October

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by Richard Taylor

British Film Institute

Due/Published May 2002, 96 pages, paper

ISBN 0851709168

October (1927) was Sergei Eisenstein's third completed feature film. It is both a testament to Eisenstein's technical genius and one of the most remarkable works of propaganda cinema. In virtuoso and indelible sequences such as the storming of the Winter Palace, Eisenstein recreated the 1917 October Revolution as a heroic spectacle, thus furnishing the fledgling Soviet republic with its founding myth.

In his analysis of October, Richard Taylor asks to what extent the film, commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, can lay claim to being "authentic" history. He then examines October's relationship to the politics of the period, particularly its contribution to reinforcing the cult of Lenin, developing the emergent cult of Stalin, and eliminating Trotsky from official history. In aesthetic terms October vividly realized Eisenstein's theory of "intellectual montage." Taylor explains both theory and its application before situating October in the wider context of Eisenstein's career.

Series: BFI Film Classics