Critics reviews

Eisenstein was given extraordinary access to the locales of the actual events, so that the vast halls of the Winter Palace and the trappings of royalty (Fabergé eggs and fancy crystal liquor bottles) give a sense of reality rare in fictional reenactments.

Eisenstein's retelling of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 is a breathtaking piece of silent filmmaking. A swift and sweeping treatment of the struggle between the bourgeois provisional government and the Lenin-led Bolsheviks, OCTOBER recreates events with such ambition that they appear documentary in style. Conversely, the film benefits from the maturation of Eisenstein's theories of the montage—moving from one of locations in STRIKE to one of "intellect" and metaphor.