Shostakovich's career as a film composer lasted about 30 years, from 1928 to 1958. Mostly he was on call for whatever projects the Soviet state wanted him to do, including a high proportion of propaganda films. After 1958 he felt considerably more able to turn down uncongenial assignments. But there were periods in his life when he was under attack from the Communist Party or the Composers' Union, and film work was virtually his only source of income—and at such times it was virtually imperative that he be seen as a willing worker for the Socialist Revolution.

Several of his films of the 1930s were filmed to fulfill an explicit Party plan to create a mythology of the October Revolution, as Levon Hakopian has pointed out in notes to a Russian Disc recording featuring music from several such scores. Films such as the three parts of the Maxim Trilogy, A Great Citizen, and The Man with the Gun are all part of this trend.

These films generally portray pre-Revolutionary Russians as hopelessly oppressed by capitalism under the Tsarist regime. Often a clean-cut young hero is duped into working with the capitalist class, but quickly perceives its evil, often after witnessing the noble death of an old worker or peasant. The hero then undergoes his conversion and becomes a revolutionary, and is sometimes portrayed as participating in the October 1917 revolution and ensuing civil war.

The Man with the Gun is sometimes also called November (the month according to the new calendar when the October Revolution occurred). It is based on a successful stage play of the same title written by Nikolai Pogodin. This play was almost incessantly produced somewhere in the Soviet Union from its appearance in the mid-1930s until after the death of Stalin in 1953.

Through the hero, the audience enjoys a view of the great events of the Revolution; Lenin and Stalin are both leading characters. Shostakovich's score consists of five cues: a brisk and martial Overture, a turbulent portrayal of the great event itself called "October," two cues called "Smolny" which consist of grim and resolute action music, and a Finale predicting the eventual triumph of the proletariat.

The five discrete movements make a decent concert piece, so there was no need for a suite of extracts from the work. The tone of the music is predictable. It is much like the Symphony No. 12 or the more "public" parts of the finale of the Fifth. Little more than ten minutes in length, the music's lack of deviation from the expected socialist-realist style is a positive thing, giving the score unity. The melodic outlines of the theme derive from the tradition of Revolutionary song. In all, this is one of the more listenable examples of Shostakovich's film music of the official type.

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