The crucial importance of Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Battleship Potemkin’
The Soviet film theorist, screenwriter, editor and director Sergei Eisenstein is one of the most important figures in the history of cinema. A pioneer in the often-used film technique of montage, without Eisenstein’s work, it’s unlikely that we’d have seen the likes of Rocky, Dirty Dancing and Bloodsport in their eventual glory.
The Soviet filmmaker was known for his silent movies Strike, October and Battleship Potemkin, with the latter being of particular cultural relevance. It dramatises a mutiny that took place in 1905 when the crewmates of a Russian battleship rebelled against their officers.
Eisenstein had originally written the film as a form of revolutionary propaganda but also used the production as a method of testing his theories on the nature of the montage. He wanted to explore whether an audience would be more emotionally affected by the visual stimulus that urged sympathy for the oppressed.
Also of note in the film is the Odessa Steps sequence, which details the massacre of a set of civilians on the titular steps in the Ukrainian city. The sequence is well-regarded in the world of cinema and is considered one of the most influential in film history.
It sees a group of white tunic-dressed Tsarist soldiers march down the steps in perfect rhythm whilst firing at the crowd below them. The civilians killed include an old woman, a young child and his mother, a young student and a schoolgirl. A baby also falls in its carriage down the steps in a truly harrowing moment.
The scene has been homage in several notable movies, including Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and has also been parodied in the likes of Wooden Allen’s Love and Death and Naked Gun 33+1/3: The Final Insult.
Interestingly, the massacre on the steps did not actually occur, but rather Eisenstein used it to detail the riots that happened in other parts of Odessa. Roger Ebert once wrote of the scene: “That there was, in fact, no tsarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene… It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened.”
Eisenstein had been disappointed when Battleship Potemkin did not garner a big audience, although he was pleased to find that those who did watch it were shocked by his depictions of evil and violence. The film ended up being banned in the United Kingdom for longer than any other work.
Check out the Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin below.
