EARTH (1930, SOVIET UNION), CHESS FEVER (1925, SOVIET UNION)

Earth

"Alexander Dovzhenko's ode to the beginning of collectivization in the Ukraine is a riot of delirious imagery of swaying wheat fields, ripening fruits, and stampeding horses. The arrival of a tractor is greeted with joy by the peasants who begin to imagine new lives for themselves, but surviving landowners try to assassinate the inspiring young head of the party's village committee. His death, though, only makes the viallagers stronger in their resolve; in a mind boggling finale, Dovzhenko brings together themes of birth, harvest, progress and solidarity as the dead man is reunited with the land he loved so well."-Richard Pena, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Workers of the world...you have nothing to lose but your tractors...but if you lose your tractors, you lose your means of production...and if you lose your means of production, you lose your livelihood and if you lose your means of livelihood...you may lose your life. This is collectivism at it's most inspirational, comrades. I first saw this movie thirty years ago and it is a powerful silent piece regardless of your political point of view.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

Chess Fever

After all the heavy films of the Soviet silent era, I decided to end the with a comedy called Chess Fever. This is a funny short film about a man whose addiction to chess is causing all sorts of problems between him and his fiance. Many of the gags are well done and it speaks comically to the Russian obsession during this period (and still today) with the game. It even features a supporting role for the then current World Chess Champion Jose Raul Capablanca!-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

Until next time, comrades!

IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART I AND II (1944, SOVIET UNION)

Ivan surveys his subjects in Ivan the Terrible, Part I

...or is this from Part II?

"Every frame in it looks great-it's a brilliant collection of stills-but as a movie, it's static, grandiose, and frequently ludicrous, with elaborate angled, overcomposed photography and overwrought, eyeball rolling performers slipping in and out of the walls, dragging their shadows behind them."-Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies

"It is Eisenstein's most ornate film, with the actors reduced to gesturing gargoyles, their bodies subordinated to his all -important visual shapes, themselves an unhealthy mixture of iconography and melodrama."-David Thompson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film

"Eisenstein's sound films displays a self-consciousness in the handling of montage that was deadening to the vitality and the exuberance of the method he applied so instinctively in his youth."-Gerald Mast, A Short History of Movies

"Ivan the Terrible, Part I is a film of awesome and monumental impressiveness, in which the senses are saturated in medieval majesty."-Bosley Crowther, New York Times, March 10, 1947

"Ivan the Terrible, Part II is murkily monolithic and monotonous series of scenes with little or no dramatic continuity and only fitful dynamic quality."-Bosley Crowther, New York Times, November 25, 1959

"The Ivan the Terrible films are cold, starkly beautiful pictures, difficult to watch, gloomy and compelling at the same time. Perhaps they offer a closet critique of Stalinist tyranny and the cult of personality."-R. Barton Palmer, 501 Movie Directors

Let it also be noted, comrades, that Ivan the Terrible also made Michael and Harry Medved's book the 50 Worst Films of All-Time. Critical reception for this film over the years has been mixed, to say the least.

The grandeur and the majesty are certainly there, but Eisentstein's actors seem to be more suited to performing in one of his silents than in a film with actual dialogue. I think if he had made it as a silent...it would be viewed today as more of a classic...Obviously, some still view it as a classic, anyway! From the above reviews, I still can't get over how much Bosley Crowther loved Part I and hated Part II. I didn't see that much artistic distinction between the two films, but so it goes.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A  Film Odyssey

OCTOBER (1927, SOVIET UNION)

                                                                             

   Lenin leads the charge in October

"It is clever, but a bore. It is kaleidoscopic, so much so that when months seem to have passed since one saw a man with a flag of truce, you find he is still sitting there in the same position awaiting an answer...There is crammed into this film enough for a half dozen productions, but most of the episodes are unfinished...Some of the action is a little muddled, but where Eisenstein does masterful work is in those scenes with hundreds and hundreds of people. It really seems as if they were part of the revolution, as if the scenes belonged in a newsreel."-Mordaunt Hall, New York Times, November 3, 1928.

I largely agree with many of the points of the above review comrades. I didn't like this film as much as Potemkin or Strike, as I began to shake me head after awhile trying to keep up with the mass of characters in this epic production. But Eisenstein's big scenes are still something to behold and were understandably influential to the ever growing cinematic language.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey

STRIKE (1924, SOVIET UNION)

Scene from Sergei Eisenstein's Strike

"His (Director Sergei Eisenstein) first film, Strike (1924), revealed the bold, broad strokes of a new film master. From the film's opening montage sequence-of whirring machines, spinning gears, factory whistles, of traveling shots along the length of the factory complex, of dynamic, dizzying movement-the film proclaimed that a brilliant cinematic imagination was at work."-Gerald Mass, A Short History of the Movies, p. 57.

Eisenstein's most famous film is probably always going to remain Potemkin, but the earlier Strike is a memorable film in it's own right. The montage and editing that he would use so famously in Potemkin is in evidence here as well. And the story about the fat cats doing everything they can to squash the will of their workers certainly has more than a ring of truth to it.-Comrade Cox, 1001: A Film Odyssey