A little like "Battleship Potemkin", but almost a musical, with touches of romance. A relatively early soviet sound film (it still shows traces of techniques reminiscent of silent films, but also revels in the ability to use sound) -- it tells the story of Maxim, a young factory worker who gets involved in "labor problems" and then is branded a revolutionary trouble-maker. Too bad a sub-titled version isn't readily available.
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vladislavmanoylo3 October 2015The Youth of Maxim is a film driven by its raw humanity. Through the disparate events and characters in the movie, the linking thread for us members of the audience is the empathy that the film creates for the main characters. Choosing to keep the plot simple worked to the film's benefit because it allowed more scenes to build the characters. In particular the introduction of Maxim and his two friends is interesting.
After the brief, and somewhat out of place, prologue, three men are introduced by having one of them call out for his friends. And of the three friends, the titular characters is the fourth to appear- arriving with a dog in front of him. One of them talks about his dreams, Maxim arrives singing, and they all enjoy each other's company. The film takes time to show emotion in its scenes and gives a view into the hearts of the characters. This allows us to see the central transformations in the characters and makes many of the scenes more powerful.
One of the best moments of driving a scene by emotion is during the strike. The entire sequence relies on an implicit understanding of what all of the members are marching for, and because of the events leading up to that one, and because of the deliberate moments spent immediately prior to the strike the scene works tremendously well. With barely a word spoken there is conveyance of the intense emotion felt towards the cause of the grief, towards the owner of the factory and towards the system that allowed the events.
Outside of just plot, the movie characterizes well using the actors physical movement and their voices- both in dialogue and especially in song. The clearest example is inside the prison where the characters are trying to sing while they are being physically restrained by the officers there. The movie does not try to be to subtle, and whether that is good or bad in the eyes of a viewer is probably the deciding factor for their enjoyment of the film. -
maria_isabee3 October 2015The film entitled "Youth of Maxim" (1935) is a Soviet film directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. The plot revolves around a revolutionary underground group that spreads leaflets of mostly anti-tsarist slogans. Among one of the members is Maxim, who is portrayed as an ideal communist hero. Maxim's character matures as the story unravels as he begins to be exposed to the reality of the workers conditions. The audience clearly see's the progress of Maxim, who was at the beginning seen as an innocent ignorant peasant to his gaining of social consciousness of the reality before him. This can be seen whenever he was brought it to meet his superior who asked him if it would be okay to sell out his comrades. Also the scene where he asked the same person to help his comrade who had gotten injured working the machines, but was immediately denied help and even told it was his friends fault for coming to work drunk. Considering this is a relatively dark film the directors take it upon themselves to play with the lighting in certain scenes. The boss of the factory is particularly highlighted almost to the point where he is glowing. His appearance most likely serves as this contrast between the workers. He is seen as this clean, bright, higher status individual while the workers have this dirty, unkept, lower class appearance. The same scene I mentioned early where Maxim was asking his boss for help but got rejected there was a moment where dirt was actually thrown unto him giving this direct connotation. Other individuals of higher rank are also highlighted such as the soldiers.