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Earth

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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 released in 1991 ... . The image is replete with scratches, dirt, and looks out of focus (which often indicates duplication from another source). Fortunately, the film's artistic audacity -- its striking compositions and innovative editing -- makes it watchable despite of the poor video quality.

The DVD also includes a still-frame reconstruction of Sergei Eisenstein's 1937 lost film BEZHIN MEADOW, a film about an allegorical struggle between the "old" and the "young". The video quality is much better here, but still isn't as sharp and clean as the edition included in Criterion's EISENSTEIN: THE SOUND YEARS DVD set. (The Criterion disc even includes a few extras such as production photos and articles on BEZHIN MEADOW, while the Image disc has none.)

Image's EARTH (and Criterion's EISENSTEIN: THE SOUND YEARS, for that matter) is an all-region DVD.


**6/5/10 EDIT:**

Just want to add my review of the new 2010 DVD edition released by Mr. Bongo Film of UK. This is without a doubt the best-looking edition of EARTH to date. There are still many visible damages on the print, but it excels over the '97 Image edition in sharpness, contrast, and brightness, while also showing more picture on all four sides of the screen. It restores the original Russian intertitles (supported by optional English subtitles), as opposed to the redone English intertitles used on the Image disc. The differences in intertitle usages and possibly a change in projection speed may also explain why this UK disc runs 77 minutes instead of just 70 minutes on the Image disc. The UK disc is all-region, but in PAL, of course, so US customers would need DVD players that can do PAL-to-NTSC conversion. The UK disc also has better audio quality, with a new score by Alexander Popov recorded in crisp LPCM stereo, as opposed to the crummy-sounding audio on the Image disc that does not do justice to the excellent orchestral score by Stephen P. Hill. This being a UK DVD, you can also order it at Amazon UK.

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.

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.

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 occasioned a work that went far beyond the funders' intentions and produced a jewel of the form. Dovzhenko wasn't at all sure how he felt about collectivization before the fact, though we know that he was appalled by its consequences afterward, but on the way to another square wheeled political epoch something happened; he was a keen enough observer of humanity to, capture a boy meets tractor love story that will look familiar, and bring a smile, to farm people anywhere, anytime; he recorded a universally persuasive evocation of youthful optimism, and finally Dovzhenko made an eloquent case for time, renewal and fecundity as the ultimate solace of human life - not the State, not the Church. Time and the Land alone suffice for happiness. The little stories embedded in this film are not finally the point; Dovzhenko was ordered to make a celluloid pamphlet, and fooled everyone by making a love offering to the Ukrainian countryside in all its living, dying, breathing and eternal glory. The cyclic images are everywhere: young people climb out of their underground shelters in the warming morning, an old man returns to sleep in the earth as he dies, lambs jump and young people dance while fecundity is rampant with apples, apples, apples everywhere. The political advocacy that occasioned this film is irrelevant to the modern viewer - its cause is dead, dead. Color it dust. What remains is one of the finest examples of the visual songs-without-words style ever made. The Earth is a must-see for all serious students of cinematic art.

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.

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, his spiritual world and internal sufferings. A must for any cultured person.

Silent films are quite unusual compared to modern cinema. Earth, released in 1930, shows us the cycle of life and the differences between four generations without the spoken word. It shows us the change, such as the arrival of the first tractor to the area and how life was never the same after the coming of the machines. Throughout the story, there is a subtle to very obvious assault on the wealthy class and religion.

Viewers of silent films are more pressed to use other senses, paying more attention to expressions and the music that sets the feeling. Getting past the difference in the way the story is told, one can appreciate the beauty presented. Earth has some amazing scenes that one could expect in the stunning countryside. Just as there is a gap between when the words are said and when we can read them, there are also some details that we must fill in to create the large picture and give meaning to the more obvious details.

Earth is considered to be one of director Alexander Dovzhenko's greatest achievements. Dovzhenko was one of the leading directors in early Soviet cinema and he conforms with the party line. The propaganda side to his film is impossible to miss. Without a doubt, Earth is very different than most movies and will be an experience that is unlike any other. If one isn't into the politics presented, there is always the art side to it that can be appreciated.

Loved the extra feature, Bezhin Meadow by Eisenstein.It is an effort to reconstruct a destroyed film from single frames that were saved. It sings with talent! There is one wonderful image after another. What a terrible loss that we do not have the whole film. I did some googling and found that this banned and destroyed film has a fascinating history. Below is a cut/paste.

As to the main film on this DVD, Earth, I am not as enthusiastic. At first I thought, "well this is an interesting artifact of silent films and Soviet films and maybe film historians will get more out of this than me. But I probably will not keep it. Then after maybe 50 minutes into it I was more and more struck by the faces of the people and the emotions conveyed as the story developed. I thought, "well,very nice, it does stand out and I will probably I will keep it." Then seeing Bezhin Meadow made up my mind.

Others have commented that the video quality is not great. I agree. Both Earth and Bezhin Meadow deserve better. But I would rather keep them than not.

Is Earth one of the great films of all time? I will leave that up to the film historians who have more context than I do for judging its contribution to film history. It was not my cup of tea except in parts and especially the last half.You could certainly see talent in the photography of faces and various scenes, and I liked the editing that lingered on them.

But again, I really loved the extra feature of about 30 minutes of clips from Bezhin Meadow.

The following is a cut/paste from Wikipedia [...]
Due to the fact that Bezhin Meadow was repeatedly edited, re-shot, and changed to satisfy the Soviet government authorities, several versions of the film were created.

