Earth (Zemlya) 1930 B&W

 

 

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Stalin may have wanted an ode to collective agriculture; what he got instead was a hymnal to mother nature and the toiling offspring who dwell in her bosom. Those opening shots of pulsating fields waving in the wind have no equal for sheer evocative power. Earth is revealed at once as a living, breathing being and bountiful provider. Flower, fruit, decay, renewal -- nature's timeless cycle. The soundless imagery is at times so wonderfully lyrical that contemporary viewers may be led to recognize how much has been lost to the technology-driven cinema of today. Even the occasional plot crudities are rescued by a style that is both brilliant and unerringly pictorial. Close-ups of weather-worn peasants, a lone kulak and oxen beneath an immense sky, great rolling plains and far horizons of the Ukrainian breadbasket -- this is the sheer lyrical sweep of the Dovchenko masterpiece, a montage that transcends all obstacles, real and man-made. Not even the estimable John Ford frames primitive elements as grandly as this. There are flaws. Too many rushing crowd scenes appear without purpose, except to mimic Eisenstein's "march of history", while the propaganda thread at times blends uneasily with the lyrical. Still and all, Dovchenko pulls off the theme of new beginning more seamlessly than might be expected. Far from being a mere relic of the silent era, or an ode to Stalinist collectivism, Earth remains an enduring testament to the power of cinema as sheer visual poetry.

Earth was supposed to be a Russian propaganda film promoting collectivism. Instead, Aleksandr wrote a love story extolling the beauty of the Ukrainian countryside and promoting the cycle of life and death there amidst the natural beauty and plentiful bounty of nature.

You can see the basic outline that the Russians wanted. Backwards farmers resist tractors coming in to make their life better. Rich landowners are upset at upstart farmers coveting their lands. But look beyond that, to the way the people interact, to the straw-roofed houses, the dancing, the fields of wheat, the love of the land. Appreciate the beautiful way in which the film was done, capturing a series of picture-perfect scenes that would be gorgeous if framed and hung on a wall.

This is definitely a movie to savor and to appreciate the lush landscape that was pre-Stalin Ukraine. I was fortunate enough to watch Earth with my parents and both sets of my godparents, and tape recorded their commentary to it. For me, that commentary will serve far better than the default musical soundtrack that comes with the film. If you can, watch the film with older Ukrainians, or read commentary on the web to get a sense of what this time was all about.

One of the lesser known and less appreciated juggernauts of Soviet silent cinema, Alexander Dovzhenko nowadays represents a truly distressing case in that his legacy, which has endowed film history with some of the most expressive visual poetry the world will ever lay eyes on, may forever remain buried in the dusty obscurity of academic discourse and, in its most accessible context, film-buff encomium. Of course, it would be hopeless (and, frankly, a bit ridiculous) to insist that a film like Earth, Dovzhenko's last silent feature and indisputably his most glorified, undergo any sort of popular resurrection in the third millennium A.D. Admittedly, one should be grateful enough to at least be able to enjoy a tolerable print of this feature on DVD.
But it's difficult to resist speculating why a picture as indisputably timeless as Earth has not managed to cement Dovzhenko's reputation alongside those of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, why Ivan the Terrible rings as a household name while Earth remains bleakly imprisoned in the realm of cinematic esoterica.
Though I hate to resort to flag-waving, I'm convinced of an obligation to goad readers into seeking out, at all necessary costs, one of the few indispensable motion pictures of the last century. Dovzhenko's account of the conflict surrounding Stalinist collectivization, in which traditional agriculturists locked horns with industrial revolutionists over their very cultural lifeblood (the eponymous soil), speaks to the contemporary consciousness with an urgency that does not seem to have exhausted one bit over the film's 72 years of existence. When viewed in consideration of its 1930 release date, Earth also retains a striking stylistic modernity (sure to appeal to the uninitiated) that in and of itself refutes the assumption that filmmakers of the first half of the 20th century had "not yet learned to edit." With one of the film's chief montage sequences, a tribute to the miracle of technological innovation that displays in grand kinetic elation the process of a tractor-aided wheat harvest, we are so overwhelmed by the poetic cadence and furiousness of Dovzhenko's arrangement of images that we abandon any crass notion of narrative altogether and glide along, free as birds, to the rhythm of his almost operatic eulogy on life itself. An even better demonstration of the director's divine knack for montage arrives during the picture's climax: the aftermath of this "farmer's war" for their dear earth, resulting in one man's murder, is detailed from almost every perspective imaginable, as Dovzhenko cuts between glimpses of a funeral procession, an indignant priest, the dead man's distraught lover, and the murderer himself, all of them rendered in perfect balance and all of them tempered by an overriding sense of moral complexity.
In its overall achievement, Earth reminds us of how rarely the media of cinema, music, and poetry have been so unrecognizably blurred into one single and indestructible entity.

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4.0 out of 5 stars About the Image DVD version of EARTH
The Image DVD version of the 1930 Russian silent film EARTH has a disappointing video transfer. It is made from the same video source that was used for Kino's VHS tape version... Read more

Published on July 24 2002 by keviny01

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the Propaganda
Dovzhenko's quasi Soviet art film "The Earth" isn't really a propaganda film at all - it is one of those happy miracles in which the heavy hand of state control of the arts... Read more

Published on May 12 2002

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the Greatest Soviet Directors!
Not to disparage the first reviewer's interpretation of this film, but in Earth, Dovzhenko is in fact supporting collectivization. Read more

Published on Mar 31 2002

5.0 out of 5 stars It's my Earth and I won't give it up!
This film is in black and white. Some times the scenes look a little faded. Who knows if this was done on purpose? This is one of the last silent films of the era. Read more

Published on Feb 16 2001 by bernie

3.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Propaganda Film
Despite the film's beauty and Dovzhenko's obvious talents as a filmaker, it does not do justice to the true story behind the forced collectivization movement in Ukraine under... Read more

Published on Oct 9 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest films ever made!
And I would like to add as a footnote to the first review: this film was actually condemned by the Soviet authorities as "counterrevolutionary" and "highbrow. Read more

Published on Mar 10 2000 by annclpoet

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the immortal masterpieces of art
This film is a powerfully poetic work about the Ukranian peasants, however, unlike the specificity of the subject the film reflects all-time, living values of the man on Earth,... Read more

Published on April 27 1999

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible
I saw this movie five years ago and am still haunted by the way that human faces are captured in it. Experience sensitive portraits that move.

Published on Jan 7 1999

1.0 out of 5 stars Yuck
Sickening ode to one of the most horrible episodes of the 20th century, made all the more worse by its artistic sensibilities. Read more

Published on Dec 7 1998

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