Eisenstein further develops his visual techniques with more use of montage, most notably during the suppressing of a counter-revolution on a slowly-rising bridge, and the storming of the Winter Palace.  Both involved huge crowd scenes featuring hundreds of extras, in an age long before CGI.

Unfortunately October was a commercial failure, though, and Eisenstein’s methods were called into question by the government, who also forced him to cut the scenes featuring Trotsky, then being purged by Lenin.

The film also let to hard times for the director, as he was invited to Hollywood but passed over for director of An American Tragedy, with Paramount favouring Josef von Sternberg.  After a further unhappy experience in Mexico he returned home to find himself out of favour with the filmmaking community, and several uncompleted projects let to a nervous breakdown.

He would, however, return triumphantly to the cinema in 1938, with the magnificent Alexander Nevsky…

Year: 1927