Pilgrimage: When motherly love turns into a weapon

Is it worth your time?

If you have a thing for old-school melodrama that doesn't mind being a little bit cruel, yeah, give it a shot. It is not exactly a feel-good Sunday afternoon watch. But if you have zero patience for characters making consistently terrible life choices, you will probably want to turn it off before the first act finishes. 🙄

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pilgrimage (1933) through its definitive frames.

There is this moment near the start where you realize the mother is the absolute center of gravity for everything bad happening here. She doesn't just want her son to stay home; she basically weaponizes his duty to his country. It is a cold way to handle a marriage proposal.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pilgrimage (1933) through its definitive frames.

I kept waiting for the movie to soften, but it just digs in deeper. It reminded me a bit of the suffocating tension in The Great Day, where you just want to reach into the screen and shake someone. The way she looks at the girl her son likes? It is pure frost.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pilgrimage (1933) through its definitive frames.

Little observations

• The house settings feel weirdly small, almost like they are trying to box the characters in.
• The dialogue is stilted, but it works because everyone is pretending to be polite while they are actually fighting.
• That one scene with the train station departure is way too long, though. You can practically hear the director yelling "more tears!"

I am not sure if it was intentional, but the lighting makes the mother look like a ghost even when she is sitting right in the chair. It is a nice visual touch that keeps you on edge. Then again, sometimes the camera work just feels stuck in place like it is afraid to move.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pilgrimage (1933) through its definitive frames.

It is definitely not as wild or experimental as some of the stuff coming out of the same era, like Plan velikikh rabot. It is grounded in this very specific, ugly kind of human selfishness. I found myself checking my watch, not because I was bored, but because I was uncomfortable.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Pilgrimage (1933) through its definitive frames.

There is a lot of silence in this movie that isn't really peaceful. It is the kind of silence that happens right before a fight. The performances are solid, even if the script gives them a lot of heavy lifting to do with some really dated lines. Honestly, it is worth watching just to see how much damage one person can do with a quiet voice.

It is not a perfect film by any stretch. It stumbles over its own heavy themes more than once. But it stays with you, mostly because it feels so incredibly petty. Truly, that is the most frightening part of the whole thing.