October

Year: 1927

Grade: B

Country: USSR

Director: Eisenstein

Review

i can’t say anything about this film that hasn’t already been said. some of eisenstein’s editing is downright brilliant and may never be matched or surpassed again. the detail that went into some of the sequences is really astonishing from a technical and allegorical point of view. he’ll take a symbol within a scene and mete it out to its very limit. i think that the film is beyond me in this regard because it really does require a micro-study, an almost frame by frame analysis and understanding of the limits of film as metaphor and of the historical context; neither of which i really possess. that said, you can still get a very good feeling of what he’s doing and trying to say, and that’s a success of the film. if it were simply an academic piece that could only be understood by a select few then it would be nearly worthless, but it’s not like that. it is an outdated film in some ways, but it’s still a very important one. i can hardly imagine the film without the score, though this is how it was originally conceived…later on the score was added and it certainly does justice to the images. it’s not an exciting film to watch, but it’s a great piece of film so it’s hard to give it a bad grade….