Red guards flow in, and the Woman’s Battalion, looking particularly bedraggled, surrenders immediately. A Bolshevik banner unfurls. Novel and irritating aspects of the film were certainly influenced by the real and often grotesque contradictions of post-revolutionary Soviet society. Up the stairs, where Kerensky once reluctantly walked, rush the red guards. Eisenstein departs radically from his original shooting script. The next sequence, a more powerful opening, is the famous scene of the Tsar’s statue: shots of the statue, appearing omnipotent and permanent; shots of the angry masses of people who surround and rope the statue; then the stone Tsar begins to wobble and tilt; back and forth between the statue and the people the struggle goes on, until, with shot 31, the Tsar falls and breaks into pieces, into the synthesis, “FOR ALL, FOR ALL.”, Immediately, a new thesis is established: “LONG LIVE THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.” Once again, the people must struggle with it until, at the end of Act I, it is resolved into the Menshevik synthesis: “LONG LIVE THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION.”, Act II opens with this synthesis immediately turned into Lenin’s thesis; “SOCIALIST AND NOT BOURGEOIS/DOWN WITH THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.”. The ship had been built for the Imperial Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet; and at the time, many of its senior officers were away, engaged in the ongoing Russo-Japanese War. In comparison to Eisenstein’s previous films, October makes a slightly weaker impact. Unlike the bourgeois ministers, they argue without theatrics or self-dramatization. It is kaleidoscopic... His masters, the Soviet, get their due.”. As with all false gods—a reference to the breaking idols sequence—it will soon be shattered. The bourgeois characters are all relatively old, in contrast to the young, handsome sailor. A famous scene from this movie is a decisive battle on the ice of the frozen Lake Peipus. The crowd becomes angry, the sailor raises his hand—still open, no need of a fist—higher. The Bolsheviks proclaim the new synthesis: “The time for words is over.”. Eisenstein first shoots him from overhead—Kerensky appears as a tiny figure standing in a huge open car, making operatic gestures. The act ends with the Bolshevik Revolutionary Military Council drawing up plans for the insurrection and tracing them out on a map of Petrograd. The Tsarina’s bedroom becomes the final battle station for four cadets who hide behind the Tsarina’s skirts—the revolution, however, allows no hiding places. This textbook provides a technical perspective on natural language processing—methods for building computer software that understands, generates, and manipulates human language. Montage of machine gun barrels—the dispersing crowd—the firing guns—the fleeing crowd—banners fall. The crowd halts; only one red sailor has stopped a whole flock of bourgeoisie. Eisenstein cuts from her to the statue, from the lovely naked limbs of Rodin’s lovers to her masculine boots and leggings. As Trotsky writes in The History of the Russian Revolution, some of the original participants in the Revolution had already begun by 1926 to adapt their memories to the new political climate. His controlling idea came from his understanding of Hegel and Marx: history as dialectical conflict. The Cinema of Eisenstein is David Bordwell's comprehensive analysis of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, arguably the key figure in the entire history of film. A silly and false sense of dignity means nothing in the face of the people’s revolution—and Antonov will jump on the table to prove the point. If Eisenstein’s films are art objects, then we can ignore his political—i.e. But Napoleon has additional meanings for Russians—a dictator and an invader of their country. Although cumbersome at times, this positivist approach supplies the facts of the film, facts upon which any understanding and comment should be—but have not been—based. They represent and connect to current reality, i.e., political power. Kerensky, at his oversized desk, signs the decree restoring “capital punishment at the front.” This decree allowed officers to shoot mutinous soldiers. The young boy, like Eisenstein at the time, begins on the bourgeois side but then, joyously, embraces the revolution. One tries to tear it with her teeth, another lifts her skirt to try to stomp its pole. The director strikingly depicts him as a “democrat”, who instinctively feels himself part of the aristocracy. Cut to the young boy asleep on the throne: the red guards and the people have completed their night’s work and the director has finished his project. Some critics suggest purely technical reasons: he was filming in high summer and these were the main summer events of the revolutionary year. Lenin turns to his companion, either Trotsky or Eino Rakhia, and says, “They have recognized me, the bastards!” Lenin takes out his watch and taps his foot—it’s only a matter of time now. Long Live the Socialist Revolution. Here again Eisenstein probably gravitated to a favorite theme. The medals cascade out like so many worthless coins. The dialectic here is between the red guards, rifles and action, versus Konovalov’s frustration with his ornate telephone, speech and inaction. The imperial eagle wobbles, and the sailor opens the gates to the revolution. At the exact center of the bridge lies the body of a young woman—her long hair is slowly stretched as the bridge opens. Eisenstein achieves tension in this scene by cutting back and forth between the two sides and raising the question: Are the Provisional Government defenders treacherous or stupid enough to fire on these two isolated red guards? (Eisenstein here suggests the superiority of visual imagination to word games.) He was given uninterrupted access to all areas of the famous Hermitage or Winter Palace. Contrary to what was generally expected, Eisenstein had not made a melodramatic, second attempt at Battleship Potemkin. In the crowd a glimpse of Lenin’s face (played by his look-alike, Nikandrov). I have concentrated on the important scenes and shots.). There is no picture of the insurrection. 