Maxim Gorky is the most important author of Russian literature in the first half of the 20th century. This is partly due to his works depicting the harsh lives of lower classes under the Czarist regime, which helped justify the Bolshevik revolution, and partly due to his literary style becoming the basis for Socialist Realism, the official cultural doctrine of the Soviet Union. The 1906 novel Mother, which is Gorky’s best known and most explicitly political work, was adapted into an eponymous silent feature film in 1926, directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, which is now considered one of the classics of early Soviet cinema.
The plot takes place in 1905, during a failed revolution against the regime of Czar Nicholas II. The unnamed protagonist (named as “Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova” in the novel, played by Vera Baranovskaya) is a woman whose family would be torn apart by those events. Her husband (played by Alexander Christyakov) is a factory worker who drinks too much and spends most of his salary on vodka, leaving the family destitute. Their son Pavel (played by Nikolai Batalov) has joined revolutionaries and hides guns and leaflets in the house. Father, due to his alcoholism, is easily recruited by the pro-government militia of the Black Hundreds and takes their side during a violent confrontation with striking workers, who are aided by Pavel. Father gets killed, while Pavel is later arrested. His mother, in desperation, gives up the hidden stash of weapons to authorities, hoping this would lead to his release. Instead, he is sentenced to hard labour. In the end, the mother decides to aid Pavel’s revolutionary friends in their attempt to set massive prison break during a public demonstration.
Mother was Pudovkin’s first feature film, released a year after Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. Comparisons between the two are inevitable, as both directors were enthusiastic supporters of the new Soviet regime, both had worked on film theory before putting it into practice, both had used new innovative montage techniques, and both films were set in exactly the same time period. Those comparisons, however, would show important differences between the two. Unlike Eisenstein’s work, which tries to recreate history with a collective protagonist, Pudovkin shows them from the perspective of the individual. Mother is much more tightly structured, conventional, less “artsy,” and easier to follow for viewers accustomed to today’s narrative techniques. This emphasis on individuals is mostly the result of the script by Nathan Zarkhi, which is often considered superior to Gorky’s novel (with whom Gorky himself wasn’t too pleased). Pudovkin adds to this by paying a lot of attention to clearly defined individuals and using plenty of close-ups. Pudovkin was also willing to find inspiration in non-Soviet sources, and one of the scenes near the end looks very much like the iconic finale of Griffith’s Way Down East.
This also means that the cast is having to work harder than it was usual for most of the silent era. Thankfully, Vera Baranovskaya, one of the more experienced stage actresses of her time, has easily adapted to the demands of the new medium and her performance, during which she plays a woman at least a decade or two older than herself, is very strong. Her character goes through a transformation – from abused wife and naive mother to dedicated activist – and does so in a very convincing way. Nikolai Batalov, as already experienced film actor, does very good job in the role of young revolutionary. His character is far from one-dimensional stereotype; Pavel dreams of freedom and even has a girlfriend (played by Pudovkin’s wife Anna Zemsteva). Even some of the villains are given individuality, like the Czarist judge (played by Pavel Poltoratskiy) who is more concerned about horses than his work during Pavel’s trial.
Although Mother ends with bloodshed and revolutionaries’ defeat (much like Eisenstein’s Strike), Pudovkin’s clever use of symbolic imagery suggests victory in the near future. The film proved to be a success both among the audience and the authorities, and Pudovkin later used the same approach and explored similar themes in his next two films – The End of St. Petersburg and Storm Over Asia – which are now, together with Mother, considered parts of the “Bolshevik trilogy”. Gorky’s novel was adapted in two later films – a 1955 version directed by Mark Donskoy and a 1990 version directed by Gleb Panfilov (not counting the 1958 East German adaptation and the 2011 Indian film Ilaignan). Pudovkin’s version, which was restored by Mosfilm in 1968 and given a soundtrack composed by Tikhon Krennikov, is considered the best.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
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