The End of St. Petersburg

Vsevolod Pudovkin's 1927 Soviet film was among the works commissioned for the tenth anniversary of the revolution. A nameless peasant coming from the country to Petersburg to look for work is used, without knowing it, as a strikebreaker; he is sent to the war and returns another man. Pudovkin's method differs from Eisenstein's: he works through the change in one person's consciousness rather than through the mass. The cross-cutting of the stock exchange with the front is the film's most cited passage and says whose profit the war is without a single line. Its visual force is high. The propagandistic purpose is plain and the story is subordinate to it. Who it's for: viewers interested in Soviet silent cinema and the history of editing. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a neutral account, or who finds silent films hard going.