Battleship Potemkin

The best known Russian feature film made shocked Western European authorities seize their scissors or entirely ban the film in 1925. Their terror was not only caused by the revolutionary message of the film, but also by the new cinematic language. Like no other filmmaker before him, Sergei Eisenstein utilised editing tools to manipulate the spectator. The film tells the story of the revolt that broke out in 1905 among the sailors of the BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, who rebelled against the degrading way they were being treated. When the insurgents in the film get support from the people of Odessa, the port where the battleship is moored, the czarist police moves in, resulting in the famous 'steps scene'. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN is suggestive of an historical reconstruction, but is in reality a revolutionary statement, that does not worry too much about the facts. For instance, the happy ending in the film, with the Potemkin setting off a chain reaction of mutinying ship crews, is completely a-historical: in reality the mutiny was quelled.