Revolutionary... Battleship Potemkin (1925)

OK, so this is one of those films you probably don’t need anyone else writing about - many hands click the return and continue on with Google - but it’s new to me at least. I’ve never consciously watched Battleship Potemkin all the way through (yes, I know…) but I’ve been aware of it as one of the great films since reading about a list of the best films in my parents’ copy of Purnell's New English Encyclopaedia – we didn’t have the internet in the seventies.  So, Sergei, no pressure then….

Battleship Potemkin impresses immediately as one of the most controlled of films with a precise rhythm that still carries force and which still catches the viewer off guard: this film makes you tense and the sequence on the Odessa Steps is, of course, still horrific – never more so than after recent events in Paris. Why are we so brutal?

The build up to the Russian Revolution in 1917 was a long one with anti-Tsarist political movements dating back well into the nineteenth century – see the Narodniks and their To the People Movement of the 1860-70s - as problems escalated across society and the economy. Karl Marx may have expected the mature industrial economies of Germany or Britain to provide the first communist states but Russia was a more desperate society with a higher proportion of people with nothing to lose…

She also lacked the great national projects of imperial expansion and commercial innovation that drove the other super powers…Rightly or wrongly she lacked this kind of success. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the disastrous war with Japan in 1904-5 which gave rise to much discontent at home and which contributed to the mutiny on the Potemkin which formed the basis of the film and which, twenty years later, was to be celebrated as an important precursor to the Revolution’s eventual victory.

Battleship Potemkin presents as one of the most  beguiling propaganda films in history with one sumptuous image following another as Sergei Eisenstein infuses his narrative with irresitable emotional and moral force. Joseph Goebbels later admiringly declared that no one with any pre-existing political leaning could watch it without wanting to become a Bolshevik (incidentally only newly formed after a split with the minority – Menshevik – element of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 although the sides didn’t dissolve that party until 1912…).

One of its successes may be that it doesn’t necessarily paint the naval commanders and the Cossacks as pantomime villains: they’re bad and brutal enough but believably so:only following the orders of a failing regime. But what really works is Eisenstein’s portrayal of the ordinary individuals caught up in these events`- people who had no option but to make a stance against intolerable conditions and a regime blind to the suffering of its own people.

The men of the Potemkin live in something akin to institutionalized poverty, cramped together in hanging bunks, exhausted from the war and fed maggot-ridden rations. The men are bullied and then told to swallow the meat they’re offered with the ship’s doctor declaring the meat fit for consumption. Tempers fray and the Captain calls his company to a meeting during which a line is drawn and he orders his troops to execute the ring-leaders. In a tense face-off, communicated through the rapid cuts and escalating tension that is Eisenstein’s trademark, the marines cannot fire on their comrades… the mutiny begins.

From order to chaos

The men run riot and soon gain the upper hand by throwing the officers over board. Soon the red flag flies over the ship but not long after their leader Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov) is gunned down, shot from behind by one of the cruellest of the officers, Commander Golikov (Vladimir Barsky). His body hangs grotesquely from the rigging before falling limp into the murky waters: the revolt has its first martyr.

Vakulinchuk falls

Free of naval authority, the crew, now led by Chief Officer Giliarovsky (Grigori Aleksandrov), take the Potemkin to Odessa. They are welcomed  by the majority of the town who come to pay their respects to Vakulinchuk as he lies almost in state. There are strange lingering shots of the body holding a candle and the masses staring in awe at the dead man – every new system needs to celebrate the fallen.

Thousands of extras swarm towards the docks

The people grow in number and all snake their way down streets, along causeways, over bridges and down steps… There’s a joyous mood as they celebrate the start of their move to freedom but as one woman throws her head back in close up and another moves forward to obscure the camera-view with a parasol, there’s a sudden – startling –shift in mood: these people aren’t celebrating they’re running and in total fear as armed militia men stride down the top of the Odessa Steps bayonets drawn and guns pointed directly at the innocents.

