The Battleship Potemkin, a film by Sergei Eisenstein, is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. Released in 1925, this film was actually a project to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful Russian Revolution of 1905. It was commissioned to Eisenstein by the Soviet Central Committee.
This movie is a very short one, about 74 minutes long. It is divided into five acts or sections:
The Men and the Maggots
The Potemkin is a powerful battleship which is currently in the Black Sea. The sailors are tormented day and night by the officers on the ship. One night, Vakulinchuk, one of the sailors, exclaims to his fellow soldiers that it is high time they fought the oppressors (the officers).
The next day, all the sailors protest against the food they get to eat daily, which is infested by maggots. An officer and a ship doctor come to the scene. The doctor looks at the meat and tells them that “These are not worms. These are maggots. Wash the meat with brine and then eat it.”
Drama in the Harbor
The soldiers refuse to drink soup. The ship’s commander Golikov asks all the ship’s men to assemble on deck. He orders a few rebellious sailors who haven’t tried the soup to stand in a corner of the deck, tells a few officers to cover these sailors with tarpaulin and then asks his gunmen to shoot at them.
As the gunmen are about to shoot, Vakulinchuk cries out ”Brothers! Whom are you shooting at??!!” The rifles waver. A full-blown uprising then takes place. The officers are either killed or thrown off the ship. Vakulinchuk dies after being shot by an officer.
Dead Man calls for Justice
(Odessa is a town which has long suffered a czarist subjugation.)
A few sailors take Vakulinchuk’s body to the port of Odessa just before dawn. They place his body in a small tent on the shore, with a board which says “Killed for a plate of soup.”.
The town awakens and the word spreads around about the uprising on the Potemkin and the soldier’s body. The entire city visits the shore to see the body. There is a note attached to Vakulinchuk’s body, which reads:
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“People of Odessa! Here lies Vakulinchuk, a sailor, brutally murdered by an officer of the battleship “Potemkin”. Death to the oppressors! We shall take revenge!”
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The citizens of Odessa are enraged about the death of Vakulinchuk. Amidst the sound of violent violins, one can see a lot of angry faces and clenched fists. Odessa erupts with the following slogans:
”Down with Czarism.” ”All for one.” “One for all.” “Mothers, sisters and brothers, let nothing divide us.” “Shoulder to shoulder.” “The land is ours.” “The future is ours.”
The Odessa Staircase
The whole town sends across food and drink to the Potemkin in many of their small boats. Odessa is with the sailors, very happy to hear about the uprising. There are a lot of smiling faces, varying in age and expression, each one different from the other.
All of a sudden, czarist troops assemble at the top of a long flight of steps, the bottom of which is where the entire city is present, cheering the sailors. The czar troops walk down the steps, shooting innocent citizens at random, stepping on corpses as they walk down.
A mother and her small boy are running away in terror, when the boy is shot. The mom, horrified and shocked, looks as other people run over her fallen child, stepping on his fingers, hand and chest. She carries the boy in her arms, walking up the stairs to the soldiers. She is one lady against the entire army. She pleads to them that her son is very ill and needs attention. Both mother and child are shot at mercilessly and the troops continue walking down.
Another mother is walking her child in a pram, when the shooting starts. The mom instinctively tries to cover the pram so that her child doesn’t get hurt. She gets the bullet. She knocks down the pram as she drops down dead. The pram gets into motion, hurtling down the steps uncontrollably over blood and dead bodies, the baby still inside, crying.
The Potemkin comes to know of this attack on the civilians. It points it’s cannons at the Odessa Opera House, headquarters of the czarist troops and fires, hitting it, reducing it to rubble.
The Meeting with the Squadron
A squadron ship has been sent to capture Potemkin. There are a lot of heated discussions about how to tackle the squadron. The sailors then decide to meet the squadron face on.
The dawn of the very next day, the Potemkin sights a squadron. Orders are given to charge towards the squadron. The next 10 or so minutes are full of frenzied activity. The sailors are preparing for battle. The huge cannons on board are readied, the shiny faces of the cannons rising up, probably rising up to the challenge.
The head sailor on board the Potemkin suddenly asks his men to signal the squadron: “Don’t fight us. Join us.”
The squadron appears within firing range. The whole of Potemkin is wondering if they will be shot at by the squadron. All their faces are tense. One of them suddenly breaks into a wide grin and he cries ”Brothers!”.
All the sailors on the Potemkin start celebrating. They leave their posts to come out on deck and wave at the squadron’s sailors, who wave back at them. The cannons go down as the Potemkin passes through without being attacked.
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Well, this movie is a silent movie. No dialogues, nothing. Black slides with text come up from time to time. But armed with a very brilliant background score, the movie makes a big impact. The gripping and fierce musical score by Dimitri Shostakovich was later added to this movie in 1951.
This movie is visually striking and very powerful. More than the storytelling, it’s the visuals that grab your attention. The expressions on the faces of Odessa’s people are unforgettable.
The “Odessa Steps” sequence is one of the most famous sequences in film history. The different expressions of disbelief and terror on the faces of the citizens of Odessa at the sight of the firing czarist troops are disturbing. The massacre on the Odessa steps shows mostly women and children being killed. The czarist troops are shown only as a line of boots advancing towards the citizens, a sign of their oppressive nature. The background score is shocking.
The editing is commendable, especially during the Odessa Steps sequence and the battle preparation.
This movie does have it’s own setbacks too. It does not have much of a story. The ending seemed very abrupt.
The Battleship Potemkin would not make the impact it made when it was released, due to advancements in film-making and editing. But in case you are interested in films that were trendsetters in their times, grab this one.
PS: The Battleship Potemkin was banned in a lot of countries, because it was considered dangerous.