So this week I saw Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) at the cinema for the first time, indeed the first time at all for at least 20 years. I don’t remember it making much of an impression on me the first time. This time was different. If you were to choose a film that conveyed the power and magic of cinema, this is as good a choice as any. I was stunned. I didn’t remember it being like this! And now I know why. When I first saw it, it would have been the pre-restored version. And the pre-restored version had missing scenes, missing intertitles and different music. The original film had music specifically written for the film by the German Edmund Meisel, and it was done under Eisenstein’s supervision. Somewhere along the line the Russian government, thinking that music written by a German on a Russian film was “unpatriotic”, imposed a Shostakovich score onto the film. A score that had nothing to do with the film itself but was merely extracted from his music.
But now I was seeing it the way Eisenstein intended it to be seen. And what a difference! The whole Odessa steps sequence was astonishing in its power, with editing used to maximum effect. I was surprised at how violent it was too, was this really made in 1925? It was almost visceral. (The scene with the pram tumbling down the stairs has been imitated several times, most famously by De Palma in The Untouchables). And the final sequence of the film, with the battleships converging and the music building up in perfect synchronicity with the cross-cutting images, was a textbook example of how to build tension.
In fact the film was so good, it made me want to start a revolution…….if that’s not a measure of the film’s success, I don’t know what is.