Storm Over Asia

Storm Over Asia is a 1928 silent film by the Soviet film-maker V.I. Pudovkin, a contemporary of the great Sergei Eisenstein.

But whereas Eisenstein's movies, both silent and with early sound, have stood the test of time, this film about a Mongol patriot who drives the English exploiters from his homeland is crude both in its film technique and in its progaganda. Eisenstein's silent classic Battleship Potemkin revolutionised cinema with its staccato rapid-fire editing technique. It was Soviet progaganda, but the progaganda was always subordinate to the art of cinema it displayed.

Storm Over Asia, however, creaks along for most of its more than two-hour length. By the time we see the only real action in the film, about four brief minutes before the end, it has arrived far too late - this silent film had died decades ago.

The film does have its interest. The setting is authentic early 20th century Mongolia, and the extras - peasants and monks - are the genuine article. This is, if we discount much else in the film, valuable history.

But the story is little more than unbelievably crude propaganda, the director cannot rise above his task of telling a story the Moscow rulers would accept. The iconoclastic Eisenstein never toed the party line quite as slavishly as this!

For early 20th century Soviet cinema, sample instead Battleship Potemkin or Eisenstein's three masterful sound epics, Alexander Nevsky, and the two parts of Ivan the Terrible. These are genuine masterpieces - Storm Over Asia should not be mentioned in the same breath.

This is a medium to poor quality print. The DVD case states it has been restored by film historian David Shepard, and perhaps it has been meticulously restored from various parts to something approaching its original content and running length. But it does not demonstrate the sort of restoration which is possible today, such as that shown by such companies as Criterion. It is, however, tolerable in its overall quality - though damaged in parts, it never drops to a non-viewable level, and its contrast ratio is acceptable for its age.

A newly recorded score by David Brock is in decent condition -it's all mono, but well recorded and suiting the overall style of the film.

The 'interactive menu' is almost unworkable - when selecting a scene, it will most times simply return one to the original menu screen. It ends up far easier to start the movie, then jump chapters instead of using the tortuous menu. The 'Introduction to Storm Over Asia' is a text-only introduction, obviously well researched, but written for an audience already familiar with its subject and able to place the movie within its cultural context.

This would be historically interesting to students of cinema. A worthy addition to a college or university film library, I cannot see it as being of much interest otherwise.