Getting to Know the Big Wide World

The chef d’oeuvre of the young Muratova. The story of the construction of a tractor factory filmed in a way that was inconceivable at the time. Muratova uses a poetic cinematographic idiom to give shape to the shapeless space, the unfinished building and the unstable relationships of the characters. She makes a tender movie about the shabby and at the same time exalted completion of the building. In this lyrical film, picturesque images merge with lifelike scenes, larded with intermezzos in folksy and Socialist settings.
Muratova chose a scenario about construction and the fantasy of love that ‘isn’t produced in factories’. She rewrote it, added images, lyrics, expressive caesuras and primitivistic collages, thus making a sophisticated patchwork.
Just as the strength of the common people in Fellini’s experimental art reinforces the lyrical backdrop of his talent, the unbridled emotionality in this film democratises Muratova’s sophisticated art.

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