The most sourced and best-known version focuses on Stepok, a young boy in a collective farming village, who is a member of the local Young Pioneers Communist organization, as are other local children. His father Samokhin, a farmer, plans to sabotage the village harvest for political reasons by burning down the titular meadow, but Stepok organizes the other Young Pioneer children to guard the crops.[3][21] Samokhin grows progressively more frustrated by his son's actions and success. Eventually, Stepok reports Samokhin's crimes to the Soviet government authorities, and is in turn slain by his own father for betraying his family.[1][2] The other Young Pioneers break into the local church, singing songs, and desecrate it in response to Stepok's death.[3][10] The visuals of the film shift during the destruction of the church, with the villagers becoming that which they are destroying--the angry villagers, by the end of the set piece, are depicted as Christ-like, angelic, and prophetic figures.[10]

A later re-editing of the film opens with images of orchards and blue sky, showing a stone obelisk with Turgenev's name on it. It is next revealed that Stepok's mother has been beaten to death by his father. In a dark hut, Samokhin complains that his son has a greater loyalty to the Soviet than his own family, as Stepok enters from the bright day outside. His father quotes from the Bible: "If the son betrays his father, kill him like a dog!" Samokhin is arrested for arson, and Stepok leaves with a Communist functionary. The other arsonists take refuge in the local church, and are soon arrested. The arsonists are nearly lynched, but are saved from the villagers' wrath by Stepok. The villagers transform the church into a clubhouse, symbolically ridiculing religion or the clergy.[8]

In some versions, the destruction of the church was replaced with a scene of villagers fighting the arsonist's fire. In the film, the fire was started when the arsonists threw dried sunflowers and lit matches into the community's fuel storage area. In some cuts, Stepok overhears his father's planning and sneaks out in the night to inform on him; in others, the local Communist Party functionary breastfeeds Stepok's young sister; in still others, Stepok's father says after shooting his son, "They took you from me, but I did not give you to them. I did not give my own flesh and blood." After Stepok's death, the same aforementioned Communist official carries him off, joined by other children, in a funeral march that was said to evolve into a victory march.[8]

The film, as mentioned by Shumyatsky and Eisenstein, is rich in religious iconography and the symbolic struggle between good and evil.[1][12] Additionally, Birgit Beumers writes, "The peasants here are grey-bearded prophets; the young men are broad-shouldered Renaissance apostles; the fleshy girls are earthly Madonnas; the peasant wrecking the iconostasis is a biblical Samson; the chubby young boy in the shirt, raised high under the cupola towards the slanting sun-ray which turns his locks golden, is the young Jesus Christ ascending to the Heavenly Throne."[10] Bezhin Meadow, in its various unreleased versions, was "Dedicated to the bright memory of Pavlik Morozov, a small hero of our time."[8]

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. The music is well coordinated with the scenes. The film is 88 minutes long. Most of the time it is images or dancing. Remove the images and dancing and you have about 20 minutes. There is a written narration at the beginning of the movie to tell you of the author and purpose of the movie. The English subtitles cover only one fourth of the dialog. You have to be a fast reader to finish the title before the next scene.

An alternate title could be "Who killed Basil?" And why? This is the story of a conflict between the collective and the individual owned farms. The technologies (tractors and aero planes) are to represent the collective. Horses and sweat are to represent the farm owners. This is played out with close ups of the faces of the farmers and the farm animals.

Some reviewers missed the mark on one of the things that make this film controversial. He tried to relate this film to "Triumph of the Will" (1934) - English subtitles. The irony is that in 1930 the Soviet Communist League asked Ukrainian director Dovzhenko to make a propaganda picture. He was to dramatize the need for landowners to give up their properties in order to create collective farms. However they got more than they bargained for. Hitler wanted Leni Riefenstahl to make "The Olympiad": Part 1 (1936) - English subtitles. This was to emphasize Aryan superiority. The film turned out to be a work of art and if anybody benefited from it that was the black American runner Jesse Owens. "Earth" turned out to be a work of art and if it did anything, it helps solidify the feelings of the people that farm ownership has its merit.


Three Soviet Classics (Earth / The End of St. Petersburg / Chess Fever)

Not to disparage the first reviewer's interpretation of this film, but in Earth, Dovzhenko is in fact supporting collectivization. What made this film problematic to the Soviet regime in the 1930s, was the idea that the Soviet peasants should rise up and take action against the Kulaks(what reviewer one calls the individual land owners). The Kulaks were wealthy peasants, which the Soviet government considered to be "mini-capitalists" and exploiters of the common peasant. Under Lenin, the Kulaks were openly attacked, but by the '30s under Stalin, the message had changed. The Soviet citizens were to focus on their own work, and their contributions to the socialist future, and not concern themselves with the Kulaks, who's corrupt views would "inevitably" lead them to self distruction. Another reason this film was problematic, is Dovzhenko's cyclical view of life. There are many references to life, fertility, nutrition, and death. This greatly conflicted with Stalin's linear view of the future, which (using THE metaphor for the Soviet agenda)was like a train moving forever forward on a straight and set course. In Earth, Dovzhenko sincerely praises collectivization, unfortunately he made his film a few years too late for it to be ideologically correct. I don't know what the first reviewer's credentials are, but as a University Junior majoring in Russian Studies, and having taken a course on Soviet films, I know that what I'm saying isn't just my own opinion.