Story of movie Mother 1926 Film : Mother (Russian: ????, Mat) is a 1926 Soviet drama film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin depicting one woman's struggle against Tsarist rule during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The film is based on the 1906 novel The Mother by Maxim Gorky. It is the first film in Pudovkin's "revolutionary trilogy", alongside The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over Asia (aka The Heir to Genghis Khan) (1928).
| Mother | |
|---|---|
Film poster | |
| Directed by | Vsevolod Pudovkin |
| Written by | Nathan Zarkhi Maxim Gorky (novel) |
| Starring | Vera Baranovskaya Nikolai Batalov |
| Music by | David Blok (1935 version) Tikhon Khrennikov (1970 version) |
| Cinematography | Anatoli Golovnya |
Production company | Mezhrabpomfilm |
Release date |
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Running time | 89 minutes (1,800 meters) |
| Country | Soviet Union |
| Language | Silent film Russian intertitles |
The film underwent restoration in 1968 in the Mosfilm studio and a sound track was added with music by Tikhon Khrennikov.
Screenplay
In this film, the mother of Pavel Vlasov is drawn into the revolutionary conflict when her husband and son find themselves on opposite sides during a workers' strike. After her husband dies during the failed strike, she betrays her son's ideology in order to try, in vain, to save his life. He is arrested, tried in what amounts to a judicial farce, and sentenced to heavy labor in a prison camp. During his incarceration, his mother aligns herself with him and his ideology and joins the revolutionaries. In the climax of the movie, the mother and hundreds of others march to the prison in order to free the prisoners, who are aware of the plan and have planned their escape. Ultimately, the troops of the Tsar suppress the uprising, killing both mother and son in the final scenes.
- Vera Baranovskaya as Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, the Mother
- Nikolai Batalov as Pavel Vlasov, the Son
- Aleksandr Chistyakov as Vlasov, the Father
- Anna Zemtsova as Anna, a Revolutionary Girl
- Ivan Koval-Samborsky as Vessovchtchnikov, Pavel's Friend
- Vsevolod Pudovkin as Police Officer
- V. Savitsky as Isaik Gorbov, the Foreman
- N. Vidonov as Misha, a Worker
- F. Ivanov as Prison Warden (uncredited)
- Ivan Bobrov as Young Prisoner (uncredited)
- Vladimir Uralsky as Student (uncredited)
- Aleksandr Gromov as Revolutionary (uncredited)
Pudovkin wrote in his book Film technique and Film acting that "In my earlier film, Mother, I tried to affect the spectators, not by the psychological performances of an actor, but by plastic synthesis through editing."
Grigori Roshal praised Pudovkin for his innovative style; "Being the first to introduce the idea of creating characterizations by means of montage in films, he has done in the cinema what Dickens did in novels."
