Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin)

Released: December 24, 1925

Studio: Mosfilm

Genre: silent/foreign

Box Office (numbers in millions):

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Adjusted for Inflation:

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Directing: Sergei M. Eisenstein

Screenwriting: Nina Agadzhanova

Starring: Aleksandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskiy, Grigoriy Aleksandrov

Review:

Battleship Potemkin is “unabashed socialist propaganda” ^CL “and looking back after more than 70 years there’s something cold, academic, even manipulative about the meticulous compositions, schematic characterizations and complex choreography of massed movement.” ^T95

However, it stands as “a double-barreled Soviet classic” ^PM that “remains a timeless blueprint for modern technique.” ^PM Director Sergei Eisenstein pioneered editing and narrative devices, such as montages, that have become “pillars of cinema.” ^CL

It is “basically…one of the first action movies of all time,” ^CL re-creating, “in documentary style…the key events of the failed 1905 Kronstadt revolution against Tsarist oppression.” ^T95 Soldiers on the Battleship Potemkin “revolted against their officers who expected the men to eat spoiled food.” ^CL The people then followed suit, fighting back against the government forces. “Unlike many staples of film history classes, this one has the power to grip any audience.” ^LM

Critic Leonard Maltin goes so far as to describe the scene on the Odessa Steps “possibly the most famous movie scene of all time.” ^LM While that’s a big claim, director Brian De Palma liked the scene enough to replicate it in his 1987 movie The Untouchables.