EARTH (1930)- Poetry in Images
Aleksander Dovzhenko (1894–1956) was a prominent Soviet filmmaker, along with Eisenstein and Pudovkin, who employed the art of montage similar to his contemporaries during the time when Soviet silent cinemas were gaining rapid attention and praise around the world. Dovzhenko was the son of Ukrainian peasants who knew very little about cinema when he decided to begin his career in the arts of cinema by joining Odessa Studios at the age of 32. A few years in the studio and his early works were predominantly copies of American slapstick comedies that were popular with the Soviet audiences at the time. However, in 1928, he made Zvenigora that was something that the soviet cinema had never seen before. It is recorded that the film was so unconventional that the Ukrainian officials were startled and asked Eisenstein and Pudovkin to preview it in order to certify its coherence. The film was remarkable in the sense that it introduced poetic feeling and emotional lyricism to the soviet films. The use of montages to evoke emotions of love, pity, hatred and sadness was so profound that Eisenstein after viewing Earth wrote later that his work was reminiscent of the work of the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.
Earth (Zemlia, 1930)
I watched Earth right after watching Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin so, I did not know what to expect after witnessing something as revolutionary as Battleship Potemkin. I was quite familiar with the use of montages (or at least I thought so), but Dovzhenko threw me right off from the first image on the screen with the beautiful shots of wheat swaying in the wind as it evoked such naturalistic feelings as if someone had put Tagore’s words into images.
The sequence of inter-cuts between wheat, sunflowers, fruits hanging on the trees and a group of people gathered outdoors where an old peasant is preparing to die lingers on the screen for a while. The mood is broken when the young guy, Vasili, makes an offensive comment about the dying man that subtly establishes the shift happening in Soviet between the old and the new. Now, the whole movie pretty much revolves around the tension and drift between the kulaks (established system) and the young peasants (emerging voices) where it culminates with a tragedy only to be quickly morphed as a natural order of life in the village of Soviet region. Kulaks were the rich peasants who owned lands and hired labors. The collective farming law introduced in the late 1920’s by Stalin forced the rich Kulaks to hand over their vast land holdings to the collective. In the film, however, the Kulaks refuse to sell their land holdings to the collection. Vasili, the village chairman, takes authority of the property, buys a new tractor and turns the collective into a thriving enterprise. This in turn infuriates a Kulak’s son (who can be viewed as slightly deranged) and he shoots Vasili dead while Vasili is on his way home. Vasili’s father overwhelmed with grief first chides the village priest and then refuses to conduct a religious funeral for his son. He rather demands a “modern” funeral for his son where everyone is to sings “new songs about new life.” This highlights the social and political dynamism in Soviet region during that time. The film ends with the joyous funeral procession followed by a downpour that soaks all the fruits in the village to showcase the vitality of lives of every beings living in earth.
Some of the techniques and the narrative structure employed by Dovzhenko are as strong and effective today as they were in 1930. The first is the inevitable recurring cycle of birth and death. Furthermore, the use of montage to stress the cycle of birth and death is simply outstanding. During the funeral procession while Vasili is being carried around the village, four other different sets of actions are occurring simultaneously. The inter-cutting between five different parallel actions is commendable. The concept of religion, the concept of guilt, the concept of birth, and the concept of sorrow are all interwoven beautifully to build up-to and give birth to the most pleasing and naturalistic climax I have seen in a film after a long time.
Although the camera is still static the placement of the camera is effective and most of the shots comprising the film are just as beautiful as the whole film. The individual shots wouldn’t have had the same effect even if the camera was moved by a few inches.
However, the montage is what ultimately brings the poetic feeling that holds the film together. For example, let’s look at the different shots of the curious and exalted villagers when they are waiting to see a machine (tractor) for the very first time in their life and when they actually see the machine respectively.
Everyone eagerly waiting for the tractor.
What the villagers see.
When the tractor arrives.
What the villagers see now.
Medium shots of proud Vasili and his comrades.
This is one of the best examples of the use of montage you will ever see. Just like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko used the reversal of cause and effect to affect the audiences perception even more. That is sheer brilliance.
The film that was made in 1930’s without any dialogues or sound (except the background score) still holds up to as a brilliant piece of art to this day. The film touches realms of love, politics, death and sorrow dealing with a sensitive subject matter not directly but rather with such tender care by encompassing elements of nature and emotions. The contribution of Soviet cinema to establish film as a medium of art is significant. I wonder to what extent did these kind of films inspire the newer generation of Russian and other foreign filmmakers mainly. That is for you to decide.
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