Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Battleship Potemkin (1925)



Bronyenosyets Potyomkin sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin film, but also used it to test his theories of ", is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatised version of the Battleship Potemkin uprising that occurred in 1905 when the crew of a Russian battleship rebelled against their oppressive officers of the Tsarist regime. Potemkin has been called one of the most influential films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958. Eisenstein wrote the film as a revolutionary propagandamontage". The revolutionary Soviet filmmakers of the Kuleshov school of filmmaking were experimenting with the effect of film editing on audiences, and Eisenstein attempted to edit the film in such a way as to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the viewer would feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the Battleship Potemkin and hatred for their cruel overlords. In the manner of most propaganda, the characterization is simple, so that the audience could clearly see with whom they should sympathize.

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A wide shot of the massacre on the "Odessa Steps".

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