One of the leading lights of Soviet Cinema was Ukranian director Alexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956) maker of 1930's silent masterwork Zemlya (Earth), whose films evoked a pastoral folkloristic idyll.
Dovzhenko started his career as a scriptwriter before co-directing 1926's Vasya the Reformer, he worked with Danylo Demutsky (1893-1954) who was later to be his best cameraman. The following year came Sumpka Dipkurera (The Diplomatic Pouch,1927), a spy thriller assigned to Dovzhenko's direction presumably on the strength of his experience as a fledgling diplomat abroad. But it would be Zvenigora (1928) that really inspired his colleagues to sit up and take notice. Zvenigora is founded on an elaborate pattern of legend, leaping from Viking times to a contemporaneous Paris theater. At its core is a bandit and adventurer named Pavlin who seeks the long-buried treasure of Zvenigora after respondng to the tales of his grandfather. Arsenal (1929) was written by Dovzhenko in all but a fortnight and according to the director was shot and edited over a course of six months.
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| A Grave dancer about to see how the other half lives n 1930's Earth |
Like most of Dovzhenko's canon, there is an intensive focus on the subject of death - be it death in the trenches, barricades of the munition factories of Kiev.
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| Sometimes you're just better off leaving them inside the bottle |
Dovzhenko's next film, Earth (1930) remains to be his most celebrated achievement. Youth and age join forces against the kulaks (affluent peasants), the church and reactionary elements in society as crystallized in a Ukranian village where young idealist 'Vasili' brings the first tractor to the local farmers and tears down the fences that divided their properties. The local kulaks resist the new move, fearing the unity among the peasants and one them murders Vasilia as he dances in reckless abandon through the village square.