The Battleship Potemkin

The Battleship Potemkin (Russian: Bronenosets Potyomkin), sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatised version of the Battleship Potemkin uprising that occurred in 1905 when the crew of a Russian battleship rebelled against their oppressive officers of the Tsarist regime.
Potemkin has been called one of the most influential films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958.

The film is composed of five episodes: "Men and Maggots", in which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat; "Drama at the Harbour", in which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulynchuk, is killed; "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" in which Vakulynchuk's corpse is mourned over by the people of Odessa; "The Odessa Staircase", in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans; and "The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron", in which the squadron ends up joining the sailors' side.

Eisenstein wrote the film as a revolutionary propaganda film, but also used it to test his theories of "montage". The revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov school of filmmaking were experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin and hatred for their cruel overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they should sympathize.

The most famous scene in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs). In this scene, the Tsar's Cossacks in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, slaughtering a crowd, including a young boy, as they flee. After the boy falls, his mother picks up his body and yells at the soldiers to stop firing. They do, only to shoot her minutes later. Toward the end of the sequence, the soldiers shoot a mother who is pushing a baby in a baby carriage. As she falls to the ground, dying, she leans against the carriage, nudging it away; it rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd.

After its premiere in Soviet Union, Potemkin was shown in the United States. It was shown in an edited form in Germany, with some scenes of extreme violence edited out by its German distributors. A written introduction by Leon Trotsky was cut from Soviet prints after he ran afoul of Josef Stalin. The film was banned in Nazi Germany, Britain, Spain (though not during the Second Republic), France, and other countries for its revolutionary zeal. It was even banned in the Soviet Union for a short period when the Comintern, for diplomatic reasons, ceased to promote mutiny among the navies of capitalist countries.

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Great picture on my HDTV

There are a ton of bargin bin versions of this movie out there. Most of them are less than $10 dollars and what you get is a transfer that looks like it was done from VHS to DVD. The sound is always poor and crackles and if you try to watch it on anything larger than a 25 inch TV, it looks stretched and distorted.

This copy seems to have been run through and remaster and noise reduction. The picture is crisp and the sound is clean. I watched this on my 50+ inch HDTV and it looks good.
July 5, 2008

A Good Version

This review pertains to the Triad Productions version of the Sergei M. Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin.

This DVD looks great on my HDTV. The sound quality is clean and the picture is crisp. This is as good a transfer as I have seen.

The film is epic to say the least and as a historical piece, represents events that took place during the Russian/Japanese War of 1905. After returning from its battle against Japan, the crew are given rotten rations. Mutiny erupts and news of it reaches all the way to the Steps of Odessa.

In one of the films most prolific scenes, innocent Russians are massacred on the Steps of Odessa. Originally intended as a propaganda piece, The Battleship Potemkin became much more. Regarded as one of the greatest films of all time for its innovations in cinematic storytelling, Eisenstein's use of juxtaposed images was the origin of the modern film montage. His editing techniques gave rise to a faster and more energetic narrative style that was much more satisfying than the start-and-stop method that characterized other silent films of the time.


June 24, 2008

The Legendary Sergei M. Eisenstein

Based on actual events of 1905, silent film THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN concerns an Imperial Russian ship on which abominable conditions lead to a mutiny. Shocked by conditions on the ship, citizens of the port city Odessa rally to the mutineers' support--and in consequence find themselves at the mercy of Imperial forces, who attack the civilian supporters with savage force.

POTEMKIN is a film in which individual characters are much less important than the groups and crowds of which they are members, and it achieves its incredible power by showing the clash of the groups and crowds in a series of extraordinarily visualized and edited sequences. Amazingly, each of these sequences manage to top the previous one, and the film actually builds in power as it moves from the mutiny to the citizen's rally to the massacre on the Odessa steps--the latter of which is among the most famous sequences in all of film history. Filming largely where the real events actually occurred, director Eisenstein's vision is extraordinary as he builds--not only from sequence to sequence but from moment to moment within each sequence--some of the most memorable images ever committed to film.

To describe POTEMKIN as a great film is something of an understatement. It is an absolute essential, an absolute necessity to any one seriously interested in cinema as an art form, purely visual cinema at its most brilliant, often imitated, seldom equaled, never bested.

June 16, 2008

Nice Enhanced Version

This review pertains to the Triad Productions Enhanced Version of The Battleship Potemkin.

The sound quality and picture look good. There is a definite noise reduction in the cracking and snapping that you hear with films this old. The picture quality was good on my HDTV.

The Battleship Potemkin is one of the greatest examples of both film and historical propaganda. Made as an expression of The Russian Revolution, The Battleship Potemkin tells a story with multiple interpretations. The patriot will see a tale of mutiny with punishments well deserved. The propagandist will see a film about the cruelties of a totalitarian state.

My recommendation is that you buy the movie and decide for yourself.
June 14, 2008

A good presentation of a vital silent film

The need for serious film-buffs to own this film is so obvious that I hardly need reiterate it. Too many have called it the greatest film ever, or nearly so. Seeing it again, I have to agree that it is a powerful and finely-crafted film, of huge historical importance thanks in part to its many innovations in technique. While I still squirm at some of its blatant propagandism, I can look past that enough to appreciate the film's excellence. June 12, 2008

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