Mother

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1h 24m

History

Drama

List

100%

Tomatometer

5 Reviews

77%

Audience Score

500+ Ratings

Naïve person that she is, Pelageya (Vera Baranovskaya) can't undertand why her son (Nikolai Batajov) is organizing a workers' strike, while her boorish husband (Aleksandr Chistyakov) is trying to suppress it. When the latter is killed, Pelageya unwittingly gives up her son to the authorities, and is horrified when he is sent to jail. Gradually, as she begins to understand her son's ideological position, she commits herself to the revolutionary cause and fights to free her son.

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Otis Ferguson

The New Republic

It provides an experience that should open a few rather sleepy eyes to the artistic possibilities more and more being realized in this medium.

Jan 22, 2024

Full Review

Yasser Medina

Cinefilia

Pudovkin's debut feature takes advantage of the possibilities of ideological montage to revise Russian historical memory and, to a certain extent, magnify the Soviet propaganda it frames through the social condition of peasants. [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: 7/10

Jun 19, 2021

Full Review

Mattie Lucas

From the Front Row

The climactic scene, in which the mother stands alone against charging Czarist forces, her flag held high and defiant, is one of the most deeply moving images in all Soviet cinema.

Rated: 4/4

Apr 9, 2020

Full Review

David Bax

Battleship Pretension

...Pudovkin builds tension, character and sympathy through editing, be it the fast-paced fades that seem to usher contrasting forces inexorably toward conflict or the deliberately slowed down sections that anxiously await an explosion of violence.

Apr 3, 2020

Full Review

Jesús Fernández Santos

El Pais (Spain)

The film achieves a perfect equilibrium between a lyrical metaphor and a heroic prose. [Full Review in Spanish]

Jul 29, 2019

Full Review

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andrey k

Montage being a Soviet cinematic invention was a truly powerful and progressive tool in Soviet cinema influencing and changing the world cinema forever with pictures like "Battleship Potemkin". It was truly in the spirit of the Revolution. All these shots following each other in rapid succession, sometimes contradicting, sometimes complementing, create unique feeling of excitement, struggle, agitation and people's wrath. Concerning the story: it all would have been wonderful and nice if it hadn't been so awfully bad in the soviet reality where all that was depicted in the movie was multiplied by thousand in the history to follow. The ending, though, reminds the previous year's Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin". In general, the early Soviet cinema was truly powerful in its force of propaganda and depiction of the ordinary people.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

03/31/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Fairly epic, though also quite depressing.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

01/16/23

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Audience Member

Classic Soviet propaganda film with stunning cinematography.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I think it's the oldest film I see over 85 years spent now. So , it's unfair to judge it without putting it in its era, historical moment & the primitive nature of cinema equipments which I found bold at that time to shoot the horses running very closely near the end of the film. Seems like Gorky's novel was revolutionary or representing the revolution at that time.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

01/17/23

Full Review

Audience Member

I prefer later Pudovkin.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

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Audience Member

Hmm....I actually love Soviet film now....interesting

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

01/22/23

Full Review

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V.I. Pudovkin

Director

Vera Baranovskaya

Niovna Vlasova

Aleksandr Chistyakov

Vlasov

Nikolai Batajov

Pavel Vlasov

Ivan Koval-Samborsky

Vessovchtchnikov

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Police Officer

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Synopsis

Naïve person that she is, Pelageya (Vera Baranovskaya) can't undertand why her son (Nikolai Batajov) is organizing a workers' strike, while her boorish husband (Aleksandr Chistyakov) is trying to suppress it. When the latter is killed, Pelageya unwittingly gives up her son to the authorities, and is horrified when he is sent to jail. Gradually, as she begins to understand her son's ideological position, she commits herself to the revolutionary cause and fights to free her son.

Director: V.I. Pudovkin
Genre: History, Drama
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 25, 2020
Runtime: 1h 24m
Sound Mix: Surround

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