ESSAYS

The Golden crates of communism (on Aleksandar Dovzhenko’s film poetics)

Four authors are usually classified as pivotal to the Soviet film of the revolutionary period: Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko. Despite being »ideologized«, extremely innovative works of a high literary attainment were created and they would later revolutionize film history through eminent cinematic techniques. While Vertov was originally a documentarist of the dynamics of revolutionary enthusiasm with his »kino-eye«, Eisenstein was a dramatist of structures aiming to present political ideas and Pudovkin in a way a prose and epic author of the best Russian novel tradition. On the other hand, Dovženko was a »lyrist«. The text analyzes three Dovzhenko’s films from the silent film era. Connection between the man and the land, evident in all his films, especially in Earth, is more than just a mere artistic habit and it imbues his entire personality. It is omnipresent, irrespective of whether we are talking about a fairy tale-legend, such as Zvenigora, revolutionary pathos and obsession with death, such as Arsenal, or poetic and visual achievements dominating over political dialectics in the film about a (forced) socialization of a village, Earth. The article closes with the analysis of the film The Golden Crates, dedicated to Dovzhenko and directed by his longtime associate and wife Julija Solnceva.

Marijan Krivak