Seminal Cinema
As I walk into Grove auditorium to watch Battleship Potemkin, I'm not quite sure what to expect. I know little about the silent film era it derives from, and even less about the Soviet revolution it's based on, yet I'm sure this isn't an opportunity to be missed. Tony Smith - President of Magdalen College and an established film historian - introduces the film which begins playing to a transfixed audience.
The film, directed by Sergei Eisenstein, was originally intended to be part of a longer film to commemorate the 1905 revolutions against the Czarist regime, but after filming the Odessa steps sequence, one episode became the whole. Banned in 1930 due mainly to Edmund Meisel's emotive score, twenty years later it was already classed as one of the greatest films ever made. Even today it is relevant, not just in its themes of brotherhood, inhumanity and hierarchical power, but in its imagery of aggressor and defenceless victim; a shot of a soldier stepping on a child's hand is effortlessly more horrific than the blood and gore you find splattered across the multiplex screens.
But it is the music that is the key. The flowing rhythms for sailing boats in the harbour, juxtaposed in the next moment with the heavy discords of the steps of armed men. Synchronised with the Eisenstein's dramatic aesthetic, it says more than a script possibly could. The live music, played skilfully by Andrew Youdell, makes the atmosphere electric.
The film's structure is organised in symphonic form with five movements. Though Eisenstein wanted to concentrate on editing and montage - likening the shocks he aimed for with the explosions of an internal combustion engine - the cinematography is surprisingly effective. A close up of a crucifix stuck into the ship's deck like a hatchet raises questions about the morality on board. Later, shots of soldiers' shadows marching over the body of a woman provide a stark reminder of their brutality. The audience did not turn their heads away once.
Battleship Potemkin serves as a challenge to the conventional attitude that old films are 'boring and slow', often meaning that we are not given an opportunity to see them. The film is at times melodramatic, but the audience reaction reflected an ability to look beyond that.
William Brown of the Magdalen Film Society said at the event: "Oxford has been slow in building up a solid reputation for film study despite its integration into subjects such as languages or history, and it is time for it to recognise film as an art form worthy of independent study."
"The turnout for the screening shows that the audience - and student interest - is there if given a chance."
13th Nov 2003