![](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125839615/510158276.jpg)
![Battleship Battleship](http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/bg/Battleship+Premiere+qvVQYAyHgK7x.jpg)
The game Battleship is known by Hasbro for being a boardgame, having a movie and now returns with an epic game here on Xbox, even though it deserves to be on ALL systems other than just home consoles. A game like this could make it to handhelds as well.
'The Battleship Potemkin” has been so famous for so longthat it is almost impossible to come to it with a fresh eye. It is one of thefundamental landmarks of cinema. Its famous massacre on the Odessa Steps hasbeen quoted so many times in other films (notably in “”) thatit's likely many viewers will have seen the parody before they see theoriginal.
The film once had such power that it was banned in many nations,including its native Soviet Union. Governments actually believed it couldincite audiences to action. If today it seems more like a technically brilliantbut simplistic “cartoon” (Pauline Kael's description in a favorable review),that may be because it has worn out its element of surprise-that, like the23rd Psalm or Beethoven's Fifth, it has become so familiar we cannot perceiveit for what it is.Advertisement. Having said that, let me say that “Potemkin,” which I have seenmany times and taught using a shot-by-shot approach, did come alive for me theother night, in an unexpected time and place. The movie was projected on a bigscreen hanging from the outside wall of the Vickers Theater in Three Oaks,Mich., and some 300 citizens settled into their folding chairs in the parkinglot to have a look at it. The simultaneous musical accompaniment was by Concrete,a southwestern Michigan band. Under the stars on a balmy summer night, far fromfilm festivals and cinematheques, Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 revolutionary callgenerated some of its legendary rabble-rousing power.It's not that anybody stood up and sang “The Internationale.”The folding chairs for this classic exercise in Soviet propaganda were on loanfrom the local Catholic church.
Some audience members no doubt drove over toOink's in New Buffalo afterward for ice cream cones. But the film did haveheadlong momentum, thrilling juxtapositions and genuine power to move-mostespecially during the Odessa Steps sequence, which had some viewers gasping outloud.The movie was ordered up by the Russian revolutionary leadershipfor the 20th anniversary of the Potemkin uprising, which Lenin had hailed asthe first proof that troops could be counted on to join the proletariat inoverthrowing the old order.As sketched by Eisenstein's film, the crew members of thebattleship, cruising the Black Sea after returning from the war with Japan, aremutinous because of poor rations. There is a famous closeup of their breakfastmeat, crawling with maggots.
After officers throw a tarpaulin over therebellious ones and order them to be shot, a firebrand named Vakulinchuk criesout, “Brothers! Who are you shooting at?” The firing squad lowers its guns, andwhen an officer unwisely tries to enforce his command, full-blown mutiny takesover the ship.Advertisement. Onshore, news of the uprising reaches citizens who have longsuffered under czarist repression. They send food and water out to thebattleship in a flotilla of skiffs. Then, in one of the most famous sequencesever put on film, czarist troops march down a long flight of steps, firing onthe citizens who flee before them in a terrified tide. Countless innocents arekilled, and the massacre is summed up in the image of a woman shot dead tryingto protect her baby in a carriage-which then bounces down the steps, out ofcontrol.That there was, in fact, no czarist massacre on the Odessa Stepsscarcely diminishes the power of the scene. The czar's troops shot innocentcivilians elsewhere in Odessa, and Eisenstein, in concentrating those killingsand finding the perfect setting for them, was doing his job as a director.
Itis ironic that he did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa Stepsis often referred to as if it really happened.News of the uprising reaches the Russian fleet, which speedstoward Odessa to put it down. The Potemkin and a destroyer, also commanded byrevolutionaries, steam out to meet them. Eisenstein creates tension by cuttingbetween the approach fleet, the brave Potemkin, and details of the onboardpreparation. At the last moment, the men of the Potemkin signal their comradesin the fleet to join them-and the Potemkin steams among the oncoming shipswithout a shot being fired at it.“The Battleship Potemkin” is conceived as class-consciousrevolutionary propaganda, and Eisenstein deliberately avoids creating anythree-dimensional individuals (even Vakulinchuk is seen largely as a symbol).Instead, masses of men move in unison, as in the many shots looking down atPotemkin's foredeck.
The people of Odessa, too, are seen as a mass made up ofmany briefly glimpsed but starkly seen faces. The dialogue (in title cards) islimited mostly to outrage and exhortation. There is no personal drama tocounterbalance the larger political drama.Advertisement. Eisenstein (1898-1948) was a student and advocate of Soviettheories of film montage, which argued that film has its greatest impact not bythe smooth unrolling of images, but by their juxtaposition. Sometimes thecutting is dialectical: point, counterpoint, fusion. Cutting between thefearful faces of the unarmed citizens and the faceless troops in uniform, hecreated an argument for the people against the czarist state. Many other cutsare as abrupt: After Potemkin's captain threatens to hang mutineers from theyardarm, we see ghostly figures hanging there.
As the people call out, “Downwith the tyrants!” we see clenched fists. To emphasize that the shootingvictims were powerless to flee, we see one revolutionary citizen without legs.As the troops march ahead, a military boot crushes a child's hand.
In a famousset of shots, a citizen is seen with eyeglasses; when we cut back, one of theglasses has been pierced by a bullet.Eisenstein felt that montage should proceed from rhythm, notstory. Shots should be cut to lead up to a point, and should not linger becauseof personal interest in individual characters. Most of the soundtracks I'veheard with “Potemkin” do not follow this theory, and instead score the movie asa more conventional silent drama. Concrete, the Michigan band (Boyd Nutting,Jon Yazell, Andrew Lersten), underlined and reinforced Eisenstein's approachwith an insistent, rhythmic, repetitive score, using keyboards, half-heardsnatches of speech, cries and choral passages, percussion, martial airs andfound sounds.
It was an aggressive, insistent approach, played loud, bymusicians who saw themselves as Eisenstein's collaborators, not his meekaccompanists.It was the music, I think, along with the unusual setting, thatwas able to break through my long familiarity with “Battleship Potemkin” andmake me understand, better than ever before, why this movie was long considereddangerous. (It was banned at various times in the United States and France, andfor a longer time than any other film in British history; even Stalin bannedit, at a time when mutiny was against the party line.)The fact is, “Potemkin” doesn't really stand alone, but dependsfor its power upon the social situation in which it is shown.
In prosperouspeacetime, it is a curiosity. If it had been shown in China at the time ofTiananmen Square, I imagine it would have been inflammatory. It was voted thegreatest film of all time at the Brussels, Belgium, World's Fair in 1958(ironically, the very year “” had its great re-release and went tothe top of the list for the next 40 years). The Cold War was at its height in1958, and many European leftists still subscribed to the Marxist prescriptionfor society; “Potemkin” for them had a power, too.Advertisement.
But it suffers when it is seen apart from its context (just as “TheGraduate,” by striking the perfect note for 1967, strikes a dated note now). Itneeds the right audience. In a sense, the band Concrete supplied a virtualaudience; the loud, passionate, ominous music by the three young musiciansworked as an impassioned audience response does, to carry and hurry the otherwatchers along.
“Battleship Potemkin” is no longer considered the greatest filmever made, but it is obligatory for anyone interested in film history, and theother night in that small-town parking lot I got a sense, a stirring, of theburied power it still contains, awaiting a call.
![](/uploads/1/2/5/8/125839615/510158276.jpg)