100th Anniversary Screening
This milestone birthday for Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary action epic also celebrates the birth of one of the fundamental building blocks of cinema. With this silent masterpiece, which was commissioned to mark the 20th anniversary of the first Russian revolution, Eisenstein innovated and perfected the art of montage. In his, and his Soviet compatriots’, estimation—confirmed by a century of cinematic evidence thereafter—when you collide two contrasting shots, you generate a synthesis of meaning. String these shots together in a sequence, and you have a symphony of ideological resonance. Potemkin features at least one of the most famous scenes in all of movie history: the massacre on the Odessa steps. The clash of motion and mayhem has inspired (i.e., been stolen by) everyone from Francis Bacon to Terry Gilliam to Brian De Palma. As one of the first films to show the scope of what cinema can achieve, Battleship Potemkin has been a fixture in the upper reaches of Sight & Sound’s poll of the Greatest Films of All Time since it was first published in 1952. But beyond its academic significance, the raw power of Eisenstein’s image-making (a baby carriage in peril! a woman struck in the eye during the melee!) still packs a punch. ~OO