Battleship Potemkin, sometimes rendered as Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film
directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatized version
of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled
against their officers of the Tsarist regime. Battleship Potemkin has been called one of
the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all
time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958.
Plot The film is set in June 1905; the protagonists
of the film are the members of the crew of the Potemkin, a battleship of the Imperial
Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. Eisenstein divided the plot into five acts, each with
its own title: Act I: People and worms
The scene begins with two sailors, Matyushenko and Vakulinchuk, discussing the need for the
crew of the Potemkin to support the revolution taking place within Russia. While the Potemkin
is anchored off the island of Tendra, off-duty sailors are sleeping in their bunks. As an
officer inspects the quarters, he stumbles and takes out his aggression on a sleeping
sailor. The ruckus causes Vakulinchuk to awake, and he gives a speech to the men as they come
to. Vakulinchuk says, "Comrades! The time has come when we too much speak out. Why wait?
All of Russia has risen! Are we to be the last?" The scene cuts to morning above deck,
where sailors are remarking on the poor quality of the meat for the crew. The meat appears
to be rotten and covered in worms, and the sailors remark that "even a dog wouldn't eat
this!" The ship's doctor, Smirnov, is called over to inspect the meat by the captain. Rather
than worms, the doctor says that the insects are maggots, and they can be washed off prior
to cooking. The sailors further complain about the poor quality of the rations, but the doctor
declares the meat edible and ends the discussion. Senior officer Giliarovsky forces the sailors
still looking over the rotten meat to leave the area, and the cook begins to prepare borscht
although he too questions the quality of the meat. The crew refuses to eat the borscht,
instead choosing bread and water, and canned goods. While cleaning dishes, one of the sailors
sees an inscription on a plate, which reads "give us this day our daily bread." After
considering the meaning of this phrase, the sailor smashes the plate and the scene ends.
Act II: Drama on the deck All those who refuse the meat are judged guilty
of insubordination and instantly brought to the edge of the bridge where they receive
religious rites reserved for death row inmates. In front of the firing squad none of them
show remorse, convinced that what they are doing is right. The captain gave the order
to open fire, but the soldiers in the firing squad lower their guns and the uprising begins.
The sailors are poorly armed but outnumber the officers, which allows them to also take
control of the ship. The officers are killed and the doctor is thrown into the water.
Act III: The dead man calls out The mutiny is successful but many of the sailors
are killed in battle, including Vakulinčuk, the charismatic leader of the rebels who took
possession of the ship. The Potemkin arrives at the port of Odessa. Vakulincuk's body is
taken ashore and displayed publicly by his companions in a tent with a sign on his chest
that says "Dead for a spoonful of soup." The sailors gather to make a final farewell and
praise Vakulinčuk as a hero. The people of Odessa welcome the sailors, but they attract
the attention of the Tsarist police. Act IV: The Odessa steps
The Cossacks of the Tsar arrive at Odessa in retaliation and march toward the unarmed
crowd with their rifles. The people run away, but the Cossacks shoot men, women, and defenseless
children. The scene has become famous: the soldiers are only shown through details that
make them impersonal, inflexible, while the people of Odessa fall in extremely violent
ways. The soldiers show no sign of wanting to stop the massacre. The sailors of the Potemkin
then decide to shoot at them with the guns of the battleship. Meanwhile, there is news
that a fleet of ships in the harbor of the Tsar is coming to quell the revolt of Potemkin.
