Review of Battleship Potemkin (1925) by Jessie C — 28 Mar 2015

I'm not going to lie, I did not enjoy this. I appreciate the importance of the film and the enormous steps it took for early cinema but wow, I was so excited for it to be over. Obviously the context of the film is incredibly important, and it is vital to note that this is a propaganda film. That being said, there aren't really characters. It's like there were just two: the people and the soldiers. The stair scene is just as legendary as it is hailed to be. Halfway through it I noticed my jaw was dropped open as much as possible. I've been watching early films lately and I must say that the violence is shocking. It's not especially graphic or even realistically performed, but the reasons they have to start fighting and the quickness of it was jarring. These soldiers just gunning down civilians was incredibly disturbing and I can't believe that that is a thing that happened, and continues to happen. There were a lot of creative angles and techniques used, absolutely. Just the way the story was told left me guessing a lot. Wasn't a lot of build-up to action, it was just suddenly inaction to action- and since I didn't know what was going on all the time, it was really confusing. Just not a format I'm used to, but I'm working on it.

There were so many points where I was like "okay, I GET IT" like so many repetitive shots and close-ups held for far too long. There were a lot of shots that should have been cut shorter because it would continue on even after the characters were mostly out of frame. There was one scene where two people walk away and the scene keeps going until all we can see is their ankles and I was like, "ok, what do these ankles symbolize" Just kidding, haha, I mean I can't knock this film too much because it's truly an important part of the foundation of modern cinema, and these guys were out there with nothing but ideas and some film equipment. They didn't have film schools, they didn't have movies to watch and study, they didn't have books about filmmaking. I do appreciate this movie's contribution to film but I did not have a good time watching this film. The story didn't do it for me and the shooting style was extremely frustrating to watch. The stair scene is worth a viewing, but I don't intend to watch this again. Not sure why any government would endorse/pay for this, but I'll never pretend to understand Russia.

Did I enjoy it? No.

Do I ever want to see it again? No.

Do I ever want to include it in my own collection? No.

6/10.

Bye love you.

-Jessie Carlson.