Around the World in 24 Frames 03.26.10: The Battleship Potemkin
Posted by Len Archibald on 03.26.2010
How did maggots lead to a massacre on the Steps of Odessa? How does this tie in with Brian DePalma's The Untouchables for the second straight week? Read on to find out...
Good Friday! Let's get this show on the road!
THE REBUTTAL
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BEATING TRAFFIC Trailer:
Some comments regarding Nosferatu last week…
What's the matter, Len? Due to your teaser tag, I can only assume that you don't particularly care for 'Shadow of the Vampire'. Bah! For my money, I believe it's a nice little bit of 'fantasy' history that ties into the once (maybe still) popular allegation that Shreck really was a vampire.
Also, I appreciate 'The Untouchables' quote, but you forgot the 'Just like a wop...' part. Thought I'd point that out to you.
And no mention of 'Blood for Dracula', the Andy Warhol interpretation of the Prince of Darkness? For shame, Archibald. Not that it should be vaunted with the likes of the Shreck, Lugosi, Lee, Langela, or Oldman films...but it has a decent amount of titties in it. I loved it when I was ten.
Posted By: YepYep (Guest) on March 19, 2010 at 12:35 AM
God, where do I start? I truly hope this was done in jest or in sarcasm. You may have read my teaser tag, but that wasn't a knock on Shadow of the Vampire. In fact, if you read my Great Films of the 2000's, you would have known that I chose the Malkovich/Dafoe collaboration as one of my faves of the decade. Or you could have read the *entire* article; apparently you missed the very last line of it:
***NOTE: "Nosferatu" was remade in 1979 by Werner Herzog, starring Klaus Kinski. "Shadow of the Vampire" stars John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe in a fictitious re-imagining of the making of "Nosferatu" – both are excellent films.***
...and no, I didn't forget the "Just like a w*p..." line from The Untouchables. If one hasn't realized by now, I try to bring a sense of credibility and journalistic integrity with "Around the World..." - I don't need to mar it with a racial slur taken out of context (which it would have been if placed within the subject I was discussing.) Likewise for giving praise to a film for having "titties" in it - but to each their own, I guess. Thanks for skimming!
Nine Queens!! Nine Queens!!! Review Nine Queens from Argentina
Posted By: rubenberendo (Guest) on March 19, 2010 at 01:36 PM
Nueve reinas aka Nine Queens is a 2000 Argentine crime drama written and directed by Fabián Bielinsky about two con artists who meet by chance in a gas station and co-operate in a scam. It is very, VERY good - almost like if David Mammet decided to take one of his stories and bring it to South America. It doesn't have all of David Mammet's wit and penchant for the casual dropping of F-bombs, but the twists and turns are excellent for the genre. I haven't gotten to it as of yet...simply because there are other films I want to highlight first. "Around the World..." is still in its infancy and I want to unfold every great film in a way where I can discuss history as well as technique. To talk about Nine Queens, I would have to get into Jean-Pierre Melville and the nods to his take on crime that is displayed here. I haven't reached that as of yet. I will highlight it when I get to it! Thanks for reading!
Of note to potential viewers: There are several different versions of this movie floating around. The longest, I believe, runs around 70 mins. Other versions cut some of the subplots out or shorten the ending. Also the soundtracks are a bit odd. Netflix has an industrial goth mix version which is a bit odd. There are a couple others with random classical music (I believe Tchaikovsky appears on one) that just loops over and over again and does not go with the tone of the film at all ("oh look, he is being attacked, but cheery music is playing the background..."). I have to say I am a bit surprised that with some of the editions available with this film that no one has recorded an appropriate orchestra soundtrack for it. Your best bet is, as Len said, watch it with the sound and lights off.
I think Murnau (no love for Faust, the best rendition of that tale as well?) proved he would have been a force to reckon with with sound (although he apparently was not a big fan of it), though we will never know--Sunrise uses a bit of interesting "sound bites".
Posted By: Dave C (Guest) on March 19, 2010 at 05:14 PM
Ahh, yes - the "Goth Mix" of Nosferatu - this is a little notorious for the hatred it has in some circles. There are so many different cuts of the film that it is unreal; especially in our day and age when we should be able to have an "Ultimate Definitive Edition" or something like that. Don't worry about Faust - that is coming, along with a little evil film called Haxan in the future. I think it is indeed sad that Murnau never got the chance to make that sound picture, as I think he may have revolutionized sound in film before Orson Welles used his radio chops to throw everything but the kitchen sink when he made Citizen Kane. Thanks so much for the info!!!
