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Battleship Potemkin
Battleship Potemkin
1.4
The Cossacks of the Tsar arrive at Odessa in retaliation and march toward the unarmed crowd with their ri The Odessa Staircase" ( ), in
es. The people run away, but the Cossacks shoot men,
which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans.
women, and defenseless children. The scene has become
famous: the soldiers are only shown through details that
The Rendezvous with the Squadron" (
make them impersonal, inexible (their boots marching
), in which the squadron tasked with inand stomping the victims, their guns ring), while the
tercepting the Potemkin instead declines to engage;
people of Odessa fall in extremely violent ways. The sollowering their guns, its sailors cheer on the rebeldiers show no sign of wanting to stop the massacre. The
lious battleship and join the mutiny.
sailors of the Potemkin then decide to shoot at them with
the guns of the battleship. Meanwhile, there is news that
wrote the lm as a revolutionary propaganda
a eet of ships in the harbor of the Tsar is coming to quell Eisenstein
[5][6]
lm,
but
also used it to test his theories of montage.[7]
the revolt of Potemkin.
The revolutionary Soviet lmmakers of the Kuleshov
school of lmmaking were experimenting with the eect
of lm editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted
1.5 Act V: One against all
to edit the lm in such a way as to produce the greatest
The sailors of the Potemkin decide to go all the way and emotional response, so that the viewer would feel sympalead the battleship from the port of Odessa to face the eet thy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin
of the Tsar. Just when the battle seems inevitable, the and hatred for their overlords. In the manner of most
sailors of the Tsarist ships incredibly refuse to open re propaganda, the characterization is simple, so that the auon their comrades, externalizing with songs and shouts of dience could clearly see with whom they should sympajoy their solidarity with the mutineers and allowing them thize.
to pass unmolested through the eet, waving the red ag. Eisensteins experiment was a mixed success; he was
disappointed when Potemkin failed to attract masses of
viewers,[8] but the lm was also released in a number
of international venues, where audiences responded pos2 Cast
itively. In both the Soviet Union and overseas, the lm
Aleksandr Antonov as Grigory Vakulinchuk (Bol- shocked audiences, but not so much for its political statements as for its use of violence, which was considered
shevik sailor)
graphic by the standards of the time.[2][9][10] The lms
potential to inuence political thought through emotional
Vladimir Barsky as Commander Golikov
response was noted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph
Grigori Aleksandrov as Chief Ocer Giliarovsky
Goebbels, who called Potemkin a marvelous lm without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no rm polit I. Bobrov as Young sailor ogged while sleeping
ical conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the
lm.[10][11] The lm was not banned in Nazi Germany,
Mikhail Gomorov as Militant sailor
although Himmler issued a directive prohibiting SS mem Aleksandr Levshin as Petty Ocer
bers from attending screenings, as he deemed the movie
inappropriate for the troops.[10]
N. Poltavseva as Woman with pince-nez
Konstantin Feldman as Student agitator
Beatrice Vitoldi as Woman with the baby carriage
One of the most celebrated scenes in the lm is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps (also known as the
3 Film style and content
Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs). This scene has been described as one of the most inuential in the history of
cinema, because it introduced concepts of lm editing
The lm is composed of ve episodes:
and montage to cinema. In this scene, the Tsar's soldiers
Men and Maggots ( ), in which the in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly
endless ight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashsailors protest at having to eat rotten meat;
ion, ring volleys into a crowd. A separate detachment
Drama on the Deck ( ), in which of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom
the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulinchuk, is of the stairs. The victims include an older woman wearkilled;
ing pince-nez, a young boy with his mother, a student in
4.1
3
British Consul reported that troops red on the crowds
with accompanying loss of life (the number of casualties is unrecorded).[13] Roger Ebert writes, That there
was, in fact, no czarist massacre on the Odessa Steps
scarcely diminishes the power of the scene ... It is ironic
that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed
on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really
happened.[14]
The scene is perhaps the best example of Eisensteins theory on montage, and many lms pay homage to the scene,
including Terry Gilliams Brazil, Francis Ford Coppolas The Godfather,[15] Brian De Palmas The Untouchables,[15] Tibor Takacs Deathline, Laurel and Hardys
The Music Box, Chandrashekhar Narvekars Hindi lm
Tezaab, Shuk Murases anime Ergo Proxy, and The
Magic Christian. Several lms spoof it, including Woody
Allens Bananas and Love and Death, Zucker, Abrahams,
and Zucker's Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult (though
actually a parody of The Untouchables), Soviet-Polish
A wide shot of the massacre on the Odessa Steps.
