'October' as history (Sergei Eisenstein)

How does Sergei Eisenstein's famed film, October, relate to the events of O ctober that it recounts? Is the film Bolshevik propaganda or history? These are the questions addressed by this essay. The strategy is to place Eisens tein and his work alongside five well-regarded histories of the Bolshevik R evolution written between 1919 and 1998. Seen in this context, the film pro ves to be--aside from a couple of wholly invented sequences--a work of hist ory in which the interpretation of major events and figures of the revoluti on compares favourably with that of one or more well-known historians. The essay also explains how Eisenstein presents history, often compressing even ts into visual symbols or metaphors. It also explains how the director's mo st obvious inventions (the 'storming' of the Winter Palace and the raising of the Bridges over the Neva during the 'July days') provide a certain kind of 'visual' truth, allowing the filmmaker to speak of events of the revolu tion that occur outside the framework of the famed 'Ten Days That Shook the World'.