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 reaction of the Left Front of the Arts (LEF) journal was so aggressive that Eisenstein broke from that group of avant-garde artists. Later, when the red guard climbed up to open the gates, he was in the crowd below, cheering the guard on. Antonov at the Ministers’ table: with emphatic sweeps of his arm, he knocks away various ministerial paraphernalia in order to clear a space to write (just as the Bolsheviks were sweeping away the old order and clearing a space for themselves in Russian and world politics). Blog. The final act opens at the Second Soviet Congress, a Menshevik delegate (historically, Martov) challenges the impending Bolshevik seizure of power. Red guards and marines quickly overwhelm them, then one marine pauses to examine the strange, opulent world of the Tsarina’s bed chamber. The ship had been built for the Imperial Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet; and at the time, many of its senior officers were away, engaged in the ongoing Russo-Japanese War. “The uprising is premature.” The sailors discuss this among themselves and decide to sheathe their bayonets. It was not interested in the revolution, and certainly not world revolution, as propagated at the end of October. He is creating his own version of revolutionary history. Cut to a red guard, rifle over shoulder, and the Aurora in the background: the objects of real power. Sergei Eisenstein, in the first decade of the Soviet Union and his own first decade in the cinema, was deeply committed to Marxism. He rejects the linear editing and narratives of his colleagues, Pudovkin (“linkage”) and Kuleshov (“brick-by-brick composition”), because their. Stalin’s virtual absence from the film was not criticised because it corresponded to the facts. And to help the reader understand the action better, to retrieve the past, in a sense, it is useful to provide ongoing identifications of the historical persons and events. Like Henrik Abel, he was a top genius whose abilities penury hindered. A unity of thought and aim unites them, but they do not fuse in the struggle itself. Then Kerensky sits contemplating a chess board. He is like a mountain climber, who, thinking the main difficulties are still ahead, suddenly discovers that he is already on the summit or almost there. When raised high, they signify the people moving toward power; when fallen, the bourgeois counter-attacking. Film score composed by Sergei Prokofiev. He was so persuasive that I myself almost believed it.What is a conspiracy theory anyway? The car speeds through the city. Pioneer Sergei Eisenstein’s film about the October Revolution is so realistic that many thought that October (1928) was a genuine documentary. Their impatience for power is increasing. They enter the huge vaulted corridor where we first saw Kerensky and his aides. There is nothing mystical or sacred about the throne. A map of Petrograd fills the screen. The German distributor renamed it TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD after John Reed’s famous eyewitness account of the Revolution, which was one of Eisenstein’s many sources. Is he Eisenstein’s attempt to focus on a face in the crowd and to trace a single story? Unfortunately, October was never truly completed. This is the drama of STRIKE and POTEMKIN. “IN THE NAME OF THE NATIVE LAND.” To illustrate Kornilov’s attempt to restore the monarchy, Eisenstein returns to the opening shots of the statue of Tsar Alexander III beneath the Church of Christ the Savior. For this episode Eisenstein … She extends the laurel wreath of victory. It is decayed and dismembered but still it does not topple (Russia from 1914 to February, 1917). In the Palace courtyard, the two Bolshevik emissaries get up and leave. This increases the tension resulting from the scene. By late October, the Bolsheviks are ready to strike: ten days will shake the world. (Boots and feet are a central metaphor and we are to contrast these shiny ones with the battered boots of the captured soldiers, and later, the ragged, urgent feet of the Bolsheviks at their Smolny headquarters). “And at the head of the betrayed armies ...” Kerensky grabs his hat, the chauffeur waits. Again the dialectical structure is undercut by the lack of real collision. The cut from his face to the crowd shows the dialectic between them. He slides open a hidden panel in the chess board and pulls out a small jeweled crown. That he happened to make movies about political revolution appears in their eyes inconsequential compared to his innovations in film direction and editing. A railroad yard at night. Contextual Analysis of Eisenstein's Montage Theory in Battleship Potemkin and October: Ten Days That Shook the World Thus aesthetic criticism of Eisenstein continues. The scene moves to the Winter Palace. The red tide swallows the few cadets still fighting. Cut to Konovalov, who is still trying to make his telephone work. 14, 