The General Line

A silent film Eisenstein shot in the countryside. Marfa is a poor woman in her village. She has no animal to plough with, her neighbours will not help, and she sets out to build a cooperative on her own. The film follows that effort: milk production, buying machinery in common, the question of a breeding bull. At the centre of the narrative is a machine: the cream separator. The villagers are about to see it work for the first time. Eisenstein stages the scene as a ceremony; faces, pipes, turning parts and the milk beginning to flow are delivered in an accelerating montage. The passage is counted among the examples of what editing can do in cinema. Marfa Lapkina, in the lead, was not a professional actress but genuinely a peasant woman. During the shoot the director broke off to make another film for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. By the time he returned the political line had changed; the finished film was criticised and its title was changed. It is known today under two names. A foundational production for anyone who likes Soviet cinema and the theory of montage. For a viewer who wants a story, the narrative is thin, the characters are reduced to types, and the film was plainly made to argue for an agricultural policy.