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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Biopic > Epic > War > Propaganda > Revolution > Soviet Union > Russia > Alexander Nevsky (1938)/October (1927/Ten Days That Shook The World/Eisenstein/Corinth DVDs)/The Bolshevik Revolution: Mother (1926) / The End of St. Petersburg (1927) / Storm Over Asia (1928/Podovkin

Alexander Nevsky (1938)/October (1927/Ten Days That Shook The World/Eisenstein/Corinth DVDs)/The Bolshevik Revolution: Mother (1926) / The End of St. Petersburg (1927) / Storm Over Asia (1928/Podovkin/Flicker Alley Blu-ray Set)



Picture: C/C/B-/B/B- Sound: C/C/B-/C+/B- Extras: D/D/B/B/B Films: B+/B+/B+/B+/B



Five classics of Soviet Cinema, most of which you have likely heard of before if not seen (and all of which you should see at least once,) are now available to view in new disc editions...



We have five films by two of the most important director's of their time, each wioth a different and effective approach to filmmaking that included strong, innovative senses of editing. Sergei Eisenstein backed what he called 'intellectual montage' and Vsevolod Pudovkin followed his own five principles of editing. It made for some differences, but both were making pro-Soviet cinema that helped build the now-defunct country early on and still influence filmmaking today.


Eisenstein was the more popular and inevitably more influential of the two, so much so that he would become a threat to Josef Stalin, who had to take the long way in dealing with him and eventually getting rid of him (Eisenstein was so sick that he never finished his third Ivan The Terrible film, which was an attack on Stalin, but Stalin just let him die from his illnesses instead of having him tortured, killed and/or having him 'disappear' as to have zero backlash from their fellow Soviets) and Podovkin survived much longer, also writing books and died of a heart attack by 1953 as an established Pro-Soviet filmmaker who Stalin had few issues with.


Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (1938) is his epic biopic of the title character (Nikolai Cherkassov more than carrying the picture) battling aggressors against Russia as a major hero, building up to the major final conflict with the Teutons in the famous 'Battle Of The Ice' that climaxes the drama and propaganda as effectively as possible. It is as well shot as it is well-acted, well-edited and has a Prokofiev score, but one that was infamously included on the soundtrack as a temp score where the horns sound like kazoos because Stalin said so. Temporarily pulled when the Soviets and Nazis signed their doomed non-aggression pact, it is a key classic.


Eisenstein's October (1927/Ten Days That Shook The World) is a flipside of his masterpiece Battleship Potemkin (1925, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) featuring the Russian Revolution that succeeded, versus the one that did not. The Czars are cold and evil, the Bolsheviks, humane, kind and wise with depth and care for all people. Heavy-handed like many other such propaganda films, but not quite as effective as the earlier film, it still offers constant visual impact throughout. Sometimes some combinations of shots work better than others, but this was very effective work in its time that has aged better still than many such films that have followed it, agit-prop or otherwise and only the director's third feature film.


It was made to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, while Podovkin's The End Of St. Petersburg (reviewed below) was the other. The later 1966 Dimitri Shostakovich score is used here, not the earlier Edmund Meisel score from the original release of the film.


By coincidence, a double Blu-ray set of three of Podovkin's films have also been issued as The Bolshevik Revolution (or Revolutionary Trilogy) and features three of his earliest and best films:


Mother (1926) has a woman in 1905 Russia (Vera Baranovskaya) so traumatized by the death of members of her family are killed or jailed in the face of Czarist control, she decides she's lost it all and becomes an enemy of the state.


The End of St. Petersburg (1927) covers the last four years of Czarist rule and how they are overthrow in the name of the people to form the Soviet Union, thanks to the Bolsheviks. Can regular, plain, simple people have any happiness, peace, prosperity or hope against a violent, greedy system?


And finally, Storm Over Asia (1928) starts in 1918 with a simple Mongol trader (Valery Inkijinoff) by greedy 'European' traders, so he is fighting with the Soviets by 1920 against the British, who capture him, then he and those against the British find out he is a descendent of no less than Genghis Khan! Though no such war ever happened in real life, the propaganda points are obvious and pull no punches. Unfortunately, it makes it the least effective of the three films, though it is always interesting at points it does and does not work.



Now for playback performance. One would hope such important and visually striking films would look as good as they can, but that is sadly not always the case, especially when so many classic films still need much preservation and restoration.


The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfers on the three Bolshevik films can definitely show the age of the materials used, but Petersburg looks easily the best and is easily the best-looking film here. All three have DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Stereo lossless mixes for their various music scores and that's fine, but the music only did so much for me and Petersburg somehow sounds the poorest of the three.


The 1.20 X 1 image and lossy Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono on the DVDs repeat the same transfers from the old 12-inch analog LaserDiscs Image Entertainment issued in the long obsolete format roughly three decades ago, including the same damage on the prints, so nothing has been fixed or cleaned since. Additionally, the sound here is more compressed and poorer than the PCM 2.0 Mono on the old LaserDiscs, so to say these need new transfers is an understatement.


The DVD have no extras, while the Blu-ray set includes another nicely illustrated booklet on the films including informative text and essays (film author and historian Amy Sargeant supplies the one here) we always get from Flicker Alley. The discs add:


Chess Fever (1925): Pudovkin's directorial debut, this ingenious satire of the Moscow chess craze combines staged scenes with documentary footage, and features a number of cameos from the worlds of cinema and chess. (Runtime: 28 minutes)


A Revolution in Five Moves: A visual essay by Maxim Pozdorovkin showcasing the five edits that inspired the Bolshevik revolution. (Runtime 9 minutes)


''Five Principles of Editing'': A comparison of Pudovkin's ''Five Principles of Editing''. (Runtime: 7 minutes)


Amateur Images of St. Petersburg (1930): (Runtime: 2 minutes)


Notebooks of a Tourist Presents: St. Petersburg (c. 1920): (Runtime: 2 minutes)


Feature Length Audio Commentary - Storm Over Asia (1928): Featuring film historian and scholar, Jan-Christopher Horak.


and a Feature Length Audio Commentary - Mother (1926): Featuring Russian film historian and curator Peter Bagrov.



- Nicholas Sheffo


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