Part Four: The Odessa Staircase Of Battleship Potemkin

In Part Four: The Odessa Staircase of Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein uses the various techniques stated in his “Methods of Montage.” Specifically, we look at the scene in which the mother begins to run down the steps with her son by the hand. The establishing shot is in the Odessa steps (i.e. the staircase) since it tells us where the scene will take place. It starts with a rhythmic montage because the music playing in the background is determined by the content of the scene. The visual patterns of the people running and the enemy marching is demonstrated through the fast-paced music. When the boy gets shot there is cross-cutting from the son to the mother to show that everything is happening simultaneously and in the same space. Then, there is a jump cut where the …show more content…
Additionally, there is an extreme close-up of the woman’s face done to display the shock that she feels; it is the use of tonal montage because it is conveying her emotions. Then we cross-cut to the scene on a bigger scale, where the people are running down the steps, however, this time the focus is on the boy who is being stepped on multiple times. Every time the boy is hurt there is an extreme close-up to each body-part being stepped on to give the reader feelings of anxiety because the boy seems helpless (again Tonal montage). Then, the scene returns to the mom by using another extreme close-up shot to her eyes and then retracting to a medium close-up shot to show her hands on her head. This gives the reader an idea of how shocked and angry the mother is which alludes to what happens in the future. She then walks towards the camera to show her determination for what she is about to do. Additionally, it appears he was dragged from the top of the stairs to the bottom such that the mother had to go back down the stairs to grab