This book presents a pathbreaking study of Soviet popular cinema in the 1920s. Professor Youngblood focuses on commercial directors, acting genres, box office hits and audience responses to these films and their stars. She also examines the role of foreign films and the governmental and industrial circumstances underlying filmmaking practices of the era. The author demonstrates that during the first decade after the revolution, Soviet cinema was dominated by "bourgeois" directors and middle class tastes and was greatly influenced by Western and pre-revolutionary film cultures.