Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Originally posted to Facebook on 11/16/2017

Our first film from 1925 was the iconic Soviet silent film Battleship Potemkin, directed by Sergei Eisenstein. This is certainly one of those silent films that comes right off of a film-school syllabus, and it's been on my list to see for a long time -- probably since The Untouchables was in the theaters and I read in reviews about the origin of the baby carriage scene. The movie takes place during the failed revolution of 1905, and obviously is intended to link that revolution to the successful revolution of 1917, and propagandistically valorize the failed revolutionaries.

The film has three main sections -- starting with mounting dissatisfaction onboard ship and an eventual mutiny. Then the growing movement sparked by this mutiny and the subsequent crackdown on the Odessa steps, and lastly a showdown at sea. The characterization of most of the characters is very thin -- deliberately so -- but despite this being a clear choice, it does serve to distance one from the action -- and it is never really clear how poor conditions on-board ship are linked to a greater civilian movement. As the first section began to drag a bit, I began to wonder if this wasn't perhaps one of those classics that had aged poorly -- but the entire Odessa Steps sequence made it clear why this film has entered the canon. The scenes of the Russian military wading into civilian protesters without regard for casualties is not only dramatic (and sadly resonant with any number of similar instances that have played out on television over the last few decades), but also dramatically and innovatively shot. The third sequence returns to the medium-energy of the first section, and, as a result, is rather anti-climactic. I think in the end the lack of actual characters, and the enormous differences in tension and energy between the middle part of the film and the surrounding sections, make this a very flawed film -- certainly from an entertainment perspective -- and the politics of it are of course coming from a very dark place. But the middle section alone more than justifies a watch.

Next week, we skip ahead briefly to 1927 before returning to our second film from 1925. Our first film from 1927 is Metropolis, which we viewed slightly out of order because it happened to be playing on the big screen at the Alamo. Metropolis is of course another iconic film, and the fifth Fritz Lang film that we've seen, featuring a few of his regulars. The link, as always is here: https://bit.ly/2lZtfmT