Sergei Eisenstein and his contemporary Lev Kuleshov were amongst the first few film theorists of the last century. They propounded that montage, which is nothing but a collage of different shots, arranged together to create the desired effect, is the essence of cinema and this if well utilized can make, film, one of the most expressive amongst the creative mediums. Eisenstein’s Film Theory is based upon the Marxist Dialectic of Thesis and Antithesis, which must collide to create the Synthesis. He proposed that an artist should not limit himself only with mere representation but should create images through the use of visual metaphors. Eisenstein pointed out in The Film Sense that cinema is closer to literature than to drama or painting, as, in cinema the process of signification or that of creating meaning is similar to that of language where, words are woven together to denote what is intended. He thus questioned:
“Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?”
The ace director went further to point out that:
"The hieroglyphic language of the cinema is capable of expressing any concept, any idea of class, any political or tactical slogan, without recourse to the help of a rather suspect dramatic or psychological past."
And this is precisely what he did in Battleship Potemkin. The director, here, was found to have set out with the firm objective of using film, effectively, as a propagandist medium to disseminate socialism, amongst his audience. His theory of montage shall be at his disposal to manipulate the audience’s response towards the desired effect.
Bronyenosyets Potyomkin or Battleship Potemkin was made in 1925 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the uprising of 1905, which despite ending in a failure laid the foundation for the victory of the October Revolution of 1917. The importance of the 1905 insurgence was acknowledged by Lenin as well, who thought of it as the dress rehearsal for the rebellion in 1917. It was after the seizure of the indigenous film industry, by the Soviet Government that the capitalist film discourse of pre-revolution Tsarist Russia was discarded and Cinema was decreed to be a medium to be used for educating the common mass and to promote class consciousness amongst its audience. In fact it was at such a point in time that Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was commissioned by the Government to chronicle the resurgence of 1905 upon celluloid. The film was initially conceived to be a part of a series named Towards The Dictatorship Of The Proletariat constituting of Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925), October (1928) and possibly The Old and The New (1929), Pudovkin’s The End of St Petersburg (1927) and some others, which were suppose to tell the story of the failed rebellion. The film was originally designed to give an account of the entire rebellion, which broke out in 1905 but acute financial constraints and technical lack compelled Eisenstein to settle for only one of the representative episodes-the mutiny of the sailors of battleship Potemkin, against their rather despotic officers and the consequent massacre at the Odessa Harbour.
Eisenstein’s treatment of the rebellion has often been challenged by critics as an inaccurate account of a historical event. Lack of historical veracity has always been a common critique against the film; modern critics have often assumed that Eisenstein’s film “owes more to myth making than to historical fidelity.” Critics like David Bordwell have pointed out that Eisenstein “takes great liberties” with History. The well known Odessa-steps-sequence has been critiqued, time and again, as a fruit of the director’s imagination and thus far fetched and untrue. A serious probe into the History of the period, however, has revealed that there is an overall confusion about what exactly happened within the berths of Potemkin and even about the subsequent events. Moreover, it was never Eisenstein’s directorial intention to present unaltered History before his audience, he was rather more concerned about maneuvering the audience’s response towards an appreciation of the struggle and thus to inculcate socialistic ideologies amongst them. Andrew Sinclair was perhaps right in saying that the film “departs from the facts for the purposes of propaganda and art.” And now as we watch it a neo critical insight, we realize the rich filmic fecundity of the master filmmaker, who has perhaps questioned the very nature of History – a biased, maneuvered discourse.
