NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Flicker Alley Blu-ray (March 2020): Flicker Alley have transferred three films by director Vsevolod Pudovkin; Mother (1926), The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm over Asia (1928) in a two-dual-layered Blu-ray disc package called The Bolshevik Trilogy. He fought in the Russian army during World War I, was wounded, and spent three years in a German POW camp. We continue owe a the debt of gratitude to Flicker Alley as well as Lobster Films for restoring these silent era masterpieces. The image quality is mostly at the mercy of the surviving source material. The first Blu-ray has Mother looking quite damaged (see two captures at the bottom) but entirely watchable, and The End of St. Petersburg. That print is much better but still has, less-frequent, damage in the form of frame-specific marks, scratches and speckles. But the second film is crisper with occasional depth. It has some decently layered contrast. Both have high bitrates.

On the second Blu-ray, Flicker Alley have transferred Storm over Asia. Like the first two films, the image quality varies but is certainly very watchable with many outdoor sequences.

On their Blu-ray, Flicker Alley use a DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel tracks (24-bit) for all three films. On Mother (1926) there is a piano score by Antonio Coppola. The End of St. Petersburg features an orchestral score composed by Vladimir Yurovsky and Storm over Asia is accompanied by an impassioned score by composer Timothy Brock, performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. Flicker Alley offer optional English subtitles for the latter two films, Mother has English intertitles with English subtitles being unnecessary. The Blu-ray disc are Region FREE.

The Flicker Alley Blu-ray offers plenty of bonus material. There is a detail audio commentary on Mother (1926) featuring Russian film historian and curator Dr. Peter Bagrov who was recently appointed curator in charge of the Eastman Museum's Moving Image Department. He describes that the version we have on the Blu-ray is not the original version, but, most likely the American released version. He tells us that it has only two shots that are missing. On Storm over Asia there is an audio commentary by film historian and scholar, Jan-Christopher Horak director of the UCLA Film and Television Archive, editor of Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919--1945, and he is also author of Dream Merchants: Making and Selling Films in Hollywood's Golden Age. He is likewise excellent and an expert in detailing many specifics about the production history and era. Also included is a 10-miniute visual essay showcasing the five edits that inspired the Bolshevik revolution entitled A Revolution in Five Moves. We also get a comparison of Pudovkin’s “Five Principles of Editing”running 6-minutes. There are short clips of Amateur Images of St. Petersburg and Notebooks of a Tourist Presents: St. Petersburg (c.1920). Chess Fever (1925) - Pudovkin’s directorial debut, this ingenious satire of the Moscow chess craze combines staged scenes with documentary footage, and features a number of cameos from the worlds of cinema and chess . It runs exactly 20-minutes and the short is described on IMDb as "With an international chess tournament in progress, a young man becomes completely obsessed with the game. His fiancée has no interest in it, and becomes frustrated and depressed by his neglect of her, but wherever she goes she finds that she cannot escape chess. On the brink of giving up, she meets the world champion, Capablanca himself, with interesting results.". The package contains a souvenir booklet featuring a new essay by film author and historian Amy Sargeant.

Wow... step back in time almost 100-years. We can see and interpret Vsevolod Pudovkin's constructive montage expression utilizing such effects as close-ups of human faces and rapid editing. So wonderful for silent-era fans, Russian cinema aficionados, as well as inquisitive film students and world cinephiles to own this extensive Flicker Alley Blu-ray package. These are masterpeices. Just amazing. Very strongly recommended!

Gary Tooze