In the late 1930s, as another world war became increasingly likely, the Soviet government began a propaganda campaign to prepare its public for such an eventuality. While most of that propaganda was crude, some was more subtle and came in seemingly innocent forms like musical comedies. One of the best examples was Tractor Drivers, a 1939 film directed by Ivan Pyryev.
The protagonist, played by Nikolai Kryuchkov, is Klim Yarko, a recently demobilised Red Army soldier who is, together with two of his comrades, returning from service in the Russian Far East. After seeing a picture of Maryana Bazhan (played by Marina Ladynina), a highly decorated leader of a brigade of female tractor drivers in Ukraine, in the Pravda newspaper he jokes that he would go to her. She has, thanks to the article, gained so many male admirers that she asks tractor driver Nazar Duma (played by Boris Andreyev) to act as her alleged fiancé. By a strange coincidence, Klim helps Maryana when she ends up in a ditch with her motorcycle. As a sign of gratitude, she hosts him at her home and, later, when he continues his journey, talks him into staying at their machine tractor station and working as a tractor driver. Klim earns the respect of Nazar and the other drivers with his skills, developed by driving a tank in the army, and wants to train his colleagues to drive tanks in case of war. Nazar is inspired to drive his tractor so successfully that Maryana decides to marry him, but at the last minute Klim confesses his feelings towards her.
Directed by Ivan Pyryev, a film-maker with a reputation as the most successful author of Stalinist cinema, Tractor Drivers is a textbook example of Socialist Realism, the official Soviet art doctrine. A rural setting, which allowed for relatively simple and undemanding plots, was very suitable for such films and could be used much more effectively to present the Soviet Union as an advanced and prosperous country, without reminders of the old pre-revolutionary world that was harder to avoid in big cities. Ukrainian collective farms were also chosen as the setting of Tractor Drivers for another reason, which becomes apparent in the scene during which tractor drivers accidentally dig out a Prussian helmet from a field. The machine tractor station manager, Kirill Petrovich (played by Stepan Kayukov), explains that the helmet belonged to an officer of the Imperial German Army, which had briefly occupied Ukraine at the end of the First World War before being chased away by the Red Army. He also claims that if the Germans invade, they would suffer the same fate. These prophetic words addressed the policy of Nazi Germany, whose leader Adolf Hitler had expressed the conquest of eastern lands as his future goal in Mein Kampf, which was for that very reason considered the main potential adversary by the Soviets. The film also mentions the Battle of Lake Hassan, a major conflict with the Japanese on the Manchurian border which took place one year earlier.
While reminding the Soviet populace of external threats, Pyryev also signals that the Soviet Union has the moral and material resources to handle them thanks to the process of rapid industrialisation. That process is manifested through tractors, machines that symbolise new technological power, and which could be easily converted into tanks. While Tractor Drivers functions as propaganda reasonably well, it leaves much to be desired as light entertainment, at least when compared with Hollywood films of the time. Pyryev lacks the sophistication and innovativeness of Grigori Alexandrov, another grand author of Stalin-era musical comedies. His film, in a strictly technical sense, looks rough around the edges and the acting is at times too theatrical. Stepan Kayukov appears to be the only cast member who acts and looks like a truly comical character, and he even manages to upstage Marina Ladynina, the director’s wife, who actually became the greatest Soviet cinema star at the time. Some of the scenes, on the other hand, were directed well. What ultimately saves this film is the music by the Pokrass Brothers, who, together with lyricist Boris Laskin, brought two songs that would become part of Soviet popular culture. One was “Tri Tankista” (“Three Tankmen”), which retold the Battle of Lake Hassan, and another was “March of the Soviet Tankmen”.
Like so many Soviet films from the Stalinist period, Tractor Drivers was subjected to censorship in the post-Stalin years, with a new version purging all references to Stalin; the original became available only after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1991, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, a parodic remake, Tractor Drivers 2, set in the contemporary period, was directed by Gleb and Igor Aleynikov.
RATING: 5/10 (++)
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