A lesson in editing a lot of film makers should learn nowadays

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2018)

The fact that I watched this laying in bed in a Sunday night, without loosing my attention or even falling into the embrace of Morpheus, already says a lot. For starters, the soundtrack is interesting a good way to engage you in the movie. Plotwise, it is an interesting story to contextualize the spirit of the Russian revolution. Albeit heavily propagandized, which sometimes may throw you off if you're not particularly crazy about the ideology, the plot still provides for some entertaining 75 minutes, while complementing what, to me, is the focal point of the film. The way ahead of its time editing and cinematography. It may not come to one's mind while watching the movie, but in a time when editing consisted in cutting and glueing film rolls together, it takes a tremendous amount of work to create a movie where some shots last less than a second. It is some common today, with digital film making, that it is easy to forget how big an accomplishment Battleship Potemkin is. This would, of course, be rendered forgettable if not used ingeniously by Eisenstein to immerse the viewer so deeply in the atmosphere of the story. After reading about his 5 methods of montage, it is clear how he uses every single one in the movie, and how much it serves to enhance the plot. If just watching the Massacre at Odessa scene, without over-analyzing, is already quite an experience, watching it again after knowing what's behind is an even further enriching experience. The cinematography is good as well, particularly in scenery of the port of Odessa, with great examples of high contrast and lighting. And again, this was 1925, and visually it is still miles ahead of a great deal of movies I see today. I am truly never tired of watching movies from this period, where the movie industry was not dominated by one single market, and I advise anyone to watch this movie to show that not all the great things in cinema were made in Hollywood.
"Killed for a plate of soup"