I thought I posted already this week... darn.



The Battleship Potemkin was to me one of the most confusing films I'd ever seen, but I won't deny that certain parts were made more effective as a result of the very methods that made it difficult to watch. I thought the class discussion on Tuesday hit it on the head: the staircase portion wasn't just a scene so much as it was an experience. The disorientation caused by the strange editing, harsh angles, and most of all the apparent absence of direction made me feel as though I was experiencing some particularly unpleasant nightmare (and, in contrast, makes Casablanca feel more like a fantasy from yesteryear).



I can understand, in retrospect, why governments would consider the film to be dangerous. Eisenstein's focus on the collective masses instead of individual, three-dimensional characters makes the film feel much less about the rise and fall of any one personality (even the seemingly symbolic Vakulinchuk) than about what I perceived as the general cause and spirit of anarchist rebellion. And yet, in contrast to this focus on crowds and classes of people, Eisenstein wisely takes time to briefly highlight individuals in juxtaposition with the large-scale events. And not just any individuals: the ugliest, strangest, and most vividly memorable characters imaginable, all of which have little to no dialogue and ultimately present themselves on the screen as representatives of ideas and concepts. A fanatical-looking man holding a cross in his hand subtly compares religious followers with madmen; an anonymous mother who dies trying to protect her baby from a massacre embodies all motherly sacrifice.
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