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Battleship Potemkin was a film Hollywood could not have made and
couldn't make today.
The corporations would not be happy with the whole idea. Eisenstein
could experiment with technique and make a silent black and white film come alive. The actors (and they were not all actors, some were members of the public roped in by his enthusiasm) have to express themselves without words and put across a story which can be understood in any language. And what a story! The sailors have to suffer appalling conditions and lack of food; their officers lie to them and meet discontent with brutal repression. In the end the sailors outrage finds a focus when the vicious Tsarist officers put a tarpaulin over the heads of some rebel sailors and orders the marines to shoot them. This is too much for the sailors and they appeal to the marines to think about who they are shooting and they rebel. The leader of the revolt is killed but his death becomes the focus of solidarity and revolution in Odessa. Even eighty years after the film and a century after the events it depicts it is still a moving tribute to the men and women who took the first faltering steps towards the revolution of 1905 and it the last reel accurately portrays their apprehension and anxiety and then their joy and enthusiasm at their successes. It was the last time Eisenstein had complete cotrol over one of his films. His next film October was cut by about a third as Stalin sought to rewrite history so that Trotsky did not appear and Lenin was made to sound like a Stalinist! I doubt if they will show it on American TV, but you can download it from the internet and there are various sites which have streaming video which let you watch the film for free. |
