O Fim de São Petersburgo

The End of St Petersburg was another landmark of Soviet realist cinema, as good as if not better than Battleship Potemkin, Strike, or Storm Over Asia. It's incredibly powerful, with many absolutely stunning montage sequences that make today's quick cut edits look like like child's play in comparison. The language of cinema was invented in Russia and Germany by artists like Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Murnau, and Lang. Anyone interested in cinema history needs to see films like this one to appreciate how weak our current crop of auteurs truly are.

This silent 1927 masterpiece is truly brilliant. To me it embodies everything that cinema is meant to be; it's visual art in motion, literature with pictures, history with emotion; all those and much more. It really is at the peak of film-making.

I say that, but that is not to say it is a perfect film. Just that the intention in creating this bleak and powerful look at poverty in early 20th-century Russia is absolutely spot-on: It wants to tell a tale, create an image, and to breathe life into history. The intention is not simply to entertain like so many awful films of the past ten years, which is a good thing, since "The End of St. Petersberg" is great without actually being entertaining.

There are some very powerful scenes and some frankly unforgettable visual sequences - the scenes of the first world war for example, or the beginning of the workers' strike. Take it from me, Pudovkin's direction is absolutely masterful and I think it's sad that seemingly so few people have discovered him. But with all that said, by today's standards this doesn't quite have the staying power of Chaplin or Keaton.

It's quite wonderful to behold, but it can really only captivate the interest of people who are interested in details of history, or who know little of the events leading up to the Russian revolution. Unfortunately for me I'm neither very interested nor entirely ignorant and so while I'm very glad to have witnessed this grand-scale piece of master craftsmanship it couldn't completely peak my interest.

That's unimportant though in the great scheme of things, and I don't mean to say that I don't thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys film or art. ****1/2 / *****

Early on in The End of St. Petersburg, Pudovkin's reputation as a montage director is evidenced. A lake shore and rising sun is paired with a view of a windmill, linking together to form a more complete view of the morning. Montages show up later, most notably a scene in which an official stands up, the camera cuts to the chair falling and breaking, and then to an attendant's shocked face. These are instances wherein Pudovkin's linkage method is clear, as the images relate and build a fuller scene. However, there is a scene one might consider more in the vein of Eisenstein: footage of soldiers rushing out of trenches in WWI is interspersed with shots of businessmen viewed from above running up steps of buildings. They are surely different, and they juxtapose sharply. Perhaps Pudovkin aimed to show the differences of those two scenes, or maybe to show that they are similar as well. Shots of a chalkboard in between these two parallel worlds (it is unsure if it belongs in that of the businessmen, but one tends to assume it does) suggest that soldiers' deaths and workers' labor are but numbers. These scenes could come off as heavy handed, but they are nuanced and the film is an intricate piece of plot and tasteful treatment of history. The depiction of WWI doesn't hold anything back, with shots of bodies floating in trenches and men being gunned down in mass. The narrative of the villager is engrossing; it doesn't overshadow the history itself and yet the film would feel lacking without it; Ivan Chuvelev's piercing stare is taken full advantage of to provide a haunting and unsettling sensation. Pudovkin's The End of St. Petersburg is a cinematic epic, but not in the same vein as Battleship Potemkin; it is a lighter, more detail-oriented fare.

Pudovkin makes use of revolutionary techniques, especially montage, as he narrates the story of the storming of the Winter Palace in Skt. Petersburg, 1917. The plot centres on two families, one rural and one urban, whose paths cross as they engage passionately in the uprising. The film is a masterpiece in silent film narration.

I have to say that I was quite captivated by this film, and, of course, I found myself rooting for those poor Soviets. The symbol of the boiled potato which at first barely fed two people, finally being shared by the communists is quite striking. The film is visually wonderful. Both Poduvkin and Eisenstein have this thing for wonderful faces, with character and pain. Of course, everything is exaggerated. Those guys at the stock market, feasting on the spoils of the country while the proletariat slaved in the factories is brought to us with an incredible heavy-handedness. These must have been used extensively for propaganda purposes and must have had people up in arms. There are good performances and all the communist symbolism one could hope for. Unfortunately, not everything panned out quite so well a few years later, with the oppressed back under the heel of those who abuse power. See this film, however, and consider the plight of the poor of Russia, stuck under the Tsar and the fat cats.