# October: Ten Days That Shook the World (Октябрь)
**October: Ten Days That Shook the World** (Октябрь; Russian: *Oktyabr*) is a 1927 Soviet silent historical film directed by [Sergei Eisenstein](https://www.edgepedia.org/sergei-eisenstein) and Grigorii Aleksandrov for the Sovkino studio in Moscow, dramatizing the 1917 Bolshevik revolution and the events that led to it[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927). The USSR commissioned it for the festival celebrating the tenth anniversary of the [October Revolution](https://www.edgepedia.org/october-revolution), and because of its thematic and stylistic continuity with Eisenstein's *Strike* (1924) and *Battleship Potemkin* (1925) it is often interpreted as the third installment of a trilogy[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927). Controversial before release and heavily censored, it is nonetheless widely considered a masterpiece of cinematic form and the fullest exemplar of Eisenstein's theory of intellectual montage[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927).
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title / directors | Октябрь (*Oktyabr*), directed by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigorii Aleksandrov; Sovkino, Moscow, 1927[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) |
| Commission | Made in 1927 on order of the October Jubilee Committee for the tenth anniversary of the Bolshevik seizure of power[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) • [3](https://csdfmuseum.ru/history/28) |
| Premiere | 7 November 1927 at the Bolshoi Theater, ten years to the day after the revolution; only excerpts were shown[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) • [4](https://historyproject.ge/en/archivememoryresearch/article/492/?cat_id=40) |
| Full release | Delayed until March 1928; on Soviet screens 14 March 1928[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) • [5](https://magazines.gorky.media/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/05_ILCHENKO.pdf) |
| Coverage | Events in Petrograd from February to October 1917: the February Revolution, the July days, the Kornilov affair, and the October uprising[6](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/) |
| Signature technique | Intellectual montage, in which clashing shots are resolved by a synthesizing idea rather than narrative continuity[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) |
| Later history | Banned by the Central Committee after 1933; returned to circulation after de-Stalinization, and restored and re-released in 1967 with music by Dmitri Shostakovich[4](https://historyproject.ge/en/archivememoryresearch/article/492/?cat_id=40) • [7](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/2638/oktyabr) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
February 1917, Petrograd. The February uprising topples the monarchy, and power passes to the Provisional Government under [Alexander Kerensky](https://www.edgepedia.org/alexander-kerensky) (Nikolai Popov), a dandy whom Eisenstein treats with relish and contempt in equal measure. The city is rendered not through individual protagonists but through crowds: workers surging across bridges, soldiers fraternizing in the streets, the emblems of the Tsar dragged down and carted off like scrap.
The first great sequence arrives early: the [July Days](https://www.edgepedia.org/july-days). **A young Bolshevik carrying a banner is pulled down and stabbed to death with umbrella tips by a crowd of bourgeois men and women, and Eisenstein cuts his death into a cascade of images: a white horse slipping and falling on a drawbridge, a woman's heel stamping on the body, a white ostrich hat, all spliced together as one continuous downward motion.** As the bridges rise to seal off the workers' districts, a dead woman's hair slips over the edge of the rising counterweight, an image repeated six times at varying angles until grief becomes geometry.[18](https://www.artforum.com/features/montage-october-dialectic-of-the-shot-210340/) The revolution's first wave is drowned, and the government thinks it has won.
Then Lenin returns. In hiding through the summer, he surfaces at the Finland Station and begins arguing that the [Bolsheviks](https://www.edgepedia.org/bolsheviks) should seize power now, not later. Eisenstein builds the leader from close-ups of a lookalike's face intercut with the real Lenin's hands and gestures from newsreel footage, a splice of documentary and fiction the film never flags; the leader becomes at once a man, a symbol, and a special effect. Against him, the film sets Kerensky in one of its most famous montages: **Kerensky climbs and climbs the palace staircase, shot after shot, intercut with a mechanical peacock spreading its tail, and then through further cuts he is reduced to a wind-up doll, while in another famous montage a tank smashes a statue of Napoleon on his desk via multiple exposures, until the head of the government has been reduced by editing alone to a toy of empire.**[19](http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) In another celebrated passage, Eisenstein ridicules religion itself, jump-cutting from a Baroque Christ to a golden Buddha to a primitive idol, all of them finally the same object.[20](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/oktiabr)
The Bolsheviks take the city's nerve centers one by one, and Kerensky flees the capital in a car flying the American flag, a detail the film lets speak for itself.[21](http://www.guylcote.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Revaluation_Sight_Sound.pdf) What remains is the [Winter Palace](https://www.edgepedia.org/winter-palace), where the ministers of the Provisional Government wait behind closed doors.
