A Film Canon

Storm Over Asia represents the logical and ideological conclusion of Pudovkin's preoccupation with nature. Set in 1918, the narrative focuses on those distant reaches of the Russian continent that have not yet felt the impact of the revolution. After being short-changed by the British occupational forces, Bair (Valery Inkijinoff), a descendant of Genghis Khan, flees westwards. Here, he encounters a small group of advancing Bolsheviks, whose ideological indoctrination only confirms everything that he has deduced from his encounter with the British and, more importantly, from his sojourn in the wilderness. In this way, Pudovkin aligns himself more with Engels than Marx, characterising the struggle between Bolshevik and capitalist as a mere instance of the dialectic principles that pervade and define the physical universe, here finally elevated to the status of a protagonist. Not only does this stratified, infinitely regressive vision explain Pudovkin's particular willingness to individualise his protagonists and scenarios (since every component of a such a universe is itself a dialectic microcosm), but it construes ideological revelation as a function of natural objects themselves, rather than the way in which they are handled, making him less prone to formal experimentation than his Russian confrères.