BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN

INTRODUCTION: This is one of the most written-about movies of all time, perhaps rivalled only by "Citizen Kane". Still, repetition has never stopped us before.

SYNOPSIS: Commissioned to celebrate the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905, Eisenstein concentrates on the mutiny on the Potemkin and the subsequent massacre on the Odessa steps of peasants supplying aid and comfort to the mutineers.

REVIEW: The film is very dated, but it still has a lot to offer, especially in this relatively new print, with a score by Shostakovich. Eisenstein is probably the closest cinema has come to producing an Einstein, only two letters out, as well as making some of the defining films of Soviet Cinema ("The Strike" & "Oktober"). He also wrote extensively on film theory.

He was of course the master of the montage edit, which involved cutting between two images to produce a third image that exists solely in the mind of the viewer. To use an example from Eisenstein - cutting between a shot of an old woman with a starving child, and a fat capitalist will conjure up the image of oppression in the viewers mind. The montage edit technique, like Eisenstein himself, fell out of favour after "Oktober" and had to be so completely re-edited to remove reference to Trotsky that it made little sense. The technique does still crop up from time-to-time, perhaps most memorably in Spielberg's greatest movie "Jaws", to remind the world of Eisentein's visionary genius.

Eisenstein's mastery of imagery is clearly on display here, perhaps most famously with the pram on the Odessa steps routine, which was later borrowed by DePalma for "The Untouchables". Even if I hadn't found the film enthralling I'd still haven given it a good rating. After all, Eisentein's fiercest critics were all massacred in Stalin's purges.

Required watching for any film buff, but perhaps a little outmoded for general viewing.

Mutt's Rating: ****

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