October (film)

What is the story?

The film opens with a crowd pulling down a statue of the tsar. But it is soon the "same old story": war and hunger go on under the Provisional Government. In April Lenin returns to the Finland Station. In July troops fire on the demonstrators; the drawbridges rise with bodies still on them, and the bourgeois throw Bolshevik newspapers into the river. Kerensky is mocked as a mechanical peacock and a Napoleon. Kornilov marches on the capital "for God and country", the Bolsheviks rally to the defence, and in October Lenin returns to the Smolny to lead the rising. The cruiser Aurora sails in and the crowd pours into the Winter Palace and overwhelms the defenders. Soldiers hunting for valuables have their pockets turned out. The door is beaten down and the ministers are arrested, Antonov-Ovseenko drafts the statement deposing the government, and clocks around the world mark the hour of success. Next day the new government starts issuing decrees.

There is no hero. Eisenstein meant to do without leading characters and a dramatic plot and to make the film at the editing table.

Why was it called unintelligible?

The film's most famous passage is the intellectual montage of Montage Theory. To take apart the slogan "for God and country", a baroque Christ is followed by Hindu deities, the Buddha, Aztec gods and finally a primitive idol: all gods are the same, said in pictures. It was hard going for audiences. The film did not match Battleship Potemkin at the box office and was finally withdrawn in 1933. The authorities complained of "formalism" unintelligible to the masses. Viktor Shklovsky wrote that Eisenstein got lost in the ten thousand rooms of the Winter Palace. Vsevolod Pudovkin's verdict is famous for the opposite reason: "How I should like to make such a powerful failure."

Who played the real Lenin?

Almost no professional actors were used. Lenin was played by Vasili Nikandrov, a cement worker with the right face, with a bald patch shaved for the part; it was the first attempt in the history of film to portray Lenin through an actor. According to Alexander Gorodnitsky's memoir, Zinoviev was played by his own brother and Trotsky by a dentist with the right look. Nikolai Podvoisky, a real participant, played himself and advised the film along with Krupskaya. Mayakovsky could not stand this Lenin. Behind Nikandrov's gestures he saw "a total absence of thought", and he repeated a comrade's remark that Nikandrov resembled not Lenin but a statue of him.

Which revolution does it show, and which does it erase?

It missed the anniversary and came out only in early 1928, and during the final edit Trotsky, Antonov-Ovseenko and Vladimir Nevsky were removed: the party struggle had reached the cutting table. Abroad it was released under the title of John Reed's book, Ten Days That Shook the World.

The storming by a great crowd is not what happened. According to Russian Wikipedia, the palace fell after long exchanges of fire when an armed group got in through an unguarded entrance, and the Aurora, unable to bear on the palace, fired one blank. The film's sequence owed more to The Storming of the Winter Palace, a 1920 re-enactment by thousands before 100,000 spectators. Even so, Eisenstein's shots passed into newsreels and history books as reliable documents. A film made to celebrate the revolution ended up making its memory. That is why it is said to have become both a story about history and an integral part of it.

Why was even the music a problem?

Delighted by his score for Battleship Potemkin, Eisenstein commissioned Edmund Meisel again. Moscow found it too avant-garde, and it accompanied only a shortened export version. In the late 1960s Aleksandrov prepared a new version at Mosfilm built on existing music by Shostakovich, and this is the one most often seen today. Meisel's score was restored in 2011 by German and Russian institutions.