by Allan Fish
(USSR 1925 74m) DVD1/2
Aka. Bronenosets Potemkin
The lion roars
d/w/ed Sergei M.Eisenstein ph Eduard Tissé, Vladimir Popov m Nikolai Kryukov (orig.Edmund Meisel) art Vasili Rakhals
Aleksandr Antonov (Vakulinchuk), Grigori Alexandrov (Chf.Off.Giliarovsky), Vladimir Barsky (Capt.Golikov), Levshin,
With the possible exception of Citizen Kane, is there a more critically revered movie than this?; topping all best film lists until Kane took its spot in the late fifties but still regarded as one of the most pivotal steps forward in the development of the seventh art. Give or take twelve months Eisenstein was about the same age as Welles when he made Kane when he made his masterpiece, but even Kane cannot claim to have devised as many shots or been such a rich source for theoretical textbooks. In short, it revolutionised the vocabulary of film unlike any other before or since.
Potemkin was commissioned to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Potemkin mutiny in 1905 and told the story from a purely aesthetic and propagandist point of view. This is best exemplified by not only the heroic stances of the mutineers and the townsfolk of Odessa who back them but in the fact that the film ends prior to the actual putting down of the revolt. Soviet propaganda did not allow such a noble failure to be documented as such, preferring to concentrate on the Tsarist regime that treated its sailors so despicably. All authority figures represent the evil regime (“death to the oppressors!” cry the crew over Antonov’s body), and as in Dovzhenko’s Earth, one member of the clergy in particular is painted very blackly.
Above all else, Potemkin is regarded as a model of cinematic montage, and this French term derives from this very film in particular. It originally represented the rapid quickfire editing techniques that contribute to both telling the story and effectively distorting time. Nowadays montage is a buzz word for any collection of edited scenes with a discernible link, such as a news item or a cacophony of visual stimuli. In truth the original meaning has become somewhat lost in the debris of modern film theory. Though the Odessa steps sequence is probably the most legendary, stretching out barely sixty seconds of action into over four nonetheless tremendously exciting minutes of montage, other sequences demonstrate its power equally. One can recall the cutting between the crew and the officers before the shooting that never happens prior to the mutiny with its numerous ferocious close-ups, or of the sequence showing the attack of the Potemkin’s guns on the Odessa opera house after the massacre with its iconic rising lions. As an achievement in film editing, it’s unparalleled to this day.
It seems unthinkable for a film to so succeed without having memorable performances, but Potemkin does. The acting – if it can be called that – is very stylised and deliberately heightened by the editing technique. There are no stars here as there is no hero. The biggest character in the film – the ill-fated Vakulinchuk who fails to survive the mutiny – is killed before half the film has passed and the other characters are often indistinguishable from each other. Potemkin is rather about images and the power of editing to make you think you’ve seen things that in actual fact you haven’t. So much so that at times it comes across as a sort of cinematic illusion (the most famous shot of the pram going down the stairs seen from side on can now clearly be seen to be a camera effect and there are a couple of other such effects for those eagle-eyed and alert enough to spot them).
Though credit must go to Tisse for his imagery and to assistant director Grigori Alexandrov, this remains Eisenstein’s most iconoclastic film, a film to which he owed the least to his collaborators. But one cannot call time without recalling Sam Goldwyn’s response to the film, telling Eisenstein how much he liked his film and whether he could do something like that for Ronald Colman. And we wonder why he left Hollywood?
As an achievement in film editing, it’s unparalleled to this day. – You can say taht again.
What an achievement! Resonates even now.
Indeed JAFB! It boasts of course the most famous set pieces in film history and its influence on the film culture is inestimable. Allan has given the film a review of scope, appreciation and expertise that stands alone. What you say about the editing there is irrefutable too.
Aha, the top 10, finally. Can’t wait for the remaining 9… great work, Allan.
