The film entitled "The end of St. Petersburg," directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin is a narrative, revolved around a naïve young country boy who travels to St. Petersburg along with his mother in search of work. He then betrays his friend, whom he is staying with, by informing the factory's manager of him being the perpetrator behind the strike leading to his arrest. He then realizes the consequences of his mistake and comes to understand the economic forces his countrymen are fighting for and results in attacking his employer. He then goes to jail and later is forced to join the army. Pudovkin uses parallelism quite a bit to express certain situations take for example the shot of Russian soldiers running over the top of the trenches towards their death, which immediately cuts to a shot of a mass amount of bourgeoisie men running up the stairs to the stock exchange facility. This showing completely different environments, as well as different actions that are taking place at the same moment in time. We are shown the brutal reality of the capitalist system that is making a profit in the murder of their own people. Pudovkin shows individuals who hold power as larger figures in comparison to the lower class citizens. For instance near the beginning of the film the naïve country boy and his mother are shown to us shrunken to the size of ants in comparison to the city's gigantic monuments. There was a scene when they were asking directions from a local officer, where the officer was also a significant amount taller than them. Pudovkin again shows us this near the conclusion of the film but where the young country boy is the equal size of the city. The instrumental throughout the film also serves to dramatized actions take for example the scene were a mother slams her daughter from reaching to grab a potato, or when an object breaks. Pudovkin also uses text to caption off certain scenes beautifully.
Review of Konets Sankt-Peterburga
