This relatively unseen silent classic propaganda documentary from the former Soviet Union in its first decade is a self-congratulatory paean to the "wonders" of socialism and Russian life.
Once you understand that, it is easy to revel in the succession of spitfire montage showing a new nation in the frenzy of work and play. Much of the magnificently edited imagery deals with factory production and machines and "the machines that make machines." From European Russia to the wilds of Siberia, it all finds a part here, and the call is to the presumably deprived workers of other nations of the world who need to take this Utopian dream as a model for their own futures. Papa Stalin is there too in a few images to provide his paternal incentive.
The film is a perfect example of how movies can transcend their subjects, even if they are agit-prop, to win us over on a gut level, if not on an intellectual one. Films like this one of Dziga Vertov, are the leftist-Marxixt equivalent of the rightist-Nazi works of German propagandists, such as Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." All are worth seeing with an open mind and a historical perspective.
Once you understand that, it is easy to revel in the succession of spitfire montage showing a new nation in the frenzy of work and play. Much of the magnificently edited imagery deals with factory production and machines and "the machines that make machines." From European Russia to the wilds of Siberia, it all finds a part here, and the call is to the presumably deprived workers of other nations of the world who need to take this Utopian dream as a model for their own futures. Papa Stalin is there too in a few images to provide his paternal incentive.
The film is a perfect example of how movies can transcend their subjects, even if they are agit-prop, to win us over on a gut level, if not on an intellectual one. Films like this one of Dziga Vertov, are the leftist-Marxixt equivalent of the rightist-Nazi works of German propagandists, such as Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will." All are worth seeing with an open mind and a historical perspective.