Sergei Eisenstein's first contemporary, rural subject, The General Line tells of a peasant woman's struggle against superstition, hostility, and greed in her attempt to form a collective and bring to it a bull, a cream separator, and a tractor. Here is one of Eisenstein's most beautiful if least known films, in which he developed his editorial concepts of sensual montage. The General Line is Eisenstein's “Russian Gothic,” populated with wonderful types often posed for the camera, and filled with humor and earthy imagery. There is a cream-separator spectacle to rival Busby Berkeley, wheat fields worthy of Tolstoy, marvelous antibureaucratic satire on the level of the Russian Eccentrics, and, despite Variety's observation that the film lacks love interest, a very moo-ving wedding. Our print of The General Line is archivist Naum Kleiman's partial restoration of the director's cut incorporating what remained of the original footage, with the title and ending as they were before Stalin called for a re-edit.