Battleship Potemkin - Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin is a thrilling, compact classic of Russian cinema that remains fresh and interesting even though it has been watched and talked about for decades. Approaching it for the first time more than 80 years after the fact, after it has influenced countless films and filmmakers and been celebrated as one of the best films ever made, is somewhat daunting. The first instinct is to look at it with a purely academic eye, however once you start watching it, it’s a film that is easy to get caught up in and enjoy. This is a film heavy with meaning and history of course, but it’s still very entertaining.

The film is divided into five sections: “Men and Maggots,” which exposes the horrid living conditions of sailors aboard the Potemkin; “Drama at the Harbour,” during which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulynchuk, is killed; “A Dead Man Calls For Justice,” in which Vakulynchuk’s body is laid out for the people of Odessa to see; “The Odessa Staircase,” easily the most famous sequence in this film and one of the most famous sequences in the history of film, which shows peasants being gunned down by the army; and “The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron,” which finds the squadron sent to get the Potemkin under control joining the rebelling sailors. The sequences flow into each other easily and build up to each other in a way that seems very natural. From a structural standpoint, the screenplay by Eisenstein, Nina Agadzhanova, Nikolai Aseyev and Sergei Tretyakov is very strong, though the dialogue is occasionally cumbersome. The characters speak to each other in “theory speak,” if you will, talking like symbols rather than actual people. Being a silent film, the dialogue is of course at a minimum, and given the circumstances under which the film was made, this kind of dialogue is more or less to be expected. However, it does still feel a little clunky at times and the film is much stronger when it expresses itself simply through images.

From a purely artistic standpoint, the Odessa Staircase sequence is the most successful of the five sequences, with images that are startling, vibrant and unforgettable. From the shot of the legless man fleeing down the stairs to the bereaved mother with her dead child in her arms, to the much imitated and parodied shot of the basinet bouncing down the stairs, this sequence is memorable from beginning to end. Eisenstein, aside from having a great eye for composing shots, also demonstrates considerable economy in terms of editing. There is not a single wasted shot in either the sequence or the film as a whole; every shot is important in terms of moving the plot forward and making the film’s political point. Its success as a propaganda film is undeniable given that the events it depicts are often taken for granted as being true to life. The mutiny on the Potemkin did happen, the massacre on the Odessa steps did not.

Battleship Potemkin is, first and foremost, a propaganda movie meant to vilify the Tsarist regime and glorify Communist revolutionaries. The politics of the film inform each and every frame but are incorporated so easily into the narrative – or, rather, the narrative is incorporated so easily into the politics – that it doesn’t feel like a burden to the film. Eisenstein’s success in this regard no doubt stems from his theories of montage, which he puts to great use here. His arrangement of sometimes disparate images deepens their meaning and the quick cutting not only moves the story along at a good pace but also makes the political message more easily digestible. So much is happening so fast that you hardly have time to think about it; you simply absorb it and that’s really the key to the film’s success.

Many films, once they attain the status of being unassailable classics, can become difficult to appreciate in and of themselves. You appreciate the thread that runs from them to later films and you appreciate their history, but you can’t always just enjoy them simply as films. Battleship Potemkin is a film that is so well-constructed in every respect that you can see immediately why it has resonated with audiences for eight decades. This is an absolute must-see for any lover of the art of filmmaking.

Watch a clip from the movie here: