BFI Top 50: The Battleship Potemkin, Released in 1925, Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

What I know going in

I have previously watched the film once and enjoyed it immensely. I looked forward to revisiting it.

 

Immediate Reaction

Once you have enough experience watching and reading about films, you realize that some elements usually considered important to the success or a failure of a film, aren’t actually necessary. Aspects of good film such as interesting characters, pleasurable dialogue, great music and sound design, and an engaging narrative aren’t required to make a film “good” per se, or at least those elements are secondaryto the aspects of cinema that make it an unique art form distinct from literature, photography, theater, painting, and music. The unique aspects of cinema include the movement of objects or the camera within a frame and the juxtaposition of different images, or as it’s more commonly known, editing.

 

Again, I’m not going to be shocking any film school students with that statement, but during the early days of cinema there was a general confusion over how exactly cinema should be treated in the arts and what made it different from theater. Similar to how video games still get denigrated as for kids or as mindless spectacle, early films were treated as side-shows or distractions. Most of the films of this time (late 1800’s and early 1900’s) were basically someone seeing a real life action (people leaving a factory, a horse running, a train barreling down a track) and haphazardly pointing a camera at it. Eventually, film became more complicated to involve distinct stories, and fantastical imagery, but the grammar of editing and camera movement and positioning still hadn’t reached a recognizable point. For example, some of Louis Feilluade’s and George Melies’ work looks more like filmed plays than its own distinct thing.

Eventually, as film technique progressed in the late teens and early 20’s, directors realized the special ingredients they were working with. The first group to do so were the famous Soviet, silent film directors who included Dovzhenko, Pudovkin, Kuleshov, and, of course, Eisenstein. This group developed theories about the importance of editing and put those theories into practice through the films they made. Kuleshov even has an effect named after him detailing how images on either side of an actor’s reaction shot can change the how the audience interprets the same expression.

 

Eisenstein put of all this thought to marvelous use in The Battleship Potemkin, arguably the greatest, and most well-known, propaganda film. The plot is sort of based on the real-life 1905 incident where the crew of a battleship under the czar’s command mutinied against their upper-class officers, a scenario tailor-made to be turned into a rousing celebration of the newly formed soviet union (a lot of the intertitles contain dialogue valorizing communistic concepts such as placing the value of the group above that of the individual). The plot unfolds in a handful of acts, with the first showing the horrendous conditions the crew face, then moving on to­ their mutiny, the citizens of Odessa rallying around them, their massacre, and the final push by the crew to break through the opposing battalion. Writing that out makes the film seem a bit simplistic, and being a propaganda film, its themes, characters, and plot are all pretty one-note.

 

However, none of what I’ve written so far gets across just how exciting and dynamic the film still is. Part of that is Eisenstein’s use of real locations during a time when massive sets were common and before that practice became common with the advent of neo-realism. It’s thrilling to watch the camera bounce around the different, often cramped locations of the battleship and put itself right in the middle of huge crowds of angry extras (who were probably reenacting events that were still extremely raw and personal to them). The main part of that excitement comes from watching the language being solidified right in front of you. While there are a few striking images in Potemkin, such as the close-up of woman’s wounded face, taken alone, most of its compositions would seem somewhat mundane compared to other films from around the same era like Sunrise and Metropolis. Eisenstein understood that it wasn’t a single composition that makes a film exciting, but the stringing together of those images that creates a film’s continuity or provokes an emotional or intellectual response. For example, take a single part of the Odessa Steps sequence. You see the guards advancing on the civilians, a woman with a baby carriage holding up her hand in defense, the guards firing their guns into the space she previously occupied, a mid-shot of her reaction, and then a close-up of her hands grasping at her wound. That sequence establishes a very neat, easily understandable continuity. It also effectively establishes the uncaring nature of the guards and put a human face on their horrific actions. Finally, it follows a nice progression. It flows from wide, establishing shots of the guards, a mid-shot of the woman reacting, and then a shot where her body takes up the entire frame. It moves in closer and tighter. There’s also the ending push by the titular battleship (which may have generated the cliché countdown-style ending) made up almost entirely of mundane actions such as a pistons moving, close-ups of the ship moving through water, and guns moving into position. Eisenstein intercuts those elements with wide-shots of the ships moving and the people scurrying around and just keeps cutting faster and faster until the tension becomes unbearable.  Again, I know all that doesn’t sound radical, and any director today should know how to create similar sequences, but nothing before, and possibly since, in film history had been put together in quite such a frenzied manner until Potemkin came along.

 

 

 

Further thoughts

There was a worrying trend in the reviews I read. A few pieces basically said that Battleship Potemkin had become staid and was mainly of interest for its historical qualities rather than anything else. It was also predicted that the film would start dropping further and further in the upcoming decades. It has already dropped a bit, it was in the top 10 every decade the poll has been taken since its start in 1952, and dropped out only in this most recent poll, although it’s number 11. Other reviews that were positive of the film tended to put an inordinate amount of focus on the Odessa Steps sequence, which is admittedly great, but has been talked to death at this point. While I do have some minor issues with the film, I find the section after the mutiny and before the Odessa Steps meanders a bit, I disagree with the assertion that the film isn’t powerful anymore or should be reduced to a single 6 minute sequence.

 

Therefore, I am going to point out a few positives of the film that have nothing to do with faceless, soldiers and slaughtered civilians.  One part of the film that is rarely mentioned is Eisenstein’s use of intertitles, an aspect of silent films that usually feels perfunctory at best or a crutch for poor visual storytelling at worst. With that in mind, the intertitles of Potemkin are stellar. They are rarely deployed for exposition or character development and are there more for impact than anything else. Two in particular stand out. Vakulinchuk’s plea of “Brothers! Who are you shooting at?” to try and stop his comrades from being executed always makes me a bit emotional. The ominous “And suddenly…” that precedes the appearance of the Czarist soldiers and interrupts the rousing nature of the previous scenes may be, along with Metropolis’ “MOLOCH!”, one of the greatest intertitles in silent cinema.

 

Why is the film on this list?

Frequently copied, but rarely outdone, Battleship Potemkin’s frenetic approach to the retelling of a failed Russian uprising has an immediacy that makes it more than just a film school textbook piece.