Oktyabr

Few films have this much bitterness, and few filmmakers have the correct balance of passion and creative talent that Eisenstein had. That is what makes this film such an important achievement in the history of cinema.

Here, it is the notion of time and space that is at the forefront of the director's concerns, utilising what artist Derek Jarman once dubbed 'a way of viewing the past by way of the present' in order to recreate the 1917 revolution; complete with thousands of extras and a never before seen approach to scene layering and editorial juxtaposition. Eisenstein himself had set the bar for this kind of thing with the much-imitated Battleship Potemkin (1925), though the experimentation here is much more revolutionary, what with the combined number of cuts, the constant switch between camera angles and location, and also in the repetition of montage.

This was all new when first released, and it still seems fresh today. Others have mentioned the debt that filmmakers like Jean Luc Godard, Nicolas Roeg and Steven Soderbegh owe to this kind of editing. Godard, Resnais, Roeg and Cammell all attempted to elaborate on the cinematic notions of this film, though you could perhaps argue that they failed to attach their creativity to a story with this much emotional resonance. Who cares if the underlining political and historical accuracy are true to the time? If we are willing to forgive Eisenstein for breaking narrative continuity then why do so many viewers refuse to disengage from cinematic distortions of reality?

This is a notion made all the more impressive due to the documentary-like nature of the film, and the raw aggression that the filmmaker gets from his extras. Here it is the contrast between what we view as real and what we know to be a façade that really tugs at the heartstrings. Surely the massacre and the image of the slaughtered horse dangling lifelessly from the toll bridge is one of the saddest scenes in the history of film; again, because of the film's roots in reality and the passion of the filmmakers.

October isn't just a film; it's a continuation in the growth of film as an artistic medium. It's also a wonderful, though often shattering story that should be seen by all; definitely a film that works on an emotional level, as opposed to the psychological.

This, Eisenstein's third film, represents the peak in development of his montage technique. It is arguably the "biggest" film he had made to date in the sense that it was made with the largest number of extras and highest budget he had yet handled. Also, it steps further into the characterlessness of his previous silent films, being in many ways closer to a documentary than a historical feature.

The montage in October is taken to new heights. In an early scene in which a machine gun regiment opens fire on a demonstration, incredibly rapid editing back-and-forth between a shot of a gun barrel and the mean look on the gunner's face suggests both the action and the sound of the gun. Another aspect of the montage which Eisenstein makes extensive use of in October is expressing ideas by editing in shots of objects from outside the setting or at least unrelated to the narrative. For example, images of the Tsar's clockwork toys are spliced into a scene in which the highly unpopular provisional government ministers meet together. In another scene a series of increasingly primitive looking religious statues from all over the world are paraded to ridicule the church. While often ingenious, this crosscutting can sometimes be a little heavy handed and obvious. For example, do we really need to flit back and forth so many times between a shot of Kerensky and a statue of Napoleon to understand what is being implied? As well as the allegories conveyed through montage, there are also a few metaphors in shot composition or basic action. When the red guards are ransacking they have a laugh amongst themselves when pulling a decorative cushion off an ornate chair reveals a commode. There are also plenty of Eisenstein's trademark funny faces – particularly ugly or bizarre looking actors are cast as people Eisenstein wanted to appear ridiculous, such as the Mensheviks and provisional government ministers.

Eisenstein's direction of crowds is, as ever, flawless. So much so in October that parts of it have been mistaken for actual historical footage of the revolution. A very convincing look-alike of Lenin also pops up from time to time, although I have to say the guy who plays Trotsky looks more like a young Rolf Harris. The events portrayed do seem to be largely historically accurate, albeit from a skewed angle. The Bolsheviks are hero worshipped out of proportion to their actual importance at the time, and Eisenstein constantly promotes the Leninist notion that the masses cannot progress without the guidance of the party. Still, this was the philosophy of the dictatorship in which Eisenstein was operating.

October may be the most technically proficient and finely crafted of all Eisenstein's films. However, it lacks the humanity of Strike and Battleship Potemkin. It's an incredible film, just highly impersonal, which can make for difficult viewing. One final note – the only version available on DVD here in the UK is from Eureka, which as well as having no extras has some terribly translated intertitles, although I understand there are very nice editions of all Eisenstein's films available on Region 1 from Criterion.

