Directed by Sergei Eisenstein Film Battleship Potyomkin - Essay Example

Film review in mythic and propagandistic aspects: Battleship Potemkin (1925) Directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm in 1925, Battleship Potyomkin is a silent film that dramatizes the 1905 mutiny that occurred when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin questioned their Tsarist regime officers; this visual reality was termed the most propagandist as well as the greatest films of all time at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. The film was commissioned to mark the 20th anniversary of the failed 1905 revolution in Russia, and was released on 18 January 1926, nearly ten years after the successful 1917 Russian revolution. This was a period of incertitude for the Russians, during which communism was still unstable and so was the new Russia, hence the profound motivation for the Russian government’s use of propaganda to instill its political ethos in the Russian population. The film’s director Eisenstein takes great liberty and makes significant alterations to this historical record of events thus controlling the narrative structure and pacing of the film (Severson). This was Eisenstein’s attempt to create an effective and well-structured film that is not bound to the nuances of the historical record, but his key shots and scenes are in fact actual depictions of what took place in the Potemkin mutiny. The titular Battleship Potemkin was a true Russian navy ship and its crew that rebelled against their tsarist captain siding with the Bolshevics was a real record of the prototypical communist struggle before its eventual triumph in 1917 (Yahner). The sailors, who were the proletariats, are portrayed as the heroic everyman of the movie while the captain and the Tsarist soldiers, who were bourgeois, are scorned as the villains of the film. The film leverages on its fiery rhetoric and violent scenes to evoke anti-capitalism feelings in the audiences, while glorifying the communism philosophy. The film establishes its strong communist ethos through the character of Vakulinchuk, an Ukranian sailor in the Russian Navy who prior to his death in 1905 had served on the Russian battleship Potemkin and witnessed the events that had occurred. Similarly, the director further embellishes the films’ ethos through masterful editing skills rather than shooting the movie in a single scene-by-scene fashion as was the norm in the 1920s; Eisenstein pioneered most of the modern film editing techniques by flashing several characters and settings across the screen despite the limitation of technology at his time (Oheir). The fourth chapter of the film, the Odessa Staircase, became Eisenstein’s most iconic scene with its depiction of the Tsarists walking down a somewhat endless stair case, mercilessly picking-off innocent Odessa civilians. The victims of the massacre include a young boy, an old man and a retreating mother with her infant child; the baby bumps down the endless staircase to its bottom where it meets its death by a Tsarist solder. The main aim of the message was to reaffirm the nation-wide belief in communism, thus, the central myth and message of the film was that the communist sailors were the heroic everyday man while the ship’s heinous bourgeois captain and the repressive Tsarist soldiers were the villainous forces of the capitalistic Tsarist regime that was to be hated respectively. The film crafts this myth creatively through a well-crafted narrative that traces the origin of the mutiny to the incident on board the battleship, when the sailors refused to eat the rotten meat and the soup that was made from it, which further led to the drama on the quarterdeck and the death of Vakulinchuk (Rizvi 81). The sailors who had mutinied took control of the ship and started for the Odessa harbour, where insurrectionist activities were also happening; the film’s ending with the relative victory of Potemkin’s passing the rest of the Russian fleet without a single shot being fired and omission of the less heroic tribulations and isolation of Potemkin soon afterwards serve a purpose. That is, they somewhat embellish the symbolic significance of the mutiny in the later historical mythmaking that prompted the revolution and the subsequent reconstruction of the revolution in more heroic terms. The film utilizes the principle of conflict in montage by contrasting images of innocence against those of violence in the Odessa steps massacre scene to create a powerful image of the oppressive political brutality perpetrated by the Tsarist regime (Grace). For instance, individualized close-up shots of the trampled child, the mother’s horror-ridden and pleading face are contrasted with the depersonalized long shots of the mass of soldiers in graphic patterns of lines and shadows. However, the citizens’ perspective of panic is contrasted with the soldiers perspective of control and domination through a juxtaposition of shots from below and shots from above respectively. Similarly, the maternal feeling aroused in this scene through the helpless woman’s pleas in contrast with the soldiers’ masculine military power symbolically contrasts humanity of the communist citizens and inhumanity of the capitalist military forces respectively. Campbell’s analysis of the metaphorical transformation of the hero reveals three major phases in the hero’s journey namely separation, initiation, and return; the first phase of separation is prompted by an individual’s reawakening from the state of drudgery and despair to follow a higher calling (Milum). However, Eisenstein breaks from this tradition by providing a model for a cinema of groups or masses rather than individual heroes; similarly, Eisenstein rejects the conventional narrative pattern where the hero embarks on a quest or responds to a challenge. Rather than a single hero, the entire crew of Potemkin and the city of Odessa unite to bring about the highly reawakened political consciousness and indeed Vakulinchuk’s exclamation “Will we be last to rise?” nuances a wider political meaning of revolt, of the men collectively rising from their sleep. The people collectively, the innocent civilians alongside the mutinying soldiers, are the glorified heroes of this pro-communism propagandist silent film, and their reawakened political consciousness that is at the core of the revolution mantra marks Campbell’s separation phase while the drama on the deck, Vakulinchuk’s death and the Odessa massacre represents the initiation phase where the hero (the people) encounters a series of tests that prepared them for the ultimate mythological goal. The final rendezvous with the squadron, where the fleet that had been dispatched to intercept the Potemkin battleship declined to engage lowering their guns represents the final stage of the mythic cycle called the return, which signals closure of the hero’s quest as he sets out to enlighten others. Initial audiences at the time of its release responded to the film with immense following given its huge emotional appeal that many governments banned the movie for the fear that it could potentially incite audiences into action against the established rule