LENIN IN OCTOBER / LENIN V OKTYABRE (1937)

Straightforward and easy to follow, Mikhail Romm’s film on Vladimir Lenin and The October Revolution of 1917 is less ‘agit-prop’ than YA bio-pic.  Made to celebrate twenty years that shook the world, it takes bolshoi liberties with the facts, most notably by raising Joseph Stalin’s involvement in events, largely by giving him now exiled Leon Trotsky’s part.*  And damned if the simplified storyline & politics don’t work in entertaining fashion.  Romm might be telling a modern Robin Hood story, with short, stocky, balding Lenin taking from the establishment and giving to the proletariat.  There’s even a big, benign protector/bodyguard called Vasily in the Little John spot.  Structured for near constant suspense, we begin with Lenin’s train ride from Finland Station to Petrograd, hunted all the way by agents.  Met by comrades in the city, he goes into immediate hiding, his every move an opportunity for various parties and groups of activists across the political spectrum to grab him.  (From Sergei Eisenstein’s OCTOBER/‘28 to Warren Beatty’s REDS/’81, party confusion is where they lose us.*)  Boris Shchukin makes a downright bouncy Lenin, a charmer (recent bios paint him as only slightly less ruthless than Stalin) while loyal aide Nikolai Okhlopkov isn’t so different than Alan Hale was in Little John in next year’s THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD.  Both leads repeated in Romm’s follow up, LENIN IN 1918/’39, but that film a good deal more daunting to watch.  With impressive sets and set pieces, sweeping, screen-filling action, self-serving political villains and a noticeable absence of Eisenstein’s artistic trappings, this was THE representation of ‘Volodya’ for at least a couple of generations in Russia.  And note the final shot at the victory rally: Lenin with his characteristic out-thrust arm; Stalin standing behind him waiting for the next act to begin.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Trotsky had his post-mortem revenge after Stalin’s death when Khrushchev’s cultural ‘thaw’ clipped Stalin out of all circulating prints.  Restored to full length, here’s an excellent print available free:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lenin_in_October_(film)_1937.webm  

DOUBLE-BILL:  *As mentioned above, Eisenstein’s OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD, which, as Stalin pointed out, is too ‘formalistic.’  (The guy was also a film critic.)  And Beatty’s REDS, which has its own problems though Jack Nicholson makes a fantastic Eugene O’Neill, if not nearly as tragically handsome.