October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1928) on Netflix
Crowds tear down a monument to Tsar Nicholas as the monarchy falls in Petrograd. A Provisional Government under Kerensky takes power and keeps Russia at war. Lenin returns from exile in April.
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Trailer
Plot summary
After the Romanov monarchy falls in February 1917, crowds in Petrograd pull down a monument to Tsar Nicholas. The dates of the events are marked with intertitles. A Provisional Government forms under Kerensky, who vows to honor the Tsar's commitments to allied governments, so Russia stays in the war. Soldiers at the front are mismanaged, and workers march through the country's streets complaining that they have no bread. Lenin returns from exile in April, met at the Finland railway station by huge crowds, and speaks from the platform of a steam engine. Marches against the government in Petrograd keep growing.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1928)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Eisenstein based the storming of the Winter Palace on The Storming of the Winter Palace (1920), a re-enactment that had involved Vladimir Lenin and thousands of Red Guards and was watched by 100,000 spectators, rather than on the actual event, which was far less photogenic.
- With little surviving film of the actual assault, October's recreation became the accepted historical depiction of the storming of the Winter Palace, and historians and filmmakers came to use Eisenstein's version.
- Almost no professional actors were used in October: Lenin was played by Nikandrov, a cement factory worker with a portrait likeness who had a bald spot shaved on his head, Kerensky by a university student, Zinoviev by his real brother and Trotsky by a dentist.
- Soviet authorities complained that October was unintelligible to the masses and attacked Eisenstein for "formalism", and he was required to re-edit the film to remove references to Leon Trotsky, recently purged by Joseph Stalin.
- Eisenstein developed a technique he called "intellectual montage", editing together shots of apparently unconnected objects to force intellectual comparisons: a baroque image of Jesus is matched with Hindu deities, the Buddha, Aztec gods and a primitive idol to suggest the sameness of all religions.
- In 1966 Dmitri Shostakovich wrote a new soundtrack for October, which later appeared as the tone poem "October" Op. 131, where his famous "Partisan" theme makes an appearance.