Act V: One against all The sailors of the Potemkin decide to go all
the way and lead the battleship from the port of Odessa to face the fleet of the Tsar. Just
when the battle seems inevitable, the sailors of the Tsarist ships incredibly refuse to
open fire on their comrades, externalizing with songs and shouts of joy their solidarity
with the mutineers and allowing them to pass unmolested through the fleet, waving the red
flag. Cast
Aleksandr Antonov — Grigory Vakulinchuk Vladimir Barsky — Commander Golikov
Grigori Aleksandrov — Chief Officer Giliarovsky Ivan Bobrov — Young sailor flogged while
sleeping Mikhail Gomorov — Militant sailor
Aleksandr Levshin — Petty Officer N. Poltavseva — Woman with pince-nez
Konstantin Feldman — Student agitator Beatrice Vitoldi — Woman with the baby
carriage Film style and content
The film is composed of five episodes: "Men and Maggots", in which the sailors protest
at having to eat rotten meat; "Drama on the Deck", in which the sailors
mutiny and their leader, Vakulinchuk, is killed; "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" in which Vakulinchuk's
body is mourned over by the people of Odessa; "The Odessa Staircase", in which Tsarist soldiers
massacre the Odessans. "The Rendezvous with the Squadron", in which
the squadron tasked with intercepting the Potemkin instead declines to engage; lowering
their guns, its sailors cheer on the rebellious battleship and join the mutiny.
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 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; he "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 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 marvelous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone
who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film".
The film was not banned in Nazi Germany, although Himmler issued a directive prohibiting SS
members from attending screenings, as he deemed the movie inappropriate for the troops.
The Odessa Steps sequence
One of the most celebrated scenes in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa
Steps. This scene has been described as one of the most influential in the history of
cinema, because it introduced concepts of film editing and montage to cinema. In this
scene, the Tsar's soldiers in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless
flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing volleys into a crowd. A separate
detachment of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. The victims
include an older woman wearing pince-nez, a young boy with his mother, a student in
uniform and a teenage schoolgirl. A mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls
to the ground dying and the carriage rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd.
The massacre on the steps, which never took place, was presumably inserted by Eisenstein
for dramatic effect and to demonise 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 and the resident British Consul reported
that troops fired on the crowds with accompanying loss of life. 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."
Treatment in other works of art
The scene is perhaps the best example of Eisenstein's theory on montage, and many films pay homage
to the scene, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Brian
De Palma's The Untouchables, Tibor Takacs' Deathline, Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box,
Chandrashekhar Narvekar's Hindi film Tezaab, Shukō Murase's anime Ergo Proxy, and The
Magic Christian. Several films spoof it, including Woody Allen's Bananas and Love and Death,
Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker's Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, Soviet-Polish comedy Deja
Vu, Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky and the Italian comedy Il secondo tragico Fantozzi. The 2011
November 7 Parade in Moscow also features a homage to the film.
The painter Francis Bacon was profoundly influenced by Eisenstein's images, particularly the Odessa
Steps shot of the nurse's broken glasses and open mouthed scream. The open mouth image
appeared first in his Abstraction from the Human Form, in Fragment of a Crucifixion,
and other works including his famous Head series.
The Russian born photographer and artist Alexey Titarenko paid tribute to the Odessa Steps
shot in his series "City Of Shadows" by using crowd of desperate people on the stairs near
the subway station in Saint Petersburg to demonize the Soviet regime and as a symbol
of human tragedy. Distribution, censorship and restoration
After its premiere in the Soviet Union, Potemkin was screened in the United States. It was
shown in an edited form in Germany, with some scenes of extreme violence edited out by German
distributors. A written introduction by Trotsky was cut from Soviet prints after he ran afoul
of Stalin. The film was banned in West Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries
for its revolutionary zeal. Today the film is widely available in various
DVD editions. In 2004 a three-year restoration of the film was completed. Many excised scenes
of violence were restored, as well as the original written introduction by Trotsky.
The previous titles, which had toned down the mutinous sailors' revolutionary rhetoric,
were corrected so that they would now be an accurate translation of the original Russian
titles. Soundtracks
To retain its relevance as a propaganda film for each new generation, Eisenstein hoped
the score would be rewritten every 20 years. The original score was composed by Edmund
Meisel. A salon orchestra performed the Berlin premiere in 1926. The instruments were flute/piccolo,
trumpet, trombone, harmonium, percussion and strings without viola. Meisel wrote the score
in twelve days because of the late approval of film censors. As time was so short Meisel
repeated sections of the score. Composer/conductor Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen has reorchestrated
the original piano score to fit the version of the film available today.
