BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN directed by Sergei Eisenstein (Russia, 1925)
How can this be one of the greatest movies ever made? – it’s silent and it’s in black and white FFS!
This, I hasten to add, is not my personal opinion but the kind of comment you might stumble upon if you click on clips or watch the full movie on You Tube.
Educating the lumpenproletariat is going to take longer than expected, and, stirring though Eisenstein’s images are, his film was not, nor ever will be, the revolutionary stimulus he hoped for.
This film nevertheless is rightly celebrated for turning propaganda into art. Eisenstein tweaks the facts by taking one real historic event and inventing another with the direct aim of inciting rebellion against Tsarist corruption and oppression.
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