October (film)

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Movie
German title October
Original title Октябрь
Country of production USSR
original language Russian
Publishing year 1928
length 102 minutes
Rod
Director Sergei Eisenstein , Grigory Alexandrow
script Grigori Alexandrow
Sergei Eisenstein
John Reed (author of the book)
music Edmund Meisel , Dmitri Schostakowitsch
camera Vladimir Nilsen
Vladimir Popov
Eduard Tisse
occupation
October. full film (Russian with English subtitles)

October is a silent and propaganda film director Sergei Eisenstein in 1928. He was shot on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The full title is: October. Ten Days That Shook the World (Russian: Октябрь / Десять дней, которые потрясли мир ) based on the book Ten Days that Shook the World by John Reed .

action

The film depicts the events before and during the October Revolution of 1917 from the Bolsheviks' perspective in suggestive images. The wealth of the previous tsarist rule is repeatedly shown.

In addition, the new assembly technology is used in several places. Most famous here is a scene in which the head of the transitional government, Kerensky , is compared with a mechanical peacock in rapid changes of images. In addition, there is a Napoleonic pose and a suggestive depiction of the tsarist regalia, which Kerensky is supposed to expose as a traitor attached to the old regime. After the signal from the Aurora , the Winter Palace and the Provisional Government are taken. The Secretary of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, Antonov-Ovsejenko, who was involved in the storming, declared her deposed. The last scene shows Lenin at the lectern: Long live the world! The revolution of the workers and peasants is over! The reconstructed film ends after these two panels.

background

The music came from Edmund Meisel and Dmitri Schostakowitsch . The premiere took place on March 14, 1928 in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, the German premiere on April 2, 1928 in the Tauentzienpalast in Berlin. As one had expected a similarly pathetic film like the Battleship Potemkin , the audience reacted to the complex and ironic work irritated and disapproving. The Soviet critics accused Eisenstein that October was too demanding, too intellectual, too incomprehensible and too aesthetic; the work therefore does not correspond to the spirit of the communist revolution.

The film was a failure. This was also due to a few changes that had become necessary at short notice: The premiere was actually planned for November 7, 1927. But this was canceled at short notice because Stalin had given instructions immediately beforehand to remove the scenes with his rival Leon Trotsky , who had just been disempowered, from the film. It is unclear what Eisenstein's original conception from October was, as the film ultimately remained unfinished and several scenes were also lost.

The Munich Film Museum made a new reconstruction of the film for the TV broadcaster ARTE , which was presented on February 10, 2012 at the Berlinale . For this purpose, the film music by Edmund Meisel was reconstructed by the composer Bernd Thewes and re-recorded by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Frank Strobel . The reconstruction also contains some of the removed scenes with Trotsky.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : October: Ten Days That Shook the World  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files