earth ( 1930 film )
alexander dovzhenko drew from ukranian folk culture in such films as zemlya (earth, 1930) .
of the silent trilogy, earth (1930) is dovzhenko’s most accessible film but, perhaps for these same reasons, most misunderstood. in 1958 a brussels’ film jury would vote earth as one of the great films of all time .
“inshi pro zemlyu za zemlyu”. kino march 1930 (8), 80 .
see for example bednyi, demian. (pseud of efim pridvorov). “filosofy. ” izvestiia april 4, 1930, “knononizatsiia ili ‘chto i trebovalos’ dokazat’ izvestia april 6, 1930 and bliakhin, p. “zemlia” pravda march 29, 1930 .
hall, mordaunt. “the screen: earth”. new york times. october 21, 1930 (city edition). 34: 4 .
bookcover for demyan bedny' s evangelist (1930). the text reads
new testament
with regard to screenplay and print, all of dovzhenko’s silent films come with their own version and translation problems. due to earth’s (1930) early censorship necessitated before its release, various existing prints add further complexity. there are at least six different versions of earth circulating in east and west. before earth was released, it was reviewed by the artistic council of ukrainfilm on february 26, 1930, and the association of revolutionary cinema workers on march 20, 1930
see bazhan, mykola. “zemlia” kino 1930 (5): 8 - 9 and ivens, jorys. “jorys ivens pro fil’m o. dovzhenka zemlia. ” kino 1930 (6): 14 .
dovzhenko. pro krasu, ibid. , p. 37, zemlya discussions, 26 february 1930 .
“earth” trans. diana matias. mother, a film by v. i pudovkin; earth a film by alexander dovzhenko. london: lorrimer, 1973: simon and schuster, 1973. p. 59 - 60 .
i. e. marshall, rotha, grierson, bakshy, potamkin. see for example, marshall, h. p. j “zimla (earth) vufku. close - up 7. 3 (1930): 171 - 176. rotha, paul. “earth” in celluloid: the film today. london: londman, green and co, 1933. pp. bakshy, alexander. “soil” the nation 29 october 1930. potamkin, harry alan. “soil review” new masses december 1930. grierson, john. “earth review (originally published november 1930, clarion) grierson on documentary. ed. and compiled by hardy forsyth. london: faber and faber, 1966 .
. on april 1, 1930, a week before its release, demyan bedny’s versified attack on earth appeared in izvestia resulting in dovzhenko’s first set of pre - release cuts .
see shkurupii, geo. ed. avanhard al’manakh, kyiv: 1930. pp. 16 - 22 .
interview with dovjenko ,
in close - up (london), no. 4, 1930 .
. in the week prior to the film’s release, the debates regarding earth had taken on large political resonance .
today we' re adding to our list of free movies a 1930 soviet silent film by director alexander dovzhenko. it' s called earth, and it' s the third installment in dovzhenko' s
ukraine trilogy .
after earth premiered in russia, dovzhenko brought the film to paris and berlin, and under the title soil, it opened in new york during the fall of 1930. the negative of earth was destroyed by the germans during world war ii, but a copy of the original release print fortunately survived .
moscow, 1965; also published in mother: a film by v. i. pudovkin and earth: a film by alexander dovzhenko, new york, 1973 .
soviet collectivization propaganda (1930). the poster reads
hey friend, come with us into the collective !
speaking of earth as “the culmination of dovzhenko’s aesthetic, a spiritual hymn to the earth’s fertility and larger philosophical meditation of life, death and the life cycle” .
dakhabrakha perform their score for classic soviet silent film' earth' on friday, aug. 19, at the sfjazz center .
six months after its april 8 kyiv release. between these dates dovzhenko travelled with earth’s assistant director, julia solntseva, exhibiting and lecturing on earth in various european capitals
ukraine on film celebrates cinema by presenting four new award - winning ukrainian films and screening oleksandr dovzhenko’s 1930 masterpiece, earth, at the opening. a title which resonates powerfully since the tragic events which have torn the country apart, present in varying degrees in the selected works
dovzhenko, alexander. “ earth literary adaptation” two russian film classics. new york: simon and schuster, 1973. p. 59 .
contemporary opinion on earth, even before release, was split. many of the arguments against the film had less to do with the film itself than with what the film, in contemporaneous socio - political debates, was presenting, or, more often than not, omitting. the earliest critique placed earth in line with dovzhenko’s previous two silent features .
rotha, paul. “earth” in celluloid: the film today. london: longmans, green and company, 1933. pp. 135 - 153 .
around the time of earth’s first north american release (october 1930), forced collectivization was reinstituted. for both 1930 and 1931, moscow raised the ukrainian quota for grain deliveries by an impossible 115 percent. in the next harvest, at a time when left - leaning cinema clubs across europe and north america were screening dovzhenko’s images of abundance and western intellectuals witnessed presentations of bucolic fertility
toronto international film festival the website for the toronto international film festival. check out the latest film news and links to the bell lightbox, the film reference library, cinematheque ontario, sprockets, reel learning, film circuit, canada' s top ten, and related features .
david cronenberg a profile of celebrated canadian writer and film director david cronenberg. from the toronto international film group .
i. e. new masses, daily worker, film front, nation, new theatre, workers theatre, film front, workers film and photo league, etc .
