Back to black… Out of the Blue (1980), BFI Blu-ray out now

Out of the blue and into the black

They give you this, but you pay for that

And once you're gone you can never come back

When you're out of the blue and into the black

 

Dennis Hopper took the title for this film from his friend Neil Young’s song My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue) which ruminated on the fleeting nature of “relevance” and fame in the wake of The King’s death and the emergence of Johnny Rotten and seemingly nihilistic punk rock. It’s also a call to be, like Young, true to yourself at whatever the cost… and, clearly, we can see why he and Mr Hopper got on so well.

Hopper hadn’t directed a film since The Last Movie (1971) and was only supposed to be an actor in what was intended as a family-friendly drama until it was clear that the original concept and team were not going to work out. Hopper had been very impressed with the presence and style of his young co-star, Linda Manz (then a rather diminutive 19 years old) and had an idea to turn things around with her at the centre.

Hopper took over directing a week into production, rewriting the script with producer, Leonard Yakir and Brenda Nielson before starting principal photography from scratch. What emerged is about as far from the original concept you could imagine and a story which encompasses some of the most unsettling moments in a stunningly off hand way… a narrative that drifts like life before smashing the watcher full in the face. Now newly restored in 4K, with a lorry load of highly impressive extras, his film comes to Blu-ray for the first time in the UK thanks to the BFI who clearly know what they have here.

Linda Manz and Dennis Hopper

We get some quotes from Hopper which help explain why he didn’t make more films, he claimed to be the world’s worst listener and that he wouldn’t collaborate with anyone else, all save his actors (imagine being a fly on the wall for his direction of Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider?!). Manz is the perfect match for his style in a film he only gained control of when the production company’s back was against the wall, and the two deliver an astonishing film.

 

The film starts with a moment of sheer terror that feels like something torn from a Paul Auster novel, the impossibly horrific crash of a juggernaut into a stalled school bus. The driver is Don Barnes (Hopper) who is drinking and distracted by his young daughter Cindy aka Cebe and doesn’t see the danger until it is all too late. It is only later that Hopper shows us the moments of the crash but we’re left to imagine the full extent as Cindy/Cebe wakes up years later and we hope it’s just a nightmare until the camera moves out and across the wreck of her father’s old cab, windscreen smashed were his head hit it and where she gained two noticeable scars.

Imagine the guilt and the consequence? Well, Dennis hasn’t finished with us yet. Not by a long way…

It’s five years later and whilst Cebe has grown up in a most peculiar way, tomboyish, she fixates on Elvis Presley and punk, parroting Sex Pistols lines and Punk aesthetic such as “kill all hippies”, as she chats to truckers on the CB radio in her dad’s old cab who have even less idea what she means than they do.

Linda Manz

Cebe’s lost and attracted to the nihilism of Punk and the manly style of The King, she’s lonely too, on the outside at school and willing to be outrageous to impress the few friends she has. Her mother Kathy (Sharon Farrell) works in a diner and is having a relationship with the straight and tolerant manager Paul (Eric Allen) who is unaware of her heroin habit and fondness for fooling around with Charlie (Don Gordon) one of Don’s old pals.

Talking of which, Charlie’s on hand to lead the leering as Cebe and her fellow 15-year-olds go bowling… it’s so casually done and all the more shocking for it especially as he then goes and paws Kathy right in front of Paul. Later Cebe sees her mother shooting up heroin with Charlie at their house which prompts her to escape to Vancouver for a night of adventures which again almost sees her sexually assaulted by a Cabby (Carl Nelson) and his prostitute girlfriend in a mixed-sex brothel.

Cebe does have one glorious moment as she goes to see Vancouver punk band Pointed Sticks who welcome her backstage and even get her to join them on drums for one song. It’s her one moment of pure joy as she’s amongst non-judgemental people who love music and ask nothing of her… they may look like plastic punks to those of us of a certain age in the UK but they’re welcoming!

A cold welcome

She returns home and sees a child psychiatrist, Doctor Brean played by Raymond Burr who was to have been a larger part of the original story and here feels like a brief punctuating break of normality.

