Comrades, the Soviet cinema of the 1920s marked a creative explosion, especially in techniques of editing, the like and breadth of which were never seen again. Among these creators was Vsevolod Pudovkin, four of whose most important films are showcased in The Bolshevik Trilogy, a Blu-ray set produced by Flicker Alley in collaboration with Blackhawk Films and Lobster Films.
A little older than his colleagues, Pudovkin displayed techniques slightly less splashy than those of Sergei Eisenstein or Dziga Vertov and correspondingly more at the service of individual humans rather than “the masses”, and the irony is that this probably made the masses more emotionally responsive to his films. We mention these filmmakers together because they are the most famous and the most self-conscious in applying editing techniques, and also because they were the most forthright and effective in using cinema as propaganda in praise of the Russian Revolution and the workers’ state.