Authors

Discussion

The history of cinema is comprised not only of films and their creators, but also of how the former are understood, which over time can significantly change. Such a shift in perception is evident in the case of Lithuanian omnibus film The Games of Adults (1967). The paper analyses the first story of the film, The Fall (dir. Ilja Rudas­-Gercovskis), seen by today’s audiences as a cinematic narrative about established gender relations and their evident diversion from heteronormativity. This analysis turns the problem of a changed, queerified understanding into an issue of the film’s structure, thus seeking to distinguish the features of the narrative order and the underlying intertextual connections that create the possibility of such a shift in the film’s reception. The paper shows how visions of masculinity and femininity slip away from the usual image economy and roles suggested by classical cinema narratives, while this escape leans on the logic of melodramas, intertextual links and an extremely multidimensional case of authorship. The changed – Post-Soviet – reception of the film allows us to discuss what theoretical frameworks could be meaningful scrutinizing this and other cases of retroactive queerness of Soviet film.