Macatangay, Denise Alesandrea N.

BFA-CNM 2

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Battleship Potemkin is a 1925 soviet silent drama film directed by Sergei

Eisenstein. It is a movie that presents a dramatization of the mutiny of a group of sailors
against their higher officers. The film was seen as pure propaganda, showing multiple
scenes of the Czars’ hostility towards the Bolsheviks. The film was said to be so political
that it was banned in the United Kingdom until 1954. The film is split up into five parts.
The first part of the movie shows how the Bolshevik sailors were being mistreated by
their higher officers by giving them rotten meat for their meals and dismissing them
despite their complaints about how the meat was rotten and had worms in them. The
first part shows just how enraged and abused these sailors were by the actions of their
higher officers. The second part of the movie shows how these sailors, punished for
their complaints about the meat, act upon their enraged feelings and start to rebel
against their higher officers. They throw the captains offboard, kill the ship doctor that
declared their meat safe to eat, and ultimately cause chaos on board to rise above their
perpetrators. The end of the second part shows that the leader of the rebellion is dead
and while they mourn for their fallen leader, they eventually head home. The third part of
the movie shows how not only the sailors on board had mourned for their fallen
comrade, but how the bolsheviks on the port had heard of this terrible news and
mourned for it as well. This part shows how lines and lines of people had gathered
together around the fallen body of the leader of the rebellion. Crying and fuelled up by
their anger, they were encouraged to rise up above the Czars. This then brings us to the
fourth part of the film in which the Bolshevik sailors had now come home and received a
warm welcome when they reached the shores. However, this happiness is cut short
when the Czars invade the area which brings the iconic Odessa steps sequence scene.
Chaos and multiple civilian deaths are seen in this part which only enraged the
Bolsheviks even further. In the final part of the film, the Bolshevik sailors take to the
seas again in plan for an attack when in their sleep are alerted about a squadron
nearby. They prepare to fire, however, stop when they realize the squadron has ceased
their fire. This ends the film with the squadron shouting and cheering with the sailors in
solidarity.

The film was a prime example of how Eisenstein had taken the techniques he
had seen from Western directors such as D.W. Griffith, and had improved it into what is
now known as the Soviet Montage. Battleship Potemkin shows all the kinds of
Montages and uses them to not only heighten the emotions of the scene but intensify its
propagandistic message to the audience. The film starts off with clips of crashing waves
and close ups of the boat itself, visually displaying to the audience that the first set of
the movie happens on water. In the first part of the movie,rhythmic montages were seen
frequently. This is first seen when the sailors slice up the rotten meat given to them, the
chopping matching with the beats from the musical score. This is also seen in the fourth
part of the film when the Czar's military arrives and their heavy steps are again
accompanied by the music. This again is seen heavily during the last part of the film
when the sailors all go up the ladder to view the squadron from the horizon and their
steps match with the up tempo orchestra sounds. It is also seen in the matching of the
drum sounds with the engines of the boat going forward. Aside from rhythmic montage,
metric montages were also very much conveyed in the film. There were multiple scenes
in which this was applied, like the scene of the sailor washing plates and reading how
the plate had said ‘give us this day our daily bread’, the scene in where the sailors were
told they would be hanged in the sails and the scene in which they were told to be shot
and be covered by a canvas cloth. These scenes used a very rapid editing technique in
which the speed in which they cut to different clips would coincide with the intensity of
the scene. For example, the plate scene in which the shots of the enraged sailor and
the plate, the cut of both scenes intensified the emotion of the sailor and eventually
contributed to their rebellion in the scene afterwards. Moreover, the musical scoring is
also very accurate to the emotions in the film; when there is an intense scene or a
scene with heightened emotion or chaos the tempo of the music keeps getting faster
and louder with heavy trombones and percussion sounds but when the emotion is
sadder there is a more isolated orchestra sound without the percussions and when
someone is shot or something terrible happens, to build up the emotion the music dies
down to build up suspense within the scene. Another type of montage seen in the movie
is tonal montage. This is seen in the third part of the film in which the hero of the
rebellion has died and people gather around his body in sadness. This conveys tonal
montage because the clips combined together further emphasize the feeling of grief that
the people had over their fallen hero. Overtonal montage is also seen in one of the most
iconic parts of the film, the Odessa steps sequence. This whole sequence shows how
all metric, rhythm and tonal montage is mixed together. There was a lot going on in this
part of the film, and the use of all these montage techniques together to create the
overtonal montage truly emphasized the emotion of grief, fear and sorrow. The chaos is
emphasized with the cutting of different clips of the mother and child, the people below
hiding out of fear and the military on the high steps with guns. The matching of the
military steps with the heavy percussion sounds, the rapid cutting in between shots to
show intensity and the close ups of the faces of horror of a mother seeing her child
being trampled on all mixed together creating a overtonal montage. The last montage
that Eisenstein used was Intellectual montage, one in which he also exceeded at. One
of the scenes in which he used this is the montage of lion heads in the Odessa steps
sequence. This symbolized the power of the Czars over the Bolsheviks and again
contributed to the propagandistic movement of the film.

Overall, the film, in terms of technicality, was truly a masterpiece. It used editing
to enhance the emotions and to better express the message it wanted to convey. This
kind of film showed how cinema does not only tell stories but also can convey certain
ideas into the minds of its audience. In contrast to how the French used cinema to
evoke emotions through its various editing techniques, the Soviet Montage technique
yearns to achieve a more objective reality. French Impressionism focused on a more
subjective perspective in which editing was used to render a character’s psychology.
The Soviet Montage used editing to enhance and further emphasize the emotions that
were already present. The Battleship Potemkin is not only a great film in terms of its
advancements in editing but it teaches us how powerful cinema can be. Cinema is not
only meant for entertainment, but also for politics. It is an art form that combines both
audio and visual aspects and does not only evoke emotion but also awakens our
intellect. One film can be the difference between a little girl believing that something is
wrong or right.