Nikolai Kryukov composed a new score in 1950 for the 25th anniversary. In 1985 Chris Jarrett
composed a solo piano accompaniment for the movie. In 1986 Eric Allaman wrote an electronic
score for a showing that took place at the 1986 Berlin Film Festival. The music was commissioned
by the organizers, who wanted to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the film's German
premiere. The score was played only at this premiere and has not been released on CD or
DVD. Contemporary reviews were largely positive apart from negative comment because the music
was electronic. Allaman also wrote an opera about Battleship Potemkin, which is musically
separate from the film score. In its commercial format, on DVD for example,
the film is usually accompanied by classical music added for the 50th anniversary edition
re-released in 1975. Three symphonies from Dmitri Shostakovich have been used, with No.
5 beginning and ending the film, being the most prominent. In 2007 Del Rey & The Sun
Kings also recorded this soundtrack. In an attempt to make the film relevant to the 21st
century, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe composed a soundtrack in 2004 with the Dresden Symphonic
Orchestra. Their soundtrack, released in 2005 as Battleship Potemkin, premiered in September
2004 at an open-air concert in Trafalgar Square, London. There were four further live performances
of the work with the Dresdner Sinfoniker in Germany in September 2005 and one at the Swan
Hunter ship yard in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2006.
The avant-garde jazz ensemble Club Foot Orchestra has also re-scored the film, and performed
live accompanying the film. For the 2005 restoration of the film, under the direction of Enno Patalas
in collaboration with Anna Bohn, released on DVD and Blu-ray, the Deutsche Kinemathek
- Museum fur Film und Fernsehen, commissioned a re-recording of the original Edmund Meisel
score, performed by the Babelsberg Orchestra, conducted by Helmut Imig. In 2011 the most
recent restoration was completed with an entirely new soundtrack by members of the Apskaft group.
Contributing members were AER20-200, awaycaboose, Ditzky, Drn Drn, Foucault V, fydhws, Hox Vox,
Lurholm, mexicanvader, Quendus, Res Band, -Soundso- and speculativism. The entire film
was digitally restored to a sharper image by Gianluca Missero. The new version is available
at the Internet Archive [1]. Critical reaction
Battleship Potemkin has received universal acclaim from critics. On review aggregate
website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an overall 100% "Certified Fresh" approval rating
based on 44 reviews, with a rating average of 9.1 out of 10. The site's consensus reads,
"A technical masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin is Soviet cinema at its finest, and its montage
editing techniques remain influential to this day." Since its release, Battleship Potemkin
has often been cited as one of the finest propaganda films ever made and considered
amongst the greatest films of all time. The film was named the greatest film of all time
at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958. Similarly, in 1952, Sight & Sound magazine cited The
Battleship Potemkin as the fourth greatest film of all time and has been voted within
the top ten in the magazine's five subsequent decennial polls, dropping to number 11 in
the 2012 poll. In 2007, a two-disc, restored version of the
film was released on DVD. Time magazine's Richard Corliss named it one of the Top 10
DVDs of the year, ranking it at #5. It ranked #3 in Empire's "The 100 Best Films Of World
Cinema" in 2010. In April 2011, Battleship Potemkin was re-released in UK cinemas, distributed
by the British Film Institute. On its re-release, Total Film magazine gave the film a five-star
review, stating: "...nearly 90 years on, Eisenstein’s masterpiece is still guaranteed to get the
pulse racing." See also
List of films considered the best Notes
External links The Battleship Potemkin at the Internet Movie
Database Battleship Potemkin at AllMovie
View Online on Google Video Battleship Potemkin at official Mosfilm site
with English subtitles "Battleship Potemkin". Senses of Cinema.com.
Archived from the original on 2006-01-03. Retrieved 2006-01-22.
"Potemkin sailor monument". 2odessa.com. Retrieved 2006-08-22. Monument in Odessa, explanation
of the mutiny The Battleship Potemkin watchable and downloadable
with Esperanto subtitles Battleship Potemkin is available for free
download at the Internet Archive [more] 2011 version with new soundtrack Battleship
Potemkin is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]