Mother is a 1926 Soviet

Cinema of the Soviet Union

The cinema of the Soviet Union, not to be confused with "Cinema of Russia" despite Russian language films being predominant in both genres, includes several film contributions of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union reflecting elements of their pre-Soviet culture, language and history,...

 film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin

Vsevolod Pudovkin

Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...

 depicting one woman's struggle against Tsar

Tsar

Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

ist rule during the Russian Revolution of 1905

Russian Revolution of 1905

The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...

. The film is based on a novel of the same title by Maxim Gorky

Maxim Gorky

Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

.

In this film, the mother of Pavel Vlasov 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
• Vsevolod Pudovkin
  Vsevolod Pudovkin
  Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage...
  
   - Police Officer
• V. Savitsky - Isaik Gorbov, the Foreman
• N. Vidonov - Misha, a Worker
• F. Ivanov - Prison Warden (uncredited)
• Ivan Bobrov - Young Prisoner (uncredited)
• Vladimir Uralsky - Student (uncredited)
• Aleksandr Gromov - Revolutionary (uncredited)

External links

• Deleon, Cara Marisa, "Ideology and Reality: Society and Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mother", senses of cinema 40 (July-Sept. 2006)