The radicalisation of a long-suffering family matriarch in Mother channels her fierce devotion towards the people of Russia, casting her as a revolutionary icon whose anguish and resilience is felt deeply in Vsevolod Pudovkin’s eloquent, invigorating montages.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed would still be a great feat of filmmaking even if it were the hundredth or thousandth feature-length animation, but the fact that Lotte Reiniger’s imaginative Middle Eastern fable of magic, adventure, and shadow puppetry is the first of its kind is simply remarkable.
