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This blog will be all about film reviews. I'm going to be watching a lot of movies, writing reviews, and hopefully not spoiling any movies you plan to watch.
Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin Pudovkin’s Mother is a post Revolutionary propaganda film intended to try and make the viewer feel sympathy for the cause of the Communists. Set in pre-revolutionary Russia, the film follows Pavel and his family as they become embroiled in a factory strike. After Pavel and his revolutionaries kill his Father, Pavel’s mother turns on him and gets him convicted and sent to prison. However, she changes her ideology and ends up helping other workers break into the prison to break them out. In the ensuing chaos, Pavel and his mother are killed. The film is definitely attempting to connect with people on an emotional level. The plot is trying to make you feel sympathy for Pavel and his cause by showing his father to be a bad and abusive man. However, while it is obvious what Pudovkin is attempting to do, for a modern audience, the film feels detached and distant. The only time I felt real emotion was when Pavels dad was beating his mother. Apart from that, I was just watching pictures on a screen. However, while Pudovkin may have not succeed in engaging this modern audience, he did use some interesting film techniques. Twice, using a POV shot, he brought the camera in and out of focus. This further helped establish that the husband was drunk, and that the mother was sleepy. While not completely necessary, as it was obvious the husband was drunk and the mother was sleepy, it was a nice bit of cinematography that really caught my eye. All in all, Mother and Pudovkin were more than able to show what they were trying to achieve. I’m sure to the audience of the time, the film was able to do this very successfully. Unfortunately in modern times it just lacks that personal connection and therefore struggles to really engage the audience.
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