In one of the steppe regions of Kazakhstan arrives on a trip Komsomol youth squad. Severe spring frosts and flows of mud, debilitating work is not on specialty complicate the already difficult lives of arrivals. Against the backdrop of such a life is a touching romance Secretary Komsomol organization and traktoristki Anna ... In 1954, the famous Soviet operator Yuri Ekelchiku suggested - the first of the Soviet operators - to hold experienced wide survey. The choice was an unusually happy: wide screen as if created specifically for Ekelchika on his constant desire to go beyond the frame, declared neobyatnoe. But the new format has brought new problems. Ekelchik obsessing looking for ways to feed the most expressive actor, checks with the possibility of shooting motion. Experiments and receive real goal - along with director Mikhail Kalatozov Ekelchik begins preparations for the shooting of the first Soviet widescreen movie Tselina by Nikolai Pogodin scenario. Unfortunately, the film had to withdraw a normal screen. But labor Ekelchika not gone and experienced shooting, and taken on a wide screen acting samples were carefully and with great benefit operators studied, followed by Ekelchikom absorb the new format. The first echelon (under the name of the film came out on the screen) again demonstrated the ability to change Ekelchika, finding new means of expression for new content. But the significance of the film in the development of carrier-art does not stop there. It's really, it seems, has not yet been assessed. The reason is that individual elements of synthetic art of cinema, as correctly noted art historian A. Kamensky, have a certain autonomy development. She and manifested in the first line - went fine interpretation of a few more of scenario and director solutions. A film importance, place in the history of cinema is defined as a rule, the overall assessment. For Kalatozova (as, indeed, and for cinema in general) The first echelon had a transitional film: he began to get rid of this period malokartinya many canons and only naschupyval a style that has made his next movie - The Cranes Are Flying (1957) event not only the Soviet - of world cinema.