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The General Line

Play trailer The General Line 1930 1h 20m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 5 Reviews 69% Popcornmeter 250+ Ratings
A woman (Marfa Lapkina) in a rural town deals with the new ways of communism.
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The General Line

Critics Reviews

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Time Out 01/26/2006
Eisenstein was condemned as a 'formalist'; and began the world travels that eventually led him to Mexico. Go to Full Review
Jonathan Rosenbaum Chicago Reader 01/01/2000
It's a bucolic epic about the Soviet struggle to collectivize agricultural production, and it's far from his least interesting or exciting film. Go to Full Review
Harry Alan Potamkin The New Masses 09/06/2019
This film is a film of wit, folk-humour, shrewdness, optimism, clarity and point... Go to Full Review
Mattie Lucas From the Front Row 08/06/2019
3.5/4
The now famous scene in which Eisenstein juxtaposes footage of a newly working milk machine with a gushing water fountain is a kind of visual symbolism that Eisenstein employs frequently throughout his films. Go to Full Review
Emanuel Levy EmanuelLevy.Com 06/12/2005
4/5
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Audience Reviews

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01/29/2012 Milk rains from the sky and the peasants on the collective farm strive to buy a tractor in the silent Soviet propaganda film that is more interesting now for Eisenstein's direction than anything else. See more 02/11/2011 Certes, l'oeuvre est propagandiste (doit-on s'attendre à autre chose avec Eisenstein?), mais le principal dà (C)faut de l'oeuvre rà (C)sulte peut-être dans sa longueur et la rà (C)pà (C)tibilità (C) de certaines sà (C)quences amenant le film a être trop long de trente minutes environ. En contrepartie, on peut compter sur des acteurs transcendants et surtout sur une mise en scène extrêmement rà (C)ussie d'Eisenstein qui parvient à tirer l'oeuvre vers le haut, grâce à des sà (C)quences remarquables de prà (C)cision et un montage apportant à (C)normà (C)ment de rythme. C'est aussi l'oeuvre la plus poà (C)tique du cinà (C)aste. Le caractère propagandiste apparait parfois effacà (C) par des petits subterfuges mettant Là (C)nine au même rang que les bureaucrates et se demandant si les paysans ne sont pas les dindons de la farce de la collectività (C) appelà (C)e par le prà (C)sident communiste. Cette histoire d'industrialisation des campagnes possède toutefois suffisamment de qualità (C)s que pour en voir le bout en dà (C)pit d'un processus rà (C)pà (C)titif donc. A cela s'ajoute des superbes images et une musique (certainement pas l'originale à en croire certains passages plutôt à (C)lectroniques) qui se fond bien avec le thème de l'oeuvre. See more 06/23/2008 Hey you know what we should do? Make a long movie about collective farms See more 04/12/2008 Well, I'm convinced. If I was a peasant in Russia and things were looking pretty bleak, I'd do what this film suggests and form a collective farm. Propaganda couldn't have been easy for the Bolsheviks. The wedding between the pedigree bull and cow was a little weird. See more 02/08/2008 I liked it, loved the cow wedding. See more 02/04/2008 A Marxist caricature elevated by Eisenstein's delirious editing. See more Read all reviews
The General Line

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Movie Info

Synopsis A woman (Marfa Lapkina) in a rural town deals with the new ways of communism.
Director
Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Sergei M. Eisenstein
Screenwriter
Sergei M. Eisenstein, Grigoriy Aleksandrov
Distributor
Amkino Corporation
Genre
Drama
Release Date (Theaters)
May 2, 1930, Original
Release Date (Streaming)
Feb 11, 2020
Runtime
1h 20m
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