The BFI Classics series has often felt like a ghetto for well-researched love letters to mislaid masterpieces. While some of the titles in the collection have been fully deserving of this comprehensive format of detail and analysis, other selections would have been better served as far shorter articles in Sight and Sound or on this website. The quality of writing has always been to the highest standard but the films selected have sometimes seemed a wee bit less essential than others so far ignored. Nine pounds for ninety pages on a film you might have trouble finding at even the most diligently catalogued video shop often seems extravagant. The annoying recurrence of these obscure titles within the range has meant collecting the series as a whole is financially off-putting.
So along comes Richard Taylor's long, hard look at October, the type of film crying out for the BFI Classics treatment. Whereas other writers have to spend just as much time advocating their selection as they do examining their chosen classic (could this be because the films themselves offer so little to discuss?), Taylor's choice feels perfect for the series. Eisenstein's 1927 epic restaging of the Ten Days That Shook the World is a film that embodies that moment in political and social history. The methods that Eisenstein perfected in this production are culturally historical. As Taylor details the true story of the October revolution and the back-story behind the production one never feels like this is a justification to suspicious audience. October is a significant inspiration to the way films are edited for contemporary audiences, a technical milestone and the experimental nature of its direction making it an enjoyable watch today. No sonnet to its status takes up valuable space in Taylor's rich critique, for such tub-thumping is made unnecessary by the sheer variety of angles this work of art demands to be considered from.
The scene-by-scene analysis is concise, allowing you room to form your own ideas and interpretations. In many ways Taylor's style is dependent on you creating a personal understanding of what Eisenstein intended with his rich mixture of montage and, in October more than any other work, mise-en-scène. The real meat and gravy however, is in the juicy anecdotes of the film's production. One of many highlights detailed is when a Chief of Police stages a robbery for fuses. These episodic interruptions give Taylor's history the quirkiness of a great novel. It is examples like these that betray October's production history as not just one of the great tales of early cinema but a fascinating, representative footnote in the USSR's foundling steps. Let's hope the BFI take Richard Taylor's enjoyable, intelligent style and inspired choice as milestone for all other entries in this series to emulate.
Reviewed by Bob Carroll