Nosferatu is the seminal work in horror films. It is the Birth of a Nation for its genre, and I mean that as a total compliment, extending to all the positive, innovative aspects Griffith gave us, and not the, ya know, horribly racist part. Excellent write-up and interesting read dude.
Posted By: DMC (Guest) on March 20, 2010 at 03:20 AM
Allow me to give a shout-out to DMC, with whom through a recent exchange in emails I realized I've known for ten years! Crazy. Thanks for the kind words, and yes, even though Griffiths was an innovator of film language - he's still an ignorant bigot who used a wonderful artistic medium to toss out his twisted view of the world to the masses.
THE RANT
No rant this week. Unless you want to read eighteen pages of the stressful fast-paced week I've had. I will spare you.
I love movies. They represent escapism, art, intellect and spirituality. Some are nothing more than popcorn flicks, designed to ease the burden of "real-life" for a couple of hours. Some bring important issues to the forefront that challenges how we perceive our surroundings. The most important thing for me – if one is a serious filmgoer – is to constantly expand and discover new movies. This includes experiencing stories told outside of North America.
Yes, I know: "I don't like to read while I watch movies". Well, neither do I, but I won't use that to prevent me from finding a great story within the screen. It is important, as human beings to discover other cultures and expand our perceptions of those different from us and how they see the world. There are reasons that Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini, Ozu and Truffaut are important in the movie world – They are just great at what they do.
I intend to highlight a new film every week that is considered "foreign-language"; now that definition is simple, yet broad and complex. For example, if you need subtitles to understand the events of the plot, I will discuss it. If it is a film from a primarily English-speaking nation, but is *NOT* in English (i.e. Leolo or Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner from Canada), I will discuss. If it is a film from outside the U.S. and it *is* in English, I will not discuss (sorry, Brits & Aussies) – for now. My goal is to shed light on some of these gems, and help quell the insatiable appetites for those who can't live without seeing a new movie. Enjoy!
Áðîíåíîñåö «Ïîò¸ìêèí» aka Bronyenosyets Potyomkin: The Battleship Potemkin
Country: Russia
Release Date: December 21st, 1925
Distributed by: Goskino
Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Runtime: 75 minutes
Cast:
Aleksandr Antonov
Vladimir Barsky
Grigori Aleksandrov
Ivan Bobrov
Mikhail Gomorov
Aleksandr Levshin
N. Poltavseva
Konstantin Feldman
Beatrice Vitoldi
When I truly decided that filmmaking was going to be my career and I needed to watch every film I could get my hands on, Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin was one of the fist movies I studied shot-for-shot, frame-by-frame. It was one of the first films that made me aware of editing, and perhaps the first film that truly made me understand film language. For most, Potemkin may be a tame silent film with some nice images – for a film student/enthusiast, it is a tour de force.
The 1925 silent film (another one??) has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. It is one of those films where the sequence of shots are pretty much known by osmosis; if not directly from the film, from the countless homages and parodies that pay tribute to Potemkin - but there is only one true original.
Now, I may break a cardinal rule of mine: there may be some spoilers. I will do my best not to give a summary of the entire plot, but to give true insight into how influencial this film was, and still is today, I will need to explain certain sequences and their impact. I pre-emptively apologize for my hypocrisy.
The Battleship Potemkin is split into five episodes:
"Men and Maggots" (Ëþäè è ÷åðâè), "Drama at the Harbour" (Äðàìà íà òåíäðå), "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" (̸ðòâûé âçûâàåò), "The Odessa Staircase" (Îäåññêàÿ ëåñòíèöà), and "The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron" (Âñòðå÷à ñ ýñêàäðîé). Each part could be considered a short film in its own right, with a clear three-act structure and a rising tension within the mini-plot.
Anchored offshore on the Black Sea, away from Odessa in 1905, the Potemkin contains sailors fresh from the war with Japan. Ship life is miserable; they are cramped and are lacking in rations with hostile and inhumane officers. The food is rotten, complete with a famous closeup of their meat at breakfast-time, complete with maggots crawling over it. The conditions are ripe for mutiny. Like a spider-web, the men in their hammocks discuss the situation where the Workers are revolting against their Tsarist bosses; shouldn't the sailors join them? The next day the sailors gather for breakfast, which is slabs of meat hanging from the gangways. When the ship's doctor declares that the maggot-infested meat is fine to eat a small group rebels. The officers, who are well fed, order their execution by firing squad, in front of the rest of the crew. A sailor named Vakulinchuk (Alexander Antonov), cries out, ``Brothers! Who are you shooting at?'' The firing squad lowers its guns before an officer unwisely tries to enforce his command. At that point, a full-blown mutiny takes over the ship. Vakulinchuk is shot and killed by the Captain, along with other sailors and officers.
