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Battleship Potemkin
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Cinmathque Annotations on Film Cinmathque Annotations on Film, , Issue 4 Issue 4 Helen Grace Helen Grace March 05, 2000 March 05, 2000
Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin, 1925,
USSR, 75 mins)
Dir: Sergei Eisenstein; Writer: Sergei Eisenstein and
Nina Agadzhanova Shutko; Cinematography:
Eduard Tisse; Original music: Edmund Meisel and
Dmitri Shostakovich; Editor: Sergei Eisenstein; Art
Director: Vasili Rakhals
Cast: Ivan Bobrov (Sailor), Beatrice Vitoldi (Woman
with Baby Carriage), Nina Poltavseva (Woman with
Pince-nez), Julia Eisenstein (Odessa Citizen),
Grigori Aleksandrov (Chief Ofcer Giliarovsky),
Aleksandr Antonov (Vakulinchuk), Vladimir Barsky (The Captain), Sergei Eisenstein (Ship Chaplain), Aleksandr
Levshin (Petty Ofcer), Mikhail Gomarov (Sailor)
* * *
Independent lmmakers, restricted to limited exhibition outlets in a world of media conglomeration, can take heart
from the fact that Battleship Potemkin, one of the most renowned lms in the history of cinema and containing
perhaps the best known sequence in the mediums entire history, was initially seen only by small audiences of lm
society acionados and trade unionists. In this sense, it represents one of the most successful instances of niche
marketing the world has ever seen.
The stories of its circulation are almost as mythical as its subject matter: it was banned as subversive in England and
its circulation was highly restricted in the US, even before the implementation of the Hays Code. In the US, it was
seen by small groups of lmmakers and critics, and in one enticing account of a screening in the New York
apartment of Gloria Swanson, it was projected onto one of Glorias satin sheets, when the absence of an available
screen threatened to disappoint the eager but select audience.
At such a screening, David O. Selznick saw the lm and wrote with great enthusiasm to his boss at MGM that a
print should be obtained because it would be very advantageous to have the organisation view it in the same way
that a group of artists might study a Rubens or a Raphael. It was, he thought, unquestionably one of the greatest
motion pictures ever made (this in 1926!) and the rm might well consider securing the man responsible for it.
Battleship Potemkin is the lm which brought Eisenstein, always a citizen of the world, to world attention. This
fame both protected him up to a point and brought him to the constant attention of the authorities, involving him
in a cat and mouse game for his entire professional life.
Although it has become an orthodoxy in the West to emphasise the repressive conditions under which artists, writers
and lmmakers worked in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it is worth remembering that Eisensteins experiences in
the West were equally, if not more, frustrating creatively. Unfruitful episodes in Hollywood & Mexico left
Eisenstein back in the Soviet Union with a nervous breakdown and a damaged reputation.
Selznick, his original Hollywood promoter, found his screenplay, based on Dreisers American Tragedy, the most
moving script I have ever read, but nonetheless rejected production support on the grounds that it would be too
expensive to make and besides, would offer nothing but a most miserable two hours to millions of happy-minded
young Americans.
Back in the Soviet Union, the needs of the masses were being catered for in similar fashion, though it was not so
much the absolutism of the economic imperative which determined decisions but an imperative more contestable:
sotsialnye zakaz (the social command). This policy delivered a series of (still) popular Stalinist or socialist-realist
musical comedies, adapted by Grigorii Aleksandrov, Eisensteins former co-worker, from Hollywood slapstick with
elements of (Soviet) jazz and Russian popular culture thrown in.
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Eisenstein himself moved on from the enthusiasm and dynamic energy of the early lms to further achievements on
grander themes, and devoted a large part of his life to teaching and writing. He left behind not only a body of
extraordinary lms, but also a body of writing on cinema and art which is unsurpassed.
* * *
Battleship Potemkin was conceived as part of a cycle of myth-making lms intended to tell the story of the
Revolution. Although that cycle was not completed, it is possible in retrospect, to view Strike (1924), Battleship
Potemkin (1925), October (1928) and possibly The Old and The New (1929) as episodes, more successful perhaps
than Pudovkins The End of St Petersburg (1927). The latter instead combines several of the moments of this
historical narrative into one lm with brief ashes of Belys Petersburg for good measure.
Battleship Potemkin commemorates the failed 1905 uprising, though technical constraints meant that only one
aspect of the revolt the Potemkin mutiny was nally dealt with. Considerable debate about the historical veracity
of the treatment has taken place, and although this contestation of the myth has sought to deny that the lm bears
much relation to what really happened, serious examination of the historical incident has only been able to establish
that there is confusion about what occurred. In general, however, there is more similarity than difference between
what has been accepted as the historical story and Eisensteins treatment of it.
Eisensteins lm is structured around ve episodes, introduced by intertitles: (1) Men and Maggots; (2) Drama on
the Quarterdeck; (3) An Appeal from the Dead; (4) The Odessa Steps; (5) Meeting the Squadron. These episodes
coincide, in large part with historical memory of the event, and Eisenstein used one of the actual participants of the
mutiny as an actor and historical advisor on the project.
The mutiny certainly did begin when rotten meat was taken on board and the sailors refused to eat the soup which
was subsequently made from it. The drama on the quarterdeck occurred; Vakulinchuk was killed in the ensuing
struggle with ofcers, his body was laid in state on the shore at Odessa and the people of the city, where
insurrectionist activity was also occurring, came to see it. This incident stirred up further unrest which was violently
suppressed by the military in the city. The Potemkin red shots and the rest of the Russian eet was brought in to
subdue the ship, but no return shots were red. One other ship joined the Potemkin in mutiny, but later ran aground.
The Potemkin left Odessa and the sailors eventually sought asylum in Romania. Eisensteins narrative ends on the
relative victory of the eets passing the ship without ring, rather than the less heroic story of the Potemkins
subsequent tribulations and isolation.
This decision serves to identify the symbolic signicance of the mutiny in the later historical mythmaking which
both led to the Revolution and also led in turn to the Revolutions being reconstituted itself in more heroic terms.
The Odessa steps massacre in the lm condenses the suppression, which actually occurred in the city into one
dramatised incident, and this remains one of the most powerful images of political violence ever realised.
This power is achieved by the principle of conict in montage: the juxtaposition of images of innocence against
images of violence (the child trampled, the mothers appeal to the soldiers, the mother with the pram [all
individualised, or at least rendered as distinct types] against the mass of the soldiers, rendered not as separate bodies
but as graphic patterns of lines and shadows in inexorable movement), the contrasts between long, depersonalising
shots of soldiers and close-ups of citizens, contrasts between shots from below (the perspective of the citizens that
of panic) and above (the perspective of the soldiers control and overview). It is maternal feeling which represents
humanity in the scene and masculine military discipline which represents inhumanity.
The Odessa Steps sequence has been much copied (Woody Allen, Brian de Palma, the odd Australian indie lm).
Seventy-ve years on, it is advertising rather than cinema which most regularly resorts to these techniques. However
much the speech of the movies has since changed, it is still a pleasure to view again a lm which, without fully
knowing it, wrote the grammar of cinema.
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About the Author
Helen Grace is a Sydney-based writer, photographer and new media producer; she is Adjunct Professor in the
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, UTS.
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