THE CRIMSON PLAYGOER

Like all cinemas from the Socialist Soviet Republic, "Soil is Thirsty" bludgeons the great truths of the class war into the consciousness of the audience; the suffering Turkmen in Turkestan are rescued from their Capitalistic overlord by five young Russian engineers. With this simple salvation of the proletariat for a theme, the plot manages to create a blood-and-thunder milieu, filled with hurricanes, dynamiting, death, and a happy ending. The Turkmen are virtual slaves of the cruel heavy, a Bey with a sneer and black waxed mustachios; the Musselmen laboriously draw water from deep wells for the garden of fig-trees and lettuce which laps Aman the Bey and his harem in luxury. But John Reed Turkman writes to the Reds, who come five strong on a thundering locomotive to water the desert. They brave the storms of the waste, the scorching sun, and the sinister Bey, and the rest is simple.

This is, of course, no romantic, bourgeois melodrama. Love interest is repressed to the lone, lorn, renegade Turkmaiden, who cooks and simpers for our heroes. Humor, in the enlightened sense of the word, is lacking, but good shots of Young Communists having a real side-splitting cachinnation excite a sympathetic titter in the audience. Unless the film has been miserably cut, it is filled with inexcusably bewildering digressions: the Playgoer is still puzzling over the meaning of storm upon storm, hands beating the harem door, the profusion of dead camels,--a species reputedly drought-proof,--and many prayers to Allah. Apparently these loose ends are tucked in for the footage, or perhaps it is just the Russian.

These Russians are not good actors. They strut and fret their hour interminably, and their make-up is very bad. The only real character in this film, aside from Communism, the hero, and Proletariat, the heroine, is poor old villian Aman-Durdy-bey. And he reminds one of a gay ninties revival.

The technique is not excellent either. Tricks of the camera compensate for bad photography, and the many unusual shots, as that of the laborer removing his shirt, revealing a sinewy silver-sweated back, are beyond praise. But tedium reigns when too many impressionistic scenes of rushing water and driving storm appear. The sound effects are well executed: one can almost taste the cinders and smell the reek of the locomotive.

In spite of its many defects this film is well worth seeing. The impressionistic treatment is more original that the half-hearted American attempts, and there is a naive spirit to the action in which the audience delights. The Amfoto way of seeing and feeling Russia is less expensive than Intourist, and probably no more propagandized.