SERGEI M. EISENSTEIN, 1925
Originally supposed to be just a part of a huge epic The Year 1905 depicting
the Revolution of 1905, Potemkin is the story of the mutiny of the crew of
the Potemkin in Odessa harbor. The film opens with the crew protesting
maggoty meat and the captain ordering the execution of the dissidents. An
uprising takes place during which the revolutionary leader is killed. This
crewman is taken to the shore to lie in state. When the townspeople gather
on a huge flight of steps overlooking the harbor, czarist troops appear and
march down the steps breaking up the crowd. A naval squadron is sent to
retake the Potemkin but at the moment when the ships come into range, their
crews allow the mutineers to pass through. Eisenstein's non-historically
accurate ending is open-ended thus indicating that this was the seed of the
later Bolshevik revolution that would bloom in Russia. The film is broken
into five parts: Men and Maggots, Drama on the Quarterdeck, An Appeal from
the Dead, The Odessa Steps, and Meeting the Squadron.