margolit, e. ,
zemlja, sssr (1930) ,
in iskusstvo kino (moscow), no. 12, december 1990 .
potamkin, harry alan. “soil review, december 1930”. reprinted in the compound cinema: the film writings of harry alan potamkin. new york: teachers college press, 1977. pp. 480 - 481 .
for a discussion of the importance that subsequent film historians afford this text which contains a chapter devoted to dovzhenko’s earth, see bordwell, david. on the history of film style. cambridge: harvard university press, 1997 .
in earth, dovzhenko creates a model, an impression of an idealized reality of a bucolic mode of life that paradoxically never existed but now is passing away. through earth’s presented images, there is the sense of lives halted, freed from future destiny. in joining cinema, iconic portraiture and his own personal mythopetic through reference to byzantine eastern orthodox iconographic code, in earth (1930), dovzhenko would construct his own surrealistic death mask of an old way of life .
a 1955 new york cinema 16 club circular notes that the original negative of earth no longer exists with prints taken from an existing dupe negative with a subsequent loss in photographic quality for which the film in its original form was praised. (museum of modern art film archives). earth: russia 1929 - 30. cinema sixteen notes
the party - backed denunciation and orchestration of ‘the moscow workers’ to rise against dovzhenko’s earth has been noted .
in his later literary adaptation of the earth screenplay, dovzhenko similarly alludes to these neo - byzantine surrealist coordinates and a series of modernist movements ascendant in the period. beginning earth’s later screenplay adaptation, dovzhenko writes :
george sadoul writes that the original release time of earth before censorship was 5, 670 ft. (94 minutes at 16 frames / second, silent film speed) .
the 1920s actress became a new kind of down - to - earth hollywood idol. her film it established a female archetype that’s still with us, nicholas barber reports .
. (on aesthetics), comp. oleh babyshkin. kyiv: mystetstvo, 1968. ” zemlya discussions, 26 february 1930, kiev”. p. 36 .
dovzhenko’s film is as heartfelt as eisenstein’s brisker, highly analytical achievement. it’s a different way of seeing—a different way of breathing air. earth also narrowly misses having more history to take into account; for, at the same time that dovzhenko was making his film, stalin’s 1929 collectivization policy, which would soak the earth in human blood, had just begun. when the film was released in 1930, then, the tragedy was still unfolding. for all dovzhenko’s acquiescence (at that time) to stalin’s iron grip on the soviet film industry, earth was deemed suspect by soviet authorities; dovzhenko’s father as a result was even expelled from his farming collective. (the film, though, was warmly embraced in scandinavia and western europe. in italy, dovzhenko was declared the modern homer .) it’s possible that stalin and the sort with whom he surrounded himself found the silence of the film— earth is dovzhenko’s last completely silent film—itself dubious, as though sound might better promote the national interest by propagandizing, or doing so more plainly, directly. in any case, the experience surrounding earth pushed dovzhenko into what has been described as a suicidal depression .
when the guardian created its list of the top 10 silent movies of all time, it put earth in the # 9 slot. about the film writer pamela hutchinson said :
the soviet use of force in accelerating collectivization was excessive. uprisings were provoked among the peasant populace and stalin took a brief step back. on march 2, 1930, he published an article in pravda entitled “dizziness from success”. here, stalin ordered forced collectivization’s end. on march 15, 1930, the peasants were permitted to resign from the collective farms and reclaim property if they so chose. immediately following stalin’s more permissive prescription, almost half of the coerced ukrainian peasants left the collective farms. in this period, dovzhenko’s earth was allowed a brief, limited and hotly debated release (april 8 - april 17, 1930, kyiv) .
1930 / 78 minutes / russian with english subtitles / mono audio (orchestral score) / 1. 33: 1 black & white / pg / dvd pal multi region / mrbdvd025
before its release, earth was greeted with a cacophony of opposing opinion. produced in 1929, released in 1930, earth precipitated a debate that is still not understood. this led to censorship and the film’s reediting of which we have yet to see full restoration. the avant - garde and intelligentsia would celebrate earth. in a series of party - backed protests the bolsheviks and moscow workers’ clubs would rise against it. the debates would also herald the ukrainian cultural renaissance’s wane and lead to dovzhenko’s longer self - censorship. a new period would begin in ukraine marked by purges, terror and a party - orchestrated famine .
here, he published dovzhenko’s notes on his working methods on his soon - to - be released third feature, earth .
this film was voted one of the 12 greatest films of all time by a group of 117 film historians at the 1958 brussels world fair .
appropriating a simpler narrative plan than his previous films and closer to poetry than prose, earth presents what has been termed a slight narrative structure to reflect on philosophical concern. the following earth summary proposes congruence in division with the trilogy’s previous two films :
publication of the first volume of ukrainian re - vision is timed to the 90 th anniversary of all - ukrainian photo - cinema directorate (vufku), under the brand of which such masterpieces as zvenyhora, two days, man with a movie camera, in spring, arsenal, and earth were created during 1922 - 1930. vufku was a cinematographic state monopoly that united the entire film industry in ukraine, including film production, film distribution, film education, and book publication. it was one of the most successful film producers in europe. exporting movies to france, czech republic, germany, great britain, usa, and japan vufku became the second largest after the usa supplier of film production to germany, which at that time was the leader of the european film industry. vufku logo became the logo of the ukrainian re - vision collection .
