Battleship Potemkin1925
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Eisenstein sure loved long scenes, didn't he? Well, the captivating visuals make up for that and the scene on the Odessa steps is everything it's been made out to be. Well worth watching.
Starring
- Grigori Aleksandrov - Chief Officer Giliarovsky
- Aleksandr Antonov - Grigory Vakulinchuk - Bolshevik Sailor
- Vladimir Barsky - Commander Golikov
- Iona Abramovich Biy-Brodsky - Student
- Ivan Bobrov - Young Sailor Flogged While Sleeping
- Julia Eisenstein - Woman with Food for Sailors
- Sergei Eisenstein - Odessa Citizen
- Andrei Fajt - Recruit
- Konstantin Feldman - Student Agitator
- A. Glauberman - Wounded Boy
- Mikhail Gomorov - Militant Sailor
- Aleksandr Levshin - Petty Officer
- N. Poltavtseva - Woman With Pince-nez
- Prokopenko - Mother Carrying Wounded Boy
- Beatrice Vitoldi - Woman With Baby Carriage
Edited By
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Member Reviews (5)
Eisenstein sure loved long scenes, didn't he? Well, the captivating visuals make up for that and the scene on the Odessa steps is everything it's been made out to be. Well worth watching.
A classic. I love Soviet Montage, well actually I love creative / intellectual montage of any sort and Eisenstein was a master of this editing technique. The Odessa steps sequence is one of the most famous sequences in the history of cinema and rightfully so. It is harrowing but the entire film, Battleship Potemkin, is brilliant. It speaks truth to power with the best of them and sadly there aren't enough of them.
People make a big fuss about Eisenstein's use of montage, and rightly so. But I'm more struck by the beauty of his individual compositions, ranging from majestic establishing shots to ultra emotional close-ups. The scope is simply breathtaking. Even if you don't agree with the highly propagandized message of the movie, enjoy it for being just so darn pretty.
Epic yet emotional. Silent yet thunderous. The narrative structure is described well by the following passage from Brecht: "Man [sic] does not become man again by stepping out of the masses but by stepping back into them." Beautiful wide shots are juxtaposed with individual close-ups throughout, but the wides are no less emotive for being wides; indeed, the central "character" is the proletariat, and only emerges in these grand, tumultuous moments. Scenes are politically didactic in themselves visually, even if you were to remove their title cards. A masterpiece of Marxist propaganda in both form and content.
A very high level of artistry regarding light and movement. I found the first part of the movie a bit slow, but the last half (especially the scenes in Odessa, justifiably famous) is brilliant.