Battleship Potemkin - FOW

Battleship Potempkin (1925) Film Analysis

"There is no art without conflict", Eisenstein ] Filmmaker 

A silent film filmed in 1925, Battleship Potemkin was intended as a revolutionary propaganda piece based very loosely on the mutiny of Russian sailors of the Potemkin against their authority figures. After a successful rebellion, an effort to unite the population of Odessa to fight against oppression leads to a fierce massacre of the citizens by the Cossacks.

The story is neatly divided into five equal chapters, with the fourth segment titled ‘The Odessa Steps’ portraying this infamous attack. It is this chapter that has defined the legacy of Battleship Potemkin in modern cinema for transforming the way films are shot and edited.

1. Rhythmic Montage, which is determined not only by the length of shots but also the rhythm of the action itself.
2. Tonal Montage, where editing is used to generate the emotion of a scene.
3. Over tonal Montage, which combines the three aforementioned styles of montage.
4. Intellectual Montage, which uses editing to generate a logical connection between shots and hence add meaning to the entire scene.
5. Metric Montage, where the length and quantity of shots in a sequence are fixed irrespective of the action within each frame. 

Historical View

• Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government in 1925 to direct a film commemorating the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905. Weather and technical difficulties made shooting come of these events impractical, and Eisenstein decided to give up.
• The result was that he made a film only focusing on the mutiny, which became Battleship Potemkin. He also used mostly non-professional actors, preffereing an ensemble which reflected the look and feels common folk. He also put into practice the developing Soviet theory of montage, using new editing techniques to illustrate character traits and communicate ideas without making them explicit with title cards to other methods. 
• First screened for Soviet officials in Moscow on December 21, 1925, and had its public premiere on January 18, 1926. The film was fairly popular in Russia, but are more popularised in foreign countries, where filmmakers and cinephiles proclaimed the film as a major leap forward for the arts of cinema. 
• Various versions are released in the Soviet Union over the years based on the changing political attitudes of Communist Party officials. 
• The film has consistently been held up by critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest films of all time.