Ever since its conception, the film has confronted controversies of all kind. While, modern critics often condemn Eisenstein for his lapse from History, his contemporaries accused him of enraging the common mass. The prints were burnt down in France and the German authorities prevented the soldiers from watching the film in the fear that it might actually provoke them to rise up in mutiny. These controversies, however, only reinstated the fact that the film was indeed vigorous in its presentation of the mutiny and had the power to unleash the mass sentiment against the repressive measures of the authorities. Eisenstein was affiliated to the Proletkult Movement along with his other contemporary artists like Mayakovsky and Maleveich. His revolutionary intentions were to liberate cinema from its bourgeois convention. The artist’s demand for complete say over his own project brought him in direct conflict with Stalin and his Government. The film was subjected to the merciless scissors of censor. About three thousand feet of the celluloid had to be cut off under Stalin’s personal instructions. This however could not lessen the potential of the movie. Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi Propaganda minister thus exclaimed after seeing it for the first time:
“A marvellous film without equal in the cinema ... anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film”
The film is in fact said to have inspired the mutiny, led by the crew of the Dutch battleship De Zeven Provinciën, in 1933, at Indonesia.
Lenin once pointed out that “of all the arts, for us (communists) cinema is the most important.” Battleship Potemkin surely validates this statement. Eisenstein was indeed revolutionary in both his treatment and theme in Battleship Potemkin. The director, who has been a part of the red army, under the commandership of Trotsky, someone, who has taken active interest in the staging of revolutionary theatre was ought to use celluloid with a pre determined political intention. Eisenstein’s adroit use of the various avant garde techniques of editing lend to the depiction of the rebellion, a special appeal, which could not have been possible otherwise.
Eisenstein subdivided his film into five episodes, which are distinguished from each other through the use of subtitles. These five episodes are:
1. Men and Maggots.
2. Drama on the Quarterdeck.
3. An appeal from the Dead.
4. The Odessa Steps and
5. Meeting the Squadron.
The first episode traces how the mutiny sparked off when the sailors refused to consume the soup, prepared with rotten meat for them. The second episode unfolds the ensuing tension which would lead to the death of Vakulinchuk. The Odessa steps sequence records the mass killing at the steps of the Odessa Harbour and the film ends with the mutineers attaining a moral victory when the fleets shall go past Potemkin without firing at her.
Eisenstein’s choice of visuals anticipated the rebellion, right from the beginning. The audience gets acquainted with the crew as they sleep in their hammocks, presumably after a very tiring session of work. As their hammocks swing, Eduard Tisse’s camera captures them in a long shot. The ambivalent use of camera, as, has been employed here suggests a suspended existence-a shackled survival, precariously balanced upon the mercy of the master, but it is an animated existence nevertheless and thus holds the promise of breaking into a mutiny at any point of time. The director’s passion to proximate the reality of the revolution becomes clear as we learn, how Eisenstein painted the socialist flag, red, in each of the frames-a technique which shall later inspire directors like Stephen Spielberg, who uses this in Schindler’s List. How cinema can become a critique of the social evils, becomes apparent in this film, where, Eisenstein has offered criticism of institutionalized religion through the portrayal of the priest, whose eyes convey a cold ferocity as he carries the cross in his hand.
Eisenstein has indeed been a pioneer in experimenting with the film form. The Odessa Steps sequence shall provide a model for generations of film makers, ever since its use by him. Richard Nelson Corliss, Film Critic, Times Magazine has pointed out that even after more than eighty years, since it was made Battleship Potemkin still continues to be one of the best movies ever made in the History of World Cinema.
This film however, has been recognized as one of the classics, decades after it was made. Initially, however, it was not met with good response from its audience. Entangled in one controversy after another, the film failed to become popular amongst the mass. A huge financial loss was incurred. But this however, could not deter the spirits of the artist, Eisenstein, for whom the film was almost an expression of the self. He was a faithful Bolshevik and film above all, was to him a weapon to challenge the bourgeoisie structures. Eisenstein once remarked:
“The revolution gave me the most precious thing in life- it made an artist out of me. If it had not been for the revolution I would never have broken the tradition, handed down from father to son, of becoming an engineer... The revolution introduced me to art, and art, in its own turn, brought me to the revolution...”
These words perhaps capture best the essence of the artist that Eisenstein was and Battleship Potemkin elucidates this statement in the best possible manner.
By,
Priyanka Mukherjee
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