Earth

Rain, apples, and a Billie Jean-esque dancing scene. And lots of random farmers.

I like some Soviet cinema, but I also think a lot of it is rather overrated. Unfortunately this belongs to the latter group. Besides some occasional nice imagery and fairly innovative cutting techniques, I found very little of merit here. The propoganda was thick, the story was dull as dirt (woohoo, a tractor!) and the characters were very one-dimensional. It was actually better when they left the plot by the wayside and just had the montages of harvesting grain and whatnot.

Death and cute babies!

It's a little preachy and dull. Then again, it has men pissing into a tractor radiator to get it to work again.

Originally threw a 50 on it but after seeing it live with Dakhabrakha's new score, I feel like it's got new life in the 21st century. Dovzhenko's poetic imagery is constantly striking. What stands out to me most now is a man dancing down a dirt road at night, kicking up dust with every step and leaving a cloud behind him. You don't need to understand collectivization or Socialist Realism to appreciate an old way of life and a culture that has now been modernized out of existence.

Very pretty and has some strong performances but it feels really chopped up and clunky at parts where the story at one point will be moving along nicely and then just stop dead in its tracks. worth watching for historic reasons though.

Majestic images of industrializing farm life over a story that disintegrates into vapor. Certainly leaves an impression, but barely works as propaganda, let alone a narrative.

Yet another Soviet propaganda film from this period in which the tractor symbolises the superiority of communism. However in the final 15 minutes, the film kicks into another gear as the viewer is assaulted with a barrage of striking imagery: a priest who demands that God punish the heathen agrarians; a naked widow who is in the throws of despair; a killer on the run who is confronted by a secular funeral parade. All precipitated by a magical scene in which a dancing man is gunned down.

Tarkovsky on Dovzhenko: “He was the first director for whom the problem of atmosphere was particularly important, and he loved his native land passionately. […] I’ll add: he made his films as if they were vegetable gardens, as if they were gardens. He would water them himself, he would make everything grow with his own hands…. His love of the land and of the people made his characters grow, as it were, from the earth itself. They were organic, complete.” For me, it's a bit dissonant, confused. [Full review]

I had a lot of difficulty following this coherence-wise, but it's at times visually pretty (with limitations with the old film) and an interesting vibe to it that gives it a spiritual quality. The editing is very effective as well. Just a note that even though it was made in 1930, it's a silent. Interesting in a lot of ways, but didn't really totally click for me.

Há 125 anos nascia Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Acredite se quiser, mas esse é meu primeiro Dovzhenko. Eu sei, sou muito relapsa com o cinema soviético que não seja Eisenstein, Tarkovsky e Vertov. A primeira impressão foi excelente, imagens de uma poética e beleza transcendentes, só gostaria que restaurassem devidamente este filme, pois se as imagens riscadas e com oscilação de iluminação já são deslumbrantes, imagine numa restauração de 4k? DVDRip no MakingOff.

79.50

26 Nisan 2018, Ekin Fil'in muzikleri ile / Fol - olumle baslayip, olum ile biten, topragin teolojik ve toplumsal yonunu yuzlerin sinemasi ile anlatan bir film. dovzhenko'nun 1930 yilinda sinemayi ne denli iyi kavradiginin bir kaniti. uzun zamandir bu kadar genc bir film izlememistim.

Easily the most coherent of Dovzhenko's 'Ukraine Trilogy.' Really interesting to realize this was released just two years before the Holodomor.

Pera Müzesi.

Through a powerful, expressive piece of silent cinema, Dovzhenko loudly and proudly flaunts his anti-bourgeois leanings, using a plethora of well-edited, Eisensteinian close-ups to passionately underline the humanity of the rural working class. This is juxtaposed against the simple, pastoral beauty of the farmland and farming process, transcending the associated politics to add a greater, more timeless depth to the piece.

Viewed June 19, 2016. This quickly became the kind of movie that I feel within the hollow of my bones. I was ultra-conscious to the beauty of its imagery (If only because the print I saw lacked a soundtrack) and to the particulars of its rhythms. But, as Dovzhenko wrestles with allegiance to faith and to country, the film's concerns become universal: As the world expands, the old makes way for the new, and some just aren't able to keep up. Life's cycle will swallow you whole.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

Visually stunning and poetic, yes, in a way that would make Malick weep blood. But what really makes it work even when it gets a bit heavy-handed with the message is that Dovzhenko always starts from the inside; the people grow from the land, the conflicts grow from the people, and in the end you reap what you sow.

"'We are SMART cinephiles!'" http://illusionpodcast.blogspot.com/2015/12/episode-82-cinema-masters-vol-xi.html

A boldness in conception and execution that it's hard to describe, and take, but also somehow succesfull, if one witnesses the frenzied yet controlled power of the last 15 minutes. A shame you must check out your morals and brains at the door, since this is a strange mixture of poem and soviet propaganda, and as such logic is thrown out the window, and its treatment of "class enemies" is ugly, to say the least.

This film is just not interesting. I did not like the heroes nor any of the characters. I do not know how it gets all these good reviews. The film is terrible.

this communist film suggests that technology has the potential for liberation, something we don't see in movies much. but that's not really the highlight, which is instead the incredible use of montage and music, most astoundingly in the mechanisation sequence. in fact the 1997 score is so unbelievable that i almost give as much credit to alexander popov as i do to dovzhenko, and he probably contributed more than 20 points to my rating. among soviet propaganda, i prefer this to eisenstein.

Outstanding. The close-ups are reminiscent of Dreyer, and the editing reminds me of Maya Deren's dreamscapes. Beautiful imagery, every shot is a masterpiece in its own right.

The rhythmic editing and the intensity of focus on the land and on the faces of the people really give this film its power. The intertitles are hardly needed, as a result. The thinness of the story, it seems to me, is part of the point. Dovzhenko is trying to get us to feel what it's like to be in this moment, and he does an excellent job of it. That said, this film fits into montage-centered Soviet cinema of the day, and as such can't shake the stench of manipulative propaganda.

The cinematography is vibrant and the editing is, of course, focused and lively. Structurally, the film is a mess and the story is mostly dead weight, which makes for lousy propaganda, but that's not the draw of the film in today's context anyway. What it fails to communicate through the narrative is communicated through the top-notch visuals, despite some unnecessarily long, ponderous shots. It's not quite Eisenstein but it is excellent Soviet montage.

I have a higher tolerance for melodrama than most, so bring on the propaganda! Dovzhenko has little love for industrialization: a token nod to its potential, counterweighed by the marginalization of human life by capital. Oh, and an appeal to God - this is the Soviet Union, after all. The story is muddled but engaging, and the photography is often poetic and beautiful, with a rousing and memorable score to complement it. And if it's good enough for Woody Allen in Manhattan, then it's fine by me.

Rain, apples, and a Billie Jean-esque dancing scene. And lots of random farmers.

#135

"In Aleksandr Dovzhenko's orgiastic paean to Soviet collectivism and tractor-ism Earth there is nothing more beautiful than the untainted countryside." - Ed Gonzalez

Some absolutely brilliant ideas here. The climax and ending nearly made me forget the painfully long harvesting montage.

136

134

A lot of great imagery and good moments but it didn't really work for me. The whole film is about the arrival of a tractor and the revolution of farming from private ownership to collectivism but it's clunky as hell and not as moving as it tries to be.

# 121