Talk:The Battleship Potemkin

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1 available non-proprietary format?
2 Russian
3 Review poor
4 "Historical context" section removed
5 Premiere
6 A hit or not a hit
7 Lookey Likey
8 Influences

[edit] available non-proprietary format?

Isn't this movie available somewhere in a non-proprietary format? Copyright has expired, so it's legal to put a link to a good quality version on Wikipedia. I tried looking on Archive.org, but they don't have it (yet?). Guaka 16:14, 4 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Russian

It is usually written in simplified form Потемкин in Russia (instead of Потёмкин), but it is still pronounced in English "Potyomkin", not "Potyemkin" (in fact, it is pronounced "Patyomkin" because of unstressed "o") Pibwl 23:59, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Review poor

The Maoist International Movement review here is actually a fairly poor-quality and perfunctory review. There is a brief biography of Eisenstein and only a paragraph or two about the movie itself, focusing mostly on one or two very minor details. From reading this review, a reader would get very little idea of the historical significance of the film or even what the film was about. My personal opinion is that this is not a worthy external link. -- Curps 18:25, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "Historical context" section removed

The whole section removed.

Being released in 1925, it has been suggested that the film was a response to the social disorder of the Russian Civil War. 1921 had seen the Kronstadt Rebellion, a naval revolt in St Petersberg, in response to the War Communism policies of Bolshevik rule. The release of the film could be seen as part of an ongoing attempt to pacify and rehabilitate the Navy and the Russian people as a whole.

This is a speculation. mikka (t) 18:12, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Premiere

Page about the December 5 says, that it was premiered on December 5, 1926, however the film was made in 1925. What is the truth behind this? --romanm (talk) 12:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A hit or not a hit

An anon tries to add a change that the movie was not a hit with Russian audiences and even added a strange reference ("Ivan the Terible"; without actual quote ). Either he is simply trolling or doesn't understand the time and place. Any new film was a hit in Russia in 1925. there were not so many of them. You were watching what you got. And it was to the tastes of workers and peasants. And probably not to the tastes of refined esthets. `'mikka (t) 21:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Russian Masses did not understand or enjoy Potemkin:

"[Eisenstein] was disappointed when Potemkin failed to attract masses of viewers." Neuberger, Joan. Ivan the Terrible. London 2003. pg 7

"No thinking filmgoer can remain unmoved by Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (more popular abroad than in Russia)...But the masses did not repsond with enthusiasm to the language of montage because of its conceptual and stylistic difficulties." Stites, Richard. Russian Popular Culture. Cambridge 1992. pg 55

"History as parable: Christmas Eve, 1925, the Moscow premiere of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Two weeks later, it opens to the Russian public on the same day as a splashy American production of Robin Hood. In just a few weeks Robin Hood is a box-office hit, while Potemkin is 'quietly pulled from the grubby, second-rate cinemas where it had been playing to almost deserted houses.' Eisenstein has bombed." http://www.goodreports.net/reviews/moviesandmoney.htm

And from the entry here at Wikipedia on Eisenstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Eisenstein): "Furthermore, Eisenstein's experimentalistic films, while successful critically abroad, were not terribly interesting to Soviet film audiences, who wanted action films with comprehensible stories. The average Soviet simply wanted a version of The Mark of Zorro or Metropolis with the hero a Communist and the villain a Capitalist."

Russian people did not enjoy Russian films during this time period. Most of the movies they went to see were American films.

The change is restored, although I find the quotes above not especially convincing. That Robin Hood was more attractive I may believe, but the whole description of the events fits American movie business model, rather than Soviet propaganda film model. `'mikka (t) 00:45, 2 May 2006 (UTC)