Arsenal (1929 film)

Arsenal (Ukrainian: Арсенал, also alternative title January Uprising in Kyiv in 1918[1]) is a 1929 Soviet war film by Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko.[2] The film was shot at Odessa Film Factory of VUFKU with the camera of cameraman Danyl Demutskyi and using the original sets made by Volodymyr Muller. The expressionist imagery, camera work and original drama were said to take the film far beyond the usual propaganda and made it one of the most important pieces of Ukrainian avant-garde cinema.[3][4] The film was made in 1928 and released early in 1929.[1][5] It is the second film in his "Ukraine Trilogy", the first being Zvenigora (1928) and the third being Earth (1930).

Arsenal
Stenberg brothers' film poster
Directed byOleksandr Dovzhenko
Written byOleksandr Dovzhenko
Produced byOleksandr Dovzhenko
StarringSemyon Svashenko
Nikolai Nademsky
Amvrosy Buchma
Les Podorozhnij
CinematographyDanylo Demutsky
Music byIgor Belza
Distributed byOdessa Film Factory of VUFKU
Release date
  • February 25, 1929 (February 25, 1929)
Running time
92 min.
CountrySoviet Union
LanguagesSilent film
Russian intertitles

The film concerns an episode in the Russian Civil War in 1918 in which the Kiev Arsenal January Uprising of workers aided the besieging Bolshevik army against the Ukrainian national Parliament Central Rada who held legal power in Ukraine at the time. Regarded by film scholar Vance Kepley, Jr. as "one of the few Soviet political films which seems even to cast doubt on the morality of violent retribution", Dovzhenko's eye for wartime absurdities (for example, an attack on an empty trench) anticipates later pacifist sentiments in films by Jean Renoir and Stanley Kubrick.

Plot

From the last months of World War I and the derailment of the demobilization train the story moves to the Arsenal armory in Kiev, where the Bolshevik Timosh, who has returned from the front, is the central figure. The January uprising of workers in Kiev, their confrontation with gangs of haidamaks serving the bourgeois Rada of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the cruelest massacre of the rebels.

Cast
  • Semyon Svashenko — Timosha
  • Georgiy Kharkiv — Red Army
  • Amvrosy Buchma — German soldier in glasses
  • Dmitri Erdman — a German officer
  • Sergey Petrov — a German soldier
  • K. Mikhailovsky — nationalist
  • Alexander Evdakov — Nicholas II
  • Andrei Mikhailovsky — nationalist

References
  1. Арсенал - информация о фильме (in Russian). Kino-teatr.ru. Retrieved 2012-12-19.
  2. Peter Rollberg (2016). Historical Dictionary of Russian and Soviet Cinema. US: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 62–63. ISBN 978-1442268425.
  3. Jay Leyda (1960). Kino: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. George Allen & Unwin. pp. 252–255.
  4. Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre
  5. Magill's Survey of Silent Films, Vol.1 A-FLA p.152 edited by Frank N. Magill c.1982 ISBN 0-89356-240-8 (3 book set ISBN 0-89356-239-4)


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