October: Ten Days That Shook The World (1928)

October: Ten Days That Shook the World (Russian: Октябрь (Десять дней, которые потрясли мир); translit. Oktyabr': Desyat' dney kotorye potryasli mir) is a 1928 Soviet silent historical film by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov. It is a celebratory dramatization of the 1917 October Revolution and  was one of two films commissioned by the Soviet government to honour the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution (the other was Vsevolod Pudovkin's The End of St. Petersburg). 

Eisenstein was chosen to head the project due to the international success he had achieved with The Battleship Potemkin in 1925 .

Originally released as October in the Soviet Union, the film was re-edited and released internationally as Ten Days That Shook The World, after U.S socialist journalist and founder of the Communist Labour Party of America John Reed's popular eyewitness account on the Revolution.

In the cultural sphere of the day, after the triumphant success of Battleship Potemkin in 1925 – a film that stands as one of the greatest achievements of silent cinema, and which inspired generations of filmmakers and artists, the  director Sergei Eisenstein found himself in high demand. 
A committed communist himself, Eisenstein spoke about how the revolution brought him to art from his engineering background, and how art, conversely, brought him to revolution. His films bear out that relationship. isenstein had planned to make a film about the events of October 1917 as the final part of his revolutionary triptych of films – succeeding The Strike (1925) and the aforementioned Battleship Potemkin.

 His “October” film was highly anticipated, received enthusiastic state support, and was to be released in commemoration of the ten-year anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power. What resulted was the most challenging (and perhaps most problematic) work in the filmmaker’s career. The authorities did not like October – it was partly censored, when it was  eventually released some months after the jubilee had passed in early 1928.
Nikolai Povoisky, one of the trioka who led the storming of the Winter Palace was responsible for the commission. The scene of the storming was based  on the 1920 re-enactment involving Vladimir Lenin and thousands of Red Guards, witnessed by 100,000 spectators. This scene is notable because it became the legitimate, historical depiction of the Winter Palace owing to the lack of print or film documenting the actual event, which led historians and filmakers to use Eisensten's recreation. This illustrates October's success as a propaganda film.
Today Sergei Eisenstein is often portrayed as the godfather of propaganda in film and.is regarded as one of the most important pioneers of early cinema, a filmmaker and theorist whose legacy can still be felt.
The film opens with the elation after the February Revolution and the establishment of the Provisional Government, depicting the throwing down of the Tsar's monument. It moves quickly to point out it's the "Same old story" of war and hunger under the new Provisional Government.The buildup to the October Revolution is dramatized with intertitles marking the dates of events. 
The film was originally  intended to represent two revolutionary leaders, Vladimir Lenin and  Leon Trotsky. Trotsky’s absence from the eventual film so obviously contradicts the historical record that one can only conclude the work was heavily censored as Eisenstein was required to re-edit the work to expurgate references to Trotsky, who had recently been purged by Stalin. 

Trotsky was chairman of the Petrograd Soviet from September 25, 1917. However, the film does not show Trotsky, but another leader of the Petrograd Soviet, Yakov Sverdlov, exhorting soldiers with a rousing speech. An important episode in the film concerns the second All-Russian Congress of Soviets. This was of huge importance in relation to the debates actually taking place. Trotsky is missing from this part of the film. The program notes to October reveal that his “historic utterance, ‘Words must be followed by deeds’ 'are put into the mouth of a political companion”

The film was not as successful or influential as Potemkin and Eisenstein's montage experiments met with official disapproval; the authorities complained that October was unintelligible to the masses, and Eisenstein was attacked—for neither the first time nor the last—for excessive "formalism". 
October was criticised in Keatsian terms by no less a luminary than Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya. “Crude tricks will not do,” she said. “The dead horse suspended over the water, hanging from the shafts of the opening bridge; the murdered woman’s hair spreading out, covering the bridge’s slats. It’s too much like an advertisement, it’s theatrical.” It is, if you like, “palpable design”.
In spite of the film's lack of popular acceptance, film historians consider it to be an immensely rich experience,a sweeping historical epic of vast scale, and a powerful testament to Eisenstein's genius and artistry. October was initially banned, with its first British screenings only taking place in 1935.

October is significant in global cinema history as it exemplifies the use of film as a political tool, showcasing revolutionary events through innovative editing and montage techniques that influenced later film movements.

This iconic film continues to receive attention for its dramatic use of imagery, deploying  Eisenstein’s famous techniques of intercutting, juxtaposition and montage to create mood and drama  and. is still in my opinion a wonder to behold.