October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (1928)

Film Record

October (Ten Days that Shook the World)

Country: Soviet Union
Release: 11 MAY 1928
Runtime: 115 min
Original Language: Russian

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Sergei M. Eisenstein's docu-drama about the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. Made ten years after the events and edited in Eisenstein's 'Soviet Montage' style, it re-enacts in celebratory terms several key scenes from the revolution.

Why It's Here

October is where Eisenstein tested whether editing could make an audience think, not just feel. He called it intellectual montage: cutting shots together not to advance a story, but to build an argument. A famous sequence intercuts Kerensky climbing stairs with a mechanical peacock and Napoleon figurines. None of those objects exist in the scene. They’re there to make a point about vanity and power. Before this, Soviet montage theory used editing to control rhythm and emotion. October proposed that the cut itself could carry ideas, turning cinema into something closer to visual rhetoric.

What to Watch For: Pay attention to the inserts that have no narrative reason to be there. The peacock, the medals, the religious icons. These aren’t cutaways or establishing shots. Eisenstein drops them into sequences purely to shape how you interpret what’s happening. The “Gods” sequence is the boldest example: a rapid series of religious figures from different traditions, cut together to dismantle the idea of divinity through comparison alone. Notice how disorienting it feels compared to the battle scenes, which use more conventional rhythmic editing. That contrast shows you the boundary Eisenstein was crossing, from editing as storytelling to editing as essay.