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I will dissociate myself from the beginning of the Communist propaganda heavily inserted into Vertov's movie; coming from a Communist country I felt the worst of that system by myself. On the other hand Three Songs about Lenin is a very interesting film, regardless of its historical importance. Any movie from the Soviet inter-war period has a certain value, some of those movies are downright masterpieces because they bear the artistic touches of such early poets of the screen such as Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Medvedkin or Vertov. Some other movies are purely propagandistic. Three Songs is far too well-done to be discredited with the actual 6.6 average on the IMDb. We should remember the year is 1934 and many of the techniques highlighted here were far from becoming past experience for many movie makers from the West. The very concept of the movie is already challenging on aesthetic grounds: Vertov purported to make documentaries but in the process he disobeyed every rule for making them, even though he introduced many of the techniques that have become so typical of documentaries we no longer think they were invented by anyone. So we can ask the following question: what is the nature of a "documentary" such as Three Songs...? Is it a fictional account of the life of Lenin? No, because thee is no underlying "script" and the people are real even if they may have been instructed in what to say. Most of the shots have nothing fictional in them, they are edited so as to imply more than a shot can say, and I must admit that there were moments when I was amazed at how much the Soviets managed to do in such a short time span after October 17. A documentary such as this anticipates many ideas of later directors that tried to introduce new concepts with their work by bridging the gap between record and fiction, people such as Herzog or Chris Marker. The three songs to which the title refers are the three segments of the movie. They are arranged according to to an arch-like structure that builds the image of Lenin as a god among humans. There are some unifying elements between different shots, the most obvious is a bench in a garden where a famous picture of Lenin had been taken. That bench functions as a leitmotif and its emotional impact grows as we find out more and more about the great man that once stood there. The first segment of the movie deals with his life and works illustrating the profound impact that his personality exerted on the whole Soviet state. The second segment is concerned with "the death of the hero", Lenin's funeral, the least impressive of the three moments and the most annoying as we have to sit through the endless mourning of his followers, shot in close-ups with their eyes in tears. The soundtrack is Chopin and Wagner and at some point we can even see Stalin staring at the dead Lenin and probably thinking at his difficult mission in the aftermath of the god's death. The third segment is the most impressive and it presents the resurrection of Lenin in the works of his children. Lenin laid the foundations for the great Soviet state and his children that inherited a free state take his plan for a greater Soviet state towards the glorious future. This layout is the basis for Vertov's skills with editing, not the most impressive you will find in a Soviet movie but fairly interesting. The beauty of some of the shots and the historical relevance of others make the viewing worthwhile.
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