![]() ![]() ![]() Eisenstein's assistant Grigori Aleksandrov played Gilyarovsky. In addition to its innovative and much-analyzed photography and editing, the film was noteworthy for its unusual mix of professional and non-professional actors, based on the principle of typage or casting primarily according to physical types. Neal Bascomb provides a compelling and detailed account of the mutiny in his recently published book Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin (2007). It should be noted that Eisenstein didn't include at least one very significant event: the massive fire that devastated the Odessa port during the strike and claimed many lives. There was even a massacre of civilians by police on the famed steps leading down to Odessa's port, though that was just one part of the civil strikes that occurred throughout the city and the resulting crackdown by the police and Cossacks. While Eisenstein was always interested more in creating an effective and well-constructed film than in being literally faithful to the historical record, many of the key images in the script were in fact inspired by actual events associated with the Potemkin mutiny: the sailors' refusal to eat borsch made from maggot-infested meat the revolutionary activists Matyshenko and Vakulenchuk (spelled Vakulinchuk in the film) using that incident as a pretext to incite the other sailors to mutiny the arrival of the battleship into the Odessa port with a red flag the throngs of townspeople lining up to view Vakulenchuk's corpse and the Potemkin being greeted by cheering sailors on another ship. ![]() The film is divided into five acts-"Men and Worms," "Drama on the Quarterdeck" "An Appeal from the Dead," "The Odessa Steps" and "Meeting the Squadron"-its structure deliberately recalling classical tragedy. While Eisenstein's debut feature Strike (1924) still dazzles through its sheer stylistic daring, in The Battleship Potemkin he consolidated his skills as a total filmmaker, demonstrating greater control over narrative structure and pacing. (See Richard Taylor's meticulously researched book The Battleship Potemkin: The Film Companion (2000) for further information on the film's production history and critical reception.) However, bad weather and logistical difficulties compelled Eisenstein and his crew to relocate to Odessa, and the Potemkin mutiny expanded into a full-fledged feature in its own right. Petersburg in October 1905, with the June 1905 mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin to serve as a prologue. The first episode was originally intended to focus mainly on the strike that took place in St. The Soviets were inordinately fond of jubilees, so it was only fitting that for his second feature film Sergei Eisenstein would be commissioned to direct a multi-episode series marking the twentieth anniversary of the 1905 revolution in Russia. This new version, overseen by the film archivist and historian Enno Patalas, attempts to reconstruct, as closely as possible, the film as it was presented in Moscow during its initial release. ![]() Reissued over the years in various censored and reedited versions, Eisenstein's great vision has not been seen for several decades in anything like what the director likely intended. But in a sense The Battleship Potemkin has been the victim of its own effectiveness. In particular, the "Odessa steps" sequence is arguably the single most famous and widely quoted passage in the history of film. The Battleship Potemkin was recognized from the start as a landmark work both for its innovative use of montage and for its sheer power as propaganda. This same version will be released on DVD by Kino in a 2-disc special edition. broadcast premiere of the 2005 restoration of Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925), accompanied by a new arrangement of Edmund Meisel's orchestral score, which Eisenstein himself authorized for the film's Berlin premiere in 1926. ![]()
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