October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
About October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
The film restages the months from the February fall of the tsar to the October seizure of power in Petrograd. Kerensky is cut against a mechanical peacock and against Napoleon. Kornilov marches on the city. On 25 October the cruiser Aurora comes in, workers take the bridges, and the Winter Palace is stormed. Cossacks and the Women's Death Battalion, sent to hold the palace, are shown on the tsar's billiard table before the building falls.
Cast & crew
More about October (Ten Days that Shook the World)
Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov wrote and directed it for the tenth anniversary of 1917. Arkadiy Alekseyev produced it. Eduard Tisse photographed it. Sovkino released it on 20 January 1928. The original cut is listed at 115 minutes. An edited version runs 100 minutes. A timed copy runs 1 hour 55 minutes 24 seconds. The battleship Aurora was lent for the filming. A few unfinished reels were shown at the Bolshoi on 7 November 1927. Trotsky was cut out before the January release. The export title Ten Days That Shook the World comes from John Reed's 1919 book. The Russian title is Oktyabr.
Themes
Background
Sovkino commissioned the film for 7 November 1927, ten years after the Bolsheviks took power. The release that followed, in January 1928, no longer included Trotsky.
Making
Eisenstein and Aleksandrov restaged the palace assault with the Aurora on the river. The jubilee audience in November 1927 saw only part of an unfinished cut.
Reviews
At the March 1928 Party Conference on Cinema, the montage was attacked as baffling. Eisenstein, writing in 1929, called one passage a means ossified into lifeless literary symbolism.
Look
Eduard Tisse photographed the bridges, the Aurora, and the rooms of the Winter Palace.
Music
Edmund Meisel wrote a score for the silent film. Dmitri Shostakovich wrote another in 1966.
Preservation
Prints of the original and of the shortened export cut survive.
Notes
- Vladimir Popov and Vasili Nikandrov are billed. Nikandrov plays a Kerensky lookalike.
- Pudovkin, shooting The End of St. Petersburg at the same time, wrote that he bombarded the Winter Palace from the Aurora while Eisenstein bombarded it from the Peter and Paul Fortress.
- The Party Conference on Cinema in March 1928 scolded the montage.
- Esfir Tobak is credited on a restoration.
Scenes
- Kerensky is matched to a mechanical peacock.
- The Aurora sails in and the workers take the bridges.
- The Women's Death Battalion lounges on the billiard table in the palace.
Influenced by
- John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World
Also available
- Internet Archive (october1928)
- Wikimedia Commons (1927. Октябрь (Эйзенштейн).webm)
