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Nice effects though.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Excellent but underrated film

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

All true cinephiles know about "Potemkin" and how it revolutionized cinematic techniques in editing. We all know about that insane, constantly referenced/parodied Odessa steps sequence, but do we really know WHY "Potemkin" is a GREAT movie? Not just an influential or famous movie, but an actually GREAT movie?Well, in my opinion, the reason that "Potemkin" is so great is its ability to manipulate emotions and have relentless emotional energy and thrills. In its slim 70 minute runtime, more emotional intensity has struck the audience than in most 2 hour action thrillers. This film may be communist propaganda, but its also damn good communist propaganda. I may not agree with the film's political intent, but while I'm watching it I sure do! Using the power of film and visuals, Eisenstein works as a master manipulator, pulling at every string in your body, a surging sea of pain and sorrow exploding across his forever influential screen. Who could ever forget those haunting images? The child being trampled on! The baby carriage falling! The old woman with her shot out! Blood everywhere! Tons of extras falling down these mammoth stairs. Its more thrilling than any horror film you've ever seen, and its damned brilliant if you ask me!

A lot of people note that director Sergei Eisenstein was ahead of his time with his 'film montage' technique, used so effectively in the massacre scene on the steps of Odessa, but it should also be noted that he captures brilliant images throughout this movie. It's certainly worth watching as a result, and is probably a must for students of film. However, what undoubtedly stirred emotions in 1925 – possibly sympathy for the communist movement, or fear of inciting revolutionary thoughts given the mutiny that takes place on the Potemkin, or squeamishness at the moments of violence (all of which contributed to the film being banned in many countries, including the Soviet Union!) – is less impactful ninety years later. It also suffers for being a propaganda film, with less nuance in its characters and plot.

I only became aware of Battleship Potemkin when Brian De Palma's The Untouchable's was released for the cinema and critics mentioned the pram down the steps sequence and how the director borrowed it from this film.This Russian silent celebrates the Potemkin uprising of 1905 which Lenin regarded as an event that sowed the seeds of the The Russian Revolution. This is a fictionalised retelling by Sergei Eisenstein.The crew of the battleship are mutinous because of poor rations, meat infested with maggots but the officers pass it as fit for consumption. The crew will not back down so the officers throw tarpaulin over some of the rebellious crew, give them the last rites and are ordered to be shot.One of the crew members Vakulinchuk pleads to the firing squad not to fire and the firing squad does not and it leads to mutiny as the officers are overcome.The uprising in the ship travels far and wide and in the town of Odessa, Vakulinchuk who was killed in the mutiny, his body is displayed to the public. In the Odessa steps a gathering crowd are fired on by Tsarist troops where women and children are killed leading to a pram with a baby plummeting down the steps. The massacre never happened, it was made up for the film.The film is propaganda to symbolize the spirit of the Russian revolution. Sergei Eisenstein made an epic film with vast crowd sequences, montage editing techniques and is a technical accomplishment for the early days of cinema.

NOTE: This is not a conventional review; this is my required response to Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin for my college course Intro to Film & Screen Studies...Cinema, both domestic and foreign, owes a lot to Sergei Eisenstein for creating not only one of the most successful propaganda films with Battleship Potemkin, but one of the most successful examples of montage in history. Eisenstein employs a wide variety of subversive montage styles here, some considered tonal ones that string together a continuous feeling that rubs off on an audience, some for the purpose of continuity and consistency in events, and some for the purpose of putting grandiose, large-scale sequences into a specified perspective, though all significant in their own right.One of the most jarring inclusions of structurally conflicting shots is the famous shot of the statue of the lion, which is shown sleeping, awakening, and rising all in the matter of about two seconds. These static images, when strung together, inspire the kind of momentary shock we, the audience, have upon watching Eisenstein concoct a film so raucous and battle-hungry that it's as if the lion is replicating our personal feelings whilst watching the film. The conflict established is more or less a circumstance of reactionary response to the disobedience of order; order which is constantly affirmed throughout the entire first chapter of the film.Then there's the scene in the second chapter where the passengers aboard Potemkin begin to rebel. Eisenstein utilizes his montage theory to establish the events occurring before zeroing in on specific people fighting and specific blows in a way that shows the conflict between the two parties whilst showing a more concise focus on a large-scale playing field. The effect is unique because it's rare we see a large battle (or even a large battle conducted in a small area) specified so humanly by way of close-ups and intimate shooting techniques that Eisenstein employs that make the sequence so personal.As far as alternative logic goes – where Eisenstein creates some sort of visual poetry or distinction without the use of his beloved montage technique – there's the scene early in the film where one of the captains goes to observe the actions in the bunkers. Eisenstein's camera observes the actions of the captain while interjecting cuts of pots and pans precariously placed atop boards of wood that are strung up and suspended to the room's ceiling. These scenes establish what the captain is looking at and what his environment is composed of in a manner that relates greatly to Kulesov and his own personal effect.Then there are scenes that are more concerned with fleshing out a specific event, rather than encapsulating the horror and the messiness of other events (the uprising aboard the Potemkin and the famous Odessa Steps sequence just to name a few). One scene is the final straw for the workers, of sorts, when they are persuaded to believe that rotting, maggot-ridden meat is okay for consumption, despite being viewed by everybody on board, even the cooks, as otherwise. Eisenstein keeps things grounded more-or-less in a real-time here, allowing his camera to go back and forth between the workers and the captains in a manner that doesn't shortchange or rapidly look for a way out of this event in order to interject other scenes and create a compilation of "last straws" for the workers. This scene in particular establishes the logic that Eisenstein uses can be equal parts broadly observant, as seen in his montages, or decidedly focused.In a way, I feel Battleship Potemkin was a film made for the masses to, for once, look introspectively at their situations in Russian and observe the treacherous, unfair living conditions and the willfully oppressive nature of the rich and able. Eisenstein had to combat the fact that most of the commonwealth Russian population was illiterate and unknowing of their own exploitation, which made him make a film like this that, despite being able to be dissected in numerous ways, almost demands a response of any kind. The complete and total disregard for the health and wellbeing of humans should at least warrant some response from people, and Eisenstein's images reflect the horrors of oppression without getting lost in symbolism or any kind of discernible auteurism. His montage elements only add to a film, rather than being stylistic distractions that work to muddle the themes at hand.Starring: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barksy, and Grigori Aleksandrov. Directed by: Sergei Eisenstein.