Arsenal (film)

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Арсенал (Arsenal)
Directed by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Produced by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Written by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring	Semyon Svashenko Mykola Nademsky Amvroziy Buchma Les Podorozhnij
Music by	Igor Belza
Cinematography	Danylo Demutsky
Distributed by	VUFKU-Odessa
Release date(s)	1928 (Soviet Union)
Running time	92 min.
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Silent film Russian intertitles
IMDb profile

Arsenal (Russian and Ukrainian: Арсенал), (1928), is a Soviet film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko. 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." This second film in Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy" (along with Zvenigora and Earth) was originally commissioned as a feature that would glorify the battle in 1918 between Bolshevik workers at a Kiev munitions plant and White Russian troops. 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. An amazing, wondrous and deeply profound work that more than a few viewers feel to be the finest of the director's "Ukraine Trilogy", which are widely considered three of the greatest movies ever made.