in a later memoir article, kino vufku ukrainian paris correspondent and emigré avant - garde filmmaker, eugene deslaw, notes that the misunderstanding between dovzhenko and stalin began at the time of earth. deslaw relates that after a screening of the film at which pudovkin and eisenstein were present, stalin pronounced that earth did not tow the general line
production: vufku (kiev); black and white, 35mm, silent; length: 1704 meters, 6 reels. released 8 april 1930, kiev. filmed april - november 1929 in poltava .
the first film in dovzhenko’s silent trilogy, which brought him the reputation of a leading ukrainian film director, ignited a fierce debate about the national cinema .
in aleksandr dovzhenko' s orgiastic paean to soviet collectivism and tractor - ism earth there is nothing more beautiful than the untainted countryside .
★★★★★ made in response to stalin’s plans for collectivisation, earth is about peasants owning their own land and tilling it as they please .
from the film’s beginning, distinctive forces harken beyond the socio - economic. there will be an undercurrent of imagery that acts as a visual dialectic and counterpoint to narrative and plot structure’s economic machinations progressing through earth .
i. e. potamkin, workers’ film and photo league, new york .
kelman, ken, in film culture (new york), winter 1963–64 .
pym, john, in monthly film bulletin (london), february 1980 .
this film was voted one of the 12 greatest films of all time by a group of 117 film historians at the 1958 brussels world fair. see more »
by march 10, 1930, sixty - five percent of the ukrainian farms and seventy percent of the land was collectivized. in light of moscow’s new strong arm policy in dealing with ukraine, there was a question. would earth be released? in the uncensored version of his later party autobiography, dovzhenko would apologize for his misalignment with state policy thus :
prior to an early earth screening in venice by the italian communists, deslaw comments: they cut the last moments in the life of the grandfather, the return of the villager to his non - existent home after picking up some earth (on his knees, the villager in this scene bends towards the earth and, taking it in hand, raises it to his cheek, so in his last moments to feel its flavor (smak) and to breathe in our black earth (chornozem). they even didn’t leave other unique scenes with the sunflowers ...
in 1930 international surrealist currents were at their apogee. striving for a union with international communist and revolutionary aspiration, benjamin peret’s and pierre naville’s journal, la révolution surréaliste, advocated linking the surrealist breakthrough with the communist upsurge
. rooted in regional specificity, dovzhenko’s earth resonates with this less spoken about social and surrealist confluence and modernist eroto - political set of themes .
even if to little effect, in vufku kino’s final year there would be an effort to counter this attack. a counter ‘ideological’ horizon of ukrainian proletarian opinion would be ‘rallied’ to state the workers’ opinions for earth. the moscow ‘proletariat’ with the exception of one worker would be unified against earth as an unsuitable film for the proletarian masses. kino’s assemblage of ukrainian workers’ opinion would diametrically mirror the russian textual construction. all of the ukrainian workers, with the exception of one worker, were for the suitability of earth for soviet screens
created to celebrate stalin’s collectivization project, which pushed ukrainian peasants off their land into huge communal farms, alexander dovzhenko ’s classic 1930 silent film earth isn’t quite as notorious. but this landmark of soviet cinema, the third of the director’s seminal “ukraine trilogy, ” inhabits unsettled ground where propaganda and art contest for meaning. dakhabrakha, the amazing ukrainian ensemble that reverently reinvents hair - raising polyphonic ukrainian folk songs, perform an original live score for earth on friday, aug. 19, at the sfjazz center. the quartet also perform at 3pm on sunday, aug. 14 at san jose jazz’s summer fest .
earth opens with a young woman in a traditional embroidered blouse next to a sunflower. while organized religion and the priest will be denounced, it will not be easy to ignore the grounding of pagan harvest fertility ritual and judeo - christian emblematic mysticism in earth’s roster of poetic imagery and marxist speculation .
... the grandfather in earth is my own late grandfather, semen tarasovych dovzhenko, an honest, kind, and genteel old salt trader .
but you watch
earth
for the editing. if you don' t care about context, you can really just watch two sequences: the…
the 1930’s was considered the golden age of hollywood. a new era in film history began in this decade with the introduction of sound into film, creating new genres such as action, musicals, documentaries, social statement films, comedies, westerns, and horror movies. the use of audio tracks in motion pictures created a new viewer dynamic and also initiated hollywood’s leverage in the upcoming world war ii .
earth’s aesthetic relies not on formalist gymnastics, camera movement or montage unlike it' s closest analogue with regard to collectivization, eisenstein’s the old and the new (1929), . grounded in stasis, the film is predicated on inter - frame composition and a painterly schema. earth’s formal qualities have kinship with dreyer’s joan of arc (1928) and narrative antecedent in griffith’s a corner in wheat (1909). unlike zvenyhora and arsenal, for whom there are no close narrative sources, for earth there are antecedents in contemporary ukrainian belles lettres and other literary works worthy at least of note: olha kobylianska’s zemlia (earth, 1902), on sunday morning for herbs she dug (1909 )
like rivera’s public multi - panelled period mexican frescos (1923 - 1930), through earth dovzhenko constructs a mural of the collective. boys and girls sit on rooftops; young married women sit on logs; men wait in a state of anticipation; oxen are shot not lowing but from conventional soviet heroic style high angle awaiting the tractor’s arrival. from a state of ‘historical’ stasis, a collective entity emerges. close to diego rivera’s marxist iconographic decoration for the chapel at chapingo, the panels taken together in earth form an iconostatic shrine to agrarian abundance and the land’s fecundity (fig. 50). like rivera’s heterodox marxo - philosophic erotic chapel, dovzhenko’s visual shrine is to the earth’s fecundity .
