The Childhood of Maxim Gorky

Rating:
Summary: Deeply moving film that doesn't betray its Soviet origins
Review: Even good early Soviet films, like Storm Over Asia, often betray some sign of their propagandistic intentions (and the lesser ones have nothing but such intentions). That's not the case with this deeply moving account of the early childhood of the writer Gorky, which (probably because it was based on a well-loved book) simply captures the joys and sufferings of simple people with scarcely a hint of political intent. (An anarchist turns up toward the end, but only as a sort of harbinger of what would supposedly end the miseries of Tsarist Russia and usher in a new age.)

The pictures of the Russian character-- emotional, willful, self-destructive-- are as vivid as anything in Doestoevsky or Tolstoy, and the performances throughout are powerfully affecting-- you are not likely to forget wise Grigori,... the grandfather's King Lear..., or most of all the wonderfully warm and loving grandmother,...

The print is in excellent shape, with very good contrast, and the disc includes a short newsreel with scenes of pre-Revolutionary Moscow. This is one of those movies that was often talked about as being one of the best of all time, but then was so little seen for so long that it was easy to think it no longer deserved its reputation. It does, and it's remarkable that we can now have it in such a worthy edition.