1977, pp. The reader experiences a kind of disappointment. In mathematics, Eisenstein's criterion gives a sufficient condition for a polynomial with integer coefficients to be irreducible over the rational numbers — that is, for it to not be factorizable into the product of non-constant polynomials with rational coefficients.. For scenes where more than one Bolshevik appears—when an army of red guards attacks—we know exactly what will happen. The night sky was dark and lurked over me, stalkerish like, not a thing felt in place. The army and the peasant masses are ready to join the revolution. Soon all soldiers, Russian and German, applaud. The other day I was amused to read a critique of The Coronation in which the author was absolutely certain that I am a closet conspiracy theorist. A few bodies fall but now the gunner shows no delight. And the next two shots read: “And the crown begins to tarnish and fade. Regardless of their content, shortening the shots abbreviates the time the audience has to absorb the information in each shot. In the sentimental tradition this face would signal a kindly old man, but when we see the man mocking the soldiers, Eisenstein breaks through the surface and reveals class venality. Eisenstein not only made movies but he wrote about the cinema in a detailed and original manner. We are not informed that two members of the central committee, Kamenev and Zinoviev, voted against the uprising. The second act, probably the most exciting and dynamic in the script and later in the film, has the Petrograd workers in mortal struggle with their enemies. A close-up shot shows two men, grossly bourgeois according to the best Eisensteinian “typage,” congratulating each other. The 1932 edition of the Soviet Encyclopaedia accused him, regarding October and The General Line, of giving 'no deep analysis of the decisive stages of the Socialist Revolution' and stated that he 'made a diversion to formal experiments. Thus, he turned the unpromising last act of the script into an acceptable conclusion to the film. The Bolsheviks advance in the opposite direction, their profiles left to right. Furthermore, the print of the film they see is butchered and far from the director’s intention. For his contemporary Soviet audience, Eisenstein has immediately stated a crucial premise. At the Winter Palace, everything is ready for attack. In 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the party, and exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. The socialist revolution in China had just been crushed, the Stalinists having sabotaged it. But the bourgeoisie is impotent. The one scene that remains from the original script occurs when a speaker addresses a huge crowd of uniformed red guards. Eisenstein, always fascinated with machinery (and during his earlier constructivist phase, optimistic about it), equates it here with inhuman destruction. Tsarist Army officers burst into laughter; politicians sing “Huzzah” (through the rhythmic montage we seem to hear them). Eisenstein, like some of his favorite Renaissance painters, has put himself in a corner of his own canvas. The arsenal is opened and arms are distributed to the people: part of Eisenstein’s on-going lesson in how to make a revolution. The first title announces “February.”. But Eisenstein so stacks his portrayal in favor of the Bolsheviks that once again (as he himself later admitted) he undercuts his drama (Film Form, 38 and 245). (This is also part of Eisenstein’s world propaganda message: In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks believed that worldwide revolution was possible, if not imminent.) Revolutionary banners are a key motif in this sequence. Statues, stairs, boots, and other ongoing visual metaphors form part of his silent film language. Eisenstein is making a point about Kerensky as politician. The Women’s Battalion of Death marches in. Amazon.co.uk: october eisenstein. In the Council of Minister’s chambers, around an ornate table, sit the ministers of the Provisional Government-later. Ultimately, in the fall of 1917, they urged an armed uprising. The women are unable to destroy the flag; they cannot destroy even the symbol of Bolshevik power, never mind the real thing. Further changes were required. Historically, this speaker was the famous Menshevik leader, Dan. Eisenstein was a cerebral filmmaker, an intellectual with a great respect for ideas. Gun fire in the distance—a crystal chandelier shakes: the Provisional Government is now as fragile as glass. Yet he wanted to portray the revolution visually. Artillery fires, red guards rush toward the Palace, a machine gunner, whom we have seen in the July Days’ massacre, fires. Trotsky briefly addresses the meeting. “For brotherhood”—a Kronstadt sailor, moving from left to center, begins to make friends. Analysis, based on the recognition of the separation of objective reality and human consciousness, must be in-voked to dialectically bridge the gap between the specific facts of actuality and the general (historical) concepts which determine actuality's concrete- Crowds of people run up public steps. Slowly the Bolsheviks convince the Tartars: montage of Asian faces and growing awareness with the titles, “For bread,” “For peace,” “For land.” A soldier wearing a Moslem head shawl nods in agreement. Instead, he tries to focus on the deeper feelings of the muzhik soldiers and the fact that although victims of the military machine, they were not quite ready for revolt. The people rise up, the bourgeois government must come down. 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