10 Most Fascinating Films Produced By Brutal Governments
5. The Great Dawn
If Lenin and the Bolsheviks began the weaponisation of Soviet cinema, Stalin turned their simple cinematic Kalashnikov into a celluloid super weapon. Battleship Potemkin had been a simple dramatisation of history while the 1938 film The Great Dawn was essentially a commercial for Joseph Stalin disguised as history.
The Great Dawn portrays how the brave Russian working class instigate the revolution of 1917 in opposition to the First World War. Stalin is portrayed as a close confidante of leader Lenin in the film although Lenin’s great distrust of Stalin at this time is evident from the historical record. The filmmakers give Joseph Stalin, played by Mikheil Gelovani, lines that announced the beginning of the glorious revolution and the genesis of a wonderful paradise on earth for workers everywhere.
The film is regarded as a key element of the beginning of Stalin’s cult of personality. The filmmakers, surprise surprise, won the ‘Stalin Prize’ for their heroic revolutionary efforts and Stalin would spend the following decades of his reign convincing the Russian people that he was the brave and thoughtful leader they needed; even as he massacred them by the thousands.