This family is a hard one to save especially as Don returns from prison to a mixed welcome from the community with the fathers of the children he killed in the crash out for revenge. He tries to reintegrate with society by driving a bulldozer on a waste site and to pick up where he left off with his wife and daughter. There’s the rub and more shocks are in store as the broken family is not so easily fixed.

Manz is indeed extraordinary and she’s a one-off with an out of kilter freshness cut from the same cloth as Hopper himself… her career was relatively short but she left her mark with this film and Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven for which she beat out one Jodie Foster!

He never phones it in... always in the moment.

The BFI have gone longer than usual on the extra special features on this release which will delight Hopper fans:

 

·         Audio commentary with Dennis Hopper, producer Paul Lewis and distributor John Alan Simon (2000)

·         New commentaries by Kate Rennebohm and Kat Ellinger

·         Dennis Hopper interviewed by Tony Watts (1984, 97 mins)

·         Screen Guardian Talk: Dennis Hopper (1990, 91 mins, audio only): the filmmaker talks to Derek Malcolm

·         Subverting Normality: Linda Manz Comes from Out of the Blue (2021, 18 mins): a new video essay by Amanda Reyes and Chris O’Neill

·         Remembering Out of the Blue (2021, 174 mins): nine new interviews with cast & crew

·         Me & Dennis (2021, 95 mins): four new interviews with Hopper’s friends and colleagues featuring Ethan Hawke, Richard Linklater, Julian Schnabel and Philippe Mora

·         Alex Cox Recalls Out of the Blue (2021, 13 mins)

·         Montclair Film Festival Q&A (2020, 30 mins): John Alan Simon and Elizabeth Karr discuss the history and restoration of the film

·         Jack Nicholson radio spot (1982, 1 min)

·         Trailers

 

There’s also a selection of complementary archive shorts – Morecambe and Wise – Be Wise Don’t Drink and Drive (1963, 1 min), Drink Drive Office Party Cartoon (1964, 1 min), A Girl’s Own Story (Jane Campion, 1983, 27 mins); Girl (Carol Morley, 1993, 7 mins)

 

There’s also a gorgeous Illustrated booklet for the first pressing only with essays by Sheila O’Malley and Vic Pratt; an extract from Dennis Hopper: how far to the Last Movie?, originally published in the Monthly Film Bulletin, October 1982; two reviews from 1981 and notes on the special features.

 

Out of the Blue is out now so make all haste to click on this link to the BFI shop and buy it! It’s a stunner!!

Typical girls… Rebel Dykes (2021), BFI, In cinemas now

Rebel Dykes were outlaws, this was way before there were queer activists or Riot Grrrls, we invented it!

 

They say if you remember the Eighties then you weren’t really there, and yet, whilst I obviously wasn’t a part of this particular scene, I well remember Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988, the Thatcher Government’s declaration of war on “the promotion” of homosexuality. We wouldn’t have the freedom to push for further freedoms now if this battle had been lost and this film is a welcome reminder of not only where we’ve been but also the simple joys of being able to be yourself; surely the thing that binds us all together?

 

Directed by Harri Shanahan and Siân A. Williams, produced by Riot Productions’ and original Rebel Dyke, Siobhan Fahey, Rebel Dykes tells the tale of post-punk feminism through a group of lesbian and non-binary friends who initially coalesced around the protests at Greenham Common against the nuclear weapon carrying cruise missiles stationed at the US air force base. There were different factions at the Woman’s Peace Camp with each of the airbase’s entrances having a different mix from the “separatist” feminists at the Green Gate, to musicians at Orange and the younger set at Blue, the nearest to a pub. A rainbow has many colours after all.

 

The woman all report on life in the seventies being more isolated and, in the provinces and smaller towns, their being nowhere to go. Even in London, the lesbian scene was not as advanced as that for gay men who had already plenty of places to meet up. The Greenham graduates began to change all that when they migrated to the capital to live in squats in Brixton and elsewhere.

 

It’s sobering to hear them relate the risks of being an out lesbian at the time with “queer bashing” an ever-present danger and one saying how it was easier to live a nocturnal life so as to avoid the “straights”. The film uses contemporary video footage mixed with animation which conveys their indefatigability even as some of the memories are clearly painful.

