"Battleship Potemkin" is a motion picture so we can automatically assume that as a source, there are limitations. There are fabricated scenes such as the most famous scene in the movie, the "Odessa Steps". The massacre did occur but nowhere near the steps of Odessa. And there are most likely events that did happen during the mutiny that Eisenstein chose to leave out. Battleship Potemkin was directed by Eisenstein who came from a Jewish middle class family. Eisenstein studied at Petrograd's Institute of Civil Engineering. After the Civil War he went to Moscow, intending to study Japanese art. Eisenstein studied under Vsevolod Meyerhold. After his film "Strike" came out in 1925, Eisenstein was presented with a new project, "Bronenosets Potyomkin". The film took four months to finish and is one of the greatest cinematic masterpieces in history.
Almost every piece of art created during the lifespan of the Soviet Union had hints of propaganda. This film regarding the 1905 Revolution was purely for propaganda purposes. One of his goals was to test the effects of music and emotion on an audience. This film is was the first place we saw the usage of rhythmic editing (montage). Eisenstein carefully edited the movie so there was an assortment of swift camera movement, close-ups for the purpose of perspective and shock effects, varying lengths to contribute to the rhythm. Even the commentary was selected to appear in appropriate scenes to add to the overall emotional feel of the movie. The thing I find most shocking about this movie is how, although it is a silent film, it characterizes the people in the scenes. Eisenstein managed through close-ups to give each performer an identity. This movie was a chance for Eisenstein to test his cinematic theories.
With every piece of propaganda there are pros and cons. A good thing about this source is that it's from that time period and a primary source. It is what the people were seeing, what influenced the people and what the people believed in. This film shows the "injustices" of the Old Regime which coincidently foreshadowed events seen under Stalin's regime. Of course with propaganda, we can only trust it as a source to a certain extent. Propaganda is created with the purpose of influencing and persuading people's thoughts. Things are exaggerated and things are ignored to achieve the goal. Since the Battleship Potemkin was a film, there would be some fictional elements in it, we can only trust it to a certain extent.
The Battleship Potemkin was released in 1925 directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It was voted the greatest film of all time at the Brussels, Belgium, World's Fair 1958. It is a fictional narrative film meant to glorify the mutiny of the soldiers on board the Battleship Potemkin in 1905. Since it is a Soviets propaganda film, there are some unavoidable elements of biases and exaggerations. For example, the way Eisenstein filmed it conveyed a stronger emotional reaction to the audience. He argued that film has its greatest impact not by the smooth unrolling of images, but by their juxtaposition. There were some really good abrupt cutting between fearful faces of the unarmed people and the strong and firm legs of the soldiers walking down the stairs slaughtering the people. It did a really good job in presenting to the audience how terrifying it was. Also, there was no single main character in the film, but a vast majority of people, again, it helped the conveyed and maybe misguide the audience to feel terrified for the people.
Even though the Battleship Potemkin was most famous for its Odessa Steps' scene, and this scene was often referred to as a fact, the massacre never took place on the Odessa Steps. Actually, the massacre did happen but not on the Odessa Steps.
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