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EARTH 147
by Vassily's death, and the still older generation in Vassily's grandfather, who dies at the opening of the picture. Dovjenko has chosen these types as being representative of the transition that is taking place to-day, together with the tractor as symbol of the machine that is the god of modern Russia. These are the bones to carry the main drive of the film.
I have already made clear the wonderful poetic quality of Dovjenko's work, so implicit in the grassy hillside slopes of Zvenigora, and even greater in the many magnificent shots of fruit and foliage, animals and landscape in Earth, and I repeat that as far as I am aware nothing quite like it has been achieved before on the screen. In my experience, there are few directors who are capable of taking such a fundamental and universal theme as Earth, expressing it in terms of visual images on the screen, and translating the poetry of fruit and flowers into cinematic images, as Dovjenko has done, without becoming sentimental. Such a work demands delicacy and restraint of direction, qualities that are most characteristic of Dovjenko's style. In every portion of the film, whether the mood is one of excitement or one of sadness, this admirable restraint carries the theme across with a high degree of emotion. Added to which, Dovjenko maintains a very firm hold over all his material — scenario, photography and editing. This is evidenced in the exactitude with which each shot and each sequence plays its part in the make up of the whole. Had he relaxed control for one moment, the intimacy with nature that dominates the film would have been lost. Moreover, the restrained key in which so much of the picture