 

One of the problems was a lack of places to go and they play their part in setting up new club nights such as the Sistermatic at Brixton's Women's Centre, run by promoter Yvonne Taylor, then with DJs like The Sleaze Sisters playing in pubs like The Bell in Kings Cross. Then there are post-punk groups such as Amy and the Angels, The Petticoats, The Poison Girls, Sluts from Outer Space, Sister George and Mouth Almighty. The latter featured the very recognisable Debbie Smith who later played bass for shoegaze pioneers Curve, Britpop darlings Echobelly and many more. Here she’s affable and proud of her contribution pointing out the footholds the activism of the 80s gained.

 

All of these groups are featured on the soundtrack and it would be good to see a compilation!

 

There’s a sense of humour binding most of the talking heads and their recollections, stand up and musician Fisch, recalls robbing beer from the squaddies’ bar at Greenham as well as being a member of the Dykes on Bikes motorcycle gang, The Black Widows. But there’s no doubt they had to endure a lot of pushback not just from straight society but also other feminists.

 

A lot of the controversy came with the establishment of London's first lesbian fetish club, Chain Reactions in Vauxhall.  The women have fond memories of this place with its sexual freedom, “so bad it was good” cabaret and the mud, oil and spaghetti hoops wrestling bouts. Founded by Seija who ran a similar club, Extasy, in Finland, she was aiming to mix sex with art and in any order and the club became the basis for one big “happy shaggy family” as one called Jane remembers with a glint in her eye.

 

The club attracted the disapproval of feminist groups who thought the sadomasochism was too influenced by male and female role playing with fascistic elements to boot and the “Lesbian sex police” were also on hand to object about a photographic record of the club in Della Grace’s Love Bites and other works. Factionalism is probably a healthy sign of a broad church and what the Dykes did was disruptive as much as it was allowing them self-expression.

The Black Widows, Gay Bykers on Activism

Around the same period was the Poll Tax so we were pretty much doing a riot a week…

 

What unified the cause and the broader LBGQT+ community was the Tory Government and Section 28. Scrap the Section was a rallying cry all could get behind and their activism was epitomised by a group of women abseiling down onto the floor of the House of Lords and, famously, disrupting the BBC Six O’clock News… for which Aunty sadly did not release any footage for the film. No matter Fahey arranged a re-enactment of Nicholas Witchell’s finest hour… at least Sue Lawley kept her cool.

 

All of this helped found a movement that has continued to this day with the Rebel Dykes playing their part in an activism that demanded extrovert solutions to repressive problems. The documentary’s closing segment gives a satisfying round up of where they all are now and to a woman, they are a proud of their past and their ongoing contribution to freedom of expression.

 

Rebel Dykes is now on release across the UK and Ireland cinemas as well as digitally.

 

You can see it at BFI Southbank, HOME Manchester, Tyneside Cinema Newcastle, QFT Belfast, Glasgow Film Theatre, Duke of Yorks Picturehouse Brighton, Ritzy Brixton, Cambridge Picturehouse, Picturehouse Central, Finsbury Park Picturehouse, Hackney Picturehouse, FACT Liverpool, West Norwood Picturehouse, Broadway Nottingham, ArtHouse Crouch End, Chapter Cardiff & Watershed Bristol – with more bookings to come.

 

Full details are on the BFI website whilst there’s also a more at the Bohemia Euphoria site where you can stream the film, and the Rebel Dykes History Project.

Street theatre... The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), BFI London After Dark Season

Even now with chunks of real estate sacrificed to the “progress” of Crossrail and corporate encroachment, Soho is still the place to be in London’s West End. My first decade in London was dominated by evenings in the French House, Coach & Horses and Soho Brasserie leading off to subterranean clubs, rare grooves and, yes, even the Groucho, before a pick me up at the Bar Italia and the night bus home. It has always been an area defined by an adventurous edge amidst the drab erotica – a place where the capital is not quite in control, commercially or morally.

