Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 4, No. 9. July 30, 1941

October

October

"October,"' or "Ten Days That Shook the World," is a Russian silent film made in 1927.

The two serious purposes of all Russian directors are the propaganda of the Revolution and the creation of a new proletarian art. The Russians were quick to realise the tremendous and almost limitless possibilities of the film as an art form, but at the same time they were forced by the scarcity of film in Russia to delimit the essential aims of the cinema and to export only the most fruitful potentialities of the new art.

Thus, even their earliest work makes a striking contrast with American films of the same period, with their over-dependence on the simple narration of a story using frequent sub-titles to explain the action. Soviet action is expressive and self-explanatory.

Montage.

We find the key to the Russian technique in [unclear: Eisenstein's] insistence that as "artist-director" he should edit, or cut and assemble his film, himself.

Montage implies the use of a series of shots emotionally bound together to stimulate the spectator to feel the purport of the scenes. The emphasis is always on an emotional unity rather than a strictly logical or temporal sequence.

We find an intelligent and imaginative use of montage in "October." Free of any need for star actors to develop his theme, Eisenstein builds up his story by actions and suggestive symbolism. A striking instance of his symbolism is the dismemberment of the statute of the Czar by the people, and the reversal of the film and the re-instatement of the symbol of tyranny to bring home the implications of the Kerensky Provisional Government.