“It seems unthinkable for a film to so succeed without having memorable performances.” That may be why Potemkin is (or was?) so revered; it’s an ideal film for auteurists, since its quality is so entirely a matter of direction and director-determined editing. It also happens to be a pictorial marvel that resonates to the present day, so long as Brian de Palma keeps filming “Odessa” sequences in his films. Potemkin was one of the first silents I ever saw, thanks to the local PBS station, and it sets a pretty high standard. It’s an obvious top-ten selection, though I’m not entirely surprised that it just made it in. It’s going to be in good company, anyway. Off the top of my head I can assume at least four of the final nine, but I’m sure Alan will throw a few surprises in as well.
By the way, to answer the opening rhetorical question, I’d say Rules of the Game is the second most critically-beloved film, as one usually finds it close behind Kane in any survey from the last sixty years or so, while Potemkin has fallen a bit further behind over time.
Great observations, Samuel. It’s interesting to look at those old lists and see the changes in taste and sensibility – particularly between the late 40s and the early 60s.
Oddly enough, many of the early auteurists – from the Cahiers crowd to Andrew Sarris – didn’t have much use for Eisenstein, or Soviet montage in general. They tipped their hat, but their enthusiasm went in other directions (actually, Sarris may have actually disliked Potemkin – I don’t have my copy of American Cinema handy at the moment!). I think that was coincidence more than anything else; Eisenstein should have been at the forefront of any pantheon but at the moment of auteurism’s ascension he’d been celebrated ad nauseum for a good 20-30 years as the pinnacle of cinema. Besides which, the celebrants tended to fall into two perhaps overlapping groups which the auteurists were rebelling against: the communist or fellow-travelling left (the early auteurists tended to be humanist liberals or even right-wing, at least initially) and those who thought cinema’s golden age was long past and that Hollywood was the source of evil. Wanting to celebrate the “hidden artists” of American film and redeem the talkie from the charges of its corruption (Sarris didn’t even cover silent cinema in his book), the auteurists were out to make cinephilia fun again and Eisenstein – to them – smacked of the academy and film as a science rather than an art.
There was also an aesthetic reason for this – Bazin being the godfather of the auteurists (despite his own reservations about their “politique”) his notions of mise en scene being superior to montage were much in vogue and though this preference doesn’t really have much to do with auteurism per se, it seems to have become wrapped up in the notion. This also explains why the auteurists celebrated that other leftist darling, neorealism, even as they distanced themselves from montage.
Anyway, sorry if I’m carping on stuff everyone’s already familiar with, I just find this whole period of criticism fascinating. Personally, I always loved Eisenstein and found him not only fun but intoxicating, though I seem to have cooled on him a bit in recent years.
The Odessa steps sequence as Mr. Wilson notes, has been so overused and eternally referenced that the power it exerted in the film seems to have lost its teeth. I guess the only other scene in cinema to equal it in exposure is the shower sequence in Psycho.
But the film does belong on any silent short list.
Great review! The TOP 10 is cracked. Some might have thought THIS film would make your top spot and, for a while, I thought so as well. I’m now certain of which film will place the top slot and you have, unbeknownst to yourself, answered the question I posed to you yesterday. Whatever the number in the TOP 10, POTEMPKIN stands as one of the greatest achievements in cinema history. Every film made after it owes it a debt of acknowledgement.
Don’t worry, Dennis, I knew Sam would give you a peek. The last time he successfully kept a secret Lincoln was getting to his feet at Gettysburg.
I don’t know what you are talking about. I divulged nothing.
I am one of these people who prefer Strike… Good film, mind.
Always great to have you here “1.” Choosing between POTEMKIN, STRIKE and OCTOBER is no easy task in fact, even if the former is justly celebrated.
You are sarcastic, right? I apologise for starting off on a wrong foot with Andalusian Dog.
These two are my only Eisenstein films so far, actually, though I’ve had Nevsky for ages, and really have to get around to it.
In order to avoid this being a “this > this” conversation, I’ll explain why I prefer Strike, though not very eloquently or elaborately:
Both films succeed because of the energy in the editing, but Strike carries the same weight there despite being an earlier film. As for the story, Strike is just a lot crazier and thus more enjoyable. Plus the score I watched it with was better than Potemkin’s – an unfair comparison point perhaps, but there you go.
