MOTHER

Based on the novel of the same name by Maksim Gorkij, Mother is considered one of the masterpieces of Soviet silent cinema, so well received internationally that in the 1950s it was ranked among the 12 best films in the history of cinema in an international referendum among critics. Set in St Petersburg in 1905, during the uprisings, the film debut of the 32-year-old Pudovkin, a pupil of Kulesov, has as its protagonist Palageja Niloyna, the widow of an alcoholic worker killed in a factory firefight, who fears for the life of her son Pavel, a soldier in the revolutionary movement, and therefore reveals to the police where she has hidden her weapons. This maternal selfishness turns into a gradual awareness: when Pavel dies during an attempt to escape during a demonstration on 1st May, it is she who picks up the red flag and is killed by the mounted dragoons. The first stage of a trilogy that also includes The End of St Petersburg and Storms over Asia.