Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Pierre Radulescu Five movies were made based on Gorky's novel: in 1920 by Aleksandr Razumnyi, in 1926 by Vsevolod Pudovkin, in 1941 by Leonid Lukov, in 1956 by Mark Donskoy (starring Aleksey Batalov as Pavel Vlassov), and in 1990 by Gleb Panfilov. Also Bertolt Brecht put the novel on stage in 1932. Hanns Eisler created, based on the novel, a cantata for chorus, solo voices and two pianos in 1935.From all this list, undoubtedly impressive by number and persons implied, I was able to watch only the silent made in 1926 by Vsevolod Pudovkin. Politics aside, it is a masterpiece. He was one of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the 1920's avant-garde (in the same line with Kuleshov, Eisenstein, and all the others), and this movie proves it brilliantly.Pudovkin's movie has an architecture that is radically different from that of the novel. One is talking about very recent events, the other is framing the facts and personages into a paradigm. Both are strongly motivated politically, but the two political moments are very different: the novel is made in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution, it's real time life, while the movie comes in the first years of Soviet power, preoccupied to build the official history of the revolution, in other words the founding mythology. While Gorky tells us a story of life flowing naturally, with personages of flesh and bones, Pudovkin demonstrates a paradigm, deals with a myth in the making. And in any myth the facts and personages are no more just facts and personages like anything else from real life: they are prototypes aiming to convey a sense. I'll give you only one example: the bridge over the river separating factory and the neighborhood. At Gorky it's just a bridge, nothing else. At Pudovkin it is a path you take to leave your submissive life and enter the revolutionary struggle. So it becomes a prototype within a paradigm, conveying a metaphysical significance.Gorky's novel inaugurates the Socialist Realism: it means its approach is realist to the bone, so its style is traditional (following the traditional Realism of the 19th century, that were to be observed by all Socialist Realist artists). Does also the movie belong to the Socialist Realist style? I don't think so. I would say that by the contrary it belongs hundred percent to the avant-garde of the twenties, so it rejects totally the tradition. It is a Constructivist oeuvre, calling in mind maybe the Expressionist movies made in Germany in the same epoch. These artists of the twenties, totally committed politically, while thinking to build the new society based on their radically new form of art and throwing over the board all that was old, traditional, classic, Realism included. The thirties would stop them forcefully, they would have to obey to the party dogmas or go to hell (the first circle or beyond).A few words about the cast: Vera Baranovskaya made a remarkable performance in the role of the mother; she would play one year later in the following movie made by Pudovkin, The End of St. Petersburg; Nikolai Batalov (1899-1937), who played in the role of the son, was also Soldier Gusev in Aelita (a fine role in a fine movie); it seems that he was not related to Aleksey Batalov, who played Pavel Vlassov in the movie of Mark Donskoy from 1956; and last but not least, Pudovkin himself in the role of a police officer- the guy really enjoyed the negative roles