The power in this scene and the ones that follow are directly opposite of a film like The Battle of Algiers, where a political conflict is also at the forefront. Where Algiers tends to focus more on one character or on a particular character arc, Eisenstein used Potemkin as a tool avoid creating ANY three-dimensional characters. Every actor on screen is more of a symbol or a representative of an emotional impulse Eisenstein wanted the audience to feel. The audience shouldn't feel sadness for Vakulinchuk's death because of his story, but because of what he represents – which is a soldier who believes in justice but is slain as a martyr for the people by an oppressive government. Much like Fritz Lang's M, or Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai we see people move as a group, in unison, as a representation of the "will of the people."
News of the uprising reaches citizens onshore who have suffered under czarist repression for far too long. They send food and water out to the battleship in a flotilla of skiffs. Soon after completing their revolution the ship sails into the town of Odessa, where the sailors erect a shrine to their fallen comrade. "He died for a spoonful of soup" some would exclaim. Crowds would be drawn to Vakulinchuk's memorial - his martyrdom whipping the citizens up into their own insurrection. Later, when crowds are cheering the sailors aboard the Potemkin, lines of Czar soldiers appear at the top of the steps which lead to the quay.
Stop.
I think it is safe to say that the massacre on The Odessa Steps is one of the most – if not the most duplicated moments in film history. Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (perhaps the most famed homage), Tibor Takacs' Deathline, Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box, George Lucas' Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and Chandrashekhar Narvekar's Tezaab and Shukō have found a way to pay their respects to the Odessa scene in some way. Spoofs include Woody Allen's Bananas and Love and Death, Baz Lurhman's Australia, The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult, Soviet-Polish comedy Déjà vu and Italian comedy Il secondo tragico Fantozzi. The great Peter Sellers presented an homage to the sequence in The Magic Christian: during the "Free money" scene near the end of the film, a line of businessmen descend the bank steps wielding their umbrellas like rifles…They also wore dresses.
In perhaps the best example of Eisenstein's theory on montage, The Tsar's Cossacks in white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion firing volleys into a crowd. The soldiers shoot indiscriminantly, mowing down everyone from young boys to old women. In a famous set of shots, a citizen is seen with eyeglasses, then as the film cuts back, one of the glasses has been pierced by a bullet; and the death of a young boy and a mother who is pushing a baby in a baby carriage. As she falls to the ground, dying, she leans against the carriage, nudging it away; it rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd. As it rolls downwards people try to rescue the baby, but are murdered by the advancing troops.
Roger Ebert perfectly sums up Eisenstein's filmmaking technique:
"Eisenstein felt that montage should proceed from rhythm, not story. Shots should be cut to lead up to a point, and should not linger because of personal interest in individual characters. The argument was made that a film has its greatest impact not by the smooth unrolling of images, but by their juxtaposition. Sometimes the cutting is dialectical: point, counterpoint, fusion. Cutting between the fearful faces of the unarmed citizens and the faceless troops in uniform, he created an argument for the people against the czarist state. Many other cuts are as abrupt: After Potemkin's captain threatens to hang mutineers from the yardarm, we see ghostly figures hanging there. As the people call out, ``Down with the tyrants!'' we see clenched fists. To emphasize that the shooting victims were powerless to flee, we see one revolutionary citizen without legs. As the troops march ahead, a military boot crushes a child's hand."
The Battleship Potemkin, I feel – is the grandfather to the music video, hip-hop filmmakers such as Hype Williams and a direct influence on Darren Aronofsky's A Requiem For a Dream. In fact, the quick cutaways in Requiem (where we see a series of quick-cutting shots: skin->needle->piercing->syringe->veins->pupil) is what Aronofsky called a "hip-hop montage"; these shots were created and looped for effect to let the audience better understand the repetitiveness of the addict's lives. This was discussed when I highlighted Luis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou: A shot of a woman looking out a window means nothing; add to it a shot of a man who falls off a bike on a sidewalk, we are given the impression that this woman witnessed this. That doesn't necessarily mean it's true – but it is how our brain processes events. Eisenstein took that idea and applied it to Potemkin so effectively at the time, there was a direct fear that the film – especially the scene conducted at the Odessa Steps, would incite riots and uprising. The critics who stupidly felt the same way after watching Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing didn't understand the true power of a propaganda film. They would have had strokes when this was unleased on the world.
