The large-scale dramatization of the 1917 October Revolution commissioned by the Soviet Government to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Revolution is a must-watch both from a historical and cinematic standpoint.

Following the postulates of the Bolshevism, the film lacks a central figure or main individual protagonist (Lenin is only featured counted times, we could even say that Kerensky appears more times than the leader of the Bolsheviks) and instead puts its focus on the entire proletariat and soviets.

At the same time, as we can expect from a movie directed by pioneering filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (in this particular case alongside Grigoriy Aleksandrov), the importance of telling the story through the cut and editing, based on the soviet montage theory of the time, is heavily on display. From fast cutting to slower paced, but always trying to clearly convey some sort specific meaning through how the images are presented is the clear norm of the story.

Overall it is a good film but it feels that it could have benefit from a longer runtime, making it much more epic, allowing the possibility for much more detail to be told through the film, as it suffers a bit of too much superficiality in exposing the many things that it wants to tackle (the return of Lenin from exile, the attraction of the masses, the debates between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the fall of Kerensky and the Provisional Government…).

Lastly, the extremely fast cut scenes sometimes become quite tedious and annoying (the movie thrives in those more delicate and calmed cuts where you can obviously still make the connection between images but also allows you to savour what you see). In any case, we could believe that this is an obvious aspect of early cinema and the experimentation of the medium.

In conclusion, although having some flaws and improvable aspects expected from early cinema, as it has been previously mentioned it is an essential viewing for its historical relevance for both what it tells and the art form that it uses to do so.