Battleship Potemkin review

 Number 318 on the top 1000 films of all time is Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film 'Battleship Potemkin.'

In the backdrop of the Russian revolution, sailor Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov) leads a mutiny against the tyrannical officers of the Battleship Potemkin. He and his fellow sailors sail into Odessa as heroes, but the revolution is only beginning.

Battleship Potemkin received acclaim from historical and contemporary critics. Unlike some other films of the era e.g All Quiet on the Western Front, it has held up well over the years.

One thing that struck me was how Eisenstein never shied away from depicting the brutality of the revolution. Within the famous scene of the massacre on the Odessa Steps, we witness these horrors in unflinching detail. Two key scenes come to mind - a little boy who has been shot by a Cossack, blood pouring from his head, and a woman who has a bullet-hole where her eye should be. They were powerful scenes.

This was shocking at the time, and it was especially shocking to see it in a silent film in an era dominated by the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

But I'm going to slightly demur from popular critical opinion. The massacre on the Odessa steps is considered one of the film's highlights. While it was good, I would argue that it went on for so long that any dramatic tension became severely diluted. There are only so many times that we can watch people run away. The film is only sixty-seven minutes long, but if it wasn't for this overly-drawn out sequence, it could have been shorter.

Yes, it is a propaganda film, but Battleship Potemkin did serve as an early reminder of the power of cinema.