Battleship Potemkin (1925)

1. Battleship Potemkin (1925)

2. Eisenstein shooting Potemkin

3. Battleship Potemkin • Pronounced “Potyomkin” • Planned as a part of a cycle of films about the Revolution (along with Strike and October) • Tells about an episode of the 1905 revolt (suppressed) • Myth-making, but relatively true to the historical events (not in details!)

4. Historical Events • 11 days of mutiny on Potemkin • Hailed and supported by the population of Odessa • Unrest in the city suppressed by Imperial troops • No support from other ships • Ran out of food and fuel, fled to Romania • No significant political outcome

5. Battleship Potemkin: structure Five parts (reels) introduced by intertitles, resemble five acts of tragedy: ReelOne: Men and Maggots Rotten meat, doctor refuses to see the maggots, image of glasses Reel Two: Drama on the Quarterdeck Refusal to eat soup – cornered on the deck, refusal to fire on comrades, mutiny, Vakulinchuk’s death Reel Three: Appeal from the Dead Vakulinchuk’s body brought to Odessa, shrine, mourning, raising of red flag Reel Four: The Odessa Steps Fraternization of sailors and townspeople. Sailboats bring food to ship. Soldiers massacre people on steps. Battleship fires on army headquarters. Reel Five: Meeting the squadron Night of suspense, the engines of ship fired up. Ship passes triumphantly through squadron sent to suppress mutiny.

6. Realism Actors Sets Static camera Long shots Statuesque human form: full shots Eroticism Fictional narrative Focus on the individual The Real Real people Filmed on location Mobile camera Short, staccato shots Grotesque deformed body: detail shots Brotherhood, motherhood History as myth Focus on the masses Eisenstein’s Cinema as rejection of established cinematic norms

7. Themes and motifs • Brotherhood: Vakulinchuk’s cry “Brothers!” • Religious motifs: slaughter of the innocent • « Optimistic tragedy »: Individuals die, while the cause of revolution triumphs. • Machines and men

8. Eisenstein’s films are didactic: they always channel an ideological message introduced here in the quotation from Lenin. • There is no hero (well-rounded individual) in Strike and Potemkin : there are masses, classes, types; the hero will only appear in October: Lenin as the leader without whom the revolution cannot succeed. • Montage of attractions: juxtaposition of unrelated expressive images in a rapid succession (technique influenced by D.W.Griffith’s Intolerance, 1916).

9. Montage and camera • Creates metaphors of power (ex., lions) • Innocence vs violence (ex., the face of the woman – the rows of soldiers with bayonets lowered) • Soldiers as depersonalized graphic lines moving forward; citizens of Odessa as individuals (close-ups) • Difference in perspective: soldiers are in control, move downwards; victims’ perspective is from below

11. Lens Theme • Doctor refuses to see maggots • Shattered lens of woman’s glasses on steps • Canvas over mutineers so that comrades with guns cannot see them • Camera lens sees and records • Camera as inverted metaphor for the gun: cf. “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

13. The Odessa Steps Sequence

14. The glorification of the machine… • Battleship itself joins the revolution • camera focuses on guns, machinery of engine room • Soldiers advance like faceless automatons down the Odessa steps

19. Visual quotes…

22. Francisco Goya The Third of May 1808 (1814)

24. Michelangelo’s Pietà

26. Edvard Munch: The Scream (1893)

27. Hand-painted flag