Phobon Nika What is it, where is it, how will it affect me? The following of one woman's struggle against Tsarist rule during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Мать, the pristine and devastating silent early work of the bustling mid-1920s Soviet Propaganda film industry, is a triumph on many levels. The ethos surrounding films like it of that certain age and origin: Eisenstein and his similar other Godly directors, is heavily scholarly, intellectual and time-dedicated, so to analyse Мать inside out really is well and truly beyond the amateur's concern to be a condescending writer. But, to be realistic, it's a naïve disgrace to formality if a list doesn't feature one of them on it. Vsevolod Pudovkin, a less known director of the decade's masterminds yet still heralded as a legend by his cult following for his innovative and often deeply personal practice, directs my personal, instinctive pick. Voted by an international panel of critics at the Brussel's World Fair as the 6th greatest film made up until the fateful judging day in 1958, it often loses limelight to the likes of Eisenstein's courageous, raw, untamed Battleship Potemkin and Dovzhenko's calmer, traditionally beautiful social study Earth. Мать, of course in its silent wisdom, force-feeds a supremely strong and vivid depiction of an individual struggle in a time of social instability. Whereas most works of the 1920s Soviet silent era focus on crowd mentality: whereby the struggle is depicted more of a Bayeux Tapestry of confusion and oppression, Pudovkin's take is lovely to see, and from the first few bold moments of Мать, we are introduced to our refreshingly small circle of main characters: a father, a mother, and a son. Few members of the audience will fail to identify with one person in such a configuration, as the aged camera-work of Мать still, after the prestigious test of time, provides a frame, a view to look in at each of the unique yet interconnected struggles of each family member. Мать evolves as clear as crystal before the eyes of any human of any outlook, a living and breathing piece of powerful, political art into a devastating slow riot for a new zero nation. As the realistic violence and suppression of the down-trodden progresses, a timeless and formulaic asset of the kind of film Мать must somewhat conform to be, there's something that smells a bit different in the air. We're always reminded of the maternal bond, its strength and power to drive a soul to unbearable torment, and how such a regime that these films fabricate propaganda against can directly sever it. This link that Мать explores is so volatile and hard-hitting to the blissful maximum extent that the limited medium of the silent, the black and white and that, again, time- honoured formula of the day can allow it to. Pudovkin's abilities with his 1926 sublime masterpiece generate an overwhelming empathy, giving the audience the completely, totally exclusive opportunity to visualise a fresh revolution through the eyes of those who are the most fragile and at risk emotionally from it.

Armand a film of its time. adaptation of touching work. a good cast. a great montage. water as symbol, key and word for a silent movie about human storm. large isles of propaganda. and powerful, precise, touching silhouette of masterpiece. it is more than a film or page of history. more than instrument of regime. more than a kind of reflection for a profound social metamorphose. it is a unique meeting. with a subtle art to glorify a regime without sacrifice the truth. a show of nuances. and fabulous act of Vera Baranovszkaia. her role is exploration of small pieces of mother heart. the novel of Gorki is scene for one of powerful demonstration to present reality behind the words. and this is secret of this movie like many others Russians films. the heart of a sensitivity in perfect light, with delicate shadows.

chaos-rampant Structures shaping into motion, motions reshaping into structure, against each other, so that the whole thing is like a snowstorm rolling down a hill; gathering itself to itself. Which is to say the people to the people, in an effort at once to reshape and portray the reshaped world.Look here. The first third ends with a murder, so the entire part is about wild kinetic energy building to it; disenchanted workers plotting a strike – the metaphor for revolution, as so often in these films – factory cronies plotting to break them, pitting rugged father against idealist son. Meanwhile the factory owners, disinterested, arrogant, oversee the bloody drama from their lofty window.The second third ends with injustice, and so the entire second part is about the mockery of justice; a colonel promising the hapless mother her son – the instigator of events - will be okay if she surrenders a hidden stash of guns, then arresting him, followed by a mock trial where each of the judges presiding is a parody of human values.The final part is about revolution, so the entire thing is about the preparations of the final stand. Again the revolutionary metaphor, so poignant in these films; a prison filled entirely with workers, farmers, the oppressed with a dream languishing somewhere. And so, everything becomes imbued with meaning; the prison walls as walls at large, the doors slammed open with conflict, the bridge where passage is presaged by a rite of violence.The strikers scattered by mounted police into a mob, it's the mother who picks up the banner of revolution. Down by the bridge, floating ice is shattered on the concrete pillars; ice dissolves, floating away, but the bridge stands.And so the suffering and sacrifice of the nameless heroes is transformed into structures that will stand the test of time; bridges, factories, where the banner of revolution unfurls at the top, enduring symbols of a thriving industry, a healthy, self-sufficient nation. We may think what we want about the equation in terms of politics, but how it's equated through cinema? It comes with the natural ease that only a filmmaking tradition so deeply centered in its worldview could afford; the individual is transmuted, engulfed into a collective structure - the Soviet god in place of a god - , in a way that reveals the individual struggle to have been redolent with purpose all along. It's a spiritual vision, make no mistake; about communion with the life-destroying, life-renewing source; about harmony of structure from the chaos of forms.