Arsenal (1928)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Aleksandr Dovzhenko

Writer:

Aleksandr Dovzhenko (writer)

Release Date:

9 November 1929 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | War

Plot:

The Great War (World War I) has brought devastation, heartache, and hardship to the Ukrainian people...

Plot Keywords:

Soldier | Train Wreck | WWI | Laughing Gas | Ukraine

Cast

Semyon Svashenko	...	Timosh, the Ukrainian
Amvrosi Buchma	...	Laughing-Gassed Soldier
Georgi Khorkov	...	A Red Army Soldier (as G. Khorkov)
Dmitri Erdman	...	A German Officer
Sergei Petrov	...	A German Soldier
M. Mikhajlovsky	...	A Nationalist
A. Yevdakov	...	Tsar Nikolas II
Nikolai Kuchinsky	...	Petliura
O. Merlatti	...	Sadovsky (as F. Merlatti)
Nikolai Nademsky	...	Official
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Luciano Albertini	...	Raffaele
Pyotr Masokha
T. Wagner
B. Zagorsky

Also Known As:

Арсенал (Soviet Union: Russian title)
January Uprising in Kiev in 1918 (UK)

Runtime:

USA:70 min | Belgium:90 min (Copy with French subtitles at Brussels Musée du Cinéma) | Argentina:75 min

Country:

Soviet Union | Ukraine

Language:

Russian | Ukrainian

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Brazil:18 | Argentina:Atp | USA:Not Rated

Company:

VUFKU

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: In a scene early in the film, a soldier lies dead, covered with sand, but the sand can be seen to rise and fall with the actor's breathing.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Archangel (1990)

fascinating method

Arsenal seems to be a direct challenge to idea that films are intended to be digested in one sitting. Apparently even Sergei Eisenstein had a tough time making sense of the narrative of some of Dovzhenko's work. Arsenal's narrative only emerges if you concentrate on what you've seeing - comprehending and reassembling the puzzle of the images and movements that Dovzhenko has arranged to create causal and symbolic associations. Dovzhenko's camera is like the eye of God, taking in a half dozen settings, all of them connected though disparate in space and time. Dovzhenko also is perfectly comfortable inserting the fantastic (a talking horse or a faith in communism that deflects bullets) into his retelling of a historical event. I watched the film several times before the plot was clear to me.

I'd recommend this film to anyone who wants to see a whole different approach to story telling. There are many great images and some of the acting is very good (the way Semyon Svashenko glances with disgust at one of the Ukrainian nationalists and slowly reaches out to touch his ribbon, feeling it's lightness, is an example), but there is no easy way of getting past Dovzhenko's style. You have to want to figure out this film. Dovzhenko's narrative technique is as unique as Robert Altman or Tsai Ming-Liang.