All Slights Deserved

Let's start with the facts: western imperialism may have been responsible for many injustices, but despite the scenario depicted here British (or 'European') colonialism in Asia never extended as far as Mongolia. While Vsevolod Pudovkin may have intended his story to be a fable one suspects this point might have been lost on a the Russian audience, although perhaps it was all grist to the mill for the communist cause as Stalin began to flex his muscles. That aside, I'll have to confess my ignorance about the work of Pudovkin, who lives somewhat in the shadow of his contemporary Eisenstein, but also played an important role in expanding Soviet montage theory. This film, the final part of a loose trilogy of Bolshevik propaganda works that included Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927). Compared with Eisenstein it's surprisingly western, in both the broader and thematic sense of the word, utilising the barren Mongolian tundra in a way John Ford wo...