**The storming of the Winter Palace is the sequence the film exists for, and it is staged as the freedom of access to a vast space.** From the bank of the Neva, masses of workers, soldiers, and sailors mass in choreographed waves; between shots of the army, Eisenstein cuts to close-ups of a map over which a hand with a pencil marks positions to be seized with Xs and circles.[18](https://www.artforum.com/features/montage-october-dialectic-of-the-shot-210340/) Searchlights sweep the facades. The gates give way, and hundreds pour up the grand staircase in overlapping tides while chandeliers sway. Ministers are plucked from behind the long council table one by one and marched out to the crowd's jeers. In reality the seizure was near bloodless, the government having already collapsed, but Eisenstein stages it as an epic assault, and his version became the one the world remembered for decades.
At 2:17 a.m. on October 26, 1917, the Soviets officially take power, and Eisenstein closes on a Petrograd clock bearing that timestamp, set beside clocks showing the hour in cities around the world: the revolution, his intertitles insist, is now the property of history.[22](https://www.scenebygreen.com/2024/10/29/october-ten-days-that-shook-the-world-1928/)
### Characters
**Vladimir Lenin (Vasily Nikandrov)** is the film's only figure close to a hero, played by a lookalike and treated in near-mythic close-up, his speeches and gestures partly spliced in from real newsreel footage. **Alexander Kerensky (Nikolai Popov)** is the villain, caricatured without apology: preening, ascending, intercut with peacocks, Napoleon, and a mechanical doll. Around them, the masses are the true protagonist: workers, sailors, and soldiers moving as a single organism, with Boris Livanov and Vladimir Uralsky among the ensemble of revolutionaries and functionaries drawn as types rather than individuals.
### Interpretations and controversies
The film's honesty as history is its standing controversy. The actual storming of the Winter Palace was a near-bloodless affair, yet the film's operatic version of it became the accepted image of the revolution worldwide, which is precisely the point: *October* is not a record of a revolution but the manufacture of a revolution's legend. Its politics were also edited in real time. The film was recut to excise Trotsky from the revolution's narrative before release,[19](http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) and Soviet critics condemned it for formalist experimentation and supposed incomprehensibility, with the 1932 Soviet Encyclopedia judging that Eisenstein had been "lured off the track by formalist experimentation."[23](https://cinemontage.org/october-surprisethe-revolution-will-edited/) Eisenstein himself later regretted some sequences, calling one "means ossified into lifeless literary symbolism and stylistic mannerism."[19](http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/)
## Commission and production
In 1926 the October Revolution Jubilee Committee pulled Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, and cameraman Eduard Tisse away from *The General Line* (completed in 1929) to begin work on the anniversary film[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/). It was one of several revolution films made for the jubilee, alongside Pudovkin's *The End of St. Petersburg*, Boris Barnet's *Moscow in October*, and Esfir Shub's compilation *The Great Way*, all slated for the anniversary[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/). The film was shot at the Sovkino studio's Moscow factory, and Eisenstein was permitted to film on the actual sites of the October events, on the approaches to the Winter Palace and inside its interiors[3](https://csdfmuseum.ru/history/28) • [8](https://lavkapisateley.spb.ru/image/gazeta/115.pdf).
**Casting and scale.** Eschewing traditional protagonists, Eisenstein developed what he called the "mass-epical," in which the masses rather than an individual hero drive events[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/). For historical figures he preferred look-alikes to professional actors, choosing the lorry driver Vasili Nikandrov to play Lenin; Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaia criticized the choice for failing to embody her husband's charisma[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) • [9](https://www.culture.ru/themes/255557/istoricheskie-filmy-sergeya-eizenshteina). The reenactment of the storming of the Winter Palace was staged on a scale with no precedent in Russian history: the crew detonated more ordnance than the [Red Army](https://www.edgepedia.org/red-army) had used during the actual event, and some footage from the film fooled news agencies into publishing its stills as photographs of the real thing[2](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/) • [8](https://lavkapisateley.spb.ru/image/gazeta/115.pdf).
## Premiere and censorship
The film was planned for the anniversary celebrations but was controversial before it was finished. Stalin objected to several passages, particularly the scenes depicting [Leon Trotsky](https://www.edgepedia.org/leon-trotsky), and Eisenstein was accused of diminishing the eminence of [Vladimir Lenin](https://www.edgepedia.org/vladimir-lenin); as a result only excerpts were shown at the festival premiere on 7 November 1927 at the Bolshoi Theater[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) • [4](https://historyproject.ge/en/archivememoryresearch/article/492/?cat_id=40). The complete film reached screens only in March 1928, released on 14 March after reworking[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) • [5](https://magazines.gorky.media/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/05_ILCHENKO.pdf).