Back before my time, in the early Sixties, Soho was in transition with its multi-cultural shopping streets gradually being marked with clip joints and increasingly brazen strip clubs. It’s a demimonde sensationally captured in Beat Girl and Espresso Bongo yet whilst Sammy Lee is part of this loose sub-genre of Soho films it's also far more aligned with the social realist films of the period and British noir. Which is exactly why Edgar Wright has included it in this season of London films that influenced his Last Night in Soho.

Even more than those earlier films, The Small World of Sammy Lee, uses real Soho locations – including a glimpse of the famed 2i’s Club in which so many folk and rock stars began – along with real strippers, albeit in the fictional Peep Show club built on a Pinewood backlot. It also has easily the most gripping and believable narrative as the titular Sammy (a truly fantastic performance from Anthony Newley) strives to pay his dues in order to avoid a heavy beating and disfigurement.

I’ve only ever seen this film on the small screen and watching it again I could identify nearly every street as Sammy’s search for cash takes him up Berwick Street, through Old Compton Street, down Gerrard Street and by cab over to Whitechapel and even Victoria Coach Station in its pomp… a place of low-budget, comings and goings. It’s a breathless travelogue north and south of Shaftsbury Avenue as well as a tribute to the communities of retailers and, yes, even adult entertainers, just about getting by.

Towards the end, Sammy’s ready to stop his perfunctory stand-up and turns on his audience in a way they don’t understand… there’s no “love” in the Peep Show Club and there’s certainly no actual sex, just a fantasy presented to an audience of sad men by a group of women who “hate their guts”. But it’s not just the women who are stuck… everyone is looking for something they don’t have, the girls, even the club’s owner, Sammy and his sweetheart, Patsy. What will it take to break away?

Sammy 'Lee' Leeman is a compere at the Peep Show Club (located in a basement in Gerrard Street according to the essential Reel Streets) and chief amongst his many weaknesses is his predilection for gambling. The film opens following a spectacularly unsuccessful all-night session that leaves him £300 in debt to one of the gangsters running the area, the unseen but ever-present, “Connor”.

Not so sharp with the cards...

Making his way to the club, he finds that Patsy played by Julia Foster simply one of my favourite actors and if you want to see her in excelsis, seek out Mr Axelford’s Angel – I have a spare copy should anyone want it! The two had enjoyed a brief romance when Sammy was playing the Northern circuit and the 18-year-old has left home and made her way down South to find him. Patsy is young an innocent but tough enough to subject herself to topless inspection by the club’s maniacally hard-chewing manager Gerry Sullivan (Robert Stephens), whose eyes pop in appreciation. Stephens is always great value and one of my regrets is not seeing his Lear although I did once spend an afternoon with him being beery in a pub just off Primrose Hill.

 

Even on the Pinewood soundstage, the Peep Show is drab and depressing yet Sammy has an energy that belies his circumstances but you get the feeling that he’s running on empty. He’s perpetual motion but hardly unstoppable as the arrival of two of Mr Connors’ heavies in his dressing room is about to prove. They’re quite the couple, old hand Fred (Kenneth J. Warren), who has his own inscrutable sense of decency and the excitable young apprentice, Johnny (Clive Colin-Bowler). Not quite John Hurt and Tim Roth in The Hit but there’s something about Sammy that touches Fred and he decides to give Sammy a chance… five hours to get all the money, in cash and avoid the consequences. So begins the chase of Sammy’s life.

(Should be) Dame Julia Foster

His first thought is to try the easy route and he cabs it over to Whitechapel and his brother Lou (Warren Mitchell) who runs a delicatessen with long-suffering wife Milly (Miriam Karlin). Pleasantries quickly aside Lou might just lend Sammy the money until Milly intervenes… Perhaps it would be good for Sammy to work this one out for himself she suggests, the guilt of a previous fling hanging over the two in Lou’s oblivious presence.

Maybe it is Sammy’s time to stand up and start counting… with the aid of his slightly befuddled sidekick Harry (Wilfrid Brambell) and in between shifts introducing the dancers at the Peep, he racks up the invention to try and raise the cash. He flogs some dodgy watches, gets glasses for a new club – run by an exasperated Roy Kinnear and a fey Derek Nimmo (harder than he looks, he went to school with my Dad in Liverpool) -  and pays off one creditor against another.