Here's a little secret I will share with you, for those who may be in fact unaware about the story of Potemkin: even though the film itself is based on the true occurrences that lead to the mutiny on the ship, the massacre at Odessa never happened. Nope. Never happened. Imagine my shock when doing my research on this film years ago. I had been duped for YEARS, thinking horrible thoughts about those soldiers and what terrible deeds they wrought upon those poor citizens. Of course, most "based on a true story" films are embellishments of the real occurrences to create drama and heighten tension, but I think the gift of Potemkin lies in its infamy: it has been so revered, so famous and so often quoted by historians and filmmakers alike – that it carries a reputation of reliability. Filmmakers wouldn't dare exaggerate facts in the 1920's!
Eisenstein's experiment was a mixed mag of success; he "was disappointed when Potemkin failed to attract masses of viewers", but the film was also released in a number of international venues, where audiences responded more positively. In both the Soviet Union and overseas - the film shocked audiences - not so much for its political statements, but for its use of violence, which was considered graphic by the standards of the time. The film's potential to influence political thought through emotional response was noted by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who called Potemkin "a marvellous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film." Irony, thy name is The Third Riech – since it was the Bolsheviks who played a major role in the Nazi surrender that lead to the end of World War II.
After its premiere in Soviet Union, Potemkin was shown in the United States. It was shown in an edited form in Germany, with some scenes of extreme violence edited out by its German distributors. A written introduction by Leon Trotsky was cut from Soviet prints after he ran foul of Joseph Stalin. The film was banned in Nazi Germany (I wonder why???), Britain (until 1954 and X-rated until 1978), France, and other countries for its revolutionary zeal. It was even banned in the Soviet Union for a short period when the Comintern, under Stalin's Socialism in One Country policy, ceased to promote world revolution and mutiny among the navies of capitalist countries.
In 2004, a three-year restoration of the film was completed with many excised scenes of violence, as well as the original written introduction by Trotsky. The previous title cards, which had toned down the mutinous sailors' revolutionary rhetoric, were corrected so that they would now be an accurate translation of the original Russian titles in the film. The people of Odessa are seen as a mass made up of many briefly glimpsed but starkly seen faces. The dialogue (in title cards) is limited mostly to outrage and exhortation. There is no personal drama to counterbalance the larger political drama.
Since Potemkin was and is considered as a propaganda film, Eisenstein declared his wish that the score should be rewritten every 20 years, in order to retain its relevance to each new generation. The original score was composed by Edmund Meisel, with a salon orchestra performing the Berlin premiere in 1926; its instrumentation was flute/piccolo, trumpet, trombone, harmonium, percussion and strings without viola. Meisel wrote the score in twelve days and nights due to the late approval from the censorship board. Because of this, Meisel would repeat large sections of the score, unchanged, in an effort to complete the project. Composer/conductor Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen reorchestrated and improved the music based on the original piano score and adjusted it to fit the reconstructed version of the film available today.
In 1986, Eric Allaman wrote an original electronic score for a showing that took place during the Berlin Film Festival of that year. The score was only featured at this premiere and has not been released either on CD or DVD. Allaman wrote an opera about Battleship Potemkin in the mid-90s, but this venture is musically separate from the film score. In its commercial format (on DVD, for example) the film is usually accompanied by pieces of classical music that have been subsequently added for its 50th anniversary edition re-release as it was created in 1975; Dmitri Shostakovich and Nikolai Kriukov are two composers whose works have been used.
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe (of the Pet Shop Boys) composed a new soundtrack in 2004, accompanied by the Dresden Symphonic Orchestra in an attempt to keep the film relevant to a new generation. The soundtrack premiered in September 2004 at an open-air concert in Trafalgar Square, London. There were four further live performances of the work with the Dresdner Sinfoniker in Germany in September 2005 and one at the Swan Hunter ship yard in Newcastle upon Tyne on May 1, 2006. The only other live performance of this piece took place on January 11, 2008, at the Barbican Center in London. The avant-garde jazz ensemble Club Foot Orchestra has also re-scored the film, and performed live in accompaniment to the film.
