Le cuirassé Potemkine

An epic of the Russian revolution, Battleship Potemkin, perhaps not so correctly historically, addresses the Russian revolution of 1905. With memorable scenes, especially the flag and the staircase scenes, Russian cinema is perhaps not so shy about showing violence. Which ends up enhancing and giving a more shocking experience when watching the film. A great movie considering the time it was released.

Originally supposed to be just a part of a huge epic The Year 1905 depicting the Revolution of 1905, Potemkin is the story of the mutiny of the crew of the Potemkin in Odessa harbor. The film opens with the crew protesting maggoty meat and the captain ordering the execution of the dissidents. An uprising takes place during which the revolutionary leader is killed. This crewman is taken to the shore to lie in state. When the townspeople gather on a huge flight of steps overlooking the harbor, czarist troops appear and march down the steps breaking up the crowd. A naval squadron is sent to retake the Potemkin but at the moment when the ships come into range, their crews allow the mutineers to pass through. Eisenstein's non-historically accurate ending is open-ended thus indicating that this was the seed of the later Bolshevik revolution that would bloom in Russia. The film is broken into five parts: Men and Maggots, Drama on the Quarterdeck, An Appeal from the Dead, The Odessa Steps, and Meeting the Squadron.

Eisenstein was a revolutionary artist, but at the genius level. Not wanting to make a historical drama, Eisenstein used visual texture to give the film a newsreel-look so that the viewer feels he is eavesdropping on a thrilling and politically revolutionary story. This technique is used by Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers.

Unlike Pontecorvo, Eisenstein relied on typage, or the casting of non-professionals who had striking physical appearances. The extraordinary faces of the cast are what one remembers from Potemkin. This technique is later used by Frank Capra in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Meet John Doe. But in Potemkin, no one individual is cast as a hero or heroine. The story is told through a series of scenes that are combined in a special effect known as montage--the editing and selection of short segments to produce a desired effect on the viewer. D.W. Griffith also used the montage, but no one mastered it so well as Eisenstein.

The artistic filming of the crew sleeping in their hammocks is complemented by the graceful swinging of tables suspended from chains in the galley. In contrast the confrontation between the crew and their officers is charged with electricity and the clenched fists of the masses demonstrate their rage with injustice.

Eisenstein introduced the technique of showing an action and repeating it again but from a slightly different angle to demonstrate intensity. The breaking of a plate bearing the words "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread" signifies the beginning of the end. This technique is used in Last Year at Marienbad. Also, when the ship's surgeon is tossed over the side, his pince-nez dangles from the rigging. It was these glasses that the officer used to inspect and pass the maggot-infested meat. This sequence ties the punishment to the corruption of the czarist-era.

The most noted sequence in the film, and perhaps in all of film history, is The Odessa Steps. The broad expanse of the steps are filled with hundreds of extras. Rapid and dramatic violence is always suggested and not explicit yet the visual images of the deaths of a few will last in the minds of the viewer forever.

The angular shots of marching boots and legs descending the steps are cleverly accentuated with long menacing shadows from a sun at the top of the steps. The pace of the sequence is deliberately varied between the marching soldiers and a few civilians who summon up courage to beg them to stop. A close up of a woman's face frozen in horror after being struck by a soldier's sword is the direct antecedent of the bank teller in Bonnie in Clyde and gives a lasting impression of the horror of the czarist regime.

The death of a young mother leads to a baby carriage careening down the steps in a sequence that has been copied by Hitchcock in Foreign Correspondent, by Terry Gilliam in Brazil, and Brian DePalma in The Untouchables. This sequence is shown repeatedly from various angles thus drawing out what probably was only a five second event.

Potemkin is a film that immortalizes the revolutionary spirit, celebrates it for those already committed, and propagandizes it for the unconverted. It seethes of fire and roars with the senseless injustices of the decadent czarist regime. Its greatest impact has been on film students who have borrowed and only slightly improved on techniques invented in Russia several generations ago.

This classic is filled with vivid images that stay in your mind after you have watched it, and there is a lot to appreciate in the way that the key scenes were set up and photographed. The visuals are so impressive that the movie's imperfections are usually not so noticeable, and they don't keep it from being a memorable film.

The movie certainly deserves the praise that it gets both for the influence that it has had, and for some ideas that for the time were most creative. The famed 'Odessa Steps' sequence alone demonstrates both fine technical skill and a keen awareness of how to drive home an image to an audience. It deserves to be one of cinema's best remembered sequences. Some of the other scenes also demonstrate, to a lesser degree, the same kind of skill.

