the production’s rhythm and staging. He strives to make the best use of the performing area and guides the performers in their characterizations. The director of motion pictures and television shows is responsible for composition and montage. Directors organize and coordinate all the components of a production: the acting, stage set, costumes, music, lighting, and sound, and in the cinema the work of the cameraman.

Elements of directing have existed in the theater since ancient times, when the playwright or principal actor took responsibility for the unity of a performance. Directing as it is understood today accords the director priority of importance in creating the production, granting only second place to the author of the play or film scenario. This concept of directing first arose in the theater during the second half of the 19th century.

The establishment of directing is connected with the activities of the German Meiningen Theater, A. Antoine’s Théâtre Libre in Paris, O. Brahm’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin, and the Independent Theater in London. These theaters were the first to advance the principles of ensemble, which include coordination of the efforts of all the performers, meticulous re-creation of the historical setting and milieu, and staging of realistic and dynamic mass scenes. The directing at the Théâtre Libre, however, was clearly dominated in the late 19th and the early 20th century by a naturalistic tendency, which resulted in a trend to make social problems excessively biological in nature.

The founders of the Moscow Art Theater, K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, advanced and fulfilled new and consistently realistic principles of directing. In the Moscow Art Theater, productions were a faithful portrayal of life; such a portrayal resulted from the director’s deep understanding of the playwright’s text. Close contact was maintained with the actors and the stage designer, and the production was permeated with details faithful to the play’s historical and social milieu. Directing at the Moscow Art Theater was marked by great psychological refinement and conveyed authenticity of surroundings, atmosphere, and moods. The actors seemed actually to become the personages they portrayed.

The directing at the Moscow Art Theater decisively influenced Russian and foreign directing. The Stanislavsky method, which originated in this theater, when creatively utilized by directors effectively conveys realism in the theater, motion pictures, and television, creating wide perspectives for the director in the most important sphere of his activity—his work with the actors.

Early in the 20th century there appeared in directing a trend opposed to the method of the Moscow Art Theater. The trend’s adherents, who were concerned chiefly with the expressiveness of the play’s form, advanced the principle of deliberate artificiality of action, rejecting the idea of creating an illusion of reality on the stage. The directors V. E. Meyerhold in Russia, G. Craig in Great Britain, and M. Reinhardt in Germany, while resolving different stylistic problems, agreed in affirming vividness, beauty, and poeticizing in stage presentations. This trend, which was particularly fruitful in the musical theater, was also applied and developed in the dramatic theater. Such diversity of trends in directing has enriched the development of the director’s art. The emergence of cinematography in the early 20th century opened up new prospects in directing. The first important film director, D. W. Griffith (USA), utilized the possibilities of the screen to re-create historical events on a large scale.

The development of directing in the Soviet theater is linked with the work of E. B. Vakhtangov, A. Ia. Tairov, K. A. Mardzhanishvili, A. Akhmeteli, L. Kurbas, G. P. Iura, M. M. Krushel’nitskii, A. D. Popov, A. D. Dikii, R. N. Simonov, N. P. Akimov, M. N. Kedrov, N. P. Okhlopkov, A. M. Lobanov, and Iu. A. Zavadskii. Outstanding directors in the Western European theater have been J. Copeau, L. Jouvet, E. Piscator, B. Brecht, E. Burian, and J. Vilar. Each of these directors originated an independent theatrical trend, and each headed a theater with its own style of performing.

Soviet directing, inspired by the ideas of the 1917 October Revolution, strove to create heroic productions national in spirit and militantly tendentious. These productions expressed a new social content in vivid, assertive theatrical form. Affirming the method of socialist realism, Soviet directing has freely synthesized the theatrical concepts of Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Meyerhold; during the Soviet period their work found new sources of inspiration and laid the foundation for a Soviet theatrical idiom.

Motion-picture directing has also developed intensively. The film directors S. M. Eisenstein, V. I. Pudovkin, A. P. Dovzhenko, N. M. Shengelaia, L. V. Kuleshov, D. Vertov, G. M. Kozintsev, L. Z. Trauberg, F. M. Ermler, the Vasil’ev brothers, M. I. Romm, S. I. Iutkevich, S. A. Gerasimov, I. A. Pyr’ev, M. K. Kalatozov, M. S. Donskoi, and G. V. Aleksandrov have utilized the cinematic art’s new means of expression and their productions have had a strong influence on world cinematography.

Soviet film directing was innovative in portraying revolutionary epics on the screen and faithfully depicting the actions of large masses of people; it also realistically portrayed historical and modern heroes, thus demonstrating the limitless possibilities of socialist realism in art. At the same time, such outstanding foreign directors as C. Chaplin, E. von Stroheim, F. Capra, R. Clair, J. Renoir, and O. Welles have developed and enriched the progressive, democratic tendencies of cinematic art, exposing the supposed antihumanitarian character of the capitalist system.

Modern directing in both the theater and the cinema is marked by continuing development and enrichment of realistic trends, which have characterized the work of the Soviet stage directors G. A. Tovstonogov, B. I. Ravenskikh, V. N. Pluchek, O. N. Efremov, A. A. Goncharov, F. E. Shishigin, Iu. P. Liubimov, A. V. Efros, V. Kh. Panso, K. K. Ird, Iu. I. Mil’tinis, D. A. Aleksidze, and V. M. Adzhemian. Realism has also dominated the work of the Soviet film directors Iu. A. Raizman, I. E. Kheifits, A. G. Zarkhi, S. F. Bondarchuk, S. I. Rostotskii, V. M. Shukshin, G. N. Chukhrai, E. A. Riazanov, L. A. Kulidzhanov, L. I. Gaidai, M. M. Khutsiev, A. A. Tarkovskii, Iu. N. Ozerov, A. A. Alov and V. N. Naumov, V. P. Zhalakiavichius, O. D. Ioseliani, T. E. Abuladze, E. N. Shengelaia, and G. N. Shengelaia. Soviet directing, while marked by a wealth of creative trends and by individuality of approach, shares ideological goals and a democratism that is determined by the principles of socialist realism.

Innovation and ideological growth have also marked the work of directors in other socialist countries, including A. Munk, A. Wajda, and J. Kawalerowicz (Poland); M. Fryč and O. Vávra (Czechoslovakia); and K. Maetzig, S. Dudow, and K. Wolf (German Democratic Republic). Abroad, the work of the most important film directors continues to oppose antidemocratic and antirealistic trends. Examples are found in the work of R. Rossellini, P. Germi, V. De Sica, F. Fellini, M. Antonioni, L. Visconti, F. Rosi, D. Risi, and E. Petri (Italy); I. Bergman (Sweden); S. Kramer, A. Penn, and S. Kubrick (USA); L. Buñuel (France and Mexico); R. Bresson (France); and K. Shindo and A. Kurosawa (Japan). Other examples are found in the work of such stage directors as J.-L. Barrault and R. Planchon (France), G. Strehler (Italy), and P. Brook (Great Britain).