Images Speaking a Thousand Words, for a Million People...

Rating: 9/10 (17 March 2018)

Why is it that so many cinematic landmarks happen to be propaganda?
I guess there was a perfect timing with the birth of a new art / medium coinciding with a new century, allowing the early cinematic masterpieces to be studied in film-making schools while not losing any relevance in history classes.
If in its silent first steps, cinema was the latest 'hip' thing, a funny wonder from two French siblings or a mild bourgeois amusement, as technology advanced and authoritarian regimes were looking for the most effective ways to capture the spirit of the masses and then, cinema became a political weapon.
It's all about masses when you think about it, propaganda movies confront us to the real bargain of cinema; different people sitting altogether in the dark, anonymously and eyes converging toward the same images. We're individuals but we form an audience, a collectivity meant to react. The director shouts "Action!", for us, it's the reaction.
And this is not a hazard either if most propaganda movies worked during the Silent Era where it was all about the power of images, dialogs rather than faces. In "Battleship Potemkin", the most iconic image involves a woman with a broken eyeglass and bleeding eye, Bunuel had the eye sliced but the point is all the same for Eisenstein, the eye is more sensitive than the brain and Eisenstein definitely knew how to catch it.
His "Battleship Potemkin" chronicles the injustices underwent by the Potemkin crew, the resulting mutiny and martyrdom, then the solidarity displayed from the people of Odessa and the iconic confrontation with the Tsarist army during the iconic 'steps massacre' and finally another battle leading to the triumph of the Potemkin whose cause has been embraced by the other rebellious ships.
Constructed in different chapters, "Potemkin" bears some resemblance with the seminal "Birth of a Nation" but the technique of Griffith was far more elaborated in "Intolerance", a film he studied to get his inspiration. But while watching "Potemkin", I was fascinated by the way Eisenstein almost never uses narration in his cardboards, they all feature cries and dialogues but they never verbalize.
No need to, this is a film that trusts its material. If it was a Griffith' movie, we'd have a group of sailors coming to the office and complaining about the food. Eisenstein provides disgusting glimpses on the maggots crawling over the meat and close-up on an evil officer twirling his mustache while ordering for the borsch to be prepared (with the rotten meat). Close-ups are integral to the power of the film, because it's only when you grasp the feeling of one person that you can extrapolate it to the masses.
Eisenstein understood that we all have a Pavlov reaction, believing that what goes through one person, goes through the other. This is why you can see close-ups on clenching fists, anger sights or before the massacre, of people smiling and waving to amplify the shocking suddenness of the Russian army intervention.
This method also served Eisenstein for shooting of the climax, feeling that there was a lack of energy from the extras, he called one of them by his name, the others thought there was some sort of magic eye staring at them. In reality, Eisenstein picked a random name and had the right effect. That's exactly how the movie works, it finds the perfect balances between crowd shot and individual shots. That's the "Stakhanovite" move, and while the massacre feel like a giant wave of people flooding down the stairs, there are individuals we still remember.
Who can forget the woman who just witnessed the death of a child and carry him to the top, going at the exact opposite of the runners, that moment alone while giving a focus on that death enlightens all the other deaths. This isn't just stylish filmmaking, this is a humanity standing and questioning the use of violence. That's something that works out of context and that's the power of "Potemkin", whether the unforgettable baby carriage, the killed mother and the broken glasses eye, at the very moment where it happens, we don't think of the Tsar, we think of War.
So the argument that the massacre never happened doesn't hold up, Eisenstein wanted to shot the opposite of truth in the realm of plausibility, and that's why the sequence is powerful regardless of the context, it represents something that can happen anywhere and anytime, and for real. While seeing the woman carrying the child, I start thinking of the Vietnamese girl burnt by the Napalm and running scared and naked on the picture, I thought of that Palestinian boy who died in a shootout while his father was begging the soldiers to cease fire.
"Potemkin" uses a sort of universal language that transcend the barriers of time and countries, many propaganda movies couldn't work on a universal level because they're too specific. When Goebbels saw Eisenstein's masterpiece, he knew the Third Reich needed a similar movie and on that level, "The Triumph of the Will" also became a landmark on its own, but being a masterpiece of propaganda doesn't make it a masterpiece in its own right. "Potemkin" can get away with it because the film never let speeches undermine the message, it trusts the images and more than anything, it trusts the editing.
Eisenstein needed a movie to celebrate the revolution of 1905, he initially planned to make an epic project based on many historical chapters but weather convinced him (once again) to have a specific focus, one central piece: from the Potemkin, the spirit of the revolution would be magnified. See, it's all about imploding from within, one image that speaks a thousand words, for a million persons.
The steps massacre became a staple of filmmaking, countlessly replayed in movies for thrills or laughs, elevating it into one of the greatest movies ever, the merit goes to Eisenstein who was so creative and daring that he didn't just made a film about revolution, but he made a revolution!