A Classic Soviet Propaganda Film That Influenced the Entire Western World

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2002)

Filmed throughout the year of 1925; Potemkin was first brought about when director Sergi Eisenstein was commissioned in March of 1925 to make a feature on the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution in 1905. What the final script came out was a script that ran over a hundred pages in length (big for that time) and would attempt to highlight all the main actions and events that happened up to the revolution.
Altogether looking at the film now it can be understandable why the film was banned from any Western countries for nearly 30 years. It's a full ahead propaganda film for the early name Soviet Union. But wonderfully made film.
One of the most memorable and harrowing scenes in the film is the 'Odessa Steps' massacre. A set piece that only lengthed for at least 3 pages in the script but would become one of the most celebrated and most used sequences in the world of cinema. What makes 'The Odessa Steps' so great tho is nothing that it is shot; but the way in which the sequence is edited to together with fast cutting shots added together, which would come about being called 'Montage Editing'; the quick shots of a woman crying, of soldiers marching down the steps firing volleys into the fleeing cowards, the shot back to the woman with blood over her face then one's of soldier's feet marching gives the impression of force and power.
The only problem is with the film is that it gives the impression that it lasts too long; the full version which was re-cut when it was allowed to enter Western cinema's (or even straight to video) was cut down to 63 minutes, from the 189 minute oringal (in which sadly the negative of the epic has been lost somewhere in russia and would probably never be found). The film carries on to long; into which the acting is very poor. But that can be understandble for a silent film; and especially a film of this scale.
The reason for such over the top acting is how can you bring about your charcter's views or opinions in any other way. You can't with sound; because their wasn't any, you can't with continues dialogue captions, because the audience would become to anoyed for reading all the time and not watching in which is the main reason for the cinema, to show moving images that astound the audience. If the film didn't astound the audinece; then the 'Odessa Steps' scene does for film makers later on in the cinema. With films such as:
Woody Allen's 'Bannas' (1971) Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' (1985) Brain DePalma's 'The Untouchables' (1987) and even Leslie Nielson's 'Naked Gun 2 1/2 The Smell of Fear (1991)

If anymore interest in the Soviet Cinema in the 1920's check out "Strike" as well.