Cinema
Arsenal
Арсенал
Oleksandr Dovzhenko · 1929
Synopsis
The film opens on the Great War with tableaux: a mother who has lost her sons, a one-armed peasant beating his horse, a German soldier driven to fits of laughter by gas. Tymish, a Ukrainian soldier, survives the accident of a train of demobilised men and returns to Kyiv, where nationalists of the Central Rada and Bolsheviks are contending for power; he joins the workers of the Arsenal factory, who rise up in January 1918.
Context
Shot in 1928 at the Odessa studio, with cinematography by Danylo Demutsky and sets by Volodymyr Müller, the film was presented in Kyiv on 25 February 1929. Commissioned to celebrate the Bolshevik insurrection of 1918, against which its author had himself fought on the Rada's side, it pushes the fighting into the background; its parallel editing and fantastic images, such as the horse that speaks in an intertitle, leave an impression of chaos rather than a clear message.
Who it is for
A silent film of about an hour and a half, in seven reels, whose meaning lies in the editing more than in the story; the first minutes are almost abstract.
Prizes and reception
Selected in 1929 by the National Board of Review among the five best films of the year, it appears in the ranking of the hundred best Ukrainian films drawn up in 2021.
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