and used as a teaching tool in the early film / social history / aesthetics courses .
future learning and skills – giving everyone the opportunity to build a lifelong relationship with film .
in 1985 actor jan rubes tells peter gzowski about his role in the hollywood film witness .
earth created a sensation outside the soviet union. its simple imagery influenced other directors, particularly documentary filmmakers in england and the united states. today, it is dovzhenko' s most famous film, and one of the great achievements of world cinema .
young screen actress, platinum blonde starlet jean harlow was also' discovered' and soon contracted with aviation millionaire / movie mogul howard hughes to replace the female lead in his soon - to - be - released, re - made sound version of hell' s angels (1930), another exciting wwi film about british flying aces .
largely filmed in close - up or head shots, the emphasis on byzantine iconology and its head - of - the - saint foregrounding will be present throughout earth. not so much presented as reaction shots, the close - ups of the family’s various generations’ faces in earth are close to dreyer’s passion of joan of arc (1928) or hugo munsterberg’s or bela balasz’s contemporary prescriptions about micro - physiognomic gesture and film specificity
dovzhenko, alexander. uncensored autobiography, 1994. , ed. nebesio, bohdan. the cinema of alexander dovzhenko. journal of ukrainian studies. volume 19, no. 1. , p. 21. there is a different version of this paragraph in a single page essay “pro zemlyu” (on earth) dated 1930 in dovzhenko’s 1964 complete works. see tvory: 4, ibid. , p. 111 .
founded in 1999, senses of cinema is one of the first online film journals of its kind and has set the standard for professional, high quality film - related content on the internet .
the film goes far beyond this terminology – it is deeper and more meaningful than the latter .
universal pictures, (or universal film manufacturing co) was founded by carl laemmle in 1912 .
projecting the speed at the incorrect 24 frames per second in its video dubbing instead of 16 frames per second, the closer silent film speed, the kino video release version reduces dovzhenko’s originally 94 minute film to 73 minutes. because of earth’ s concern with stasis and motion, this speeding up does violence to dovzhenko’s rhythm. dovzhenko’s original conception of the film was predicated on a lyric static, painterly aesthetic. in the original conception, little moves .
avant - garde earth, a recognized cinema masterpiece, was banned 9 days after release and glorified in ukraine only after dovzhenko’s death, bringing forth dozens of controversial interpretations. full of lyrical pantheism and utopianexaltation, it demonstrated the ambiguity of ukrainian geopolitical choice in the 1920s. the new soundtrack for earth was created by ukrainian ethno - chaos band dakhabrakha, whose music shifts the emphasis from the film’s ideological connotations to universal ones .
earth marks a threshold in dovzhenko’s career emblematic of a turning point in the ukrainian cultural and political avant - garde - the end of one period and transition to another .
earth concludes with the body of the village coming together to sing new songs. in silent cinema variant, dovzhenko’s final synaesthetic analogy is aural. the screenplay adaptation reads :
earth concludes with the presentation of paradisaical vegetation - wheatfields, apples, melons, a voluptuous fecundating rain. apples are restored to the branch outside the town. the fruits of the earth glimmer in newborn splendor washed by falling rain. it is hard not to feel prophetic catharsis. compare dovzhenko’s visualization with the revelation of the divine to isaiah :
bataille, georges. “sacrifice”, ibid. , p. 62. there is room for further comparison in earth with frazer’s golden bough (1910) and robert graves myth of the white goddess. see also here mikhailkovich, v. “naturfilosofia zemli” kinovedcheskie zapiski 1994 (special dovzhenko anniversary, earth conference issue), pp. 111 - 122 .
much of this film is chaotic, especially during the church episode and some of the closing scenes .
douglas fetherling, ed. , documents in canadian film (toronto: broadview press, 1988) .
wyndham wise, ed. , take one' s essential guide to canadian film (2001) .
earth is the final part of dovzhenko' s silent trilogy (following the nationalist fantasy zvenigora (1928) and the avant - garde anti - war film arsenal (1929), and is brimming with exuberant youth, but haunted by the shadow of death... .
for other soviet directors on this transition see vsevolod pudovkin, grigory alexandrov, sergei eisensten in “statement on the sound film” (1928), vertov, dziga. “let’s discuss ukrainfilm’s first sound film: symphony of the donbas (1930) ”. kino - eye: the writings of dziga vertov. ed. and introduced by annette michelson. trans. kevin o’brien. berkeley: university of california press, 1984. , pp. 106 - 112, 102 - 106 .
zvenyhora spanned millennia in ukraine’s history. arsenal looked back ten years to the civil war. earth draws from the present historical moment (1929) and central topic of the day, collectivization. dealing not so much with collectivization as appropriating the topic, the film orchestrates philosophic meditation .
you can watch earth above, and find it listed in our collection of free silent films, a subset of our meta collection, 1, 150 free movies online: great classics, indies, noir, westerns, etc. . below you can watch a version of earth with a recent soundtrack provided by the amazing ukrainian ensemble, dakhabrakha. enjoy .
