It's ironic that an atheist like Lenin is portrayed in such a manner as in "Tri Pesni O Lenine" ("Three Songs About Lenin"). While I a am no huge fan of Lenin, I did appreciate how he did NOT wish to be turned into a god after his death. However, Stalin orchestrated a campaign where exactly this happened in the decades following Lenin's early death. Posters, songs, documentaries and busts abounded--all to replace the religious icons that the Russians had held so dear as well as to give the seeming stamp of approval for Stalin's regime (after all, if Lenin was their new god, why couldn't Stalin be as well?). So film maker Dziga Vertov was given the task to create this film and sing Lenin's praises. I think this job was given to Vertov because he'd done such fine work espousing the glories of the new Soviet Union in the Kino series as well as "Man With a Camera"--he was a dedicated member of the Communist party and appeared to strongly believe in its ideals.

As a film , "Three Songs About Lenin" leaves a lot be to desired. First, it's propaganda throughout and has no objectivity--and it's practically orgasmic in its descriptions of the man. Its aim is to create Stalin's idea of a good film for the people. Because of this, while it has some nice footage, the film itself comes off as tremendously jingoistic and lacking any real story other than "we all love the USSR and Comrade Lenin"--not exactly a deep sentiment! Everyone is deliriously happy and thanks Lenin for making their lives better (probably true, as Czarist Russia was no paradise and the mass executions of Stalin's regime were not yet known to much of the world--even within the new USSR).

If my review comes off as very biased, you are correct. I am a history teacher and cannot ignore all the horrors of the Stalinist era--which left millions dead in order to 'purify' the country. Of course, the film is even more biased, as it presents nothing but a carefully-scripted view of a Utopia that never was. I just can't see the artistry of a film like this--and it comes off as a creepy historical document. And, speaking of creepy, get a load of all the closeups of the dead Lenin! Yikes!

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.

Lenin has lived, is living, will live: a film poster summarizing it very well. The atheist society of Stalin needed its own mythology, just as throughout the whole history any other society had to build its own mythology (a fiction is always essential in the struggle for survival; if Darwin hadn't told it from the very beginning, it was said anyway by lots of Darwinians). Ultimately any mythology supposes the existence of an eternal god. Of course, in the Soviet mythology the eternal god was Lenin. As he had died in 1924, the problem of his immortality had to be solved. In this movie the god Lenin lives forever in the Soviet society: in the whole society, and in any particle of it. Any Soviet citizen, and any Soviet accomplishment, carries the personality of Lenin. With this movie Vertov gives up his atheism, to become a pantheist: he deifies the Soviet society because it embodies the eternity of Lenin, and he deifies Lenin because his eternity is embodied in the Soviet society. Is it pantheism or rather panentheism? I'd leave for you to decide. Anyway it is the demonstration of a perfect totalitarian system: one cannot have free will as everyone embodies Lenin, thus carrying the will of Lenin. Well, for the regime officials this movie had two impardonable flaws. Firstly it was an Avangardist movie, it means some kind of bourgeois leisure. In 1934 the Soviet norm was already the Socialist Realism. And more than that it was the second flaw. The Soviet mythology was actually built upon two gods: one dead (Lenin) and one alive and in full control of the power (Stalin). And the dead god should have had only one role: to justify the almighty alive god. This movie said too much about the dead god, and almost nothing about the alive god. No wonder that Vertov would not be let to make another movie any more. He would not understand why, as he was too honest, too sincere, to understand the ways of life. Apart from that, this is a superb movie, just because it is so consistently Avangardist (I would even say so Productionist - the whole Soviet construction living through one hero, Lenin),and so sincere.