Earth

Dovzhenko is aware of the tragedy, his Basil (“the kingly”) dies at the hands of Thomas (the rich young man), but his Simon dies unto Peter.

Zemlya is to be taken as presented, and nowadays uncensored. Modernization badly handled, with a whole dramatic apparatus to that end, of which Dovzhenko is prophetically cognizant.

His structure holds. Greatly modified, especially considering the opening scene, it can be seen in Little Big Man and The Godfather. Emilio Fernandez has his skyscapes here, the youthful muzhik and his Communist cell are echoed in Pasolini’s I Racconti di Canterbury, the tractor joke somewhere (“we’re going to spend a penny in the radiator”), Basil’s dance in The Milagro Beanfield War, the widow’s hysteria in Fanny and Alexander, the delivering mother in Our Daily Bread—Thomas’s gyring is from Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (Griffith’s technique is predominant)—and the final crowd scenes in Distant Thunder (Satyajit Ray), foreshortened.