The General Line

The General Line was the project Eisenstein interrupted to make October, the epic commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the USSR. Neither of these two celebrations of his theory of 'associative montage' (which remain among his most powerful and innovative movies) met with official approval or popular success; Eisenstein was condemned as a 'formalist'; and began the world travels that eventually led him to Mexico. The General Line is a comprehensive account of Soviet agricultural policies, showing the struggle for collectivisation of the farms, distinguished (like October) by Eduard Tissé's phenomenal photography, by Eisenstein's muscular homo-erotic poetry, and by extraordinary sadomasochistic undercurrents. Fans of Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'Artifice should not miss the daringly erethistic cream-separator sequence in The General Line on which it is based.