The political constraints shaped the film's content directly. The film historian Richard Taylor has shown how the history represented in *October* was hampered by political expediency: the film writes Trotsky out of the official history[10](https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/629/). After 1933 the Central Committee prohibited the film outright, declaring this depiction of the central event of Soviet history anti-Soviet; only after de-Stalinization, in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the revolution, did a dubbed version return to cinemas[4](https://historyproject.ge/en/archivememoryresearch/article/492/?cat_id=40). In 1967 the film was restored and re-released with music by [Dmitri Shostakovich](https://www.edgepedia.org/dmitri-shostakovich) at Mosfilm[7](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/2638/oktyabr).
## Style: intellectual montage and the mass as hero
*October* serves as a demonstration of Eisenstein's concept of intellectual montage, in which a conflict between successive shots produces tension that a synthesizing concept, idea, or thought then resolves; Eisenstein uses these syntheses to comment on historical events, going beyond what the film offers as a mimetic representation of them[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927). The [Museum of Modern Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/museum-of-modern-art) film notes call it the purest example of what Eisenstein called ideological montage, treating its subject not as history but in the manner of a political cartoon[6](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/).
The film has no individualized hero and no conventional dramatic plot; instead, historical events themselves take over the structural role of chapters[11](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/). Its montage devices include associative editing that compares Kerensky and Kornilov with Napoleon through juxtaposed shots, and symbolic imagery such as the statue of Alexander III toppling at the start to signify the fall of autocracy, then reassembling at the midpoint to suggest that Kerensky occupies the tsar's place, with intertitles dubbing him Alexander IV[11](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/). The raising of the bridge, in which a wounded horse hangs from the lifted span, is described in the MoMA notes as one of the most famous sequences in film history and the one in which the dimension of time is most stretched[6](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/).
Contemporary Soviet officials found the formal experimentation troubling: the film, stripped of individual heroes and dramatic plot, was seen as breaking into fragments rather than delivering a coherent picture of the revolution, and its hieroglyphic montage struck 1920s viewers as a rebus[12](https://xn----7sbxcach3agmieaceq1th.xn--p1ai/sites/default/files/journals/2003-6.pdf).
## History and invention
Historians have pointed to the film's anachronisms and inaccuracies. The destruction of the monument of Alexander III, which the film places in 1917, actually happened in 1921, and the sequence depicting the storming of the Winter Palace is fictionalized[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927). The storming itself, later a fixture of Soviet historical memory, was largely a cinematic invention: the sailors who took the palace had, by contemporary accounts, gone on a drinking binge and stormed it two or three times over, while the film supplies a disciplined sailor who interrupts such a meal[11](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/) • [8](https://lavkapisateley.spb.ru/image/gazeta/115.pdf).
In *The Film Till Now*, Paul Rotha described the film's approach as picking and showing real people and happenings not to depict history faithfully but to convey a specific political stance, which is why Trotsky was left out.[6](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/) At the same time, one reading of the film notes that its overall argument counters a strict party-line account: Eisenstein shows October as the moment when the masses entered into history and history entered into the masses, even though the final seizure of power was planned by a small group of Bolshevik leaders[10](https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/629/).
## Music and release abroad
The composer Edmund Meisel, who had scored *Potemkin*, wrote the music for *October*[13](https://silentlondon.co.uk/2017/10/17/edmund-meisel-sergei-eisenstein-october/) • [11](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/). After passing censorship the film premiered in Berlin on 2 April 1928, but where critics had hailed *Potemkin*, the reviews of *October* were overwhelmingly bad, focusing on the film's repetitiveness and Meisel's relentless music; one hostile review prompted Meisel to sue for professional damage, drawing a countersuit that dragged on for two years[13](https://silentlondon.co.uk/2017/10/17/edmund-meisel-sergei-eisenstein-october/).
The film's versions differed from country to country. The Film Society staged the British premiere at the Tivoli on the Strand in 1934, but the print received ran considerably longer than the German version, which in turn differed from the Moscow cut, and its structure varied so much that a small fortune went into rearranging Meisel's score; conductor Ernest Irving worked with two assistants to keep the performance on track.[13](https://silentlondon.co.uk/2017/10/17/edmund-meisel-sergei-eisenstein-october/) In the United States it circulated as *October*, with the alternate release title *Ten Days That Shook the World*, after John Reed's book[14](https://bampfa.org/node/194888) • [11](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/).
## Versions and running time
The surviving cuts differ substantially. The Pacific Film Archive catalogs a 141-minute version[14](https://bampfa.org/node/194888); culture.ru lists 104 minutes for its restored copy[9](https://www.culture.ru/themes/255557/istoricheskie-filmy-sergeya-eizenshteina); a 1927 Soviet reference gives 103 minutes[15](https://s3.amazonaws.com/tjmassets/guide_pdfs/PoP_Russian_Web2.pdf); and a 2007 restoration is reported at around 137 minutes. The original November 1927 version ran approximately 13,000 feet[16](https://lib.zu.edu.pk/ebookdata/Media%20Sciences/A%20History%20of%20Narrative%20Film.pdf). These discrepancies reflect the film's troubled passage through censorship, re-editing, and restoration rather than a single authoritative cut.
