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
