By a substantial margin Eisenstein's least famous silent film, this is
also the least interesting. It's less a narrative film than a
descriptive poem paying tribute to the Russian landscape and
developments in agriculture, but only the opening sequences strike
the desired note of pantheistic lyricism. Afterwards Eisenstein is
content to wallow in a heavy-handed anthropomorphism (the bull's
wedding) while hammering home his message through facile symbolism
and flat, emblematic characters. There are some extraordinary
images, but the unvarying noisy triumphalism swiftly becomes
monotonous.