comedy Deja Vu, Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky and the
The massacre on the steps, which never took place, was Italian comedy Il secondo tragico Fantozzi. The 2011
presumably inserted by Eisenstein for dramatic eect and November 7 Parade in Moscow also features a homage
to demonise the Imperial regime.[12] It is, however, based to the lm.
on the fact that there were widespread demonstrations in The painter Francis Bacon (19091992) was profoundly
the area, sparked o by the arrival of the Potemkin in inuenced by Eisensteins images, particularly the Odessa
Odessa Harbour, and both The Times and the resident Steps shot of the nurses broken glasses and open mouthed
SOUNDTRACKS
Alexey Titarenko paid tribute to the Odessa Steps shot in his series
City Of Shadows. Saint Petersburg, 1991.
Distribution,
restoration
censorship
and
5
prominent. In 2007, Del Rey & The Sun Kings also
recorded this soundtrack. In an attempt to make the lm
relevant to the 21st century, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe
(of the Pet Shop Boys) composed a soundtrack in 2004
with the Dresden Symphonic Orchestra. Their soundtrack, released in 2005 as Battleship Potemkin, premiered
in September 2004 at an open-air concert in Trafalgar
Square, London. There were four further live performances of the work with the Dresdner Sinfoniker in Germany in September 2005 and one at the Swan Hunter ship
yard in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2006.
The avant-garde jazz ensemble Club Foot Orchestra has
also re-scored the lm, and performed live accompanying the lm. For the 2005 restoration of the lm, under the direction of Enno Patalas in collaboration with
Anna Bohn, released on DVD and Blu-ray, the Deutsche
Kinemathek - Museum fur Film und Fernsehen, commissioned a re-recording of the original Edmund Meisel
score, performed by the Babelsberg Orchestra, conducted
by Helmut Imig. In 2011 the most recent restoration
was completed with an entirely new soundtrack by members of the Apskaft group. Contributing members were
AER20-200, awaycaboose, Ditzky, Drn Drn, Foucault
V, fydhws, Hox Vox, Lurholm, mexicanvader, Quendus,
Res Band, -Soundso- and speculativism. The entire lm
was digitally restored to a sharper image by Gianluca Missero (who records under the name Hox Vox). The new
version is available at the Internet Archive .
pulse racing.[25]
Directors Orson Welles,[26] Michael Mann[27] and Paul
Greengrass[28] placed Battleship Potemkin on their list of
favorite lms.
8 See also
List of lms considered the best
9 Notes
[1] Battleship Potemkin. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
[2] Whats the Big Deal?: Battleship Potemkin (1925). Retrieved November 28, 2010.
[3] Battleship Potemkin by Roger Ebert. Retrieved 201011-28.
[4] Top Films of All-Time. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
[5] Pet Shop Boys meet Battleship Potemkin. Retrieved
2010-11-28.
[6] Battleship Potemkin, Strike, October by Sergei Eisenstein: Appreciation. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
[7] Battleship Potemkin. Retrieved 2010-11-28.
Critical reaction
www.historytoday.com.
Re-
In 2007, a two-disc, restored version of the lm was re- [14] ":: rogerebert.com :: Great Movies :: The Battleship
Potemkin (xhtml)". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. Retrieved
leased on DVD. Time magazines Richard Corliss named
2010-03-06.
it one of the Top 10 DVDs of the year, ranking it at #5.[23]
It ranked #3 in Empire 's The 100 Best Films Of World
[15] Iconic movie scene: The Untouchables Union Station
Cinema in 2010.[24] In April 2011, Battleship Potemkin
shoot-out. Den of Geek. November 16, 2011.
was re-released in UK cinemas, distributed by the British
Film Institute. On its re-release, Total Film magazine [16] Peppiatt, Michael (1996). Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an
gave the lm a ve-star review, stating: "...nearly 90 years
Enigma. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 0-29781616-0.
on, Eisensteins masterpiece is still guaranteed to get the
10
Rotten Tomatoes
10
External links
EXTERNAL LINKS
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