EARTH

Alexander Dovzhenko's "Earth" is as great as "Battleship Potemkin" or anything else in the Eisenstein canon and yet not many people have seen it, However, I don't doubt that anyone who has seen it will easily forget it for this is one of cinema's great masterpieces. The theme is solidarity or more appropriately humanity as this is one of cinema's great humanist films. It is also, of course, propaganda, a paean of praise to the doctrine of communism that some may find objectionable. However, others with broader minds will see in that doctrine of communism a need and a willingness for the oppressed to rise up and to take a stand against the oppressor and I doubt if anyone can argue with that philosophy. Of course, that in itself doesn't make the film a masterpiece but Dovzhenko's film, made in 1930 and silent, employs filmic techniques like few others before or since. Frame after frame dazzles the eye, the mise-en-scene is sublime and the editing, (remember this was 1930), breathtaking. If I see anything as good this year I will be very surprised.