Talk:The Battleship Potemkin

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Film Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Films. This project is a central gathering of editors working to build comprehensive and detailed articles for film topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start
This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
Top
This article has been rated as Top-importance on the priority scale.
Maintenance A plot summary needs to be added to this film article, or the current one needs to be expanded.
Maintenance Please add more information about the cast and the crew, discussing the "behind the scenes" aspects of the production process, and giving insights into the casting and staffing where possible. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines for more advice.
Russia Portal
This page is within the scope of WikiProject Russia. If you would like to participate, please join the project and help with our open tasks.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
High This article has been rated as High-importance on the assessment scale.

Contents

[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)

Apparently, they do now [1], though I haven't tried downloading it so I don't know what the quality's like, or if there's a better version somewhere. --Estrellador* 17:16, 24 February 2007 (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.

<by user:128.211.176.167>

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)

[edit] Lookey Likey

Poster of The Battleship Potemkin
Poster of The Battleship Potemkin

Sorry to be frivilous for a moment - but does the chap in this poster look like Ronnie Barker to you? --kylet 18:51, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Not to be frivilous either, but this is the most boring movie ever made. --Ymallet 15:05, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Not to be frivolous as well, but Wikipedia is neither a blog nor a forum. Cmapm 16:01, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I respectfully agree with the Ronnie Barker comment. Also, although I have not seen the film in its entirety, it does sound pretty boring. As for the last comment: well that's just where you're wrong I'm afraid. Sorry mate! Dr Spam (MD) 07:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influences

One cannot forget Bonnie and Clyde, the film, when Warren Beatty is shot in the eye. This sequence comes from the film.

As well, in Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, the sequence with the buggy going down the steps arise from this film.

Woody Allen refers to this film as well, see Bananas and Love and Death.

The Guilty Gear series has a character named Potemkin, perhaps as an homage to the ship.

(Remember, Potemkin was and is a Russian proper name- sometimes a name is just a name Saxophobia 20:34, 4 June 2007 (UTC))


In 1928 director Boris Barnet parodied the Odessa Steps sequence in "The House on Trubnaya Square" as a chase for a runaway duck causes havoc in Red Square.Saxophobia 20:32, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Note the problem with note 4. Looks like someone messed up the reference syntax --Droll 03:58, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixed.Cop 633 15:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Kill the Jews"?

Can anyone explain as to why, at about minute 42, a well-dressed man in the crowd randomly shouts "Kill the Jews" as they are rallying in support of the sailors? That just seems really odd, and maybe it should be mentioned in the article.

Rebelyell2006 18:44, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

I believe this is a reference to the Tsarist regime's use of anti-semitism to try to direct popular anger away from them. Notice how before that scene, one of the main speakers says, let nothing divide us or something of that sort (ie, don't let ethnicity divide us), and notice how the well-dressed man was brutally beaten afterwards. This could actually be a reference especially to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was commissioned by those against the Russian revolutionary movement and tried to point to Jews as the cause of the world's problems instead of the repressive regimes that fueled revolutionary resentment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.52.215.67 (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps this should be mentioned in the article.

Rebelyell2006 21:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

^I agree. There's a pretty clear attempt in this article to link Potemkin to the nazis, one which I think is pretty unsupported historically or content-wise in the film. I took out the unsourced claim that it "influenced" Triumph of the Will. The film also likely influenced John Ford and Frank Capra... Regardless of your ideology, this is an enormously important film in the history of cinema and deserves a much better and balanced article. Negatia 20:02, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the reason for the "Kill the Jews" shout was a reference to historical reality. There were revolts against the Tsar in many towns and cities in the Russian Empire in 1905, and these included a wave of anti-semitic attacks. Whilst researching the history of Dnepropetrovsk I found a paper on dealing with anti-semitism in the revolt there: see Surh, Gerald, Ekaterinoslav City in 1905: Workers, Jews, and Violence, published in International Labor and Working-Class History No. 64, Fall 2003, pages 139–166.--Toddy1 (talk) 12:56, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Toddy1, its the other way around - tsar = anti-jews, revolution = pro-jews --Topk (talk) 23:29, 29 March 2008 (UTC)