Lullaby poses the question: what is happiness? Its responses are motherhood and October, shown as opening up all paths to women's development. In order to convince us of this not terribly self-evident association, the film uses a range of means to associate joyous motherhood with the revolution. In essence, the method employed is a development of the earlier documentary approach. The ongoing importance of documentary reference for the film is clear from the many drafts for the scenario, where initially the main characters had real prototypes and were named. However, this was increasingly allied to the idea of the film as a song. One version of the scenario describes the film in the following terms:
The plan I am submitting is the plan for a musical
and poetical
and graphic and documentary
work.
The words of the eponymous song sung by Soviet mothers to their children are the first and most straightforward way of linking motherhood and October :
Joy in October rose above the Earth.
Sleep, my little girl, sleep.
Joy is rocking with you in the cradle.
Sleep, my little girl, sleep. Jeremy HicksDziga Vertov defining Documenary Film I.B. TAURIS, 2007 (194 pages)