{"id":14223,"date":"2021-05-20T21:00:14","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T01:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=14223"},"modified":"2021-05-16T23:15:22","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T03:15:22","slug":"storm-over-asia-1928-vsevolod-pudovkin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/14223","title":{"rendered":"Storm Over Asia (1928, Vsevolod Pudovkin)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On to the early Soviet Revolutionary chapter in the Vogel book, characterized in form by “an
\naggressive rejection of conventional methods and systems and a profound concern with the theory and language of film.” He writes on Eisenstein’s Strike<\/em> and montage theory, the aesthetic poetry of Dovzhenko’s Earth<\/a><\/em>, the avant-documentary of Vertov’s Man With The Movie Camera<\/a><\/em>, and this Pudovkin. VP is described as “more sensuous and less cerebral than Eisenstein or Vertov” – I’d seen his wonderful Mother<\/a><\/em> and Chess Fever<\/a><\/em>, but not this one.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Master Mongol fur hunter is sick, sending his son to the bazaar. Much is made of the lovely fur he’s gonna sell which will feed them for months, so you know something’s gonna happen, and pretty soon a monk praying for the old man’s healing attempts to grab it as payment until the son kicks his ass and takes it back. The music is all light flutes for 15 minutes until a low bass kicks in when the suit-wearing whites appear “who guard the interest of capitalism.”<\/p>\n

There’s a panic in town when the son punches a capitalist for offering too little, everyone flees while the white guy comically falls down getting lost in his own coat. “AVENGE THE WHITE MAN’S BLOOD” say the titles after he knifes an enforcer in self defense, never a phrase you want to see, and son goes on the run.<\/p>\n

Sinister Whites:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The white man’s blood:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

It’s an exciting and plotty movie, incidentally with lots of sword dancing and some cat tossing. Our guy runs into pro-soviet partisans fighting in the mountains, rescues their chief by tossing an enemy machine gunner off a cliff, and joins the struggle until captured and executed by the whites. But as he rolls down a cliff, they discover the amulet he’d recovered from the ass-kicked monk back at dad’s house, and believe him to be a descendant of Genghis Khan, rushing to save his life in order to install him as a puppet ruler.<\/p>\n

Son in the mountains:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

In chains:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n

The whites dress him in their clothes, never noticing the simmering rage on his face. He’s reunited with his enemy and property, snatching his fox fur from the evil furrier’s girl, prompting her to get the vapors and the white trader to go on a racist tirade, while in a back room the other whites draw up papers to steal the country. After a prisoner is shot right in front of the son he finally speaks up, and as he rages, the picture and intertitles begin to strobe. Finally, he grabs a sword and rides away, a literal storm blowing away the whites who give chase.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Vogel:<\/p>\n

Other strong images and episodes had … a powerful, radicalizing impact
\non audiences: the Mongol about to be executed, heedlessly walking through a mud puddle which his “civilized” British executioner studiously avoids … a dignified Lama priest and a ridiculous British general’s wife cross cut while dressing for a formal occasion … Altogether, the film is an object lesson in visual political cinema, glowing with revolutionary fervor and hatred for oppression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Val\u00e9ry Inkijinoff the Son would continue acting, appearing in late Fritz Lang movies, a non-Lang Mabuse<\/em>, and an Eddie Constantine action flick. The furrier was in Pudovkin’s previous film The End of St. Petersburg<\/em>. Pudovkin himself acted in films by the other major filmmakers mentioned above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On to the early Soviet Revolutionary chapter in the Vogel book, characterized in form by “an aggressive rejection of conventional methods and systems and a profound concern with the theory and language of film.” He writes on Eisenstein’s Strike and montage theory, the aesthetic poetry of Dovzhenko’s Earth, the avant-documentary of Vertov’s Man With The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[526,1033,2863,45,64,2852,1239],"class_list":["post-14223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1920s","tag-cat-tossing","tag-mongolia","tag-russia","tag-silent","tag-vogel-subversives","tag-vsevolod-pudovkin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14259,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14223\/revisions\/14259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}