Earth (1930)

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's Earth contains plenty of USSR propaganda: it even contains people dancing in anticipation of the first tractor in the village. Earth chronicles the violent tensions within the new society, USSR (and Ukraine), it explores new technology and collectivization of land. One does not need to guess where Dovzhenko stands: he cheers on the New and "kulaks" are depicted as old people who want to stick to the old ways. But what on Earth could imbue such views with cinematic quality? Well, Dovzhenko knows what to do with images (which makes a level of ambiguity slip into the movie). He is at his best when he leaves the Agenda and directs his gaze at nature, which he does - often. When I read about the film I realize that I've seen a restored version of the film that contains a few scenes that Dovzhenko was more or less forced to eliminate back in the days. In one of these scenes, we see the famous tractor appearing on the horizon (BIG, BIG sky and a small, small patch of land, on which we discern this glorious, tiny-great thing). It gets closer .... and closer ... and closer. But then it stops. The beastly machine won't work. One clever guy realizes that there's no water in the radiator and the gang on the tractor scratch their heads. Then one of them has a bright idea: they should urinate into the radiator. That kind of playfulness is not something I associate with Stalin-era movies and well, unsurprisingly this scene proved to be too much for the Soviet censors. Earth starts with a serene scene of an old man's death, continues with tumultuous debates between the young and the old about the merits of collectivization and towards the end, these societal tensions are unleashed as on guy, the young man who brought the tractor to the village, is killed. The young guy is buried and honored with new songs - no religious rituals. Even here, beyond the expected gestures, Dovzhenko makes the progress of the story engaging by using bold cinematic techniques - what feels quite fresh here is how he mixes romantic images of nature with Eisenstein-like montage images of crows and frenzied activity.

Interestingly, the reception of Earth was mixed. Some saw in it an example of perfect propaganda, while others denounced it as Spiritualism or some other stripe of anti-Soviet mentalist obscurity.