The General Line

Eisenstein and Aleksandrov, 1929, begun in 1926 as The General Line, released as The Old and the New after the party line on the countryside moved. Marfa Lapkina, a real peasant, wants a dairy cooperative; kulaks and a broken tractor stand in the way; the cream separator sequence treats a machine like a revelation. Tisse photographed the milk as if it were a stunt. Gosfilmofond holds the troubled versions. Collectivization as a comedy of machinery, finished under a different order than it started.