. the intertitles mix not heaven and hell but two cosmologies, a christian heaven with an earlier classical, pagan, hades. in 1930, the mixing of metaphoric systems would not have been lost on contemporary soviet audiences. during the last ten years, they had experienced a great disjunctive rupture and revolutionary societal turn. dovzhenko will place earth in a similar transitional set of culturo - temporal coordinates. he foregrounds not simply the rupture to new aesthetic forms (i. e. the cinema) but also film’s displacement, appropriation and continuity with antecedent media .
there are similarities with earth’s central tractor panel in rivera’s “mechanization of the country” (1926, ministry of education, mexico city), (fig. 51). in both representations, the hero, is figured in high angle presentations, master of technology. in rivera’s mural, hydro - electric dams and power stations form the background. oxen look on amid telegraph poles in earth. in rivera’s “mechanization” a mexican peasant ploughs up land on a tractor. in earth, vasyl rides high as the tractor ploughs through fields. in rivera’s mural, centre frame, a peasant maiden heartens the rise of two stalks of maize. in earth, young peasant women bend over to gather up the cut wheat stems into burgeoning sheaves .
brakhage, stan. “alexander dovzhenko” film biographies. turtle island: berkeley, 1977. p. 286 .
earth is, among other things, a celebration of workers, and one of its most beautiful passages—i’m not sure how i feel about the preceding part where urine cools the radiator of the newly arrived tractor—shows harvesters, from every conceivable camera angle, at work in the fields. there is such joy in their labor, for being a part of nature and close to the earth. subsequent scenes show the mechanical threshing of wheat and, close up, the plowing of earth. a generalization arises as to the holistic nature of these people’s lives .
the first soviet sound films were released in march 1930: abram room' s plan velikikh rabot (plan for great works) - a compilation documentary with postdubbed sound only - and some vaudeville and musical shorts. at that point only two theaters were wired for sound. by 1931, however, enough theaters were equipped that sound films came out more frequently. following entuziazm: simfoniya donbassa (enthusiasm), yuri raizman' s silent montage - style film zemlya zhazhdet (the earth thirsts, 1930) was re - released in may with a track of music, songs, and sound effects. other silent films soon received the same treatment. new sound films also appeared: in the fall of 1931, grigori kozintsev and leonid trauberg' s odna (alone) was released, soon followed by sergei yutkevich' s zlatye gory (golden mountains) .
similar to earth’s opening, dovzhenko ends with a funeral. young women carry flowers. the priest prays alone in an empty wooden church. a woman gives birth. the commune comes together
the monogram picture corporation - rayart pictures, which had taken over the old selig studio in echo park in 1924, became monogram pictures in 1930; it was founded by w. ray johnston to make mostly inexpensive westerns and series (charlie chan, the bowery boys, etc. )
earth explores iconology on a hieratic level different from arsenal in more than degree. dozvhenko lends ecclesiastic reverence to the earth and larger rural populace’s struggle for social justice. a parallel for what dovzhenko is accomplishing can be found in diego rivera’s compatriot, the mexican muralist, jose clemente orozco’s fresco “the family” (national preparatory school, mexico city, 1926). here, a similar rural family to earth’s is portrayed through codes of neo - byzantine iconography. in a similar funereal situation and encompassed by revolution, urbanization and modernity’s sea - change, a family bears witness .
father panas (earth’s father) - the ukrainian villager - this is in fact my father, petro semenovich dovzhenko, who in his sixty - seventh year of his life joined the collective .
avant - garde earth, a recognized cinema masterpiece, was banned 9 days after release and glorified in ukraine only after dovzhenko’s death, bringing forth dozens of controversial interpretations. full ...
earth, which to this day is considered one of the best ukrainian films, was supposed to be the first ukrainian sound film. in earth, dovzhenko returns to a more conventional narrative form. moreover, this is his first film on a modern, not historical, subject. exuberant nature, noble faces of peasants, full - blooded and human - like animals – the director strives to bring into this pantheistic world agricultural machinery and the new order, without disturbing the natural status quo. dovzhenko could not possibly foresee that collectivization would turn into a tragedy for the ukrainian people and would start the flywheel of holodomor as a reaction to civil disobedience. in earth, dovzhenko speaks the language of pagan rites – here, the arrival of the new always comes with the demise of the old .
after censorship in the ussr, the film was cut down to 5, 200 ft. (86 minutes). according to roman savytsky, the prevalent supposedly ‘uncensored’ version of earth circulating in the 1950’s and 60’s in the republics ran 5, 589 ft. [ 237 ] (93 minutes) .
when dakhabrakha perform the score for earth, the group wears more sedate, dark outfits so as not to compete with the film. and they recently traded in the wedding dresses for new costumes by ukrainian designer olga navrotska, inspired by their animated video for “karpatsky rap, ” drawn by sashko danylenko .
