Mother (1926 film)

Mother
Film poster
Directed by	Vsevolod Pudovkin
Written by	Nathan Zarkhi Maxim Gorky (novel)
Starring	Vera Baranovskaya Nikolai Batalov
Music by	David Blok (1935 version) Tikhon Khrennikov (1970 version)
Cinematography	Anatoli Golovnya
Studio	Mezhrabpomfilm
Release date(s)	11 October 1926
Running time	66 minutes (1,800 meters)
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Silent film Russian intertitles

Mother (Russian: Мать, Mat) is a 1926 Soviet film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin depicting one woman's struggle against Tsarist rule during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The film is based on a novel of the same title by Maxim Gorky.

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 - 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)

DVD Cover

External links

• Mother at the Internet Movie Database
• Mother is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Mother at AllRovi
• Deleon, Cara Marisa, "Ideology and Reality: Society and Vsevolod Pudovkin’s Mother", senses of cinema 40 (July-Sept. 2006)