toqtaqiya2 Review of Konets Sankt-Peterburga

Konets Sankt-Peterburga (1927)

No matter what your own politics or interpretation of history, you can't help admire the sheer joy Pudovkin takes in filmmaking.

[8/10 · 15 November 2010]

Trained in physics and chemistry, Vsevolod Pudovkin joined Lev Kuleshov's film workshop soon after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917. He systemized the master's methods in the pamphlet Film Technique (1926), which ennobled editing as the alpha and omega of film art. Pudovkin also insisted that the filmmaker had to make every scene vivid through facial expression and those details of setting he called 'plastic material'. Although critics judged Sergei Eisenstein the deeper theorist, Pudovkin's doctrines became canonical for aspiring filmmakers everywhere. By treating filmmaking as a matter of strict calculation, Pudovkin may have led critics to overlook his forceful storytelling and poetic imagination. The End Of St. Petersburg remains a powerful portrayal of the 1917 Revolution, seen from the bottom. Pudovkin follows D.W. Griffith in contriving to balance historical sweep with personal drama in a way that The Battleship Potemkin (1925) never attempts. In the most famous sequence, Pudovkin cross-cuts the battlefield with the stock exchange not only to illustrate how war yields profits but also to stir our anger at the obvious contrast between frenziedly bidding brokers and dead soldiers frozen in the mud. Throughout, the political lessons arise from emotional details. Once considered Eisenstein's peer, Pudovkin has wandered into the shadows. Mother (1926), a striking adaptation of Maxim Gorky's novel, has largely been remembered for its textbook montage. Adventurous experiments like Storm Over Asia (1928), A Simple Case (1932) and Deserter (1933) have largely been forgotten.