I agree with ‘1’ at the present. After Allan’s ‘Strike’ review I checked it out (I had never seen it), and loved it immensely. I was immediately ready to declare it my favorite silent Eisenstein, but then even I know as soon as I watch ‘Battleship Potemkin’ again I’ll probably like that one more again.
Either way there is no way one can dismiss how more polished, more advanced this is for Eisenstein and his theories. Anyone who wants to should buy a few of his journals on film theory, since compiled.
One can not also dismiss Allan’s supreme list… ‘Potemkin’ at 10! Wow, it’s going to be one helluva final 9. (In my head I am assure of at least 5, and I haven’t even peaked. It’s the other ones that make me VERY curious)
On careful investigation, I can confidently say I know what 8 of the top 9 will be (and there’s #9 right on schedule!). At least I would be stunned if the films I’m thinking of aren’t in there. I have a hunch what his #1 will be, but we’ll see…
ALLAN-I know where you’re coming from… But, on this occasion I have to confess that Sam has said nothing. Matter of fact, and on several occasions, I have even pressed him to chirp. His response, firm, was that this is “ALLAN’S BIG SPOTLIGHT” and to sing would be spoiling the surprize. On my own, though, I have summized, through pressing discussions about this era with Sam, queries on your tastes, and day after day of reading your work, what floats your boat. I could be wrong. But, as I said the other day, I’m pretty certain (not 100%) of which film is gonna make the top slot as it would also make my own, and I’m also pretty sure that two directors will take two slots a piece in the ten. Furthermore, if my detective work is correct, and because I think you and I also share a lot of the same tastes, that one of the directors with two films in the ten is also the director of the top film. The film I’m thinking of is a breath-taker on every level, and the second film of his two is almost as great.
IN PASSING-I believe that few films can take on the sub-heading of BREATH-TAKER. Like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony or ones first reading of Steinbeck’s EAST OF EDEN, it, to me is that level of consummate art that leaves the viewer/reader/listener in nirvana. For me, a film like POTEMPKIN goes beyind just working (and those that work completely are few) and moves to a level of perfection that the human mind can barely concieve. I often think of films like 2001, VERTIGO, CITY LIGHTS and FANTASIA as the kind of work that is so ingenious in concept and flawless in presentation that one would think they are created by God. Its hard for me to fathom the level of intellect thst can compose something as bmind-blowing as the ODESSA STEPS sequence. Eisenstein, as I’m sure the directors of the next 9 films are as well, is an artist whose brilliance, like Beethoven or Mozart or Shakespeare, is almost not of this realm. POTEMKIN is a film you see and, when over, you are left utterly without breath. I can’t wait to see the rest
I don’t love any of the films you mention, dennis (though City Lights comes close and without Stravinsky Fantasia might have made it), but it’s a nice passage 😉
I have a sneaking feeling/hunch for what Allan’s No. 1 will be, it should be very interesting.
Propaganda, propaganda. I have a problem with it. Even if I’m more closely related to the propaganda of this film over any other I’ve seen in my short viewing span, this one stands out as a flat out pamphlet, but one of the most beautiful and well done pamphlets in the entire universe, and that deserves a spot in the best movies of the history of cinema, even if it doesn’t make my favorites. (****1/2)
Silly. All art is propaganda. Every film should aspire to be art, thus propaganda. Don’t be confused just because it’s slightly more political then most.
So thus when you say the quick, dismissive (and poorly explained) “I have a problem with it”. With what? It’s politics? (so do you favor the opposite of what it’s championing, bureaucratic or economic control over the masses?), or that it is ‘propaganda’? Which leads us back to my initial statement that all art is. As such, the ones that challenge the status quo are the ones we should champion.
Besides, watching the film several times now, I’m struck more by it’s quiet still moments then it’s grand statements. Hands holding food, men offering loving sympathy to others, etc.
I don’t believe all art is propaganda, I have problems with propaganda, of any kind, political propaganda. And I clearly stated that I was closer to this messages, you could say I’m a red, a commie, a ruskie, if you want, but when cinema is used for a political message it’s dirty… even if cinema itself is just the epythome of the fascist control of minds.
