https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JqYZ_9ffyw

Considered one of the most important films in the history of silent pictures, as well as possibly Eisenstein's greatest work, Battleship Potemkin brought Eisenstein's theories of cinema art to the world in a powerful showcase; his emphasis on montage, his stress of intellectual contact, and his treatment of the mass instead of the individual as the protagonist. The film tells the story of the mutiny on the Russian ship Prince Potemkin during the 1905 uprising.

After the success of Strike (1924), Sergei Eisenstein was commissioned by the Soviet government to make a film commemorating the uprising of 1905. Eisenstein's scenario, boiled down from what was to have been a multipart epic of the occasion, focussed on the crew of the battleship Potemkin. Fed up with the extreme cruelties of their officers and their maggot-ridden meat rations, the sailors stage a violent mutiny. This, in turn, sparks an abortive citizens' revolt against the Czarist regime. The film's centerpiece is staged on the Odessa Steps, where in 1905 the Czar's Cossacks methodically shot down rioters and innocent bystanders alike. To Eisenstein, this single bloody incident was the crucible of the successful 1917 Bolshevik revolution, and the result was the "Odessa Steps sequence," which is often considered the most famous sequence ever filmed; it is certainly one of the most imitated, perhaps most overtly by Brian De Palma in The Untouchables (1987). This triumph of Eisenstein's "rhythmic editing" technique occurs in the middle of film, not as the climax, as more current film structure might do it. All the actors in the film were amateurs, selected by Eisenstein because of their "rightness" as types for their roles.

The film is composed of five episodes:
1."Men and Maggots" (Люди и черви), in which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat;
2."Drama on the deck" (Драма на тендре), in which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulinchuk, is killed;
3."A Dead Man Calls for Justice" (Мёртвый взывает) in which Vakulinchuk's body is mourned over by the people of Odessa;
4."The Odessa Staircase" (Одесская лестница), in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans; and
5."The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron" (Встреча с эскадрой), in which the squadron tasked with stopping the Potemkin instead declines to engage, and its sailors cheer on the rebellious battleship.

Uploaded by RosesOfTime on Dec 17, 2011