Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's dramatization of an event from the Russian Revolution, is one of the touchstones of cinema. It caused a sensation when it was released in 1925 and remains one of the most influential films of the silent era. Its methods, bold and unconventional in their time, transformed cinematic technique. Kino International has recently released the film in what may prove to be a definitively restored edition, a two-disc set that includes both English and Russian versions of the film.
The film is primarily influential due to what became known as "montage." Though the word really just translates as "editing" or "putting together," it has come to mean several different kinds of editing: rapid rhythmic cutting; spatial and temporally jarring cutting; or the accumulation of images in the creation of either an emotional effect or an intellectual idea. Perhaps the simplest definition is the juxtaposition of independent and often disparate images in the creation of meaning. Eisenstein himself described it as independent shots placed not one after the other, but on top of one another, like layers of meaning and emotion.
The most famous example is the Odessa Steps sequence, a heart-pounding scene in which soldiers march methodically down what appears to be, due to Eisenstein's editing, an enormously long staircase, slaughtering a throng of people who rush to escape the gunfire. Eisenstein never fully orients the viewer to the landscape. Instead he provides a continuous rush of imagery: closeups of the dead and the dying; shots of crowds fleeing; stampeding feet; and, most famously, a baby carriage tumbling down the staircase, set in motion by the falling body of a murdered mother. Through the rapid juxtaposition of disparate shots, Eisenstein simulates the terror and bloodshed of the event, the disoriented space, the rush of motion, and the drawn-out feeling of time expanding, as though the horror will never end.
There are simpler examples of montage as well. Early in the film, when the crew on the battleship feels the first stirrings of revolution, a sailor smashes a plate on the edge of a table. Eisenstein, through montage, imbues this moment with greater import and force by rapidly cutting in several views of this gesture. In quick succession we see the plate smashed in closeup and in medium shot, along with closeups of the soldier's face and arm. Essentially we see the action repeated, the plate smashed several times, but all this action flashes by in a second. It seems very simple, but Eisenstein was touching on something profound here, using the unique properties of the cinema in the creation of a powerfully expressive technique. With a few clever edits, he transformed a gesture of frustration into a battle cry, the first act of mutiny. The smashed plate heard round the world.
Potemkin would be subject to far more cutting over the years. It would seem that every nation in which it appeared found it necessary to cut away at the film, diluting its revolutionary power and even shaping it to fit other ideologies. Thus the film, though it has been widely viewed and always appreciated, has rarely, if ever, been seen in anything resembling its original form since its 1925 premiere in Moscow. The Kino release does not claim to represent the film in its original state, but it is thought that this is as close as we're likely to get.
Extra features include a 42-minute documentary on the making and restoration of the film, English and original Russian versions, and a photo gallery.
Battleship Potemkin (1925). Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein. 69 minutes. $29.95. Kino International. www.kino.com.
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