The End of St. Petersburg

The End of St. Petersburg is a 1927 silent film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and produced by Mezhrabpom. Commissioned to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, The End of St Petersburg was to be one of Pudovkin's most famous films and secured his place as one of the foremost Soviet montage film directors. A political film, it depicts the Bolsheviks' rise to power in 1917. The plot covers the period from about 1913 to 1917. Political figures of the time are not shown; the emphasis is on the struggle of ordinary people for their rights and for peace against the power of capital and the autocracy. The film forms part of Pudovkin's 'revolutionary trilogy', alongside Mother (1926) and Storm Over Asia (aka The Heir to Genghis Khan) (1928). The film inspired the composer Vernon Duke to write his eponymous oratorio (completed in 1937).