It says a lot for how effective all of the visuals are that so many viewers think so highly of "Battleship Potemkin" despite a story that is sometimes heavy-handed, and despite characters and acting that are both rather thin. These features might simply stem from the collectivist philosophy that lies behind the story, and they are obscured most of the time by Eisenstein's unsurpassed ability to present pictures that viewers will not forget.

Despite the flaws, this is a movie that most fans of silent films, and anyone interested in the history of movies, will want to see. There's nothing else in its era that's quite like it.

If you're a film student, or were one, or are thinking of becoming one, the name Battleship Potemkin has or will have a resonance. Sergei Eistenstein, like other silent-film pioneers like Griffith (although Eisenstein's innovations are not as commonplace as Griffith's) and Murnau, has had such an impact on the history of cinema it's of course taken for granted. The reason I bring up the film student part is because at some point, whether you'd like it or not, your film professor 9 times out of 10 will show the "Odessa Stairs" sequence of this film. It's hard to say if it's even the 'best' part of the film's several sequences dealing with the (at the time current) times of the Russian revolution. But it does leave the most impact, and it can be seen in many films showcasing suspense, or just plain montage (The Untouchables' climax comes to mind).

Montage, which was not just Eistenstein's knack but also his life's blood early in his career, is often misused in the present cinema, or if not misused then in an improper context for the story. Sometimes montage is used now as just another device to get from point A to point B. Montage was something else for Eisenstein; he was trying to communicate in the most direct way that he could the urgency, the passion(s), and the ultimate tragedies that were in the Russian people at the time and place. Even if one doesn't see all of Eisenstein's narrative or traditional 'story' ideas to have much grounding (Kubrick has said this), one can't deny the power of seeing the ships arriving at the harbor, the people on the stairs, and the soldiers coming at them every which way with guns. Some may find it hard to believe this was done in the 20's; it has that power like the Passion of Joan of Arc to over-pass its time and remain in importance if only in terms of technique and emotion.

Of course, one could go on for books (which have been written hundreds of times over, not the least of which by Eisenstein himself). On the film in and of itself, Battleship Potemkin is really more like a dramatized newsreel than a specific story in a movie. The first segment is also one of the great sequences in film, as a mutiny is plotted against the Captain and other head-ups of a certain Ship. This is detailed almost in a manipulative way, but somehow extremely effective; montage is used here as well, but in spurts of energy that capture the eye. Other times Eisenstein is more content to just let the images speak for themselves, as the soldiers grow weary without food and water. He isn't one of those directors who will try to get all sides to the story; he is, of course, very much early 20th century Russian, but he is nothing else but honest with how he sees his themes and style, and that is what wins over in the end.

Some may want to check it outside of film-school, as the 'Stairs' sequence is like one of those landmarks of severe tragedy on film, displaying the ugly side of revolution. Eisenstein may not be one of the more 'accessible' silent-film directors, but if montage, detail in the frame, non-actors, and Bolshevik themes are your cup of tea, it's truly one of the must sees of a lifetime.

There is something special about watching the really old films, especially when it is a film as influential as 'Bronenosets Potyomkin' ('The Battleship Potemkin'). Besides the historical value of the film I was surprised how much I really enjoyed it. Director Sergei Eisenstein takes reel events and changes them a little for this powerful film.

The story begins on the battleship Potemkin where the men are served rotten meat. A sailor named Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov) steps up and after a series of events mutiny is what follows. Out of revenge an officer is able to kill Vakulinchuk. The men on the ship want to honor him and try to bring their revolution to the shore, to the city of Odessa. They place him in the harbor in a tent with a sign that says he was killed over a boil of soup. The people of Odessa sympathize with the sailors from the Potemkin and they are welcomed in their city. A massacre, in one of the most famous sequences of the cinema, is what follows on the Odessa Staircase.

It is especially this great sequence that shows some real horrors, uncompromising I should add. There are images, like the slit eyeball from 'Un Chien Andalou', you will remember. The people on the staircase, troops firing at them, a crushed hand, a woman with her child shot dead, but most of all a carriage with a baby in it, rolling down the staircase. Every image is effective, showing things what few (or no) films did back then. I was amazed of how good this scene still works today; I was watching in disbelieve.

On a technical scale the film is also very good. Most of the time we believe we are watching what the film wants us to see, the visuals work. Eisenstein is able to make things even more effective the way he cuts between the images. Famous for its montage, 'Bronenosets Potyomkin' sometimes seems like a choreographed sequence of presented images, with a rhythm and a tempo. I could say so much more about this film, one you should have seen if you are interested in the history of the cinema. If you do not really care you might give it a chance. It is one of the most effective silent films I can think of, still very accessible for a large audience.