Well, my beliefs are leftist to marxist so whatever you aren’t isn’t entering my thoughts. Saying when films or art become political they are ‘dirty’ is a statement I can’t touch because it makes so little sense to me. Everything is political, even apolitical art as it re-enforces the status-quo thus creating an environment where change is less likely to happen or even worse, change becomes an alienated not desired idea.
Hell, the price of bread in a supermarket is political.
I’d curious as to why you’d say ‘I don’t believe all art is propaganda’, as I think it’s the epitome of an incorrect statement. Could you expound on this?
When cinema becomes so obviously, and emphasis on the obvious, connected with a political ideology, it bugs me. Other movies with a ‘hidden agenda’ may go pass me without notice. If every film is political, so be it, as long as it’s not political propaganda of a clear side in a fight, everything’s fine. (‘The sinking of Lusitania’, that animated short, I hated it)
So you want cinema that is hypocritical, obscure, skittish, and noncommittal in its politics? See, to me, that is gross.
To be honest, I don’t care what anyone else thinks. If they can portray their political views in a film, that’s good, if I can see that they weren’t paid by the political party to do so.
I don’t care what anyone else thinks
I’ll take this as either a waving of a white flag, or as you saying you don’t really want to continue, as it’s not really the way to continue conversation with another person. But clearly it’s a bogus statement, as why else would you run a film blog for the sole purpose of giving opinions on films and ending each statement on a film with an arbitrary, personal star rating system, let alone aspire to make films of your own? These ventures sort of operate on the give and take with an audience, and you sharing ideas and expressions with others.
A shame really as this could have been a fun politics and film discussion.
“I don’t care what anyone else thinks”
I said it in a sense of I don’t care about the political views of the maker, I don’t want them to be put on me, specially if they were paid by the party.
As always definitions are the sticking point. What defines propaganda? I suspect Jaime and Jamie are talking about different things but using the same term.
Yes, all art contains either implicitly or explicitly a point of view and thus could be considered to be advocating for that point of view. But there are degrees here. Some works of art are more exploratory than polemical, and hence less propagandistic. And in common parlance propaganda has certain implications; if we don’t clarify where we at least stand in relation to those implications, a great deal of confusion will arise. For myself, I use the term “propaganda” usually in relation to a work explicitly advocating a particular social, political, or cultural point of view as its primary purpose, and especially if the work leaves out crucial information or shadings in order to present the case as simply or starkly as possible. Having a political point of view does not necessarily make a work propagandistic in this sense of the world, or rather it’s LESS propagandistic.
For example, I would consider a polemical work like No End in Sight less propagandistic than Fahrenheit 9/11 simply because, despite its ellisions and highlights and approaches (for example, a favoring and less questioning approach towards State Department officials than Defense Department) it engages with its opponents, giving them enough rope to hang themselves, rather than doing it for them, because it uses less explicit trickery and manipulation in its approach, and especially because it plays less on emotion than intellect – it brings us to a rational opposition to the Iraq War more than a visceral one. Just to provide one example. And a film like The War Tapes, which allows soldiers to take video cameras on a convey and comment on their footage is less propagandistic than both, because it offers multiple points of view and explicitly foregrounds the fact that we are experiencing subjective perspectives rather than an all-encompassing, objective “right” point of view. So again, degrees.
Is propaganda negative? Yes and no. If one is seeking to understand and appreciate all sides of an argument, so that one can stake out a position based on all the information than yeah, propaganda is a bad idea. But how often does one look to art for this quality? Yes, it’s something art can provide but as a secondary attribute. Primarily, I and, I think most people, look to art for some sort of emotional experience – an engagement with reality without the numbing filters everyday reality can provide on our actions and interactions. In this sense, propaganda is no more negative than any other approach a film can take – it’s one way of seeing and experiencing the world, no less valid than any other.
Anyway, if we just lump together all art as propaganda without exploring the meaningful distinctions, it seems there’s not much of a discussion to be had in the first place because the terms are so ill-defined.
