Short and Sweet
The plot is very loosely based on the actual events of the Russian revolutionary year 1905: the mutiny of the crew of the Russian warship Knjas Potjomkin Tawritscheski against their tsarist officers. Battleship Potemkin premiered on December 21, 1925, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow as the official anniversary film celebrating the revolution of 1905. As a propaganda film, it was intended to evoke strong emotional reactions in line with Soviet mass ideology. However, in both form and content, it goes far beyond simple propaganda and has been repeatedly recognized as one of the most influential and best films of all time.
About
Sergei Eisenstein himself describes his work as a tragic composition in its most canonical form – a tragedy in five acts.
1. The Beginning
The sailors of the Potemkin are supposed to eat spoiled meat. There is discontent; they refuse to touch the soup.
2. The Uprising
The captain decides to set an example and orders some sailors to be shot. After the guards side with the sailors, a mutiny breaks out and the sailors take over the ship. One of the leaders, Vakulinchuk, is killed in the process.
3. Mourning
Vakulinchuk’s body is laid out in a tent on the pier in Odessa; the city’s residents mourn him and show solidarity with the sailors. They provide the sailors with food.
4. The Odessa Steps
The tsarist army begins to shoot at the crowd on the steps. Panic ensues, people start to flee; there are many dead and injured.
5. The Encounter with the Fleet
The sailors fire on the Odessa theater, where the local loyalist military is stationed, to support the population. They then debate whether to land to provide further assistance. However, since a tsarist admiral squadron is already on its way against them, they decide to confront it. But when the ships meet, there is fraternization between the sailors of the Potemkin and those of the admiral’s squadron, and the Potemkin sails into open waters. Referencing a failed revolution in a propaganda film is coherent when considering Leninist revolutionary theory: according to which the rebelling masses lacked the necessary professional revolutionaries and cadre party, which the Bolsheviks would later prove to be.
In principle, there is no coherent, composed plot; it takes a back seat to Eisenstein’s approach of emotional montage. Eisenstein aims to “work on” the viewer with a particular ideological conclusion by using a unique form of montage of shots, images, and scenes to evoke emotional responses. Accordingly, the characters in the plot are drawn schematically. “Types” such as sailor, officer, beggar, aristocrat, citizen, mother dominate instead of individualized persons. Only the first leader and first martyr of the mutiny (Vakulinchuk) is portrayed individually. Eisenstein edited the film in a way that was intended to evoke the strongest possible emotional reaction. The goal was to elicit sympathy for the rebellious sailors and antipathy toward the tyrannical superiors. The plot is kept simple to make it clear to the audience with which characters they should sympathize.
Music
Eisenstein wished for each generation to compose its own music for his film. Over the decades, numerous different versions of music for the film have emerged; the most famous to date is by Edmund Meisel from 1926, which was re-arranged for orchestra by Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen in 1985. Wilfried Kaets created an experimental music piece for piano, glass harp, and live electronics, which consciously positions itself as an independent “sound sculpture” alongside and against the images. This approach aims to achieve a dramaturgically coherent interweaving of sequences and acts, as well as to create an active dialogue through counterpoint that complements the extraordinary montage of individual images into affective content.Eisenstein wished for each generation to compose its own music for his film. Over the decades, numerous different versions of music for the film have emerged; the most famous to date is by Edmund Meisel from 1926, which was re-arranged for orchestra by Mark-Andreas Schlingensiepen in 1985. Wilfried Kaets created an experimental music piece for piano, glass harp, and live electronics, which consciously positions itself as an independent “sound sculpture” alongside and against the images. This approach aims to achieve a dramaturgically coherent interweaving of sequences and acts, as well as to create an active dialogue through counterpoint that complements the extraordinary montage of individual images into affective content.