Director: Grigori Aleksandrov
Starring: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky
Bronenosec Potjomkin -Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary sophomore feature has so long stood as a textbook example of montage editing and with it the Russian film- maker changed the shape of cinema into a new direction. ( Previously the accent was on staging best exemplified by Weiner’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the Russian master gave in its place a purely cinematic idiom of montage.) Another feature of this film is that thin and treacherous line that often trips up a film maker who is bent on making a propaganda film. It is to the credit of Eisenstein that he didn’t fall a victim. Eisenstein of course was working under the dictates of the party bosses and had to keep true to the Marxian ideology from their position. What made it a celluloid epic despite of their interference?
In order to understand this conundrum we have to grasp the fundamentals of film. (First of all let me make it clear as with music knowledge of grammar is unnecessary in order to enjoy film).
A film is synthesis of several arts. In visual terms a film maker might make a political statement from any historical event. In the Battleship of Potemkin, Eisenstein is narrating a crucial event of the 1905 revolution. He can play with time as in the famous scene on the steps of St. Petersburg. The action itself, the people running up the steps into the guns of the Tsarist soldiers actually takes place in a few minutes. The detail shots of falling bodies, feet, faces, guns are all props to give an illusion of time in the viewer’s mind. If with time he can also shift points of view back and forth. The art of film being such there is no place for dogmatic statements. It is cerebral experience as well as vicarious. It was the genius of Eisenstein that he could fine tune his control on his viewer by means of montage. Like a wizard he made the experience of the protagonist as that of you and me. Montage makes it possible to shift from objective to subjective and vice versa. Thus the Russian master didn’t narrate history of the revolution as it happened but in the context of a few characters that figure in the film. Lo and behold their situation has for the moment become yours and you have become part of the experience of the protagonist!
In order to reinforce that a film maker could create the right mood as in the case of the corpse of the murdered sailor. How can a viewer be not affected by the environment,- and the rising misty dawn over the hapless sailor simply puts the viewer receptive to what is to follow. Eisenstein portrays the revolt in microcosm with a dramatization of the real-life mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. His genius transcended politics and created a timeless classic.
The story tells a familiar party-line message of the oppressed working class (in this case the enlisted sailors) banding together to overthrow their oppressors (the ship’s officers), led by proto-revolutionary Vakulinchuk. When he dies in the shipboard struggle the crew lays his body to rest on the pier, a moody, moving scene where the citizens of Odessa slowly emerge from the fog to pay their respects. As the crowd grows Eisenstein turns the tenor from mourning a fallen comrade to celebrating the collective achievement. The government responds by sending soldiers and ships to deal with the mutinous crew and the supportive townspeople, which climaxes in the justly famous (and often imitated and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre. Eisenstein edits carefully orchestrated motions within the frame to create broad swaths of movement, shots of varying length to build the rhythm, close-ups for perspective and shock effect, and symbolic imagery for commentary, all to create one of the most cinematically exciting sequences in film history. Eisenstein’s film is Marxist propaganda to be sure, but as I said earlier polemics do not stand a chance against a creative genius who is in control of his medium. Naturally it is the secret of this masterpiece.
(ack:Sean Axmaker)
Similar Movies
October (1927, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Arsenal (1929, Alexander Dovzhenko)
Storm over Asia (1928, Vsevolod Pudovkin)
Strike (1924, Sergei Eisenstein)
Tabu (1931, Robert Flaherty, F.W. Murnau)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Alexander Nevsky (1938, Sergei Eisenstein)
Qué Viva México (1932, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Vesna (1947, Grigory Alexandrov)
Strike (1924, Sergei Eisenstein)
October (1927, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1944, Sergei Eisenstein)
Ivan the Terrible: Part 2 (1946, Sergei Eisenstein)
Our Daily Bread (1934, King Vidor)
Other Related Movies
is featured in: Seeds of Freedom (1943, Hans Burger)
is related to: Reds (1981, Warren Beatty)
Black Sea Mutiny (1931, Arnold Kordyum)
has been re-edited into: Seeds of Freedom (1943, Hans Burger)
is related to: Blue Moon (2002, Andrea Maria Dusl)
Sergei Eisenstein: Mexican Fantasy (1998, Oleg Kovalov
compiler:benny
Read Full Post »