There’s another problem her too: the notion of what a film is championing vs. who it’s championing for. If I understand Jaime’s implications correctly, he doesn’t like that this film is propaganda for the Soviet regime. Jamie says the film opposes “bureaucratic or economic control over the masses” but in fact it opposes a particular bureaucratic or economic control over the masses” and is silent on another kind, namely that of the regime presently in power when the film was made. It could even be taken to endorse that latter oppression BUT here is where I think Jaime might be misstepping.
Here’s where I disagree somewhat with Jaime and agree more with Jamie: I don’t think Battleship Potemkin is a great example of pro-Soviet propaganda (October would be a better substitute) simply because it deals with a period pre-Bolshevik Revolution. Theoretically, the same film could be made in the U.S. without any endorsement of the Communist Party (something you won’t find in Potemkin either, it just doesn’t come up). It is our knowledge of the context of Potemkin’s times which makes us feel it is apologist for the Leninist regime. When in fact, despite Eisenstein’s support for that regime, despite the film’s coincidence with the party line on the event in question, despite its use of a historical antecedent to celebrate revolutionary figures who implicitly lead us up to the 1917 revolution and its aftermath – despite all this, the film ITSELF does not contain any comment on the Soviet Union.
So while its techniques are more propagandistic than, say, The Magnificent Ambersons or Shadows (two totally random, and different, films that come to mind), it is no more apologist for a particular regime or way of life than either of those films are. It stands in opposition of, rather than in support of (or rather, it’s in support of ideals, but not, in its actual text, a specific course of action – other than general resistance – to encode those ideals. Anti-White, not necessarily pro-Red.)
“There’s another problem her too: the notion of what a film is championing vs. who it’s championing for. If I understand Jaime’s implications correctly, he doesn’t like that this film is propaganda for the Soviet regime. Jamie says the film opposes “bureaucratic or economic control over the masses” but in fact it opposes a particular bureaucratic or economic control over the masses” and is silent on another kind, namely that of the regime presently in power when the film was made. It could even be taken to endorse that latter oppression BUT here is where I think Jaime might be misstepping.”
Yes, Joel you exactly correct here, if might be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ based on personal taste, but that’s where the discussion starts. Besides, if one opposes art like POTEMKIN, one needs to make art that then opposes it/argues against it.
Plus on the grounds of this particular film it’s being made more with Trosky’s take in mind, and I believe Jaime is think more about Lenin… Further definition distinctions no?
What I mean when I say ‘All art is Propaganda’, I’m using the broader idea of what propaganda is. It doesn’t have to be only in regards to politics, a film like 50 FIRST DATES (picked particularly because it was also financed by Barrymore’s production company that also financed Jaime’s favorite DONNIE DARKO), is love propaganda. Inaccurate, trite, offensive love propaganda at that.
“The best way to criticize a movie is to make another movie” – Jean-Luc Godard
He was onto something.
“For myself, I use the term “propaganda” usually in relation to a work explicitly advocating a particular social, political, or cultural point of view as its primary purpose, and especially if the work leaves out crucial information or shadings in order to present the case as simply or starkly as possible.”
Obviously this is what I’m hinting at. Class, which essentially dictates most politics and art, is the larger idea. From here everything can be extrapolated.
I would say most films, particularly Hollywood films, implicitly rather than explicitly advocate an ideology or worldview, and that said ideology/worldview is not foregrounded – it’s an element which can be analyzed, certainly, but if focused on to the exclusion of all other elements, one runs the risk of missing the point and losing aesthetics in a haze of sociology (don’t get me wrong – I enjoy sociological readings of art and have often indulged in them myself but ultimately they are less satisfying and more obfuscating than primarily aesthetic readings). Something like “50 First Dates” has propagandistic elements but if I called it “propaganda” in the same sense of a work which actively seeks a propagandistic aim, the word would cease to have any meaning or utility and would become a useless catch-all. So, like most people, I reserve the term “propaganda” for the works which have a pronounced propagandistic effect, which is I think what Jaime is doing as well, and why the effort to say “all art is propaganda”, while technically true, is a dead end in this sort of conversation. Better to take his definition and its own terms, and criticize it from there rather than short-circuiting his argument by taken it into another, more semantic, territory. Just my 2 cents.
