Synopsis
A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.
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Arsenal
Cast
Director
Producer
Writer
Cinematography
Studio
Country
Language
Alternative Titles
The Arsenal - A Revolutionary Epic, Arsenaal, Arsenale, 兵工厂
Releases by Date
Theatrical
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USSR
09 Nov 1929
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USA
Physical
04 Oct 2012
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Netherlands
Releases by Country
Netherlands
04 Oct 2012
- Physical DVD
USA
09 Nov 1929
- Theatrical
USSR
25 Feb 1929
- Theatrical
Popular reviews
More-
The first few sequences in Arsenal contain some of the genre's most haunting and effective images of the hell of war. Might be on me (most likely) for not knowing enough of the context surrounding the events on screen but I felt that the film lost a lot of momentum as it progressed so would like to give this a rewatch in the future after having learnt a bit more of the history.
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Not even Elem Klimov could imitate the nightmare quite like Alexander Dovzhenko. Frenzied motion of inanimate objects, and the frightening stillness of its actors, Arsenal builds and builds in grand sweeping motions, to the abruptness of confronting one's own destruction. An apocalyptic battlefield quickly receding light into nothingness, and seemingly nonsensical actions almost come to a point of self-awareness, or an acknowledgement of the "stage", before reverting back into montage, cross-cutting the most bizarre situations into truly unnerving sequences. The most freakish image might just be the grinning faces of the dead, or the more foreboding images repeated in reiteration. And while Dovzhenko has somewhat moved past the Soviet Montage madness of Zvenigora, that disorientation feels just as present, and just as appropriate.
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A Soviet film made in Odessa, Ukraine in 1928 by a Ukrainian director in part to mark the 10th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Arsenal has Bolshevik Ukrainian soldiers returning from WWI and taking up arms in rebellion against the Ukrainian national parliament, seen by them as representing the bourgeoisie and not workers' interests. Confused? You're not alone; I had to do a lot of reading up on the side!
That rebellion centers around the Arsenal ammunition factory in Kiev; it starts with a strike but there are arms in there, of course, and a bunch of returning soldiers who know how to use them.
The rebels are brutally violent, but their own violence is more than matched by militias…
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2nd Alexander Dovzhenko (after Earth)
Mud and blood reign supreme in Dovzhenko's vision, a singularly pessimistic hellscape about the nightmare of combat that contrasts with the vision of the Revolution that comes from Eisenstein or Pudovkin. This is a film that does not shy away from the horrors of war, including a justly famous sequence where a soldier goes mad from laughing gas, pushing his maniacally leering face close to the camera in a silent scream of mirth, his missing teeth inches away from the face. It's the sequences that focus on a single individual that really stand out, especially where characters are clearly suffering from a form of PTSD; an elderly man who repeatedly looks out of a window,…
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55/100
Stunning opening sequence and there are some gorgeous images throughout. I guess to sum it up I'd say that this switches between Classenal of Sir Arsène and Assna of Mikel Arteta.At one point it says that "hurry up brothers. Arsenal is dying." They definitely predicted the future.
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A masterclass in blocking, among other things.
Can we kill the bourgeois and the officers, if we meet them in the streets?
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Powerfully composed, Dovzhenko probably indeed was the most poetic of Soviet masters working during silent era. His films also created a strongly rooted tradition of Ukrainian poetic cinema that can be seen in the works of Ilyenko and Ivchenko. It's as if this is the only way to organize the images at the beginning; creating not only wonderful juxtapositions between images but between earth and people as well (Zhang and Chen must have seen this film before making Yellow Earth). Strange yet fascinating intertitles too Give their own input to the overall atmosphere. We are closer to surrealism than to Soviet realism; war smells of gas, earth buries the laughter. Its weakness Definitely shows itself in long episodes of "conversations" and propaganda that unfortunately has its mark that slows down even the best of Soviet films during that time (the only exceptions could be Battleship Potemkin and Man with the movie camera).
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É interessante como Dovzhenko usa a montagem de uma forma frenética para nos colocar em um ambiente que justamente não tinha paz, pois o filme retrata uma Ucrânia pós primeira guerra não só devastada, como também cheia de problemas políticos para resolver internamente. E no caso esse problema é a guerra civil entre os nacionalistas burgueses e a classe trabalhadora carregando os ideais soviéticos. Todo esse caos misturado com cenas extremamente cruas fazem com que esse filme seja uma experiência bem diferente do que estamos acostumados. Talvez seja o fato de termos um povo contando a sua própria história, isso faz com que tudo fique mais autêntico e visceral na minha opinião.
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Recommended by Creeper as part of A Very Groovy Movie Server's Movie Roulette.
A grim and gritty depiction of the Russian Civil War, Arsenal is almost like a cinematic puzzle. The narrative of the film is found by putting together images and seemingly unrelated sequences of war, violence and depravity. Seems vastly different from the other Soviet films of this era (notably Eisenstein's work), but some of the best war photography I've seen from this period.
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It is genuinely mind blowing just how good the editing is for a film made in 1929. The anti-war elements elevates a lot of the propaganda fluff, and some of the imagery is so memorable. Really impressive film making.
No idea why I'm watching this trilogy in reverse chronological order, but at least this is part 2 either way 😂.
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Watching this gives one the feeling that, as far as composition and editing go, the bulk of today’s filmmakers aren’t even trying.
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Наверно для 1929 года - это был шедевральный военный фильм, а спустя 95 лет - это типичный военный фильм, но хотелось бы отметить, что количество локаций и военные баталий были на высшем уровне.
