Eighty-five years ago, on January 16, 1926, Sergei Eisenstein’s famous film The Battleship Potemkin was shown to the public for the first time. The legendary film, which made cinema into an art, was the first of its time to be shot without decorative sets and well-known actors, featuring real people in the depiction of true events.
Eighty-five years ago, on January 16, 1926, Sergei Eisenstein’s famous film The Battleship Potemkin was shown to the public for the first time. The legendary film, which made cinema into an art, was the first of its time to be shot without decorative sets and well-known actors, featuring real people in the depiction of true events.
Sergei Eisenstein shot the film in anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution. The production was originally commissioned by the Soviet government, which initially planned to show the film at clubs and lectures rather than in theaters.
However, everything changed after an official premier when the film was shown publicly for the first time in December 1925 at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater during celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution.The very next day, the 27-year-old Eisenstein wrote in his diary: “Woke up famous.” Photo: Still from The Battleship Potemkin.
The first audiences to see the film at Moscow’s Arts Cinema were stunned not only by the film but by its surrounding fanfare. The entire staff of the theater wore naval uniforms, and the theater’s façade was converted to resemble a large warship. Posters for the film were rendered by the famous artist Alexander Rodchenko himself. Photo: Reproduction of an advertising poster for the film The Battleship Potemkin by Alexander Rodchenko. 1926. Goskino publication.
Following its premier in 1926, The Battleship Potemkin became a success. In an interview, Director of the Cinema Museum Naum Kleiman once commented: “This first darling of Russian cinema coincided with the first love of film as full-fledged art.”
The film recounts the mutiny of the crew of the battleship Potemkin in 1905, which triggered mass revolutionary protests across Russia. Although Eisenstein followed the facts rather loosely, the film is still perceived as belonging to the documentary genre. Photo: Still from the film The Battleship Potemkin depicting the execution of sailors.
The plot begins with the mutiny of Potemkin’s crew after being served rotten meat.
The instigators are sentenced to be shot, but the crew prevents their execution. They attack the ship’s officers and throw them overboard, but Vakulenchuk, the leader of the mutiny, is killed in the melee.
The residents of Odessa then flock to attend Vakulenchuk’s funeral, but their spontaneous uprising is brutally crushed by the authorities.
The depiction of the death of protesters as a baby stroller rolls down Odessa’s Potemkin Steps became one of the most powerful scenes in the film and was subsequently reproduced in hundreds of other movies.
The score was originally composed by Berlin’s Edmund Meisel and first released in 1930. However, a second sound version composed by Nikolai Kryukov was released 20 years later. The great Dmitry Shostakovich wrote the film’s final score in 1965.
The film was inevitably censored, but not only in the Soviet Union. The original frames were first sold to Germany, and, fearing that the immensely powerful mutiny scene would prove incendiary, the German censors did their best to cut it down. Since then, specialists spent several years searching for the film’s lost fragments and attempted to restore it to its original version. The restored version was first shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2005.
As the film reaches its dramatic denouement, a red flag waves proudly from the battleship’s mast, painted on each black-and-white frame by Eisenstein himself.
