 The Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party required that it screen and approve Bezhin Meadow before its release . Multiple versions of the film were banned by the Committee , which cited them as " inartistic and politically bankrupt " , and claimed that Eisenstein " confused the class struggle with the struggle between good and evil " . By an order from the Chief Directorate of Soviet Cinema , production of the film was stopped permanently on March 17 , 1937 . Shumyatsky complained that Eisenstein had presented the conflicts of the film in somewhat Biblical terms , rather than placing the conflicts of the film in the context of the socialist class struggle . Eisenstein himself would later say that the murder of Stepok by his father was " reminiscent of Abraham 's sacrifice of Isaac " . 
