Aerograd

Russian villagers repel a planned attack by the Japanese. Typically overwrought and impassioned Soviet propaganda which is nigh-on impenetrable to those with no knowledge of the country's history and/or Communist ideology. A grim and dour ordeal that is nothing more than a succession of fervent speeches and rousing anthems glorifying the Soviet cause.

For those who fondly remember the terrific visuals of Dovzhenko's "Earth", this is a very, very long way off. As some have mentioned this IS propaganda but the sort that shoots itself in the foot rather than pointing fingers. In the first thirty minutes alone there were three monumental speeches, all over-stressed and so painfully long they made me actually home-sick for the Academy Award-winning overacting we know so well. There's not really much of a plot here - the screaming propaganda would have buried it anyway - and the characters themselves go no deeper than comic-book roles. In fact, the characters don't develop either, so the film is quite static in just about every way. All the foreigners here are despicable as well as people making the signs of the cross. This is a textbook example of Stalinist film, with exclamation points at the end of every sentence. And as we remember from grade school, too many exclamation points weaken the ideas. Perhaps that was why the film is so tiring.

Rumor floods the Taiga north of the Amur. The Soviets are about to build a new city on the Pacific, a fortress, a city of aeroplanes, a fantasy, and call it Aerograd! Remnants of the White Russian Army struggle against it; Old Believers, descendants of people who fled there more than two centuries ago, are terrified by the city, the modernism, the dancing; and samurai spies are determined to stop it, because they hate Russia, with its taiga of unlimited resources.

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's movie goes beyond propaganda, into obvious and outright partisanship with a strong whiff of paranoia. I believe, like many of his contemporaries, he had trouble with Soviet censorship, and like Dziga Vertov in THREE HEROINES (1938), made something so arrantly over the top that no one could accuse him of not being a communist supporter. There are lots of actors striking heroic poses and declaiming. There are lots of long-focus shots of forsts and the Amure, and airplanes filling the sky. It's all marvelously entertaining. It's so over-the-top that, like Vertov's work in this era, I find it hard to believe that the censors didn't know what was going on. I suspect they did, but figured the audiences wouldn't.

If propaganda is your thing you'll love this movie. Although I succumb to propaganda in really well done movies like I Am Cuba I wasn't sucked in much by Aerograd. Therefore, all I really liked about this pro "manifest destiny" piece for the Soviet Union were the beautiful landscape and airscape vignettes. Russia's Far East sure looks like a place worthy of conquest so I feel the movie is at least somewhat successful in that. If you're a historian you may also be interested to see how the interwar Soviet propaganda machine rails against Japan and other Asian countries in 1935.

Aleksandr Dovzhenko's "Aerograd" is the sort of movie that you watch to see how masterful cinematography can be. Where it's lacking is in real plot. Obviously intended as a propaganda piece, it depicts an airfield in the eastern Soviet Union that comes into conflict with the Japanese. The characters come across as cartoonish and it's a predictable movie. It was probably a movie that Stalin wanted them to make. Now that I think of it, I should have spent the whole time riffing the movie like on "Mystery Science Theater 3000".

No, it's not a terrible movie. Just overacted and generally corny. Might be of interest to film buffs, but not to anyone else.