of law (Ebert). As a well-staged and craft class-conscious revolutionary propaganda, the film was highly inciting since it had the immense power of moving the audience into emotional tears through its candid and up-close presentation of the atrocities of the Tsarist regime. In particular, the massacre of civilians on the Odessa steps was highly emotional and has been described as one of the most influential scenes in the film history as the Tsarist soldiers are depicted marching down the stairs in a rhythmic machine-like style firing into the crowd of civilians taking innocent lives. The highly emotional response of the initial audiences to the film indicates that their pathos had been won by the film’s great propaganda that sought to demonize the Tsarist regime; nonetheless, this film’s power varies greatly depending on the context or social institution in which it is shown today. For instance, if this film is shown to an audience in a social context of prosperous peacetime, it is bound to be viewed curiously but if it is shown to an audience in a volatile context of social upheavals, the film is more likely to arouse dangerous reactions. For instance, if the film was to be aired in the People’s Republic of China during any of the Tiananmen Square’s infamous protests, the film would probably be very dangerous and inflammatory to the audience, even potentially inciting action of the masses against the perceived repressive Chinese regime. This signifies that pathos play a very major role in individual responses to a film, a technique that has been utilized to great heights by Hollywood up to date in its major block buster feature films; Disney world has indeed perfected the principle of pathos in creating its hit movies. By playing on the feelings of the audiences, Disney world has managed to establish strong feelings of attachment or emotional connection between their characters and their target audiences. These emotional connections between perceivers of a visual experience and the characters depicted in the film eventually foster the necessary environment that compels audiences to be engrossed in the narrative and development of its characters, thereby producing a massive following audience, and the subsequent love for Disney movies. There is no doubt that that the film represents a remarkable piece of visual experience that still bears the immense capacity to elicit emotions from an audience up to date; after personally experiencing the film. I also reacted emotionally since I was moved by the horror of the villainous activities of the Tsar soldiers, and the helplessness of the innocent civilians at the hands of the dominant and repressive Tsar regime. The movie’s music and bizarre setting further heightened its horrors by breaking through my personal understanding and familiarity with the battleship Potemkin over the years, that I achieved even much thorough and profound perspective of why the film was indeed banned for fear of its potent to incite audiences to action. The aspect of the film’s myth that had a strong negative influence on my pathos was the fact that the civilian victims that perished at the Odessa steps and the mutinying soldiers were the heroic everyday man while the Tsarist soldiers were the villains of the battleship Potemkin. On the other hand, the aspect of the film’s message that had the most profound positive influence on my pathos was the idea that the masses could successfully rise against an oppressive regime and triumph in the end even if it looks unlikely from the beginning. The Odessa steps massacre, particularly the individualized close up shots of the innocent victims, the pleas of the helpless mother at the mercy of the soldiers’ brutality and the baby trolling down the stairs to its final demise at the bottom of the stairs have left a permanent imprint on my memory due to their strong negative influence on my pathos. Similarly, the massive influence of the film on my emotions is indicative of the fact that like any perceiver of this filmic experience, my pathos towards the film, its myth and messages are strong. The film successfully creates emotional connections that compel me to suspend all disbelief and to empathize with its innocent civilian victims while loathing the barbaric Tsarist soldiers and the regime they represented. The film succeeds greatly as both an artistic endeavor and a propagandist endeavor since its director Eisenstein successfully displays his grand pioneering editing skills that were way ahead of the cinematic history given the technological limitations of his time while depicting the Tsarists as the barbaric and uncivil killing machines in a well-crafted pro-communist ethos narrative (Yahner). The first scene that depicts a close up shot of the Potemkin crew’s breakfast with maggots crawling on the meat the soldiers had refused to eat is very crucial because it eventually sets the entire movie in motion. Therefore, embellishing the exploitation and repressive aspects of the Tsarist regime, which serve as the motivations for a rebellion among the crewmembers who eventually rise against the Tsarist officers. The film’s utilization of close cuts of shots of different settings and characters all in a flash across the screen and the directors’ juxtaposition of shots in what has been termed the principle of contrast in montage were highly innovative creative film editing techniques that set the film apart from its contemporaries. The iconic Odessa massacre scene depicts one most prominent shots of all time that still lingers on the minds of many film critics up to date, as they cannot begin to fathom how Eisenstein was able to capture the long shot of the baby’s stroller as it ventured down the many steps. Both the artistic and propagandist endeavors of the film are not only compatible, but also supportive of each other and are somewhat in a synergistic relationship; for instance, the film’s successful utilization of the principle of conflict montage renders the Odessa steps massacre as the most powerful image of the Tsarist suppression. Ultimately, Eisenstein’s film succeeds not only as an artistic endeavor, but also as a propagandist endeavor of all time and despite the passage of time and audiences’ continued familiarity with the actual events of battleship Potemkin, the film continues to affect their pathos as it did in 1920s. Works Cited Ebert, Roger. “Battleship Potemkin.” Ebertfest.com. n.d. Web. 9th June, 2014. Grace, Helen. “Battleship Potemkin: Senses of Cinema RSS feed.” n.d. Web. 9th June, 2014 Milum, Lynne. “The Hero’s Journey: A Campbellian Look at the Metaphorical Path to Personal Transformation.” Mythichero. 2003. Web. 9th June, 2014. Oheir, Andrew. “How “Battleship Potemkin” reshaped Hollywood.” Salon.com. 2011. Web. 9th June, 2014. Rizvi, W., Raza. “Politics, propaganda and film form: Battleship Potemkin (1925) and Triumph of the Will (1935),” Journal of International Communication, 20.1, (2014): 77-86. Severson, Gregg. “Historical Narrative in The Battleship Potemkin.” Carleton.edu. 1998. Web. 9th June, 2014. Yahner, Tim. “History through cinema with The Battleship Potemkin.” Examiner.com. 2006. Web. 9th June, 2014. Read More