Themes: Redemption, Political Unrest, Mothers and Sons
Main Cast: Nikolai Batalov, Vera Baranovskaya, Alexander Chistyakov, Anna Zemtsova, Ivan Koval-Samborsky
Release Year: 1926
Country: SU
Run Time: 70 minutes
Plot
Mother (Mat) was the first of Russian-filmmaker Vsevold Pudovkin's "personal epics"-films that weave spectacular historical tales while never losing sight of the individual, and individual emotions, that motivate those tales. Based on a Maxim Gorky story, Mother recreates the abortive Russian revolution of 1905. The title character, played by Vera Baranovkskaya, is the unwitting cause of the imprisonment of her political-activist son Nikolai Batalov. When her boy is killed in an escape attempt, she is awakened to the horrors of the Czarist regime, and picks up Batalov's political cudgel. She too, is killed while participating in a worker's protest. The sweep and scope of the action scenes in Mother never dwarf the human story. What sticks in the mind most vividly is the intimate scene in which Batalov, contemplating his upcoming release from prison, begins dreaming of his mother, while superimposed closeups of her face blend into lyrical shots of the Russian spring thaw. Mother was the first of Pudovkin's trilogy of Revolution-inspired silent masterpieces: the subsequent films were End of St. Petersburg and Storm over Asia. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In this film, the mother of Pavel Vaslov is pulled into the revolutionary conflict when her husband and son find themselves on opposite sides during a worker's 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.
Cast
Vera Baranovskaya - Pelageya Nilovna Vlasova, the Mother
Nikolai Batalov - Pavel Vlasov, the Son
Aleksandr Chistyakov - Vlasov, the Father
Anna Zemtsova - Anna - a Revolutionary Girl
Ivan Koval-Samborsky - Vessovchtchnikov, Pavel's Friend
