Celluloid : the film to-day (1931)

EARTH 149 length for the full expression of their content. This question of the artist's static outlook and its relationship to the cinematic outlook of the film director is worthy of considerable thought, and should produce interesting revelations. By this emphasis on Dovjenko's use of the static image, I do not imply that he eliminates movement of the screen material altogether, for that would be absurd. On the contrary, when desirous of employing movement other than that of the celluloid and of the camera, Dovjenko's matching up and intermixing of rhythms is admirable. No better example of screen movement could be instanced than that of the gradually increasing tempo of the gathering of the harvest, the binding, the stacking, the sifting, the dough-kneading, and finally the baking of the bread, the movement being so speeded up that at the finale the whole screen is rocking with energy. If fault be found with Earth at all, I think it lies in the funeral scenes of the last reel. To me these do not reach the beauty or the power of the preceding reels, firstly because they are not conceived in such measured terms of relationship between images and editing as the rest of the film, and secondly because their photographic value does not achieve the same standard as that of the earlier scenes. To make a comparison, I prefer the famous religious procession in The General Line, an episode which admittedly marks the height of Eisenstein's work to date, but which nevertheless has a certain affinity to the procession in Earth. Whereas in the former film, Eisenstein collected a hundred small movements of