Running heroically through the Soho streets, Sammy is in full flow, as if it’s more than his life that depends on it… He gets a tip from a shady pal, and goes off to retail some grass, offending his hip black mate rehearsing his jazz in a basement before finding a supplier: some films wouldn’t take the time to pop popular perceptions in this way but, like Sammy himself, this narrative cares to cover a lot of ground.

Meanwhile Patsy has been persuaded to do a turn by sleazy Gerry and Sammy ends up decking him and getting the sack. Julia Foster insisted on doing the routine herself – having been played by Hughes whose stand in for her was rather heavier, persuading her that she had no alternative but to put her best foot forward. It is an uncomfortable watch – the actress was just 20 and in her first major role even if it adds to our recognition of Sammy’s own disgust: Patsy’s not the kind of girl he wants dragged down in his world and she’s an important part of this day when his small world not only gets turned upside down but he develops a sense of moral responsibility.          

No spoilers…

Time clicks on and Sammy’s almost within reach of his total; today is the time for stick or twist, run or stay and the fear of Frank’s fists grows with every passing minute…What’ll it be Sammy Lee?

Ken Hughes directs his own script with focus, maintaining the flow even with so moany stop off points along Sammy’s five-hour dash. He also wasn’t averse to using a few tricks or two to bring out the best in his cast with Foster saying recently that he’d told her later that he’d deliberately set out to make her feel vulnerable throughout the shoot. Cameraman, Wolfgang Suschitzky came from a documentary background and he captures London in such a forensic way this film is surely one of the best records of the era. There’s also a fab score composed by Kenny Graham and the soundtrack is available, of course, from Trunk Records.

Johnny and Fred pay Sammy a visit

Sammy Lee is on Blu-ray with extras including an interview with Julia Foster, Mike Hodges – influenced by the film on Get Carter – and a location guide to help you spot those landmarks, streets and atmospheres that persist even as they slowly fade away…

You can buy it from the BFI shop online.

There was also a fab short, Look at Life: In Gear (1967) which took us down Kings Road and Carnaby Street in search of Swinging London. Michael Ingrams’ sardonic commentary tells us that we’ll be missing the point if we take it too seriously but we do get to see inside Granny Takes a Trip, Hung on You, The Antique Supermarket, I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet – for your genuine ex-military braided jackets - Biba… clubs like Tiles, The Bag ‘o Nails and other venues were Syd’s Floyd, Jimi and The Soft Machine could be found! Ingrams takes his tongue out of his cheek long enough to point out that these shops were breaking the mould and inventing their own fashions, in that sense independent Britain maybe still swings here and there…

Rupert Court with the Blue Posts in the background, that and the one in Berwick Street are still open.

A symphony for wheat… Earth (1930), Klassiki Online with Stephen Horne

“… the expropriation of the kulaks is an integral part of the formation and development of the collective farms. Consequently, it is now ridiculous and foolish to discourse on the expropriation of the kulaks. You do not lament the loss of the hair of one who has been beheaded. …they are sworn enemies of the collective-farm movement …”

Josef Stalin, Problems of Agrarian Policy in the USSR, 27^th December 1929

Even having seen the other two parts of Dovzhenko’s "Ukraine Trilogy", Zvenigora (1928) and Arsenal (1929), Earth comes as a surprise in terms of its sparse approach and almost dreamlike quality. The director is so confident in his use of form that he appeals directly to the watcher and within a few minutes you know this is going to be something of a "conversation" about nuanced visual expression. It’s a mindful experience that calls on the viewer to understand the process of editing specific faces, acting or not, arranging moments and leaving spaces… the meaning is sometimes in the gaps between events and not defined by title cards*. It’s also perfect for the soulful musical interpretation of one our finest film accompanists...

