San Francisco International Film Festival
Official Selection
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Battleship Potemkin1925
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For eight decades, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece has remained one of the most influential silent films of all time. Yet each successive generation has seen BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN subjected to censorship and recutting, its unforgettable power diluted in unauthorized public domain editions from dubious sources until now. Dozens of missing shots have been replaced and all 146 title cards restored to Eisenstein's specifications. Edmund Meisel's definitive 1926 score, magnificently rendered by the 55-piece Deutches Filmorchestra, returns Eisenstein's masterwork to a form as close to its creator's bold vision as has been seen since the film's triumphant 1925 Moscow premiere.
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2 members like this review
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.
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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
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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.
2 members like this review
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.
1 member likes this review
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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.