“Something like “50 First Dates” has propagandistic elements but if I called it “propaganda” in the same sense of a work which actively seeks a propagandistic aim, the word would cease to have any meaning or utility and would become a useless catch-all… a conversation dead end…”
This actually isn’t true in either sense, as at this point we could talk about how much art (in this case cinema) effects how we as a culture view virtually every act. From courting, to love, to violence, to class, to politics, to … There are infinite ways for conversations to go and opinions/views expressed. Further multiplied by era, culture, country, etc.
So, in effect, as I said it’s crass films like 50 FIRST DATES that distort and end varied opinions, where people see an honest film like POTEMKIN as problematic in it’s ‘heart on a sleeve’ aesthetic, and recommend the THOR’s of the world.
And besides, most Hollywood films in 2011 don’t have an aesthetic worth discussing (rendering a statement like “one runs the risk of missing the point and losing aesthetics in a haze of sociology” moot) as there aesthetic is essentially nothing more then production design. This hints at the economics available to most of these films, which leaves us (again) in the politics of production companies, country economies, and entertainment conglomerates.
Oh, and even if aesthetics are judged purely as, we are still viewing them a certain way due to political factors. Something John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ taught me in college.
I can say this much about the comments above:
1. I was first talking about political propaganda, and I define propaganda when there’s an order in course, I mean, the chiefs of a political party, or a country on war, order a film. I don’t care about which side made it, I’d have a bias against USA WW2 documentaries by Capra, as well as Hitler documentaries by Rhiefestahl.
2. For your information, I like Potemkin, I love it, it just doesn’t get into my favorites because of its political propaganda. Simple? It’s one of those things I just don’t fight with. Like not liking films were criminals are recompensated at the end of the movie, even if they do nothing to achieve it.
3. Thor gets ****1/2. Potemkin gets ****1/2. I found Thor extremely well done, acted and shot, but I don’t love it (yet). Potemkin is a classic, and as that, I love it as a marxist statement of the struggles of the diminished classes.
It’s not that considering the propagandistic elements of ALL films can’t lead to a good conversation, but that defining all films as propaganda short-circuits the kind of discussion Jaime’s comment should have facilitated: i.e. how is Potemkin propagandistic, should propaganda disqualify a film from greatness, etc. For that discussion to occur we have to assume that there are some films which can be described as “propaganda” as distinct from films which aren’t. The decision to semantically broaden a term to encompass more than it typically would sidetracks the conversation and leads to a wild goose chase.
As for aesthetics, I haven’t seen 50 First Dates but from your description I can assume that it does have an aesthetic, just not a very impressive one. Which is worth criticizing.
I do agree, however, that with poor films often the sociological aspect is the only, or at least the most, interesting element to discuss, which to me leads back to a point that sociological criticism is kine of the poor man’s criticism – most useful when there ain’t much more to chew on. Personally, I find it far easier to write, and far less satisfying, than examining a film on a more personal and/or aesthetic basis (i.e. what it has to say about human beings not as social animals but as psychological figures, and how it uses the elements of its form to convey this meaning; or how its images and impressions affect us intuitively and viscerally; politics/sociology tends to reduce people to types, actions or images to archetypes, and dilute the humanism or sensory spectacle of an artwork. In my experience, anyway, which is the only one I have to go by.)
Also, can you elaborate on your point about 2011 films? I would say cutting, camera movements, composition, lighting, as well as storytelling constructs and acting styles all have very strong presences in contemporary filmmaking, so I’m not sure what you mean by just production design. I happen to dislike most of the dominant tendencies in all of these fields, but that only highlights the fact that there is indeed an aesthetic at play.
Here are some dictionary definitions of propaganda:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/propaganda
It would appear that, technically, Jaime is correct – the term is meant to refer to government (or movement)-disseminated information of material considered favorable to said government (or movement). This is a narrower definition than I myself would use, but so be it.