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56 The Old and New
inn" (the title says), Russian peasants, looking suspiciously like cowboys, sit at a table and drink not Red-Eye but TEA! Another man, whom we at best call a "wagon-rustler", after tying all the carts behind the tractor, begins to jump from cart to cart, an action reminiscent of chases on tops of trains. The peasants, finally roused, jump on their horses and ride to the brow of a hill where the Russian line must have been, "Head 'em off at the pass". These scenes, however clever and amusing, are essentially irrelevant to the theme.
In the cow-bull scenes earlier in the film there are also some spoofs, not only of American motion pictures but of a whole literary genre. The bull, garlanded with flowers, appears in front of a circa 1800 romantic setting. Amidst the flowers and before a delicately meandering stream, he does not entone lyric verse but bellows lustily. One would hardly expect an average audience to recognize this satire, but peasants could chuckle at the "Pillar of Industry" sequence in which the head of the tractor company, seated near a huge white bust of Lenin, is finally convinced to hasten the order. Everyone in the factory scurries in fast motion, the deed is swiftly accomplished. This is good, broad humor which the working classes could easily understand.
This humorous episode follows one of the most poetic of Eisenstein's scenes, the Harvest. With dark skies and rain, and the wind tossing the bundles of hay, Eisenstein portrays in the same beauty as many painters of the nineteenth century the battle between man and the elements. This romantic scene is a luxury which, in terms of the film, can no longer be allowed in an age of mechanization. Harvesting by hand, however lovely, is superfluous, for the tractor can do the job faster and better.
There are many folk qualities to Eisenstein which critics generally attribute only to Dovshenko; compare, for instance, the above-mentioned harvest, the wedding ceremony, and, of course, the scene of the dying bull, the three skulls on the poles, the old woman with her frogs, the death watch — all are pictorially and cinematically well handled. The shots do not dwell upon the screen (see the long shots in Earth) nor do they violate normal editing procedures. The shots, no matter how thematically buccolic or folkish, still are interesting as cutting; form does not lie prostrate before the content, as in Dovshenko's editing. This much can be said for Eisenstein — and it is indeed a compliment — he is never dull. Even if the material is indifferent, he is able, sometimes by technique alone, to prevent tediousness.
What are his methods? Eisenstein of course makes use of the juxtaposition of shots, but he also has a stringent way of viewing reality and is much tighter in his control of different shots than most directors. The Old and New is hardly the best source for finding examples, but one can point out the "classic" clarity in the introduction of Marfa to the audience: L.S., M.S., title, C.U., M.S., L.S., longer L.S. This way of presenting shots did not later blossom forth in Ivan as many critics have suggested, but was there from the very beginning. The bearded, staring faces by