## Standing
Despite its compromised production history, *October* is widely considered a masterpiece of cinematic form[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927). Its contribution to the image of the Bolshevik revolution worked less through the film as a whole than through later selection, as it was broken apart into widely quoted film citations[17](https://historyrussia.org/tsekh-istorikov/istoriya-v-kino/imidzheneriya-revolyutsii-oktyabr-1917-goda-v-sovetskom-igrovom-kino.html). It remains a foundational reference point for avant-garde and political filmmaking, and its sequences, from the bridge-raising to the assault on the Winter Palace, continue to be studied as the clearest working-out of montage as a means of generating ideas rather than narrating events[1](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927) • [6](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/).
## References
1. [Eubanks, Ivan. "October (1927)." Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism](https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/october-1927)
2. ["1927: October (Sergei Eisenstein)." Senses of Cinema, 2017](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/)
3. ["Десять дней, которые потрясли мир." Музей ЦСДФ](https://csdfmuseum.ru/history/28)
4. [Brutyan, Edgar. "Sergei Eisenstein's 'October': The Story of a Pivotal Era in the History of Film." History Project, 2022](https://historyproject.ge/en/archivememoryresearch/article/492/?cat_id=40)
5. [Ильченко, С. "Нева," 2017, on the production and release of «Октябрь»](https://magazines.gorky.media/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/05_ILCHENKO.pdf)
6. [October [Ten Days That Shook the World] (1927-28), Toronto Film Society film notes](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/october-ten-days-shook-world-1927-28/)
7. [Смотреть фильм «Октябрь» в хорошем качестве на портале «Культура.РФ».](https://www.culture.ru/live/movies/2638/oktyabr)
8. ["Неумирающий миф." Лавка писателей, on the invention of the Winter Palace storming](https://lavkapisateley.spb.ru/image/gazeta/115.pdf)
9. ["Исторические фильмы Сергея Эйзенштейна." Культура.РФ](https://www.culture.ru/themes/255557/istoricheskie-filmy-sergeya-eizenshteina)
10. [Review of Robert Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History, Reviews in History, 2007](https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/629/)
11. ["Октябрь (1927)." Кинопоиск](https://www.kinopoisk.ru/film/42759/)
12. [Journal article on Eisenstein's intellectual cinema and the reception of «Октябрь»](https://xn----7sbxcach3agmieaceq1th.xn--p1ai/sites/default/files/journals/2003-6.pdf)
13. [Riley, John Leman. "'Rhythm, rhythm and pure rhythm above all': How Edmund Meisel scored Eisenstein's October." Silent London, 2017](https://silentlondon.co.uk/2017/10/17/edmund-meisel-sergei-eisenstein-october/)
14. [October, Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) catalog record](https://bampfa.org/node/194888)
15. [Сила искусства: Ранняя советская фотография и раннее советское кино, exhibition guide](https://s3.amazonaws.com/tjmassets/guide_pdfs/PoP_Russian_Web2.pdf)
16. [A History of Narrative Film, fifth edition](https://lib.zu.edu.pk/ebookdata/Media%20Sciences/A%20History%20of%20Narrative%20Film.pdf)
17. ["Имидженерия русской революции: Октябрь 1917 года в советском игровом кино." Российское историческое общество, 2017](https://historyrussia.org/tsekh-istorikov/istoriya-v-kino/imidzheneriya-revolyutsii-oktyabr-1917-goda-v-sovetskom-igrovom-kino.html)
18. [https://www.artforum.com/features/montage-october-dialectic-of-the-shot-210340/](https://www.artforum.com/features/montage-october-dialectic-of-the-shot-210340/)
19. [http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/](http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2017/soviet-cinema/1927-october-sergei-eisenstein/)
20. [https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/oktiabr](https://www.encyclopedia.com/movies/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/oktiabr)
21. [http://www.guylcote.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Revaluation_Sight_Sound.pdf](http://www.guylcote.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Revaluation_Sight_Sound.pdf)
22. [https://www.scenebygreen.com/2024/10/29/october-ten-days-that-shook-the-world-1928/](https://www.scenebygreen.com/2024/10/29/october-ten-days-that-shook-the-world-1928/)
23. [https://cinemontage.org/october-surprisethe-revolution-will-edited/](https://cinemontage.org/october-surprisethe-revolution-will-edited/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Early and silent cinema › European national silent cinemas*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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