‘Battleship Potemkin’ at 100: how the Soviet film redrew cinema’s boundaries
Alexander Howe looks into the impact of Sergei Eisenstein’s historical epic, released a century ago today
People crowd together in the sun. All smiles and waves. Joyous.
Pandemonium erupts. Panic hits like a shockwave as those assembled swivel and bolt, spilling down a seemingly infinite flight of steps.
Armed men appear at the crest, advancing with mechanical precision. We are pulled into the chaos, carried with the writhing mass as it surges downward. Images sear themselves on the retina. A child crushed underfoot. A mother cut down mid-stride.
An infant’s steel-framed pram rattling free, gathering speed as it hurtles downward. A woman’s glasses splinter, skewing across her bloodied face as her mouth stretches open in a soundless scream.
I’ve just described one of the most famous sequences in the history of film: the massacre of unarmed civilians on the steps of Odessa. Instantly recognisable and endlessly quoted, it is the centrepiece of Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece, Battleship Potemkin, which turns 100 on December 21 (today).
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