The sequence is stunning, visceral and unflinchingly horrific as the rifles start to fire and no one, not women, children or babies is spared. The camera tracks alongside the steps following the soldiers’ relentless, murderous march placing the viewer in the centre of the tragedy hoping for the survival of each individual highlighted in the slaughter. The soldiers force the people down the steps and towards the welcoming blades of mounted Cossacks… there is no mercy.

In reality there was no massacre on the steps but there were plenty more elsewhere. Eisenstein’s film does not mislead, this is what happens when civil war erupts and change was increasingly inevitable once the social contract was ripped apart over the ensuing months of the revolution.

The Tsar regained control but Russian society was changed for ever after the 1905 Revolution and the lessons of solidarity in the face of state oppression were not forgotten. Here in the discipline of the country’s military were the hearts set and the minds open to the truth of the old regime. The film closes with a segment as poignant as the steps as the battleship heads to face the Russian fleet: will they be blown from the waters or will they find merciful solidarity? Whatever happens next is based on actual events…

There have been many versions of Potemkin over the years and I watched the BFI version which is as close to the original as you can get - I think? It's available direct - on sale! - or from Movie Mail.

Every home should have one... but then you probably already do.

Strike (1925) with Wendy Hiscocks, BFI

“I don’t make films to be watched by an impassive eye, I prefer to hit people hard on the nose…”

Ow!

Strike (Стачка or Stachka) was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, his second being The Battleship Potemkin and it is as packed full of ultra-quick cuts and brutal montage as you’d expect but also comedy – who knew the dialectic featured so many laughs? So, anyone who doesn’t think communists have a sense of humour better look away now…

Some modern commentators seem to struggle with the politics but this is history as cinema as cinematic history: a deliberate political statement that says much about the state of Russia when it was made: there’s nothing to agree or disagree with. That is, unless, you’re looking for a fight…

The workers and the managers

Eisenstein wanted to demonstrate the importance of solidarity in the face of capitalist and state oppression and if this language sounds old fangled then imagine you’re living in Tsarist Russia in 1912 when the strike in question took place. At times the American influence is so marked that I kept on thinking how this would all feel if the story was set in the Wild West or mob-dominated Chicago… people need hero-leaders to turn the tables on bullying of all kinds and the moral force remains whatever the injustice confronted.

Of course in the mid-twenties, the Revolution was still being consolidated and part of this process was the establishment of the mythology of the new regime – no different from France and the USA in the early nineteenth century. So, yes, Strike is propaganda: history being written by the victors.

The factory

Leading up to the First World War, there had been a number of large-scale industrial disputes which had been ruthlessly crushed by the old regime: a political system far behind Western Europe in most respects.

In the film there is no trades union and the workers are shown to have almost no rights in the face of a cruel management. Eisenstein’s workers are heroic figures whilst the businessmen, police and agitators are comically ruthless.

Grigori V. Alexandrov

The villainous foreman (Grigori V. Alexandrov) is hyper-actively cruel whilst the pompous, over-fed Director (B.I. Charuev) and his shareholders drink wine and eat caviar as their employees starve.

The spies leap off the page...

The Chief of Security Police (I. Ivanov) pulls together an evil bunch of agents to spy on the workers and disrupt their unity and focus. The Chief looks at a page in his book of spies and the chracters suddenly move into life: a neat device as well as a sophisticated edit.

They are a marvellous collection all gurning away like the animals they are named after; Owl (P.I. Malek), Fox (A.P. Kurbatov), Monkey (A.P. Yanichevski) and Bulldog (Maksim Straukh).

Fox and Monkey

This casting is the result of Eisenstein’s idea of “typage” – the casting of actors by their physical attributes as much as their acting ability per se. He would often spend months looking for the right person or rather the person with the right look. Here it works exceptionally well – were you watching Tod Browning (not that Lon couldn’t have managed them all on his own…)?

