Early on in The End of St. Petersburg, Pudovkin's reputation as a montage director is evidenced. A lake shore and rising sun is paired with a view of a windmill, linking together to form a more complete view of the morning. Montages show up later, most notably a scene in which an official stands up, the camera cuts to the chair falling and breaking, and then to an attendant's shocked face. These are instances wherein Pudovkin's linkage method is clear, as the images relate and build a fuller scene. However, there is a scene one might consider more in the vein of Eisenstein: footage of soldiers rushing out of trenches in WWI is interspersed with shots of businessmen viewed from above running up steps of buildings. They are surely different, and they juxtapose sharply. Perhaps Pudovkin aimed to show the differences of those two scenes, or maybe to show that they are similar as well. Shots of a chalkboard in between these two parallel worlds (it is unsure if it belongs in that of the businessmen, but one tends to assume it does) suggest that soldiers' deaths and workers' labor are but numbers. These scenes could come off as heavy handed, but they are nuanced and the film is an intricate piece of plot and tasteful treatment of history. The depiction of WWI doesn't hold anything back, with shots of bodies floating in trenches and men being gunned down in mass. The narrative of the villager is engrossing; it doesn't overshadow the history itself and yet the film would feel lacking without it; Ivan Chuvelev's piercing stare is taken full advantage of to provide a haunting and unsettling sensation. Pudovkin's The End of St. Petersburg is a cinematic epic, but not in the same vein as Battleship Potemkin; it is a lighter, more detail-oriented fare.

Pudovkin makes use of revolutionary techniques, especially montage, as he narrates the story of the storming of the Winter Palace in Skt. Petersburg, 1917. The plot centres on two families, one rural and one urban, whose paths cross as they engage passionately in the uprising. The film is a masterpiece in silent film narration.

Welcome to a dark and joyless Russia in the days before its revolution.

This is a place where, if you manage to survive childbirth, all you get is a yowling, extra mouth to feed. If your man doesn't work, you starve.

Rabid for profits, industrialists seek higher production by lengthening shifts at the local, hellish factory.

When the workers proclaim, "We're on strike," it sounds triumphant, but fear abounds.

"Soon we'll have nothing to feed our faces," says a unionist's wife (Vera Baronovskaya). "In a week, we'll be dead from empty bellies."

Directors Vsevolod Pudovkin and Mikhail Doller create tension by showing one class conflict after another. When the moneyed class brings in strikebreakers, the viewer braces for violence. But the workers really don't want to hurt one another.

"Brothers, you're going against your own people!" a striker shouts.

The acting in this silent film is stark and expressive. In particular, Ivan Chuvelyov does well as a peasant who unwittingly betrays a unionist. When he realizes what he's done, he attacks his "betters," winds up in police court, and dares to defend the workers' advocate: "He's got kids sitting at home with nothing to eat!"

For his courage, the peasant gets his face smashed and a trip to the Great War front ("Enlist this one as a volunteer," snarls a cop).

This movie, produced to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the revolution, aired on the network of the City University of New York. With class conflict a theme in the presidential election, this film is worth a view.