lillian gish film' the wind' (1928) 01 may 1928 cth25954 allstar / cinetext / mgm * * warning * * this photograph can only be reproduced by publications in conjunction with the promotion of the above film. for editorial use only entertainment orientation landscape couples film still drama gun in hand photograph: allstar / cinetext / mgm
since its release, earth has remained alexander dovzhenko’s most famous work. its overwhelming visual beauty and complex editing convey a sensual celebration of life. a vital influence on the films of andrei tarkovsky, earth is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made - featured on the list of ten greatest films at the brussels world fair and time out magazine’s 100 greatest films of the 20th century .
in repeated letters to eisenstein, dovzhenko put this as his desire to see hollywood, new york, san francisco and collaborate with chaplin. see tvory: 5, ibid. , “letters to sergei eisenstein and i. o. solokyansky from berlin and london” (1930) pp. 325 - 330 .
this is a suggested viewing list of narrative films for the film and visual studies phd offered by harvard university. …
a futuristic city scene from the film, metropolis, directed by fritz lang in 1927. photograph: ronald grant archive
( 1922) — were not as profitable as his first, they were not failures. only his last film —
sandra gathercole, “the best film policy this country never had, ” cinema canada (june 1978), 28–31 .
katherine monk, weird sex and snowshoes: and other canadian film phenomena (vancouver: raincoast books, 2001) .
the film was originally commissioned to champion a policy that would ultimately lead to the famine - induced deaths of millions of ukrainians. director alexander dovzhenko could not have foreseen this, however, and his priorities were poetic rather than political. after earth was denounced as ukrainian nationalist propaganda, dovzhenko lost his job at the kiev film institute. he continued to make films until his death in 1956, but none scaled the same creative heights .
earth is a tribute to life in the ukraine, the birthplace of its creator, alexander dovzhenko. the film' s star is essentially the ukrainian village in which the story is set: it is not necessarily a tale of russian farmers and kulaks but a visual poem about life and the calm acceptance of death .
uncertainty concerning sound led to a dip in french production. by 1930, however, most of the main studio buildings were wired, using either american or german systems or one of several minor french brands. wiring went on until 1934, since many theaters were small and independently owned .
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in earth, dovzhenko’s aesthetic mode is syncretic, iconic and complex. there are parallels harkening to the ascendant french surrealism. there is a fascination with a dream playing out through the film. dovzhenko references impossible spaces by setting up eye - line matches and cuts that exceed possibility’s boundary. earth references the hereafter’s unknowable surreal space by a type of visual paradox. through a purposeful eye - line set - up of expectation to objects, people or events that cannot be, dovzhenko pushes silent cinema’s grammatical borders toward surreality .
continuing dovzhenko’s series of epic allusion, . like earth’s opening sunflower, tychyna’s sunny clarinets comes to terms with a violent revolution’s disjunctive events through a connection with a sunflower and neologism ‘sunny’, or ‘sunflowery clarinets’
earth’s muralistic aesthetic has parallel with these less spoken about paths haunting struggles of national emancipation and social revolution. ripe for comparison are kahlo’s later pregnant still lifes “fruits of life or “ viva la vida ”
the canadian cooperation project helps to explain why, during the 1940s and 1950s, there was virtually no feature film production in canada outside of québec (see the cinema of québec). however, thanks to the economic boom in canada following the second world war, a number of small, independent producers began to establish themselves, making primarily industrial films and shorts. in 1941, nat taylor founded the trade magazine canadian film weekly, and in recognition of the nascent private film sector, the canadian film awards were established in 1949. (the canadian film awards would become the genie awards in 1980 and the canadian screen awards in 2012 .) the inaugural presentation was held in ottawa, and crawley films of ottawa won the first film of the year award for the short film, the loon' s necklace (1949) .
earth concludes between coordinates of icon and dream. in the film’s final image, vasyl’s lover, natalka, in soft - focus close - up awakens as if from a dream. the shot is matched with an earlier shot in the film. with the rest of the young villagers and in the safety of vasyl’s embrace, natalka had found a brief security under the harvest moon. like so many period hollywood endings, the idealization is ‘happily ever after’. earth’s final context is left in the foreground, enigmatically iconic, . this is a space of ‘ l’amour fou ’, between icon and dream, figured through the cinema’s transitioning representational practices .
orson welles, who knew a thing or two about silent movies, famously anointed buster keaton' s crowning achievement
the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest civil war film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made
.
the centre tableau in earth ’s portraiture is the scene of the tractor’s arrival. in this neo - byzantine collectivization mural, the sequences surrounding the tractor make up earth’s central panels. the film possesses little movement before the tractor arrives. characters are shot in close - up with little depth of field. landscapes and apples within the orchard have been organized as a series of iconostatic, still - life tableaux to be read iconically and with a painterly eye for composition rather than inter - frame movement that suggests relationships, are montaged .
earth’s closing sequence has few parallels in silent cinema in its noetic complexity. dovzhenko envisions a poetic pictorial synthesis against a modernist backdrop of the ukrainian cultural renaissance’s international aspirations. he fuses a deeply religious and spiritual
for another discussion of the different versions of earth see savytsky roman. “pomiry zemli o. dovzhenka” suchasnist lypen / serpen’ 1975 chastyna 7 - 8 (175 - 76). pp. 106 - 112 .
