[2] Based on the 1906 novel The Mother by Maxim Gorky, it is the first installment in Pudovkin's "revolutionary trilogy", alongside The End of St. Petersburg (1927) and Storm Over Asia (aka The Heir to Genghis Khan) (1928).

He is, nevertheless, arrested and tried for sedition under the cool gaze of a bust of Nicholas II and the contemptuous glare of local bourgeois society.

Now thoroughly radicalized, Pelageya becomes a defiant standard-bearer holding aloft the socialist flag and is gloriously trampled to death under the hooves of a cavalry charge.

A final montage presents images of fortresses, churches, factories and, lastly, the battlements and towers of the Kremlin with the same flag waving triumphantly on top.

"[6] Grigori Roshal praised Pudovkin for his innovative style; "Being the first to introduce the idea of creating characterizations by means of montage in films, he has done in the cinema what Dickens did in novels.