Soviet Montage: Eisentstein's Battleship Potemkin

The Odessa Steps sequence is the climax of the film, and one where nearly every viewer will feel the tremendous tension brought out by montage editing. The Odessa Step sequence begins with a series of close-ups and medium shots on the elated faces of certain people within the crowd all of whom are waving & cheering the mutinous sailors of the Potemkin with some shots focusing on particular objects such as a white parasol, pince-nez and a baby carriage. This creates a state of equilibrium (Todorov).

With the appearance of an intertitle the music suddenly stops followed instantly by a few flashing close ups of a dark haired woman’s head with her mouth agape as if in shock or terror. This then cuts to a mid shot of the feet of the crowd starting to run down the steps from left to right desperately trying to flee from the armed troop’s firing. A long shot of a legless man's uneasy but rapid descent down the steps seems to symbolize the people’s current situation. The source of terror & reason for chaos is revealed in a long shot from the reverse angle, showing a horizontal line of troops in white carrying rifles approaching the people on the steps. The mise-en-scene is framed with a statue of Duc de Richelieu who once served as a Russian Major General at the top of the stairs its almost as if governing the troops, the crowd appear to be trapped in-between the Church and the soldiers. Possibly this is symbolizing the control that the tsarist monarchy had over the church and people. Here Eisenstein uses nearly a hundred shots to piece together his montage of collision in order to distinguish the terror and chaos being produced by the machine-like soldiers and their unrelenting onslaught of the citizens. Eisenstein’s collision editing causes a dramatic psychological impact causing an emotional response of tension & horror.

During the Odessa steps time is drawn out as Eisenstein manipulates temporal verisimilitude through over-tonal montage for emotional response, making an already shocking scene even more terrifying. Time is drawn out within the scene when a woman notices a baby’s carriage about to roll down the steps. There are cuts from the mother who has just been shot to the baby carriage rolling slightly, then away and back again. By drawing out this scene, a great deal of suspense mounts. The apprehension created in watching the baby carriage roll back and forth over such a long period of time almost gives the audience a kind of reprieve when it finally goes down the steps. The violent scenes in the Odessa step sequence apply to the domain which Dyer describes as ‘intensity’- the ‘ experiencing of emotion, directly, fully, unambiguously’, this intensity which Eisenstein employs evokes a response ‘ in a way that makes them seem uncomplicated, direct and vivid.

A camera dollies beside a mother running down the steps with her son this tracking shot cuts to a low angle shot of soldiers firing with their faces obscured leaving then with certain anonymity; perhaps suggesting that evil has no face. The juxtaposed shots of the gun fire & that of the mother and son running suggests one will be hit, this is confirmed when the boy falls down from being shot in the back. The mother continues down the steps unaware until the child calls out to her, upon hearing this she realizes the boy is gone and turns to look into the oncoming crowd. She sees the boy on the steps reaching out his hand before collapsing. The camera cuts to an extreme close-up of the horrified face of the mother evoking shock and empathy. This cuts to a wide shot of the crowd stampeding down the steps trampling and kicking the child’s lifeless body. The camera crosses the axis of action and flips direction creating an unnerving uncomfortable effect on the audience violating spatial verisimilitude and continuity editing principles. The following close-ups of the boy’s torso, body and hand being stamped on leaves viewers mortified, and sickened as we can only empathize with the mother. Patrick Phillips, an introduction to film studies, “the horror audience, whether male or female, does not have control of the look but is forced to take on a passive, classically feminine role, identifying with the pain and suffering of the protagonist.”

Shadows are utilized for dramatic effect by the way in which the sun shines down upon the steps creating harsh contrasts. The angles of which the marching soldier’s boots and legs are shot while they descend the steps are accentuated by long looming shadows caused by the overhead sun. Later, when she stands in front of the line of faceless soldiers, her figure appears to be caged in by vertical lines resembling prison bars, caused by the shadows of the soldiers creating the effect of the mother holding her dead son to be trapped- she can’t escape the outcome.

The sequence constantly contrasts between the collective emotionless troops and the terrified stampeding mob. Eisenstein cuts between close-ups of the soldiers boots/rifles and extreme long shots of them marching ever closer leaving jump shots of the dying or fleeing. With the on-going comparison of this shots rhythmic montage occurs, the two rhythms created by one the slow marching soldiers and the shorter length shots of the chaotic crowd. 

 

The rhythmic drum of the soldiers' feet as they descend the steps violates all metrical demands.  Unsynchronized with the beat of the cutting, this drumming is off-beat each time, and the shot itself is entirely different in its solution with each of these appearances.  The sequences final moment of tension mounts with the baby’s carriage, the shift from the rhythm of the descending feet to another rhythm - a new kind of downward movement. Between the slow marching of the soldiers and the quicker beat of the montage.  Indeed, as Eisenstein suggested, the rhythm of the movement within the frame and the rhythm of the cutting only begin to parallel when the pram, described by Eisenstein as a 'progressing accelerator', begins its descent downwards.

 

The next shot is of the famous editing sequence with the young woman and her baby’s carriage. Her falling is shown in several overlapping cuts. Her fall is extended and repeated through montage editing as Eisenstein tries to provoke more effect and emotion by overlooking actual time and rather elongating the time to produce more effect and emotion. 

Finally falling to the ground her body uncontrollably nudges the carriage over the steps and starts it long descent. Eisenstein alternates the scene of the carriage falling with shots of a woman wearing pince-nez, a young male also wearing glasses and a final cut of Cossacks wielding sabers slaughtering the citizens that escaped fire at the bottom of the steps. Just before the sequence concludes the young male is shown yelling as the carriage eventually overturns, it then quickly cuts to a Cossack slashing his saber three times in a downward action this leaves the audience unsure of what the Cossack was striking as the following close up shot is off the elderly woman wearing pince-nez one with a smashed lens and a blood poured down her face from her right eye.

Eisenstein juxtaposed the shots of the baby rolling down the stairs with close ups of the suffering citizens which in a way seems to suggest the life that has been snatched from the child with its accelerated (reference to the speed of which the carriage descends) death going through shots the baby symbolizing new life passes by the middle-aged people (dying) ultimately cutting to the dead mans body before the overturning of the carriage the likes of which could be also be interpreted as an open casket for the child.

Over tonal montage can also be seen in the Odessa Steps sequence in the development of the editing along simultaneous metric, rhythmic, and tonal lines—the increase in editing tempo, the conflict between editing and movement within the frame, and the juxtapositions of light and shadow, intersecting lines, etc.

The Battleship Potemkin impressed film audiences around the world. “This is not a picture—” the film critic of Germany’s leading newspaper, the Berliner Tageblatt, wrote, “it is a reality. Eisenstein has created the most powerful and artistic film in the whole world.” As a historical drama Eisenstein certainly provokes emotion with the use of montage techniques to enhance intensity creating a psychological impact on the audience even today Battleship Potemkin is still viewed as a film that creates high spectator pleasure in terms of intensity, terror and suspense.