October (1927)

October (Dir. Sergei Eisenstein and Grigorii Aleksandrov; Moscow: Sovkino, 1927) is a film about the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the events leading to it. Due to its thematic and stylistic continuity with Eisenstein’s two earlier films, Strike (1924) and Battleship Potemkin (1925), October is often interpreted as the third instalment of a trilogy. Nevertheless, the USSR commissioned it as a separate film for a festival celebrating the tenth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution. As a historical film, October proved controversial even before its release, which was delayed until March 1928. Stalin objected to several passages, particularly the scenes depicting Leon Trotsky, and therefore only excerpts of the film were shown at the festival. Eisenstein was also accused of diminishing the eminence of Vladimir Lenin. Historians have since pointed out the film’s anachronisms and inaccuracies, such as the destruction of the monument of Alexander III, which happened in 1921 and not 1917, and the fictionalised sequence depicting the storming of the winter palace. Nevertheless, October is widely considered a masterpiece of cinematic form that exemplifies Eisenstein’s theory of ‘intellectual montage’, according to which sequential shots clash with each other to create tension that is resolved by a synthesising concept, idea, or thought. Such syntheses manifest as Eisenstein’s commentary on historical events, which supersedes the film’s status as a mimetic representation of them.