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Thunder Over Mexico
(1933)
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Samuel Brody
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Thunder Over Mexico is, politically speaking, a distortion of content. The causes for its formal perversion can only be understood if they are regarded as flowing directly from the conscious inversion of Eisenstein's original intentions.
Posted Feb 04, 2021
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(undefined)
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Samuel Brody
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Its ethnographic and political implications are beyond criticism, while some very original mounting make it a film which holds you thruout its length.
Posted May 08, 2020
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(undefined)
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Emjo Basshe
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Everywhere the great spirit of the workers of the Soviet Union shows itself.
Posted May 08, 2020
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(undefined)
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Helene Woolf
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The timeliness of a Jew at War, with a new imperialist war in the offing, makes it even more significant.
Posted May 08, 2020
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Raffles
(1930)
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Samuel Brody
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It's all papier mache from the sets to the dramatis personae.
Posted May 08, 2020
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China Express
(1929)
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William Seigel
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I have yet to see any non-Russian director depict scenes of rebellion, struggle and destruction with such gusto. The camera eye moves in a sort of a frenzy, catching distorted faces, clenched fists, guns, broken glass and upset furniture.
Posted May 08, 2020
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Variety
(1925)
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Edwin Seaver
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Variety riots in the beauty of materials, of things alive and perfect in themselves.
Posted May 08, 2020
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Fragment of an Empire
(1929)
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Emjo Basshe
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Fragment of an Empire shows that the cinema artists of the Soviet Union are never satisfied with just one technique, with one theme or a single triumph. They keep on experimenting, creating, discovering.
Posted May 08, 2020
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Battleship Potemkin
(1925)
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Edwin Seaver
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Potemkin is a complete break from anything hitherto known in the art of the motion picture.
Posted Apr 10, 2020
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Metropolis
(1927)
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Lewis Mumford
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Metropolis is a sentimental mess; it is staggering; yes, but it has the blind staggers; and they lead to nothing but the sentimental repentance (capital and labor shaking hands!) of the morning after.
Posted Apr 10, 2020
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(undefined)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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A direct invitation to murder Soviet officials.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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Stolen Heaven
(1931)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Off they go the land of dreams on their 20,000 bucks, and we never are told they are anything but respectable, true to the Hays code, the evangelical bible of the movie.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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Bed and Sofa
(1927)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Room's social comedy is Russia laughing at herself, letting a tickle out of her new morality.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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(undefined)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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There is another Russian film which must not be neglected: In Old Siberia. It is not the best, but it is one of the most sensitive, and also lacking in arrogance --which is a proof of Russia's adulthood.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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(undefined)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The chief significance of A Son of the Land is its proof that the process of the Soviet film is a lively one, seldom deteriorating to beneath its norm, but collecting more and more strength -- producing numerous new talents -- as it moves.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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The Millionaire
(1931)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The movie is a ritual that purges everything it touches -- purges everything of veracity and sense.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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Skippy
(1931)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Redemption is the keynote of every American film. Bourgeois society is a coupon. Skippy puts its bid across through the popularity of young children as players.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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Eliso
(1928)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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This Russian film is assuredly not a great one, but it is a compelling one.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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The New Babylon
(1929)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The problems and their tangents provoked by The New Babylon could fill a book. That is contribution enough. I urge everyone to examine this detaining film for himself.
Posted Mar 26, 2020
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The Silent Enemy
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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I can think of nothing good to say for this production, unless it be the initiative of the group that made it. The film was made independently by people who had nothing better to do and did that badly.
Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Abraham Lincoln
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The fact that it draws tears is rather against it than for it. The pathos of a tremendous social occurrence should not be refined or lachrymose, but revealing. The social occurrence seldom gets a chance here.
Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Storm Over Asia
(1928)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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An exciting film, which beats any American audience-film. It makes the boasted dramatic technique of America appear a schoolboy's exercise.
Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Arsenal
(1929)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Here we have a Russian film that is not didactic but suggestive... an intensive, agonized, poignant, introspective film, conceived not as realism punctuated by symbols but as sustained symbolism.
Posted Mar 25, 2020
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Earth
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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It extends the message of collectivism farther into the province of the reflective, whither the film the world over must inherently progress. But in moving to the reflective, it becomes too personal a meditation...
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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Billy the Kid
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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It is just another western of "the good bad man" who goes good for a girl, a theme and treatment which dates from the first Broncho Billy.
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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Gabriel Over the White House
(1933)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The picture Gabriel is cheap, tawdry propaganda but not "pointless."
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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All Quiet on the Western Front
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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All Quiet is constructed with some attention to intervals, to time and even emotional quality. But directorial competence is not enough. The temper is lacking.
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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Holiday
(1930)
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Samuel Brody
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Holiday is a supreme effort of cinema to become as much the theatre as possible. It is more competent theatre than even Mamoulian's Applause, which definitely eliminated the use of intervals thru the moving camera.
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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Shanghai Express
(1932)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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The alibi that the film is 'just melodrama' is puerile.
Posted Jan 14, 2020
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The Man With a Movie Camera
(1929)
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Emjo Basshe
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No million dollar appropriations. No full page advertisements. No phrases out of Barnum's corpse:... Just an experiment by a Russian director and his cameraman trying to find out what can be done with a camera and a will to create.
Posted Sep 12, 2019
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Hallelujah
(1929)
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Emjo Basshe
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[What] follows: a plot which is jerky, muddy, full of sounds one expects from senile and ailing phonograph records.
Posted Sep 12, 2019
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Drifters
(1929)
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Samuel Brody
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Drifters is a film of sincere intentions and feeble cinematic craftsmanship.
Posted Sep 07, 2019
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Numbered Men
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Incompetent.
Posted Sep 07, 2019
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The General Line
(1929)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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This film is a film of wit, folk-humour, shrewdness, optimism, clarity and point...
Posted Sep 06, 2019
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Turksib
(1929)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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I have called Turksib an ode. It is more than an ode. It is more than an ode, though it does not become the epic its momentum strives after. This is by no means frustration.
Posted Sep 06, 2019
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Journey's End
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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No one can call this reproduction of a play a moving picture.
Posted Sep 06, 2019
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The Big House
(1930)
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Harry Alan Potamkin
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Dialogue cannot carry the mood, the film as a whole is the vehicle. The accusations therefore remain incidents -- passing and unemphatic. Whatever suggestion of social guilt they contain is dissipated by the events of the story, and their treatment.
Posted Sep 06, 2019
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