The standout “actors” tend to be those playing the leading workers especially Aleksandr Antonov as the organiser of the strike committee, Mikhail Gomorov and Ivan Klyukvin. They’re all tall, strapping and good looking - they would have made excellent cowboys.

Ivan Klyukvin and Aleksandr Antonov

There is already much unrest at the factory as the film begins, with management nervous about agitation: conditions are poor and the workforce is running out of options but they are not yet decided.

The spark for the conflict is the theft of a micrometre from the factory. Yakov, the worker whose tool it was reports the incident to the Foreman who refuses to believe him. Completely innocent but faced with humiliation and the loss of his livelihood, he hangs himself in spite of the desperate efforts of his co-workers to save him. He leaves a note explaining his plight and this leads to the men walking out.

The death of Yakov

The management try to retain control but are thrown into the sludge a suitably slapstick coup de grace for such Keystone Capitalists.

The factory falls silent and the workers decide on a list of demands… an eight hour working day, six for children, a 30% pay rise and a call to be treated fairly… we know it’s too much.

The orders start to pile up and the directors seek help from the Chief of Police who sets his secret agents onto the strikers… they set off to identify the ring leaders and to lay traps.

A day in the country...

The workers are shown in bucolic unity – discussing the way forward in countryside meetings, it’s an idealised vision and one that is rudely interrupted by the arrival of mounted police. Before the panicked proletariat are routed their leader gets them to sit down and the horses back off instinctively.

Subterfuge begins to reap rewards as one of the strike’s leaders (Mikhail Gomorov) is captured, badly beaten and then blackmailed into offering information. The key discussion takes place with the Police Chief as behind them two dwarfs dance on a table covered with champagne and caviar: a deca-dance (sorry).

David Lynch or Sergei Eisenstein?

The strike wears on and the workers begin to suffer depravation as the money runs out: the decision to fight for their rights has cost them dear and there will be worse to come.

The narrative progresses with more Hollywood tonality as the Monkey goes off to recruit the King of Thieves (Boris Yurtsev) to help entrap the strikers. His men sleep in huge barrels and emerge into the daylight in one of the film’s most memorable scenes: clearly their baddies.

The King and the Monkey

The King’s man, led by his Queen (Yudif Glizer) set fire to a shop building and try to get the workers to join them in the loot. The workers are too canny and manage to set off the alarm for the fire brigade to put out the fire but they ignore the flames and are told to turn their hoses on the workers instead.

Spoilers… The subsequent suppression of the workers is relentless and still harrowing: they are battered by the force of the fire hoses and run to ground by mounted police who even invade their tenements.

Their leader is half-drowned before being captured and then the army is sent in to not just finish the job but to eradicate the “problem” once and for all…

The rout of the workers

“Remember Proletarians!” is the film’s final call… although I’m not sure how much room there was for any complacency in the early Stalinist years?

The film tries to entertain as it informs and there were many examples of the brutal oppression it describes in the years leading up to the 1917: the revolution didn’t come from nowhere. In 1924-25 the “dream” of a new world was still very much alive… the incalculable damage of the Stalinist years was yet to fully unfold.

Eisenstein’s film has therefore to be taken at face value: a work of a conviction and of good faith in the Communist project.

The director used performers from the Proletcult Theatre and there’s a raw edge to the acting accentuated by the quick-fire editing. His direction is inventive from first to last including the usual trick shots along with lovely moments such as a workers meeting seen reflected from a puddle. The cinematography from Eduard Tisse also deserves mention.

The film was presented with live accompaniment from Wendy Hiscocks, an experienced silent specialist I’ve not seen before. She wove some lovely lines around the revolutionary themes and clearly enjoyed the communistic carry on too. More evidence if it was ever required of the impact live performance has on our connection to and enjoyment of silent film.

More details of Wendy are available on her website.

Strike is available in DVD from Movie Mail or Bluray from Amazon.com a flying start to one of cinema's most influential directorial careers.