In documentary style, it depicts the historical deeds in St Petersburg , Petrograd are re-enacted from the end of the monarchy in February of 1917 to the end of the provisional government and the decrees of peace and of land in November of that year. Lenin returns to St. Petersburg from exile in April . Huge crowds meet him at the Finland railway station, and he delivers a firing speech . In July, counter-revolutionaries put down a spontaneous revolt, and Lenin's arrest is ordered by President Alexander Kerenski and the military commander-in-chief Kornilov . By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to strike . As Bolsheviks and other small parties - as the sailors of Krondstat- that participated in the overthrow and take the Winter Palace .While the Mensheviks vacillate, an advance guard infiltrates the palace . Anatov leads the attack and signs the proclamation dissolving the provisional government : All power to Soviets .

The film describes the increasingly chaotic days until the victory of the Bolsheviks over the Mensheviks : ten days will shake the world . Extensive use is made of montage that expresses ideas by editing in frames of things from outside the setting or unrelated to the narrative . As directors Sergei Eisentein and Grigori Aleksandrov use a technique named "intellectual montage", or attraction edition , as the editing together of images of apparently unconnected objects in order to create and encourage intellectual comparisons between them . The frames often contrast faces with still objects . The visual setting is overwhelming : enjoyable sculptures , wide exterior views which encompass roads, canals, masses of people and armies, extended interior views, beautiful decorative objects and art works like Rodin's sculptures . Special mention for the the brethtaking shots of the drawbridge and with a dead horse hanging . It is well re-enacted with impressive human masses, a cast of thousands , an innovative edition , including a great number of close-ups and spectacular backgrounds . At the end takes place a crushing final strike as small warship -Cruise Aurora- enters the city river and posts itself close to the Winter Palace .



This documentary was well based on historical events : commonly referred to as Red October, the October Uprising, the Bolshevik Revolution, or the Bolshevik Coup, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks and Vladimir Lenin that was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 7 November (25 October, O.S.) 1917. It followed and capitalized on the February Revolution of the same year, which overthrew the Tsarist autocracy and resulted in a provisional government after a transfer of power proclaimed by Grand Duke Michael, brother of Tsar Nicolas II, who declined to take power after the Tsar stepped down. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils (soviets) wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and its actions. After the Congress of Soviets, now the governing body, had its second session, it elected members of the Bolsheviks and other leftist groups such as the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to important positions within the new state of affairs. This immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the world's first self-proclaimed socialist state. On 17 July 1918, the Tsar and his family were executed. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 7 November 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured. The long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. In contrast to their majority in the Soviets, the Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which won 370 seats, although the SR Party no longer existed as a whole party by that time, as the Left SRs had gone into coalition with the Bolsheviks from October 1917 to March 1918. The Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the Constituent Assembly came into conflict with the Soviets, and it rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, resulting in the Constituent Assembly being dissolved the next day by order of the Congress of Soviets. As the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War (1917-22) and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922

I think that Sergei Eisenstein, who has (rightfully) been credited as one of the grandfathers of modern cinema, is sometimes forgotten as someone who can really direct great epic scenes along with making them expertly edited. The filmmaker here knows he's pushing along an ideology, one that is not only encouraged but all but required of him to give to the public. But he also knows that to put out the message there needs to be some conviction, surprise, something to catch eyes as the information's already known. Perhaps even to a greater extent than Battleship Potemkin, October: Ten Days That Shook the World puts on display a director with total confidence not only in his flourishing, insistent style, but in that of his mostly non-professional actors, crowds, real-locations, sets, and his crew. It's one of the most assured pieces of silent film-making I've ever seen, and it's taken a few viewings to take in everything in one sitting (I ended up watching half an hour, and then sitting back trying to remember everything I just saw, or thought I saw).

Some uses of montage in the film- make that most if not all- rival those of even the better editors working in commercials and music videos today. Like those editors, they're working with images meant to be dynamic and to the point. Here it's the story of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, where Lenin took control of the reigns of the provisional government with left the country at a stand-still in poverty. Or, at least, that's how the film would definitely lead things onto. Watching a film like this and seeing 100% accuracy is irrelevant. But watching it to get a sense of what cinema is supposed to- and can do- with tricky subject matter, is completely worthwhile. Some of these scenes are just pure masterpieces of crowd control; when the people mass together in the town square, for example, one might immediately think of the Odessa stairs from Potemkin. Here, however, there's more than one chance for such operatic takes on harsh realities. The beginning- where they tear down the statue- is striking enough. But just watch when the crowd has to disperse and runs around early on in the film, or especially the storming of the Winter Palace. Could you do the same material with computers today? More than likely, but not with the same conviction and 'this-was-really-happening' feel that a camera (recreating) on the scene could get. And, sometimes, as when the monument/statue gets 'put back together', it's almost amusing but still convincing of what the medium can do.

