Old and New (1929)

100.000.000 peasants - illiterate, poor, hungry. There comes a day when one woman decides that she can live old life no longer. Using ways of new Soviet state and industrial progress she changes life and labor of her village.

Directors:

Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein

Writers:

Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein

Stars:

Marfa Lapkina, M. Ivanin, Konstantin Vasilyev

1 win.

Cast

Credited cast:
Marfa Lapkina	...	Marfa
M. Ivanin	...	Marfa's son
Konstantin Vasilyev	...	Tractor Driver
Vasili Buzenkov	...	Secretary of the milk cooperative
Nejnikov	...	Miroshkin - Schoolmaster
Chukamaryev	...	The butcher
Ivan Yudin	...	Komsomolets
E. Suhareva	...	Witch
G. Matvei	...	Priest
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Efimkin	...	Peasant
Vyacheslav Gomolyaka
Mikhail Gomorov	...	Peasant
Hurtin	...	Peasant
M. Palej	...	Peasant
Maksim Shtraukh	...	Peasant

Storyline

100.000.000 peasants - illiterate, poor, hungry. There comes a day when one woman decides that she can live old life no longer. Using ways of new Soviet state and industrial progress she changes life and labor of her village.

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Plot Keywords:

peasant | soviet citizen | modernization | rural setting | communist propaganda | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Not Rated

Did You Know?

Connections

Featured in Gulag: The History: Origines : 1917-1933 (2020)

User Reviews

Its message is about as subtle as a nudist at a Baptist potluck dinner!

Technically, in some ways "Old and New" is a good film. After all, this Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei M. Eisenstein production has the sort of nice cinematography you might expect from an Eisenstein film. Plus, it has lots of 'faces'--unusual looking folks whose piercing visages seem almost like the folks you'd later find in a Fellini film. However, it also has an incredibly broad message--lacking all subtlety and humanity. Folks in this film are simply tools for Soviet propaganda and the writing is quite poor.

Little did most folks realize at the time, but the film also served to justify the deaths of millions of farmers! This, I'm sure, I'll need to explain a bit. Back in 1928, the Soviet government (and increasingly, this meant Stalin) felt that farm production was a problem due, in part, to the old pre-communism days. Instead of the inefficient individual farms (shown being run by nothing but fat and greedy people in this film), it would be much better if small farmers all banded together to make larger farms where no one owned the land, equipment or output--it all belonged to the collective (and the Soviet government). So, independent farmers were increasingly sent off to gulags in Siberia or were simply thrown off the land to starve to death. The same fate was meted out to the priests--who, in this film, are evil, superstitious and lead the people astray. Oddly, in spite of all these enemies of the State being punished, production actually went down-- though you see none of this in the film! Soon, it was assumed that folks in the collective were lazy, and starting in the early 1930s, these folks met similar fates in many cases. This film helped lay the groundwork for a program that killed between 4-10,000,000 people by most estimates! Rarely has a film been responsible, in part, for more death and evil than "Old and New".

If it was't for the evil that this film justified, it STILL would be shallow propaganda...with nice cinematography. But clearly, its message is meted out in an almost cartoon-like fashion and I think this film is really overrated.

Details

Country:

Soviet Union

Language:

None

Release Date:

2 May 1930 (USA)

Also Known As:

Old and New

Company Credits

Production Co:

Sovkino

Technical Specs

Runtime:

121 min 131 min (ZDF/arte 1998 reconstruction)

Sound Mix:

Silent

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1