Pudovkin's first feature length fiction film, an adaptation of a story
by Gorky about a peasant mother who comes to embrace revolutionary
ideals, is regularly cited as a classic of Soviet silent cinema for its
imaginative montage. Certainly the editing is superbly judged, but
Pudovkin's visual sense is here above all architectural, and at its
best reminiscent of Fritz Lang. The oppression of the workers is
visualised both in the confined interiors of their homes and in the
towering pinnacles of factory and prison, while the finest montage
sequences intensify the visual claustrophobia, until it is exploded
in the famous climax: marching rebels cross-cut with the breaking up of
an ice floe. Gripping and moving.
