Aleksandr Chistyakov

Vsevolod Pudovkin's adaptation of the Maxim Gorky novel, set during the failed Russian revolution of 1905. Vera Baranovskaya plays a timid working-class mother whose son Pavel (Nikolai Batalov) joins the strike against the factory owners; when he is arrested, she takes up the cause herself and is transformed from bystander into revolutionary. Pudovkin uses montage for emotion rather than Eisenstein's intellectual collision — the famous sequence cuts the prison break to melting ice on the river, movement itself becoming hope. Made at Mezhrabpom-Rus studio, it was a huge international success and established Pudovkin as a major director alongside Eisenstein. Baranovskaya's performance is often cited among the greatest of the silent era. The film is in the public domain.

Drama · Silent