Oktyabr

Commissioned to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the 1917 revolution, Eisenstein came up not with a rousing spectacle that might please the proletariat, but with an experimental film aimed at exemplifying his theory of 'intellectual montage'. The result, for all its spectacular set pieces (notably the raising of the Petrograd bridges and the storming of the Winter Palace), is sometimes hard to follow, since human actions and motivations tend to be neglected in favour of the overall, rather abstract design of the film, and the narrative is regularly interrupted by montage shots of metaphorical and symbolic value. As a result, the film remains an interesting oddity rather than entertaining or illuminating. Indeed, watching it today can seem hard work.