janet gaynor was also honored in the same year with an academy award for her exquisite acting in german director f. w. murnau' s first american film - the beautiful fox - produced sunrise: a song of two humans (1927), often considered the finest silent film ever made by a hollywood studio. murnau' s succeeding films were the four devils (1928) and our daily bread (1930), with his last film the sensual semi - travelogue documentary tabu: a story of the south seas (1931) shot with documentarist robert flaherty. (a week before tabu' s premiere in early march 1931, murnau died in a car accident. )
, earth’s ending is a complex montage - a birth but also a death. if up to now the film may be seen as setting ground for an eschatologic presentation, the collapsing of levels now occurs through montage. the outer landscape takes on a noumenous hieratic quality in a sequence that may be described as complex pathetic fallacy .
for a study of skovoroda’s redivivus during this period see myrtovych, cyrille. “reserches philosophiques: essor des études skovordiennes dans les années vingt en ukraine” in labriolle, f. red. la renaissance nationale et culturelle en ukraine de 1917 aux années 1930. paris: inalco, 1986. , pp. 311 - 316 .
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frejlih, s. ,
ein epos unserer epoche ,
in film und fernsehen (berlin), august 1974 .
the famous mgm lion roar in the studio' s opening logo was first recorded and viewed in a film in 1928 .
- - earth (1930), d. alexander dovzhenko, ussr one of the last of the silents, and though increasingly an absentee from ten best lists, a very great film indeed. the director' s trademarks - a field of sunflowers all waving goodbye, a lowering sky filling three - quarters of the frame - remained well nigh constant throughout his career, but he seldom recaptured the pantheistic phosphoresence of this hymn both to nature and to the gleaming new tractors and plows which aimed to transform it. such is the authenticity of its pictorialism, in fact, that one has to remind oneself that it was actually shot like other films .
made in response to stalin’s plans for collectivisation throughout the soviet union, earth is about peasants owning their own land and tilling it as they please, for themselves, and the problems they come across in the process. this caused the film to be controversial in its day, but one almost universally acknowledged as being of great beauty .
while various censored copies of earth exist in the west, the foundation of dovzhenko’s original conception still holds up - a testament more to the integrity of dovzhenko’s vision than preservation of the negative or ‘director’s archival version .
i think u v missed an important point, the arrival of the tractor, in this seen dovjenko predicts the doom to the earth. it is expressed in words, which are not translated correctly and in music
williams, b. ,
a mirror of the cinema: poetic discourse and autotelic aesthetics in dovzhenko' s earth ,
in journal of ukrainian studies, vol. 19, no. 1, 1994 .
the tomatometer score — based on the opinions of hundreds of film and television critics — is a trusted measurement of critical recommendation for millions of fans. it represents the percentage of professional critic reviews that are positive for a given film or television show .
national film board of canada watch full - length films, clips, and trailers - all free for home viewing. scroll down the page to see links to online animated shorts and films in other categories. from the national film board of canada .
the soviet press severely criticized the film for its “naturalism” and “physiologism”. after all, instead of glorifying collectivization, dovzhenko advocates its political significance. the director himself admitted that he was not interested in the story per se. as a result, earth best demonstrates dovzhenko’s interest to human existence, which explains why the film became successful all over the world. told by dovzhenko, a usual story of a class struggle becomes a universal philosophical parable about life and death .
shibuk, charles ,
the films of alexander dovzhenko ,
in new york film bulletin, no. 11–14, 1961 .
published 2012 | copyright © 2012 weta, washington, dc and the dust bowl film project, llc. all rights reserved .
it was formed from a merger of laemmle' s own imp - independent motion picture company (founded in 1909) with bison 101, the u. s. production facilities of french studio éclair, nestor film co. , and several other film companies .
the film combines two trends: political and religious. politically, it supports the current work on the construction of the state and, for benifit of collectivization, earnestly campaigns against the kulaks. i think it uses improper means to do that... . its title, earth, is more than just a name – it is a religion ...
. it would only be later, in the face of international consensus, that official party opinion of earth would make an about face. attempting to erase notions of an earlier division, soviet critique would distance itself from bedny .
dovzhenko’s eastern european dialogue with surrealism was not lost on the surrealists. after viewing la terre, the surrealist poet, writer and communist, aragon would write in “roman inacheve” of earth’s aesthetic, delineating affinity with the surrealist agenda .
zvenigora stars nikolai nademsky (earth), as the grandfather of timoshka (semyon svashenko), whom he alerts to secret treasure buried in the mountains and the boy spends the rest of his... see full synopsis »
one of the most significant events in canadian film history was the establishment of the national film board of canada (nfb). in 1938, the federal government commissioned scottish filmmaker john grierson — who had coined the term “documentary, ” and had been head of the empire marketing board and the general post office in britain — to study the state of film production in canada. he wrote a report that year that led to the creation of the nfb in may 1939, and was named the board’s first film commissioner in october 1939 .
deslaw continues “it’s possible that because of kremlin orders, copies of the film were ruined in the soviet union but beyond these borders there exists two copies of earth before the venice cuts. in south america there also exists another copy of zvenyhora”. deslaw, evhan. “o dovzhenko i stalin” ukrainian digest (no. 6) 1961. p. 78 - 81 .
hollywood: perhaps no other place on earth evokes the same air of show - business magic and glamour. the legend of hollywood began in the early 20th century and is an earmark of modern american society rich in history and innovation .
