Velho e Novo

...from directors Sergei Eisenstein and Grogoriy Aleksandrov. When peasant farm woman Marfa (Marfa Lapkina) is driven to the edge of ruin by the old way of farming, she decides to join other fed up agriculturalists and form a collective farm, working together for a better common future. But the enemies of progress are always at their heels: the fat capitalists, the false-hope Church, and a lazy bureaucracy.

We all know how the Soviet collectivist farming utopia really turned out, and when the lecturing sections of the film are at the forefront it's a tedious bore. But when the directors let their artistic instincts come into play, there's a lot to enjoy here. The visual compositions are often interesting and aesthetically pleasing, and I liked a scene where one farmer dreams of the skies raining milk and cream, and another scene with a new tractor hauling a train of wagons like some kind of centipede over the hills.

The filmmakers also gathered a lot of interesting faces, and use a lot of close-ups. Beauty is not the order of the day, and it almost seems like some of Fellini's later period grotesqueries. I also don't recall a movie featuring so many people with roaches crawling on them. This won't be for many viewers, but for those who appreciate the value of technique and composition, this is recommended.