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Anand Bhat

Professor Adam Scott

Film 101

November 16, 2009

Bronenosets Potyomkin

Propaganda films often turn out to be works of cinematic beauty and technical excellence

simply because they need to be the crème de le crème to appeal to a mass audience from

all walks of life. It needs to convince and sell an agenda and cause the masses to subscribe

to the worldview presented in that 35 mm of film stock.

Bronenosets Potyomkin or Battleship Potemkin seeks to accomplish all that and more in its

exaggerated and over dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905

when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their

officers of the Tsarist regime. The film attempts to glorify the revolution of

the red army against the evils of the bourgeois Tsar controlled white army by

unabashedly distorting the event in question. The film is broken into

‘chapters’ much like a Tarantino film with each chapter delving into a

specific aspect of the precipitation of the red revolution.

The film is a silent film and thus is heavily dependent on score to produce

the dramatic effect needed to stir the passion of potential Bolsheviks in the
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audience.Infact the creator Eisenstein wanted the score to be remade every

twenty years to appeal to a new generation of the audience. The score is apt

in that it adapts to the often violent events on screen .The lighting is mostly

bright and optimistic with no real metaphorical usage present. Shadows are

hardly ever present. The cinematography is critically acclaimed for the most

part and in specific the scene involving the baby and the carriage hurtling

down the steps. This particular scene involved the manipulation of real time

to create an extended period of tension.

Another scene that comes to mind is the close-up shots of the proletariat

getting shot by the white army. The one scene with the open mouthed nurse

comes to mind for its graphic merit. The Odessa massacre scenes were

deemed a necessary part of the propagandist theme of the movie with IMDB

reporting that specialist makeup men were hired from various parts of the

world specifically for those depictions.

The acting at times feels exaggerated but when put in historical perspective

and given the fact that the film is silent these periods of over dramatization

are deemed by consensus as necessary to the plot. Camera angles are for

the most part conservative, with the odd wide shot of the massacre on the

"Odessa Steps” and the marching of the Tsars soldiers.

Perhaps the most notable contribution of Eisenstein’s Magnum opus is the

pioneering use of a filmmaking technique that is today a trademark feature

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in Hollywood: The montage. Fittingly the only color ever seen in the movie is

the blotchy and angry red of the revolutionaries.