Review #488: 'Earth' (1930)

The Soviet Union's political and social journey throughout the first few decades of the twentieth century presented a wide and rich palette for film-making innovators to work from. The most popular of the Soviet visionaries was Sergei M. Eisenstein, master of the montage, and champion of the working-classes. So breathtaking was Eisenstein's work, that it is easy for other great film-makers to be relatively forgotten. Although it would be extreme to label Aleksandr Dovzhenko, director of the magnificent Earth, as forgotten, time has been unfair to the director who was arguably as visually innovative and socially aware as his counterpart.

Earth begins with the death of a farmer, Semyon (Nikolai Nademsky), who says his goodbye's beneath a pear tree, blissfully ignorant of the turbulence his death will cause. The village is cut down the middle. One half are the kulaks, private-land owning peasants, who were seen to be growing rich in their greed by Stalin, personified in the film as Arkhip (Ivan Franko), who discusses with his group the idea of collectivisation, to a united resistance. The other, is the sceptical Opanas (Stepan Shkurat), father to the pro-collectivisation Basil (Semyon Svashenko), who is a member of All-Union Leninist Youth Communist League. The arrival of a new tractor lifts the communities spirits, but a murder sparks off a feud.

One of the many social revolutions to come out of the Stalin-era Soviet Union was the idea of collectivisation. After Ukranian peasants were given rights to own land at the turn of the century, Stalin saw them growing rich beyond their means and vowed to eliminate what he saw as its own social class. Collectivisation was to bring land back to the community, therefore generating more product and boosting the economy. But the Soviet army met stubborn resistance from the peasants, who were seeing their land and goods seized and distributed.

Dovzhenko's film has a somewhat ambiguous message, focusing more of the individual plights of a select group of characters. The collectivists and communists are clearly the more sympathetic groups in the film, but the film is more human drama than political propaganda. Like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko treats us to a simply brilliant montage scene, as the delight of the farmers at the arrival of a new tractor (which they urinate in to get going) is juxtaposed alongside the mechanics of grain production. This feeling of the metaphorical prevails throughout the film, as the seemingly endless grain fields and growing fruit are filmed as if tiny gods, watching the human drama unfold beneath them. The film had a mixed reception upon release, forcing Dovzhenko into depression, but is now rightly heralded as one of the most important to come of the Soviet Union, alongside Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925).


Directed by: Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Starring: Stepan Shkurat, Semyon Svashenko, Yuliya Solntseva, Ivan Franko
Country: Soviet Union

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie