Earth (aka Soil)

In the 1950's, a group of film critics voted this early Soviet film as one of the 10 greatest ever made, unfortunately, since then, it has mostly disappeared into obscurity. Director Alexander Dovzhenko is less cinematically mature than his bretheren, Eisenstein, Vertov, and Pudovkin, but the has the heart that Pudovkin and Vertov lack. This is like the neo-realist film of Soviet propoganda. It tells of an idyllic farming community and their love for life even during the hard times. The farmers take pride in their work and rejoice when they join together to form a collective and buy a tractor. It enjoy expressing its theme through juxtaposing images of dying with images of birth and life. It's distinctly and naively Marxist, but boldly reaffirms the human spirit, though in a non-God, pro-worker sort of way. Dovzhenko shows moments of slight visual poetry, but his editing rhythms are not as well defined as the other Soviet masters. This is a film worth remembering, but I hesitate to call it a great one.