Film101CyberCinema - BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
(aka Potemkin)

In his online review, Hal Erickson writes of this extraordinary film:

Thanks to the success of his earlier Strike, director Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the Uprising of 1905. Eisenstein's scenario, boiled down from what was to have been a multipart epic of the occasion, focussed on the crew of the Battleship Potemkin. Fed up with the extreme cruelties of their officers--and their maggot-ridden meat rations--the sailors stage a violent mutiny. This, in turn, sparks an abortive citizen revolt against the Czarist regime. The film's centerpiece is stage upon the Odessa Steps, where in 1905 the Czar's Cossacks methodically shot down and hacked up rioters and innocent bystanders alike. To Eisenstein, this single bloody incident was the chrysalis of the successful 1917 Bolshevik revolution; thus, he poured his heart and soul into the Odessa Steps episode. The result was what many film historians consider the most famous sequence ever filmed; it is certainly one of the most imitated, as witness Brian DePalma's The Untouchables (1987). This triumph of Eisenstein's "rhythmical editing" technique is in the middle of film; it is not the climax, as many who've never seen Potemkin automatically assume. Incredibly, the sequence is actually topped by Eisenstein's jubilant finale, wherein the sailors of Imperial Navy, in solidarity with their comrades, disregard orders to fire upon the Potemkin. Their pivotal decision is symbolized by the legendary "waking lions" montage (Eisenstein isn't too subtle, but boy was he effective!) The two major sequences in Battleship Potemkin can still bring an audience to its feet even when taken out of context. Considering the intensity of their performances, it is astonishing to learn that all the actors in the film were amateurs, selected by Eisenstein because of "rightness" for roles. Pictorial quality varies from print to print, but even in a duped-down version, Battleship Potemkin is must-see cinema. (See the review via a search at the All-Movie Website. Quoted also on the UC Berkeley Media Resources Center)