Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Overall, I thought that this film was well put together and for the most part, entertaining. I enjoyed the quicker shots that are really more like the editing styles that are often seen today, with the closer shots on people's faces instead of the style of Evgeni Bauer (longer shots in extravagent rooms which make for busy backgrounds). I think this film was more believeable than some of the other silent films we watched on Thursday, especially the first two parts of it. The story was good in showing clearly the buildup of tenstion that led to the revolt. I also really liked the portrayal of what I assumed to be the Captain - the older, moustache-less man - in those couple of scenes. He looked like a hawk or a vulture of something watching the sailors. Later, a lot of the higher officers with moustaches would curl them and grin to indicate their "evil" motives - which made me think of Snidely Whiplash from the old Dudley Do-Right cartoons...they also had a lot of monocles or glasses with chains, so that added to the association with cartoon villians.
The third part seemed rather overdone to me, I felt like this is definitely where the propoganda comes in to the film. It would make sense for passers by to notice the sailor's body on the beach, but then people started coming in droves upon droves! I can't imagine that the reaction would have been quite that dramatic or intense as it was pictured in the film. That is one part where I thought it still went too long, that sooooo many people were freaking out over it and they were shown for a good 5 or 10 minutes straight. I didn't understand at first why all of a sudden there were soldiers all over the place killing people, but I am guessing they were the White army trying to disperse the massive crowd that had gathered in support of the cause of the Reds represented by the dead sailor. That whole scene also seemed todrag on a long time, but they did a good job of capturing how chaotic and terrible a scene like that would be. The little kid getting shot was definitely an emotional event, and I really reacted to it myself.
The ending scene got super annoying with the over-dramatic music that kept getting faster and faster in tempo until it became frantic noise. That part dragged on forever, I just kept thinking, well shoot them already! I was a little confused when all of a sudden they were friends because I didn't see any flag or anything on the other ships to indicate a response to the Potemkin's sgnal of "join us". I thought it was a little weird to end the film at that scene, for some reason it seemed a bit anticlimacric after the previous battle scenes.
A few technical things I was curious about were, for one, the red coloration of the flag. Was that done at the time, or more recently in "retouching"? Clearly it sticks out among the otherwise greyscale colors, and is a big symbol for the new leadership and communism of the Bolsheviks. I thought that the main sailor who died looked a bit like Stalin with that big moustache, and I was curious if maybe that had been done on purpose, especially before he ended up dying. The other technique I thought was really interesting as incorporating "sound effects" into the musical score, for the gunshots and cannons as well as the bugles, whistles and even splashes into the water. I'm not sure if the scoring on the version we watched today was the same as the original, but if so I think it was rather creative.
I think that's all for today...
Though Eisenstein proved very influential here in the way he could generate flows of movement by large crowds--and to show them winding and circulating through the city and along the harbor, almost like blood through the larger body politic.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Red Flag, yes--it is believed that they took a red marker pen to the film and created the red effect we see here--though the original print that was used for the debut screening has not survived.
I too noticed today for the first time that Vakulinchuk looks a bit like Stalin--though I doubt that was intentional (Eisenstein was far more of a Trotskyite in his devoted adherence to the cause of Communism and the Soviet Union). But I have to agree with you that something quite deliberate seems to be taking place here with the resemblance to the way people visit the dead Lenin in the tomb--and this cannot be accidental, I think. Both Lenin and the sailor can be seen (according to Eisenstein's conception) as martyr-leaders who continue their work past the grave. As the famous Soviet slogan went, "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will always live" ("Lenin zhil, Lenin zhiv i Lenin budet zhit'/Ленин жил, Ленин жив и Ленин будет жить)!
Keep in mind that the action of the film takes place in 1905--so there weren't Reds vs. Whites yet, per se. The officers and soldiers attacking the citizens on the Odessa steps would have been the Tsarist army of Imperial Russia and then the Cossacks (who were a warlike people who lived on the Russian frontier and ended up doing a lot of the pogroms that persecuted Jews in the late 19th-early 20th century). Now whether the Odessa Staircase sequence is based on reality is a whole 'nother story (Eisenstein and his cohort played and manipulated with the facts in presenting this entire episode from history).
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ReplyDeleteFirst it told me that my initial comment was too big to fit--so I started to re-write it in bits and pieces. But now I see it got through after all. Hence, I deleted my attempt to "re-write" the comment. :>)
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