Now, many party members would tend to disagree with what is clearly an "ideologically vicious" waste of public funds which fails to communicate the clear imperatives of collectivisation and de-Kulakization but, as Dovzhenko’s later communications with Stalin would plead: “This is my life, and if I am doing it wrong, then it is due to a shortage of talent or development, not malice.”

It can be hard to second guess The Leader in matters of political sentiment and whilst it's impossible to know how much Dovzhenko was ever looking to "please", with Earth he was judged to have failed in his attempt to walk the line between indivdiual artistic expression and collective objectives. Pravda praised the film’s style yet claimed that its political message was “false” whilst Demyan Bedny called the film "counterrevolutionary" and "defeatist” in a poem decrying the director’s naïve philosophical attitude… he was probably right but Dovzhenko mined more truth than increasingly murderous political reality would allow and even if he was forced to re-cut.

Tractor boy, Semen Svashenko

A few figures. none of which would have been known to the film maker at the time. Stalin’s first Five Year Plan and its policy of dekulakization, the removal of “wealthy” peasants/landholders, may have led to well over half a million deaths between 1929 and 1932 from hunger, disease and mass executions. Some 1,800,000 peasants were also deported to the cities to support collectivization and industrialisation with the aim of making the Soviet Union an industrial superpower and to create a rural communism hence the need to remove all landowners no matter how small their holdings.

Dovzhenko, from Ukrainian peasant stock himself, was one of 14 children born in a small village to uneducated parents. He managed to survive to adulthood, when 12 of his siblings did not, and became a teacher. He then fought for the Red Army in the post-revolutionary Civil War and joined the Borotbist party – one of a number of leftist groups – before becoming a writer and film maker in the mid 1920’s. Here, whilst welcoming the arrival of mechanisation and modernisation, he could not fail to sympathise with those facing change but clearly this was not the time to point that out, no matter how obliquely. Russia was never an easy tale to tell as my endlessly patient tutor, Dr Robert Gildea, had to remind me with every essay.

Contented death, Mykola Nademsky

The film starts with the gentle passing of one of the village elders, Semyon Opanas (Mykola Nademsky) beneath a fruit tree and surrounded by friends and family, old and young, in the midst of the natural life he has loved. It’s an odd death as he briefly rallies in time to eat an apple, before falling gently back and drifting away surrounded by nature and family.

 

Then we see the reactions of various faces distorted first by grief and then by anger as we segue to a party meeting, a member reads of the sabotage undertaken by some Kulaks who we then see in a further meeting with Arkhyp Bilokin (Ivan Franko), and his son Khoma (Petro Masokha) who is intent on doing what he can to hold back process. Thus, Dovzhenko takes us through transitionary close-ups to move from the loss of the old man, and his ways, to the raging debate over the new. Here, as elsewhere, Danylo Demutsky’s cinematography delights in the capture of the grandeur and simplicity of nature and human response.

 

This woman's not from Venus but from Mars... Yuliya Solntseva

Talking of which, whilst I’ve heard Mr Horne accompany so many films, here he is mining a particularly rich seam or, more precisely, ploughing a deep furrow. There’s a stirring Russian march as the overture followed by some rolling lyricism to accompany the old farmer’s gentle death in this bucolic setting, optimistic rising chords counterpoint the last breaths drawn on the accordion which Stephen uses almost as a human “voice”, an earthy sound against the piano’s upper register. Beguiling flute lines float over both piano and accordion… then we return to that opening theme, as the farmers discuss their friend’s life and uncertain legacy.

 

Now Father, the Kulaks are finished… When we have the machines, we’ll take their land away.

 

The debate continues in the house of Opanas (Stepan Shkurat) and his modernising son Vasili (Semen Svashenko, the fresh-faced hero of Dovzhenko’s Arsenal) who is counting on a new tractor to convince his fellow villagers of the need for change. Vasili’s sister, is played by Yuliya Solntseva who was not only Aelita, Queen of Mars, but the director’s long-term partner and wife. A director herself, Solntseva died in 1988 having lived long enough to see Perestroika and Glasnost reforms, the beginning of the end of the USSR.

