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Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin

List Price: $24.99
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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A classic of Russian silent cinema
Review: The sailors, fed up with the poor rations they must eat while the officers dine in splendor, stage a mutiny and take over the Potemkin. In the fray, the leader of he sailors, a Bolshevik named Vaculinchuk, is killed. The sailors take his body to the shores of Odessa where they lay his body in tribute. The people of Odessa flock to see his body when they learned of the events on the Potemkin. Enraged at the treatment by the government, the citizens of Odessa rebel against the tsarist government.

This films is probably the best example of a propaganda film ever made, showing the perceived menace of the Russian government back at the turn of the century. The message seems to be that the citizens need to band together, that all Russians are brothers and sisters and must rise up against tyranny and fight for their freedoms. While the story isn't completely engaging today, it does contain one of the most startling sequences in a silent film: the Odessa Steps. As the citizes of Odessa start to gather, the Cossacks ride in resulting in one of the bloodiest slaughters to reach the screen. Directors Grigori Aleksandrov and Sergei Eisenstein knew how to use this medium of film to get their message across, and this is one of the most effective scenes you'll ever see on screen.

It's a remarkable piece of cinematic history.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Russian classic has little for the modern viewer.
Review: A movie that contains some very clever sequences and shots, particularly those of the massacre on the steps of the city. There isn't much of a story though. It's more a snapshot of a moment in history, that of the Russian revolution, and where as, it may have had emotional significance for the Russian audience of the time, the same cannot be said for the modern viewer.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Good film, terrible DVD
Review: With modern multi-million dollar blockbusters with computer effects, an OLD film like this can be difficult to watch. With the masterful scoring, it justs adds to the effect.

Film School students have undoubtedly seen the "Odessa Step" sequence. It is a great source of semiotic analysis with editing cuts and cuts to shapes. Not to mention the diagonal lines. This scene, with the baby carriage incident, was used in "The Untouchables".

The "Odessa Step" scene is the part I remember the most. The mother carrying her small son up to the soldier's after he'd been shot. They shot her, and walk over the body. Or the young mother with the baby in the carriage, you know the baby is going to go down the steps because that's what happens in every other movie.


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