Battleship Potemkin (1925) ****

U. S. Release Date: December 5, 1926 (December 21, 1925 in the U.S.S.R.)

Running Length: 1:14

Rated: NR

Cast: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barsky, Grigori Aleksandrov, Ivan Bobrov, Mikhail Gomorov, Aleksandr Levshin, N. Poltavseva, Konstantin Feldman, Beatrice Vitoldi

Directer: Sergei Eisenstein

Screenplay: Nina Agadzhanova, Nikolai Aseyev, Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Tretyakov

Battleship Potemkin is one of the greatest propaganda films ever made. It started out its life as an exercise by Director Sergei Eisenstein to test his personal theories about editing and using montage to instill strong emotion in his audience in regards to the Russian Revolution of 1905. While he wasn't entirely successful in this endeavor there is no doubt that the finished product was meant to portray a specific viewpoint and does so with an agenda in mind.

The film begins on the battleship itself as the men serving aboard are protesting the poor living conditions they have to endure. They sleep in cabins crowded with hammocks that crash into each other as the ship rocks with the waves. In one scene an officer clumsily stumbles through the hammocks, then vents his frustrations on the back of an unsuspecting recruit. During the days things are even worse. The meat provided for the recruits is covered in maggots. The ship's doctor examines the meat and says that it is fine, they just need to wash the maggots off with some brine and it's good to go.

Later, after the men have refused to eat the captain orders his officers to open fire of some of the recruits and a mutiny breaks out. During the ensuing battle the leader of the mutiny is killed. Afterwards his body is deposited on the shoreline of the city of Odessa with a note attached proclaiming that he was killed over a matter of food. This incites the citizens of Odessa to rise up and protest the Tsarist regime that was governing them. Tsarist soldiers attack the townspeople on the steps of Odessa and leave behind a massacre.

The scene on the steps of Odessa is arguably the most influential scene in movie history. It has inspired filmmakers to this day with remnants of that moment found in such films as The Godfather, The Untouchables, and even The Naked Gun 33 1/3. It's almost casual depiction of a massacre instilled abhorrence in the audiences of 1925, not just for the massacre itself but for its depiction in grim detail of the violence and brutality of the Tsarist soldiers. They are seen walking down the Odessa stairs in formation, firing their weapons on fleeing people, while remaining faceless themselves. The camera never gives us a glimpse of their faces, only those of the people they kill. And it's not just adults getting killed in this massacre. Much time is dedicated during this scene to a young boy who is trampled by the fleeing people. His mother picks up his broken body, carries it towards the soldiers pleading that they don't fire. Her pleas go ignored and she is killed in cold blood. Another woman is shot while trying to protect her infant in a stroller. As she falls to the ground the stroller goes down the steps, amazingly not overturning as it passes the bodies of the dead on its way down. We are meant to side with the victims against an almost faceless threat and this scene, despite being completely fictional in an otherwise mostly factual film, does exactly that.

This film was considered a failure at the time as it didn't succeed in swaying the intended audience as much as it was supposed to. However, it was considered a dangerous film by certain groups including the Nazis who prohibited SS members from seeing it and banning it in West Germany, France and several other countries for its revolutionary themes. It wasn't until 2004 that it received a proper restoration re-inserting several scenes and getting proper subtitles that were a more accurate translation of the original Russian text.

It has been nearly ninety years since this film was originally released. After all that time the film never fails to be riveting. It is at times exciting and horrifying and it gets its message across clearly. Even though the massacre on the Odessa stairs never happened in real life it is a scene that sticks in the mind so well that may people have come to think of it as a real event that shaped the revolution. There's no doubt that this film has shaped the minds of filmmakers who have incorporated various elements of it into their own work. It stands up as one of the greatest examples of film making in the history of the art and should be viewed by anyone interested in film history.