charlie chaplin in the 1931 silent film city lights, released after the first talkies. photograph: charles chaplin productions / sportsphoto ltd / allstar
janet gaynor, george o' brien in the film sunrise: a song of two humans (1927). photograph: ronald grant archive
western electric' s and rca' s were the principal systems on the market. under the terms of the 1930 paris agreement, 25 percent of the british market was reserved for tobis - klangfilm equipment, while 75 percent belonged to the american firms. but tobis encountered technical difficulties as a result of having allied itself with the small british phototone, and it could not exploit its share of the market. several british companies offered cheaper sound outfits, but these provided poor reproduction. british thomson - houston (a subsidiary of general electric) introduced reliable equipment in 1930, but it ran third behind the two american firms in the number of theaters wired. by 1933, all but the smallest british cinemas could reproduce sound .
dovzhenko and crew during earth' s filming, 1929, peasant garb. centre dovzhenko, immediate right cinematographer danylo demutsky immediate left, asst. director lazar bodyk, far right, vasyl, semen svashenko, far left, khoma petro masokha
at the same time, dovzhenko is satiric of soviet heroic realism (what became socialist realism). in earth, this satire is evident. oxen, horses, swaddling new - borns and watermelons are given soviet heroic style camera decorum .
this short synopsis does not effectively describe the film' s content and impact on the viewer. dovzhenko lyrically captures what the earth—the soil and the life - sustaining crops it produces—means to human beings. the earth must be lovingly nurtured so that corn and wheat may be reaped and mouths may be fed. (dovzhenko shot the film on the rich terrain of his beloved ukraine .) most significantly, the film is at once a celebration of life and an acknowledgement of the inevitability of life' s end. dovzhenko' s images, all in meticulously composed shots, are unforgettable: in the film' s prologue a dying man (the grandfather of vasilly, a character patterned after the filmmaker' s grandfather), serene as he approaches his end, happily pierces an apple with his teeth; vasilly ecstatically dances in the summer moonlight, kicking up dust and feeling every moment of his life before it is abruptly ended by a bullet; apple tree branches brush over the face of vasilly' s corpse in the funeral caravan. in sequence after sequence, dovzhenko brings together the two ultimate but contrasting realities: life and death. death is not a gloomy, depressing finality, but a necessary and logical occurrence. if babies are to be born and the world replenished with the hopes, desires and energy of youth, some must vacate the earth and allow them time and space. similarly, the earth must yield its crops so that it may again commence the cycle necessary to feed and nourish the hungry .
associates him with the “movement of the seed” present in the film. at earth’s beginning there are literally seas of wheat. a little later, a young girl’s head is metonymically associated with a sunflower filled with seeds. vasyl’s kulak antagonists are presented standing unmoving, patronizingly spitting or wasting seeds. later, the tractor illustrates marx’s process of material production through a flurry of movement visualizing the seed’s trajectory into bread. in a similar manner, throughout earth’s naturalistic imagery, dovzhenko inflects the predominantly rural ukrainian countryside’s images with a philosophic tradition. he foregrounds continuities and a line from skovoroda to hegel to marx. skovoroda paraphrasing corinthians ,
only one english canadian feature film was made in the 1940s — bush pilot (1946), an imitation of hollywood’s captains of the clouds (1942). a print of the film was restored by the national archives (now library and archives canada) and tmn television network .
a more detailed reception study of earth’s resonance and subsequent inadvertent role in aiding to later deny the ukrainian famine of 1932 - 33 through its various european and north american releases is beyond this work’s scope. it will be mentioned, though, that more than a few western intellectuals, knowledgeable about earth and the famine, had chosen to pass over these connections - neither noting the devastating effects of the material famine nor the contemporary contradictory picture presented by earth (see chronology, earth dates). [ 256 ] after the soviet union’s collapse in 1991, an opening of the archives and coming to terms with historical legacy began. scores of earlier heterodox emigré voices would be validated [ 257 ]. in his attempt at reconstruction of the ukrainian famine while the archives were closed, stanford historian, robert conquest had presciently pointed out that ‘kulak’ theoretically signified an amorphous stalinist economic class. in reality, the term signified a party construct that gave a carte blanche for genocide.
earth ( ukrainian : земля , translit . zemlya ) is a 1930 soviet silent film by ukrainian director alexander dovzhenko , concerning the process of collectivization and the hostility of kulak landowners . it is part 3 of dovzhenko 's " ukraine trilogy " ( along with zvenigora and arsenal ) . earth is regarded as dovzhenko 's masterpiece . 
earth (ukrainian: земля, translit. zemlya) is a 1930 soviet silent film by ukrainian director alexander dovzhenko, concerning the process of collectivization and the hostility of kulak landowners. it is part 3 of dovzhenko's " ukraine trilogy " (along with zvenigora and arsenal). earth is regarded as dovzhenko's masterpiece.
earth (ukrainian: земля, translit. zemlya) is a 1930 soviet silent film by ukrainian director alexander dovzhenko, concerning the process of collectivization and the hostility of kulak landowners. it is part 3 of dovzhenko's " ukraine trilogy " (along with zvenigora and arsenal). earth is regarded as dovzhenko's masterpiece.