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5 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :- Ignore the propaganda and appreciate the people, 29 November 2006 Author: netwallah from The New Intangible College
Vertov eulogizes Lenin with an idealized view of Soviet progress. There are, indeed, three songs, or three musical movements. The first presents a woman's view of Lenin's legacy, beginning with the movement away from various forms of repression, the joy of women working, the new equality in field and factory. The second records the Soviet mourning for their leader. The third showcases progress, with the refrain if only Lenin could see his country now. With the exception of three or four spoken passages, this is built like a silent film to which a programmatic soundtrack has been added. There are actual songs, with titles furnishing the words, and sections of great music by Russian classical composers, and some music probably written for the film. The continuity comes through the songs and through several thematic sequences of images—there is no plot. The images are fascinating, showing the best side of Soviet culture, the variety of ethnicities, the joy of having enough to eat, the sense of sharing in a wonderful experiment, the determination to succeed, the unselfishness of many individuals, the idealism of the collective. There are thousands of shots of people, agriculture, industry, public works, parades, happy people, hardworking people, landscapes, and every sort of window into a vanished world. Of course it's propaganda. Of course there are essential elements of Soviet history omitted. Of course the very first sequences present the unveiling of Muslim women as a great stride toward liberty. Let the political scientists and historians investigate the significance of what is left out and what is presented in this partial view of life in the 1930s. But remember it was only sixteen years after the October revolution, and the progress the movie highlights did occur. Still, we don't have to accept the propagandistic aspect of the film. Neither do we have to reject the film out of hand because we think Communism is stupid, nor does it benefit anybody to heap ridicule upon it. Three Songs is a (partly) great movie because it shows irreplaceable real images of real people and of vanished technology and vanished historical places. Some of the photography is amazing, and the editing, timed rhythmically to match the music, is unusually good. Even the way the propagandistic themes are built is worth examining—we're all pretty much safe from its baleful influence these days.
Not the best Soviet movie I've seen but too good to be ignored, 6 March 2008 Author: stalker vogler from Xanadu
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.
5 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :- Good Imagery & Photography, Otherwise Rather Disappointing, 11 October 2004 Author: Snow Leopard from Ohio
Despite the good imagery and photography, this Dziga Vertov feature, though often interesting, is in general rather a disappointment.There are many fine features from the Soviet cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, in which the skill of film-makers like Eisenstein, Dovzhenko, Vertov himself, and others far outweighs any small doses of politically-mandated content. It is unfortunate that some very elegant films of that era are often described as propaganda pieces, when they actually have far too much depth for that label to be appropriate. All this is simply to say how unfortunate it is to have to point out that, indeed, "Three Songs of Lenin" might have been much, much better without the heavy-handed propaganda statements with which it is laced.There's no reason in itself why a film praising Lenin could not still work as cinema, and indeed at least two of the three "songs" contain some worthwhile ideas. But the title cards and some of the dialogue simply go way too far in trying to build up Lenin's legacy, and it is not long before it gets to be too much. The lavish praises that the movie heaps upon him would be ridiculous even if they were being applied to Washington, Churchill, de Gaulle or any other world leader. No one leader deserves anything approaching that much credit for his country's successes, and no human leader or ruler deserves such unstinting and unqualified praise.Vertov was a skilled and creative film-maker, as he proved in pictures such as "Man With a Movie Camera". And even here, there is plenty of good photography and other material to work with. A more restrained approach would have resulted in a much better film. It's still of interest to those interested in the era, and it does have some definite strengths; it's just not nearly as good as you could have hoped for it to be.
1 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :- Oh, how I laughed! Oh, how I snored!, 19 May 2001 Author: Steve Duff from Seattle, WA
This 1931 'documentary', acclaimed in its day, is nothing more than a ham-fisted, banal, and unremarkably filmed piece of propaganda. The editing is jerky; the shots frequently undisciplined and poorly composed; the pace glacial; the script naive and stilted in its crass deification of Lenin. Oh yeah, it's dour and humorless, too.It might hold some interest as an early example of the 'tractors and dams' approach to agitprop, but it holds little interest on its own merits. It is worthwhile, however, to see Lenin threatening to defeat 'the landowners and capitalists' around the world!Keep an eye out for this in your film history class, and be ready for your indoctrination.
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