Solnechnyy pokhod (1931) review: Tractors, dust, and aggressive enthusiasm

Look, unless you are writing a thesis on early 1930s Soviet cinema or you really, really love vintage farm machinery, you can probably skip this one. Solnechnyy pokhod (The Sunny Campaign) is strictly for the archive diggers and silent film completists. If you want a cohesive narrative, you will probably hate it within five minutes.

The whole thing is basically a propaganda pep rally about young city folks heading out to the countryside to help with the collective farms. There is barely any plot, just a lot of sweaty, enthusiastic faces looking toward the horizon. 🚜

It lacks the playful, chaotic energy of The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks. Instead, it feels closer to the raw, documentary style of Kino-pravda no. 14, but with a bit less artistic flair.

There is this one guy, played by A. Bavrin, who spends half his screentime looking intensely at dirt. I am not kidding, there is a literal three-second shot of him just letting soil crumble through his fingers like he is discovering gold.

Anna Zarzhitskaya is in this too, though she does not get much to do besides look determined while holding a shovel. Her character has this weird habit of adjusting her headscarf every time she is about to do something important, which is actually kind of endearing.

The Quirky Stuff I Noticed

• The soundtrack in the digital copy I found did not match the action at all, making a simple walk down a hill sound like an absolute apocalypse.
• A stray dog wanders into the frame during a big speech and nobody bothered to edit it out.
• Someone actually hugs a sack of grain. Literally hugs it.
• The editing gets super choppy near the end, like they ran out of film or just got tired.

It is definitely not a masterpiece, and the political message is hammered home with a giant wooden mallet. But there is a weird, dusty charm to how earnest the whole thing is.

If you have some time to spare and want to see how they tried to make agriculture look heroic in 1931, give it a spin. Just do not expect a riveting story.