I think it is interesting that Mother was made (or released) the same year as Passaic Textile Strike. Both films deal with the events of a strike and the brutal attempts to bring it to a halt. But while the latter title is a simple, earnest document made without any pretense to "art," Mother was the work of a sophisticated film artist whose talents were directed to aiding the cause of proletarian struggle.
Another film that came to mind is the modern story in Griffith's Intolerance. It's the same situation. However, both Intolerance and the Passaic Textile Strike differ from Mother in one crucial respect: in both of those
films pains are taken to explain the motivations of the strikers. We are told why they are striking. In Pudovkin's film it is just assumed that the strikers are in the right and the owners or capitalists are in the wrong. The strike doesn't have to be explained or justified.I suppose the comparison is only valid in the case of Passaic Textile Strike, as Intolerance is telling a story in which the strike merely happens to figure. Intolerance actually comes to mind because of Griffith's influence on Soviet directors and here one of them is dealing with similar material.
Noteworthy about Mother is its concentration on close-ups of faces and its superimpositions. The actors who play the roles of mother and son are remarkable, intense, and Pudovkin uses those wonderful faces for maximum effect. The superimpositions show a relationship with the European "art film." I thought of Leger's Ballet Mecanique and Epstein's Coeur Fidele.
The film is about a family in revolutionary times. The son is involved with a group of revolutionaries who intend to strike. The father is recruited to stop it. In the violence he is killed. The authorities come to the home, after the son. They want him to confess, but he won't. The mother, who is terrfified, gets the leaflets and guns that he has hidden under the boards.
The mother is fantastic in her obsequiousness before the authorities. She is humble, always bowing, a perfect supplicant. But is this unwarranted? It seems like an appropriate response to people in power. And the mother doesn't show much awareness of the issues involved. The son and his friends were responsible for her husband's death. That's about all she understands.
The son is put on trial. The trial is a great set-piece. It shows "justice" in this society as a dreadful--and deadly--farce. Well-dressed women attend, regarding the whole thing as entertainment. One of the tribunal of justices is more interested in his mare than the fate of the young man which it is his duty to decide. The attitude of Pudovkin or the filmmakers is as sarcastic as that of Griffith in the modern story of Intolerance.
The son is given a harsh sentence. The mother is shocked and cries out, "Where is truth?" You have to wonder--well, what did she expect? After all, the son was concealing guns that were intended for use byrevolutionaries. Of course, the people in power are going to give him a harsh sentence. She should consider it lucky that they didn't take him out and shoot him. Her reaction really shows us how limited her understanding is.
The son's friends plan to help him break out of prison. The mother is suddenly one of them and brings some of the necessary items to the prison. She gives him the goods she has been concealing and says, with a smile, "From your friends." It is the warmest scene in the film.
There is trouble getting him out and he ends up escaping on ice floes in a scene which recalls the finale of Way Down East. The people of the city gather together in solidarity, the mother among them. Alas, the son's escape is not successful, he is shot and dies in his mother's arms.
And this turns her into a real revolutionary. Her private grief turns into a true revolutionary spirit. This is conveyed through the performer--in her faqce and body language. But she, too, is shot at the end.' Amidst all this action at the end is interspersed footage of frozen rivers and flowing water. It is the frozen energy of the masses which is beginning to be unleashed. The imagery reinforces the scene.
Mother doesn't seem all that hopeful to me. That's because the central character merely reacts to situations as they affect her personally. If the revolutionaries had been responsible for her son's death (and they could have been) she would have been just as willing to take up a flag and march against them. Man simply reacts to stimuli, it would seem. I don't find that very inspiring of confidence in human potential.
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