Staroye i novoye (1929)

 Alternative Russian title: Generalnaya liniya

English titles: Old and New; The General Line

In early 20th-century Russia, a poor farmer woman endeavors to form a cooperative. She must fight the State's unresponsiveness, the lack of cohesion and discipline of other poor farmers, the opposition of rich farmers, and the inclemency of the weather.

The hardships of rural life have been the subject of great movies, but this is not one of them. It has some striking imagery, but its narrative virtues are scant. Being a propaganda piece for the Soviet Union, one wouldn't expect a balanced approach from it, but even for a propaganda piece this is abusively didactic. The funny thing is: despite all that, I just do not think it is effective as propaganda. The poor are depicted in such a way that one simply cannot believe that they could be successful at farming. Unfortunately, reality would prove that the hard way, and the Soviet collectivization process resulted in massacres and starvation.

There is more than one version of this film. I have watched the version entitled Old and New; there is also a version entitled The General Line; with the help of a book, I located the parts which were supposed to differ and watched them; the differences were small, except for the ending which is very different in the two versions.

Rating: 34