Oktyabr

Saw Oktyabr, a propaganda film from the USSR directed by that king of Soviet agitprop, Eisenstein. A few reviews ago I said Eisenstein was more of a choreographer than a director but this doesn't capture the brilliance of his montages which is on display in this film. There's a scene where a peaceful Bolshevik protest is broken up by proletariat counter-protesters and the army. As the guns fire and protesters are trampled underfoot by ugly fat counter-protesters, the film works itself up into a fever-pitch of insanity. It's Eisenstein at the top of his game. He also frequently uses allusions to art in this film. The evil (and kind of weaselly-looking) Russian Emperor will fold his arms and we smash-cut to a statue of Napoleon. An official is shouting at the troops and we cut to the consternated face of a marble baby.

This is, of course, blatant propaganda. The good guys are always handsome and/or cute. The bad guys are fat and decadent, rolling their eyes and laughing at the struggles of our heroes the Bolsheviks, often bespectacled, often with terrible teeth. They show the hell of the provisional government by showing long breadlines but of course we don't get to the famine of the grain shortage. Anyway, if you can leave politics aside, the film is well made and interesting. It drags near the end, when the Emperor's palace has fallen, but there's some confusingly off-message ugliness at that point. Ugly old ladies fight with an attractive guard over a bottle of booze from the cellars. He smashes all of the booze bottles and I don't know if this a good or bad thing.

Anyway, the film is a masterclass in editing and montage. This is a silent film and at one point a machine-gun fires. The film flickers between images of the gun's muzzle and the soldier's grimacing face to evoke the rat-a-tat-tat of the gunfire. Very clever! I also liked the coloring of people's actions through ham-fisted allusions to other images. This film is definitely telling us how to feel, but it lets us puzzle out its message just a bit, and this can trick us into thinking the connections sprang from our minds. Very good (propaganda)