And soon enough Eisenstein reaches his climax, the immense lot of 10 days that brought the country to a peak of change and possible prosperity for its people. It's like October for the Russian people of the time is like a thousand or so snapshots of that time and place in the world. The one point that Eisenstein poses for his viewers- not just for his of-the-period silent film crowd but for those watching today- is that he is not making it boring for those who can give themselves to the images, the moments taken with some shots more than others. Anyone getting into editing, I think, should see at least some of Eisenstein's films to get an idea of where the smoke of post-modern film-making generated. October is probably one of his prime examples; if you want to watch it for purely historical or political contexts it may be hit or miss depending on point of view, but it is hard to see as a misfire in telling a story using spectacular and imaginative compositions with the frame, lighting, and with specific, profound musical accompaniment by Edmund Meisel.

American John Reed, who never met a Bolshevik he didn't admire and trust, wrote a still spellbinding first-hand account, "Ten Days That Shook the World," of the November (October in the Old Style calendar) revolution that ended Russia's Provisional Government. Directors Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov dipped into Reed's almost breathless panegyric to the quixotic and jumbled events that led to the capture of the fabled Winter Palace for the epic, "Oktyabr" (shown here as "October").

Whatever Aleksandrov's contribution, this is emphatically and unmistakably Eisenstein's film and it's a masterpiece. Tracing the increasingly chaotic days from the overthrow of the Romanovs until the victory of the Bolsheviks and their foolishly trusting partners, Eisenstein's 1927 movie freezes the mood and emotions of one of the most turbulent episodes in Russian, indeed in world, history.

A signature technique of Eisenstein is the fast pan from enormous, fluid and raging crowd action (here occasionally taken from news film but more often staged with a cast of thousands) to a closeup of faces that reflect deep emotion. As in "Battleship Potemkin," dealing with an earlier phase of the unraveling of tsarist Russia, Eisenstein's heroes are the proletariat, poor but possessed of a fierce and empowering nobility. The bourgeoisie are inflated, food and drink-sated fools, their supercilious natures reflected by expressions bordering on the imbecilic.

With Eisenstein's films, viewers tend to remember several scenes that most exported his vision. Here a dead horse and a long-haired young woman, killed as she joined in a workers' protest, undergo a slow passage from the deck of an opening bridge into a river. It's harrowing, unforgettable.

Lenin is, of course, a hero. The hero. Trotsky, on his way to banishment and eventual assassination, is shown as a weak would-be compromiser, actually a mild obstacle to the march of the Soviets to power. I bet he didn't like this movie.

Contrasting peoples' moods with still shots of objects was always an Eisenstein trait. The workers are juxtaposed with weapons, streets, bridges. The feckless Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government, is pictured against statuettes of Napoleon. Depicted as a coward he abandons his cabinet in a car bedecked with a small American flag. The flag is shown several times. I wonder why. And the poor tsar and tsarina, soon to be brutally murdered with their children and servants at Ekaterinburg, have their framed photos alternated with those of their imperial commode.

Dmitri Shostakovich, not simply the greatest Russian composer of the last century but also one of the world's finest, was ideologically and creatively in tune, no pun intended, with Eisenstein and officialdom's retrospective paean to the Bolshevik overthrow. In 1927 he was years away from being Russia's most endangered composer because of the whims of the madman, Stalin (who isn't in this film). His score is hardly his best work, not even his finest film music. It is an effective accompaniment to the action.

Originally a silent film, the added-on soundtrack has virtually no speech but the sounds of marching, running, trains, guns and other objects enliven the picture, now faithfully and well-restored.

"Oktyabr" is, of course, a political polemic and the history portrayed is what the party ordained as truth. Eisenstein was a brilliant innovator but he was no counter-revolutionary deviationist and wrecker. He adhered to the party line and so does the movie.

The restored print is making the rounds of film societies and art theaters and should, if possible, be viewed on a large screen. But even on a TV set "Oktyabr" will reach out and grip the viewer.

10/10. A milestone in film-making.