Battleship Potemkin, a Bolshevik propaganda film from 1925, impresses upon its audience the validity of the new Communist regime in Russia by presenting an idealized microcosm of the Bolshevik revolution on the battleship Prince Tavrichesky. Battleship Potemkin curates its audience’s reaction through the rise and fall of tension, which it does most prominently through the synergy of camera shot placement, camera shot order and music. Battleship Potemkin cycles through periods of calm, tension, and action. In this essay, calm is defined as a period in which on-screen subjects are not opposed to one another. Tension occurs when on-screen subjects are opposed to one another, but do not act on their opposition. Conversely, action occurs when
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In this scene Eisenstein utilizes the length and motion in shots to produce nascent motion as Kraucauer discusses in his piece “The Establishment of Physical Existence.” Kracauer describes nascent motion solely through physical subjects which may be manipulated in film to contrast motion with motionlessness. However, his definition of nascent motion can also be applied to contrast between shots with motion and shots without. In the execution scene, short shots of quick motion precede motionless shots. Officers watching the execution stiffen in line. The guards lift their weapons. Vakulinchuk raises his previously lowered head. The priest knocks his cross against his palm in the same way one threatens others with a baseball bat. Then, three motionless shots follow: a life preserver, the bow of the ship, and a trumpet resting on the leg of its player. The third shot also gestures to the fact that the background, present almost continuously in the film, has cut out. The contrast between these motionless and soundless shots with the mobile shots before them exacerbates the lack of action in this moment before what the audience presumes with be crucial action, namely the execution of the sailors. It causes the audience to wait, much like how the plate smashing scene causes the audience to wait. However, unlike the plate scene, in the execution scene the delay is filled with inaction instead of violent action. This inaction gestures to the action to come, which builds the tension necessary for Vakulinchuk to step forward and save the sailors. Then the ship erupts into action; the nascent motion becomes
In this scene Eisenstein utilizes the length and motion in shots to produce nascent motion as Kraucauer discusses in his piece “The Establishment of Physical Existence.” Kracauer describes nascent motion solely through physical subjects which may be manipulated in film to contrast motion with motionlessness. However, his definition of nascent motion can also be applied to contrast between shots with motion and shots without. In the execution scene, short shots of quick motion precede motionless shots. Officers watching the execution stiffen in line. The guards lift their weapons. Vakulinchuk raises his previously lowered head. The priest knocks his cross against his palm in the same way one threatens others with a baseball bat. Then, three motionless shots follow: a life preserver, the bow of the ship, and a trumpet resting on the leg of its player. The third shot also gestures to the fact that the background, present almost continuously in the film, has cut out. The contrast between these motionless and soundless shots with the mobile shots before them exacerbates the lack of action in this moment before what the audience presumes with be crucial action, namely the execution of the sailors. It causes the audience to wait, much like how the plate smashing scene causes the audience to wait. However, unlike the plate scene, in the execution scene the delay is filled with inaction instead of violent action. This inaction gestures to the action to come, which builds the tension necessary for Vakulinchuk to step forward and save the sailors. Then the ship erupts into action; the nascent motion becomes