The Battleship Potemkin

The film is composed of five episodes: "Men and Maggots", in which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat; "Drama at the Harbor" , in which the sailors mutiny and their leader is killed; "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" in which the leader's corpse is mourned over by the people of Odessa; "The Odessa Staircase", in which Tzarist soldiers massacre the Odessans; and "The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron". 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. Eisenstein's experiment was a mixed success; Eisenstein "was disappointed when Potemkin failed to attract masses of viewers", but the film was also released in a number of international venues, where audiences responded more positively. In both the Soviet Union and overseas, the film shocked audiences, but not so much for its political statements as for its use of violence, which was considered graphic by the standards of the time. The film's potential to influence political thought through emotional response was noted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who called Potemkin "a marvellous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film." The Odessa Steps sequence The boots of the Tsarist soldiers shown marching down the "Odessa Steps". The boots of the Tsarist soldiers shown marching down the "Odessa Steps". 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 attempt to 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. The scene is perhaps the best example of Eisenstein's theory on montage, and may have influenced many of Leni Riefenstahl's similar images in the Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. It has been endlessly referenced in many motion pictures, with famous homages occurring in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Brian De Palma's version of The Untouchables, and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It was also spoofed in Woody Allen's Bananas and Love and Death, Terry Gilliam's Brazil, and the ZAZ film Naked Gun 33: The Final Insult. The massacre on the steps is fictional, presumably created by Eisenstein for its dramatic venue and effect, as well as for propaganda and to demonize the Czar and the Imperial regime. It is, however, based on the fact that there were widespread demonstrations in the area, sparked off by the arrival of the Potemkin in Odessa Harbour, and both the Times of London and the resident British Consul reported that troops fired on the crowds with accompanying loss of life (the actual casualties are unrecorded). Film critic Roger Ebert writes, "That there was, in fact, no czarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene ... It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened." All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Date Added: Sat, 22 Sep 2007
Show: nitmeare  
Category: Entertainment   Channel: blip.tv
Related Tags: Odessa, Texas, midland, West

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