ten days of intense dreaming and desire
by Douglas Messerli
Sergei
Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov (screenplay), Sergei Eisenstein (director) Oktyabr': Desyat' dney kotorye potryasli (October: Ten Days That Shook the World)
/ 1927, USA 1928
When an American journalist asked who had
authored the screenplay, Eisenstein sarcastically answered, “the Party.” The
deletions of Trotsky came at the very last moment, in fact on the very day it
was to be shown at the Bolshoi Theatre, with Stalin himself visiting Eisenstein’s
editing room to view the scenes concerning Trotsky. Presumably Trotsyist
opposition protests in Moscow and Leningrad that morning, November 7, 1927, had
resulted in this decision.
Eisenstein’s final work, although
reverential of the Soviet heroes, in its sometimes comic exaggerations of the
Tsar’s world and the figures of the provisional government, seems almost to
wink at the heroic posturing of Lenin and the delegates of the Military
Revolutionary Committee.
But even if one generally admires Eisenstein’s more formal collaging of images such as his quick shifts from a baroque Jesus to a Buddha, Hindu deities, Aztec gods, and African idols—suggesting that all religions are equally meaningless—there is something too heavy-handed and simple-minded about many such scenes that fill this film with many slightly embarrassing moments.
A huge mechanical peacock lifts its head
and slowly lifts metallic feathers into the air, supposedly representing the
absurdity of the Tzar’s and the provisional government’s self-deluded pride.
The ridiculously moody Alexander Kerensky (leader of the provisional
government) turns into frozen sculpture of Napoleon, and later, when his
government is threatened, crawls into bed, melodramatically attempting to bury
his head under the covers. Sabre-rattling Tatars, presumably in league with the
Lavr Kornilov, the tsarist counterrevolutionary officer, suddenly convinced by
Bolsheviks to abandon their leader, spin off into a celebratory dance joined by
the Bolsheviks leaping and splashing about in the mud in a kind of mock Pereplyas.
Yet for all these flaws, Eisenstein’s
film is filled with so many remarkable images that even if we occasionally
might cringe at the silliness of the worst of them, we can only be in awe of the film overall. The real revolution that
Eisenstein’s work documents is not the Bolshevik event of 1917, but the utter
inventiveness of his movie itself.
Today we perhaps can enjoy this film less
because of its thematic focus than its evocation of the 10 days of intense dreaming
and desire of the Soviet people—of which the work is itself is further
evidence.
Los Angeles, August 1, 2015
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