The General Line

• Marfa Lapkina: farmer's wife Marfa
• Vasily Busenkow: secretary of dairy cooperative
• Konstantin Vasilyev: tractor driver
• M. Iwanin: Marfa's son
• G. Matvey: Priest
• Tschuchmarew: Meat seller
• Neshnikow: Teacher Miroschkin

The General Line ( Original title: Генеральная линия, Generalnaïa Linia ), alternatively The Old and the New ( Original title: Старое и Новое, Staroye i Novoye ), originally The battle for earth, is a Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, who from 1926 to was produced in 1928.

Action

The film, commissioned by the Soviet state, advertises in the form of propaganda for the new, socialist order in the distribution of land and the forced collectivization.

In the center of the action is the young farmer's wife Marfa, the de facto plays himself. When her father dies, her remains in the distribution of heritage only a cow and a tiny piece of land to cultivate the hardly worthwhile. In order to achieve at least a minimal income, ask a rich kulaks for some help. You only need a horse to order their small farm. But the hard-hearted man she does not even listen to. Out of sheer desperation, Marfa about whether there can be no other way to a promising agriculture.

So one day wakes up in Marfa, the revolutionary. It is founded with four other farmers who are in a similar precarious situation, its own collective farm. There are always setbacks, but gradually the benefits of this production community for all participants is emerging. The cooperative is the prime example of effective agriculture, and more and more farmers in the area close to it. Soon, you can even afford a tractor and farm fields to the benefit of all optimal. In contrast, so many other appears in the environment, such as the deeply faithful and the priests, as a gradually verglimmendes, archaic relic of bygone times.

Production Notes

The shooting of the film began in 1926 and dragged on for almost three years. 1927 interrupted Eisenstein filming to his revolutionary film in October - Ten Days That Shook the World to rotate. The premiere was on November 7, 1929, in Germany, the film was launched on February 10, 1930. While the film is at its German first presentation at The Battlefield Earth (the title in the illustrated film courier, No. 1351 above) ran, he is after 1945 in Germany almost exclusively under the literal translation of one of the original title, The General Line, known. Under this title he was re- listed and 1962 in Germany.

After his triumph with Battleship Potemkin Eisenstein was in the young Soviet state quasi free in his decisions. "The government gave him to turn all loans every possibility, every freedom to, The General Line ' ( The Old and the New ). He worked for four years on it, destroyed the nearly finished work, it began again, spent 100,000 meters of raw stock to keep only 2500 meters of it. "

Eisenstein explained the goals he pursued with The General Line, in an interview. In the German publication The film was to read: "The film speaks of the machine, of animals and milk; but as he speaks of them, he is primarily aimed at the responsible richest object of collectivization, the people. "

Grigori Alexandrov, who worked on the script of the film, was also Eisenstein's assistant director. Another assistant was Maxim Schtrauch, which is also seen in a brief scene.

Reviews

In spite of dramatic and creative merits The general line is considered to be a somewhat -forgotten side Eisenstein's work. Nevertheless, especially the arty film criticism has for decades worked intensively with the film. Here are some examples:

" Eisenstein's new film has many advantages. He has a fable, people, and a clear line of development. [ ... ] The main role of the farmer's wife Marfa Lapkina. Where they agreed with the principles of the "type", the audience took their representation contrary without reservation. But when she tried to play, created artistic dissonance. The film was a beautiful work in its visual design. No one before Eisenstein and Tisse has portrayed on so poetic and lyrical, the Russian village. The procession was a small masterpiece in the composition of the different settings and in their assembly. Quite outstanding are charged with satirical sharpness scenes, as Marfa deals with the bureaucrats in office. "

" For the first time Eisenstein has provided an individual here in the center of a film. [ ... ] But the action aims yet again on the glorification of collective efforts and achievements. So Eisenstein exposed right at the beginning the situation of individual farmers by letting pan the camera with an infinitely vast sky over the miserably small plots. He makes conservatism and religion in a big rain procession contemptuously, in which participants hope in vain for a miracle; this miracle happens for next door at Marfa Lapkina where the milk separator of the cooperative provides the first cream. According to this film are the breeding bull Foma and later the tractor to mythic excessive and sometimes quite naive allegories for the success and the new time. "

"The film took place in the USSR a negative recording. Eisenstein's representation of the peasantry have a satirical tone, which was perceived as offensive, and because of the brilliant, witty, he was the assembly, formalism accused. It will also be ambivalent relationship with religion evident in the excessive representation of a rainmaker ceremony, which is performed by the priests, and in the semi-mystical admiration of the work of the new milk Ripper. On the other hand Staroje i Novoje Eisenstein's only film on a warm, identifiable person: Marfa Lapkinas representation exceeds the type principle, after it has been picked, and gives the political message attractive human qualities ".

" As to the form, so the led, installation of collisions' metaphors, which are difficult to understand or naive. [ ... ] Despite these imperfections is the general line of one of the greatest achievements of the expiring silent film art. [ ... ] He followed with other means of Parole Lumières and Vertov: taken from The Life ' and defined its objectives as follows:, reproduce Life in its truth, in its nudity and work out its social implications, its philosophical meaning. ' The general line means an advancement over the documentary form of the Potemkin. At the championship of montage and image to the severity of the collisions ' is still the guiding principle, the variation of the shapes, the counterpoint of images rich metaphor. And the development of the individual hero begins. "

" In symbolic scenes of strong expressiveness of the story of a Russian peasant commune is told that organizes itself after some initial difficulties [ ... ] to a cooperative and fate takes into their own hands. The hymn-like praise of technical progress may now seem a bit naive; nevertheless an outstanding document of political film- like aesthetic development "

Halliwell's Film Guide characterized the film from the Anglo-American point of view:

"A slight piece of propaganda, put together with all of Eisenstein 's magnificent cinematic resources: the cream separator demonstration is one of the most famous montage sequences in cinema history."

" A light piece of propaganda, together with all the glorious cinematographic means, on the Eisenstein has: the demonstration of the cream separator is one of the most famous montage sequences in the history of film. "