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (1898–1948) revolutionized film language in the same way D.W. Griffiths and fellow Russian filmmaker Dziga Vertof did with Birth of a Nation (1915) and Man With a Movie Camera (1925). Eisenstein studied architecture and engineering before joining the miliatry to serve the Russian Revolution. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a command position in Minsk, after success providing propaganda for the October Revolution. At this time, Sergei studied Japanese—he learned some three hundred kanji characters which he cited as an influence on his pictorial development, and gained an exposure to Kabuki theatre, which led him to Japan. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing "The Montage of Attractions" for LEF. Eisenstein's first film, Glumov's Diary (1923), was a collaboration with Dziga Vertov hired initially as an "instructor."
Strike (1925) was Eisensteins first full length feature film and that led to The Battleship Potemkin, which amassed worldwide critical acclaim. His praise was not as warm at home, though. October (aka Ten Days That Shook The World) (1927) was renowned as a masterpiece abroad, but Eisenstein's focus in these films on structural issues such as camera angles, crowd movements and montage, brought him and likeminded others, such as Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexander Dovzhenko, under fire from the Soviet film community, forcing him to issue public articles of self-criticism and commitments to reform his cinematic visions to conform to socialist realism's increasingly specific doctrines.
In 1930 Paramount Pictures offered him the opportunity to make a film in the United States. He accepted a short-term contract for $100,000, but the arrangement quickly failed as Eisenstein's idiosyncratic and artistic approach to cinema was incompatible with the more formulaic and commercial approach of American studios. Many of his theoretical articles from this period, such as "Eisenstein on Disney" have surfaced decades later as seminal scholarly texts used as curriculum in film schools around the world. After some fits and starts as a filmmaker and teacher at The Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, Eisenstein took on the task of creating a film biopic of Alexander Nevsky. The film was critically received by both the Soviets and in the West, which won him the Order of Lenin and the Stalin Prize. This was also his first sound film.
Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein and his contemporary, Lev Kuleshov argued that montage was the essence of the cinema. His articles and books — particularly "Film Form" and "The Film Sense" — explain the significance of montage in detail. He believed that editing could be used for more than just expounding a scene or moment, through a "linkage" of related images. Eisenstein felt the "collision" of shots could be used to manipulate the emotions of the audience and create film metaphors. He believed that an idea should be derived from the juxtaposition of two independent shots, bringing an element of collage into film. He developed what he called "methods of montage".
The Battleship Potemkin is one of those films that stir up buried emotions of revolt with a power that is rarely unmatched. Show Potemkin in a country during peacetime and I don't think people will understand it. Show this film to the "teabaggers", or segments of the Middle East, it may trigger a devastating chain reaction. The thing is, Potemkin was *made* to stir up those feelings. It needs the correct audience to do so, but if the right people see it, Potemkin is one of the few films that can be considered "dangerous" in a mob-like setting. There was a reason why Triumph of the Will was made and shown in Nazi Germany, and Potemkin was banned. Triumph, although lacking in energy, drips with unabashed pride. Potemkin just makes people angry. It is one of those few films, like Rocky, Casablanca, The Seven Samurai and In The Heat of The Night that speak to our most basic of instincts and triggers the understanding of the word "revolution" through our hearts.
A two-disc, restored version of "The Battleship Potemkin" was released on DVD in 2007.
Trailer for The Battleship Potemkin
{Film Passport Stamped]
Coming Attractions: The special effects extravaganza of 1927 that paved the way for basically every science-fiction film ever made.
Questions or comments? Completely disagreed with any of my picks? Are you in love with me? Leave comments below or email me at aa24frames@aol.com!!!
Kino Blu-Ray - April 27. Had this preordered for two months now!
Posted By: Shawn S Lealos (Registered) on March 26, 2010 at 02:42 AM
Great stuff. Also, sorry if this is a stupid question but do you know if and when Beating Traffic will have a page on IMDB? Judging by the preview it looks like something I want to check out. I love independent film and try to see as many indie movies as I can every year (along with some mainstream stuff). Although that can sometimes be difficult living in the midwest.
Posted By: the honorable Judge Reinhold (Guest) on March 26, 2010 at 08:58 PM
I've always thought Eisenstein was a little too into the Montage idea. I mean, I know he pretty much started it and was a master at it, and his work with it is incredibly effective, but it seems as if that's all their is with him. Every book and essay seems to go on and on about it. I'm not knocking him at all, but he definitely seemed to be a one trick pony and possibly delved way too much energy into it instead of trying to push other elements of cinema further.
Posted By: Dave C (Guest) on March 27, 2010 at 03:20 PM
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