Mother (1926) :
Brief Review -
Vsevolod Pudovkin kicks off his famous Russian 'revolution trilogy' with a socialist Mother of revolution. The Russian cinema industry in the 20s was on a different level altogether. I don't think Russian cinema was ever as powerful as it was in the 1920s. Sergei Eisenstein's films were leaving critics and movie lovers stunned, and somewhere around the same time, Vsevolod Pudovkin began his 'Russian revolution trilogy'. Sergei's "Strike" (1925) and "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) changed Russian cinema forever (at least that's what I believe), but Pudovkin's trilogy was equally important. Although I rated his films lower than Eisenstein's, I believe the importance and advanced storytelling were equally worthy. Storm Over Asia was a bit of a complex topic for me (you know, being an Indian, knowing nothing of the Magnolian revolt and Russian propaganda), but still gave me an idea of Vsevolod Pudovkin's vision and hard-hitting style of storytelling. At first, I thought Mother must be some melodrama about the mother's character, and in the first 5-6 minutes, everything was going that way only. Suddenly, there was a revolution, riots, fights, and so on, and I reminded myself that this was not your typical mother-son drama. Based on Maxim Gorky's 1906 novel, The Mother, the film depicts the radicalization of a mother during the Russian Revolution of 1905, after her husband is killed and her son is imprisoned. The presentation is raw, the actors are extremely expressive, the cinematography is first class, and the entire execution is brought to screen with a larger-than-life vision of Vsevolod. Mother has drama, action, patriotism, love, hate and Russian socialised segments that are worth your time. Watch it to see that never-seen-before socialist mother awakened by revolution you always miss in movies.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.
Vsevolod Pudovkin kicks off his famous Russian 'revolution trilogy' with a socialist Mother of revolution. The Russian cinema industry in the 20s was on a different level altogether. I don't think Russian cinema was ever as powerful as it was in the 1920s. Sergei Eisenstein's films were leaving critics and movie lovers stunned, and somewhere around the same time, Vsevolod Pudovkin began his 'Russian revolution trilogy'. Sergei's "Strike" (1925) and "Battleship Potemkin" (1925) changed Russian cinema forever (at least that's what I believe), but Pudovkin's trilogy was equally important. Although I rated his films lower than Eisenstein's, I believe the importance and advanced storytelling were equally worthy. Storm Over Asia was a bit of a complex topic for me (you know, being an Indian, knowing nothing of the Magnolian revolt and Russian propaganda), but still gave me an idea of Vsevolod Pudovkin's vision and hard-hitting style of storytelling. At first, I thought Mother must be some melodrama about the mother's character, and in the first 5-6 minutes, everything was going that way only. Suddenly, there was a revolution, riots, fights, and so on, and I reminded myself that this was not your typical mother-son drama. Based on Maxim Gorky's 1906 novel, The Mother, the film depicts the radicalization of a mother during the Russian Revolution of 1905, after her husband is killed and her son is imprisoned. The presentation is raw, the actors are extremely expressive, the cinematography is first class, and the entire execution is brought to screen with a larger-than-life vision of Vsevolod. Mother has drama, action, patriotism, love, hate and Russian socialised segments that are worth your time. Watch it to see that never-seen-before socialist mother awakened by revolution you always miss in movies.
RATING - 7/10*
By - #samthebestest.