Foppish young Kulaks, Petro Masokha in the middle

The tractor arrives and as the villagers look on – the director focusing in closeups of locals cast, as per Eisenstein, for their looks, disaster strikes and the vehicle runs out of water. Then, in one of the funniest moments in soviet cinema, two men volunteer to fill up the tank using their own urine, they may strain but the flow eventually comes and the tractor is driven triumphantly into the village by Vasili. He drives the tractor over to his father who is scything the wheat by hand and tells him to throw his “crutches” away and, for possibly the only tine in the film, the older man smiles. Then we see the increased productivity as the tractor ploughs up more fields and allows a far quicker harvest and production. This is a moment of powerful transition and one that is to be celebrated by – nearly the whole village.

Later in the night-time, as the lovers hold each other and the future looks tenderly bright… Stephen’s response to Dovzhenko’s lyricism is a symphonic one, relishing the close-focus humanity and the connections between the land and peace, whether individual or collective.

The last dance. Semen Svashenko

The musical themes are weighted with their own meaning and whilst they perfectly fit the action as you’d expect they also add (an) extra character. As Vasili walks a drunken walk home, reflectively sozzled by the success of the tractor only to take a pause and suddenly start dancing a hopak, accompanied by accordion and a liquid turn of musical pace. There are so many moments of immersed musicality which play with the director’s ultimate joy in human thought. You don’t watch him dance you join in the dancing… irresistible sympathetic syncopation.

And, what a fine dance it is too… but just as it looks like it could carry on for ever, Vasili is struck viciously form behind and falls dead to the ground as his assailant runs away.

In the moment following the murder, Stephen’s thin lines from the top end of the accordion slice through the sadness and provide the most fragile of carriers for the devastation on view. Extraordinary control during the film’s emotional crescendo when the temptation might have been to add thunder not this sad lightning. I also loved the repeated theme that surfaces so prominently during the brief confrontation between Opanas and the priest, the former’s sadness at the hurt he has given is reflected in the music’s almost winsome despair; there is no God… and there are no priests.

Stepan Shkurat's extraordinary energy

And we’ll sing songs about the new life…

Vasyli’s funeral provides the moments of the film’s dynamic and magically real ending as the majority of the village marches behind his opened casket on its way to a committal without priests or religious ceremony. Meanwhile the local priest (Volodymyr Mikhajlov) rages for God to punish the guilty and Vasili’s fiancée Natalya (Yelena Maksimova) strips naked in her house and almost dances her anger and grief. Cutting between those two scenes, Dovzhenko also shows us Vasili’s kulak killer tearing through fields and finally shouting his confession at the funeral cortege… he is ignored as the local party leader tells them that Vasili’s sacrifice will not be in vain.

There’s a lot to unpack in this final sequence and, even though there are a number of different cuts of this most censored of films, the director’s “cut” is always there for us to interpret. What the authorities saw as wrong thinking was Dovzhenko’s ambivalence to the changes being made to his community in “the breadbasket of the Soviet Union”. Yet, he did see a collective solution with the secular unity and the determination to continue Vasili’s work reflected in Natalya’s closing reverie, even if her naked grief was excised from most cuts.

Yelena Maksimova's primal grief

The director’s real issues with Stalin came after the film culminating in his plea quoted above as the Georgian became more and more unpredictable and ruthless in imposing a collective solution for Russia’s agrarian economy. By the end of 1928 just 1% of the farms had voluntarily become collectives and Stalin essentially imposed forced collectivisation not just on rural Russia but also on his own regime with opposition outmanoeuvred or simply removed. That’s a whole other story but here in 1929-1930, the fact that Dovzhenko was able to make a film in which he showed the impact on everyone is proof enough that, even as worse days were coming, there was still optimism and diverse opinion.

 

I watched the film on Klassiki which is the only place in the world where you can stream classic film from Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia! You need to be a member to access the content but at £9.99 a year it is an absolute bargain.

Watch it for one of the greatest of all silent films, for a history primer and for one of the finest musical accompaniments I’ve heard in some time!

*Earth exists in some nine different versions and whilst this copy seems near complete – including the nudity – it’s possible that not all the title cards from Dovzhenko’s original final cut survive.