The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

In 1927, when Eisenstein was making October, Esther Shub was working on neglected newsreel footage from the Moscow archives to create a dramatic 'montage of film document' spanning 1913-1917. In 1967, Mosfilm re-produced the film, adding an introduction and a soundtrack of classical piano music to counterpoint and underline her juxtaposition of images and terse intertitles. The result is a highly entertaining and visually interesting history lesson, which charts in succinct and often amusing terms the decline of the Tsars (the Romanov dynasty) and the rise of the masses.