STORM OVER ASIA (1928)

A.K.A.:  Potomok Chingis-Khana

Country: U.S.S.R.

Genre(s): Adventure / Epic / Propaganda / War

Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin

Cast: Valery Inkijinoff / I. Dedintsev / Viktor Tsoppi

Plot

After inciting the ire of the English imperialists in a fur trade gone wrong, a Mongol hunter is embroiled in the politics and war with the occupiers.  When the English wrongly come to believe he is the descendant of Genghis Khan they install him as a figurehead ruler, making him a puppet in their designs for capitalist exploitation.

What I Liked

“Storm Over Asia” is a well-crafted epic of rebellion, along the lines of a silent, Soviet “Braveheart” in plot.  Telling the tale of a commoner who slowly experiences of the corruption of an occupying power first hand and comes to lead his people to freedom, the movie starts slow but builds in drama, excitement, and scope until it reaches a conclusion literally of cyclonic proportions.  Often following two related subplots at the same time, the filmmakers cleverly use editing techniques to great effect, generating a sense of suspense in several scenes that remain effective over 80 years later.

Remarkably well preserved for its age, the film has some astonishing visuals, especially when it comes to the Asian landscape.  Whether capturing the expanse of vast plains or imposing figures of towering mountains, director Vsevolod Pudovkin’s camera captures the power of the environment with a sense of grandeur on par with the Cinemascope epics of thirty and forty years later.  Luckily, good prints of this movie have survived, maintaining enough clarity to truly admire the spectacle of it all.

What I Didn’t Like

Despite the ever-mounting intensity that comes later, the first half hour of this movie is torturously slow.  Luckily this section of the film features some of the most impressive landscape photography to help ease the agony, but a silent movie that takes so long to get moving is hard to endure.  Even as the film gets going, there are several lulls in action and one annoyingly long sequence capturing a Mongolian religious ceremony that forced me to give in and fast-forward.

As one can imagine would be the case with a propaganda film from the U.S.S.R., the historical inaccuracies of the story are everywhere.  Absolutely nothing after the exposition explaining the history of Genghis Khan is factually accurate.  The English did not even occupy Mongolia during the 1917 – 1920 time period the movie purports to document, the Russians did.

Most Memorable Scene

It’s a shame that a movie that has so many outstanding qualities also has some unbearable ones.  The worst is that extended ceremony I alluded to before.  What must have been exotic and thrilling for Western audiences of the day is now laborious, made even more so by an annoyingly atonal soundtrack.

Even this scene comes with some redeeming moments, as Pudovkin intercuts the British officer’s respectful attendance of this ceremony with scenes of crimes being simultaneously being committed against the Mongolian people, namely British soldiers raiding Mongolian farms.  The filmmakers interweaving both scenes to show the hypocrisy of the invaders, reminded me of the closing to “The Godfather,” and makes me wonder if Francis Ford Coppola had seen “Storm Over Asia” before he began his own epic.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5