Over the weekend the Castro Theatre screened Eisenstein's famous Battleship Potemkin, in a new restoration by Kino International. I'd never seen the movie before, even though I recognized its parody in Naked Gun. In the opening scene high waves crash against a pier, symbolizing the revolution sweeping Russia. Eerily, this image combined the tsunami that hit Japan with the uprisings in the Arab world.Though the story is very simple, the atmosphere is tense & expectant. The shots of crowds lined up in Odessa impressed me, & I liked the many close-ups of ordinary-looking people. The graphic brutality of the Odessa Steps sequence does not feel like it belongs to an historic past. The movie has a strange shape, though, since the last act spends a lot of time building up suspense without culminating in any spectacle.
The soundtrack was the original orchestral score by Edmund Meisel. It matches the movie's atmosphere, sounding militant & Russian. The tempo & dynamics ratchet up step by step in the final act, building tension simply. La Marseillaise pops up throughout, though I expected the Internationale instead. This was the 1st time in a while that I've seen a silent movie without live musical accompaniment, & I wished for a live orchestra.
§ Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Dir. Sergei Eisenstein
Castro Theatre
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