Kutub

Battleship Potemkin (Russian: ?????????? «????????», Bronenosets Potyomkin), sometimes rendered as Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a dramatized version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime.

Battleship Potemkin has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958.

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

The most celebrated scene in the film is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs). In this scene, the Tsar's soldiers in their white summer tunics march down a seemingly endless flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing volleys into a crowd. A separate detachment of mounted Cossacks charges the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. The victims include an older woman wearing Pince-nez, a young boy with his mother, a student in uniform and a teenage schoolgirl. A mother pushing an infant in a baby carriage falls to the ground dying and the carriage rolls down the steps amidst the fleeing crowd.

The scene is perhaps the best example of Eisenstein's theory on montage, and many films pay homage to the scene, including Terry Gilliam's Brazil, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, Tibor Takacs' Deathline, Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box, George Lucas's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Chandrashekhar Narvekar's Hindi film Tezaab, Shuko Murase's anime Ergo Proxy and Peter Sellers' The Magic Christian. Several films spoof it, including Woody Allen's Bananas and Love and Death, Australia, Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker's Naked Gun 33?: The Final Insult (though actually a parody of The Untouchables), Soviet-Polish comedy Deja Vu, Jacob Tierney's The Trotsky and the Italian comedy Il secondo tragico Fantozzi. The Irish painter Francis Bacon (1909--1992) was profoundly influenced by Eisenstein's images,

Since its release, The Battleship Potemkin has often been renowned as one of the finest propaganda films ever made and considered amongst the greatest films of all time. The film was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels World's Fair in 1958.

Similarly, in 1952, Sight & Sound magazine cited The Battleship Potemkin as the fourth greatest film of all time and has been voted within the top ten in the magazine's five subsequent decennial polls, dropping to number 11 in the 2012 poll.

In 2007, a two-disc, restored version of the film was released on DVD. Time magazine's Richard Corliss named it one of the Top 10 DVDs of the year, ranking it at #5. It ranked #3 in Empire's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010. In April 2011, Battleship Potemkin was re-released in UK cinemas, distributed by the British Film Institute. On its re-release, Total Film magazine gave the film a five-star review, stating: "...nearly 90 years on, Eisenstein's masterpiece is still guaranteed to get the pulse racing."

CAST:
Aleksandr Antonov — Grigory Vakulinchuk (Bolshevik Sailor)
Vladimir Barsky — Commander Golikov
Grigori Aleksandrov — Chief Officer Giliarovsky
Ivan Bobrov — Young Sailor Flogged While Sleeping (as I. Bobrov)
Mikhail Gomorov — Militant Sailor
Aleksandr Levshin — Petty Officer
N. Poltavseva — Woman With Pince-nez
Konstantin Feldman — Student Agitator
Beatrice Vitoldi — Woman with the baby carriage

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (23 January 1898 -- 11 February 1948), né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage". He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike (1924), Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1927), as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Ivan the Terrible (1944, 1958).