Old and New (1929) review

Poor Soviet farmers struggling to survive and finding "field work" to be difficult decide, with Martha (Martha Lapkina) as their "forward thinker," to form a cooperative and "upgrade" their methods with new technology, eventually obtaining a few tractors ... oh, and they hold a wedding ceremony for two cows.  Naturally, this was created to "celebrate" the Communist Party (pictures and busts of Lenin appear several places) and embracing the modern ways of doing things (to presumably compete with the West) and although much of it is wonderfully edited - all those waving fields are hypnotic, and juxtaposing flowing milk with water fountains is clever - it's also lacking in plausible drama (bureaucrats save the day?) and there are segments that don't make any sense (where did the witches come from?).  This was supposedly re-edited once good old Leon Trotsky's ideas were no longer deemed "favorable," so who knows what the final product would have looked like without "interference."  Note: the stock score made me want to jam Kleenex into my ears, so instead I paired it with Harold Budd's 1984 album Abandoned Cities and then, appropriately enough, Brian Eno's Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace from 1997.