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Battleship Potemkin is a 1925 Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein. It presents a dramatised version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against its officers and the public protests that followed in the city of Odessa in Ukraine. It is one of the masterworks of silent cinema. In 1958 an international critics’ poll voted it the greatest film of all time.
In the film, Eisenstein made full use of his idea about the “montage of attractions” or “dialectical montage”. He believed that montage should proceed from rhythm, not from the story. The filmmaker should cut shots to lead up to a certain point and not to linger and focus on individual characters. The film was the ultimate expression of his ideas, which culminated in the last scene, the Odessa Steps sequence. The sequence incarnates Eisenstein’s theory of dialectical montage by which the meaning is generated by the collision of opposing shots.
The Odessa Steps sequence
The Odessa Steps sequence is one of the most celebrated and influential scenes in the history of cinema. It pictures the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps (aka Potemkin Steps). In the scene, the Tsar’s soldiers in their white uniforms march down a flight of steps in a rhythmic, machine-like fashion, firing at the crowd. A separate group of Cossacks fires at the crowd at the bottom of the stairs.
An elderly grandmother, a young boy with his mother, a uniformed student, and an adolescent schoolgirl were among the victims. One of the most memorable scenes in film history occurs when a mother pulling a baby carriage collapses and dies on the ground, and the carriage slides down the steps amid the running throng. Although the incident did not occur, it was based on widespread demonstrations in other sections of the city.
The history of Odessa Steps
The actual Odessa Steps are a giant stairway in Odessa. It is the formal entrance into the city from the direction of the sea and its most famous symbol. Odessa, perched on a high plateau, needed direct access to its harbour. The stairs were originally known as the Boulevard Steps or the Richelieu Steps. The first staircase consisted of 200 stairs and was designed in 1825 by the Swiss-Italian architect Francesco Boffo and the Russian architect Avraam Melnikov.
In 1837, the decision was made to build an enormous staircase, which they constructed between 1837 and 1841. On the left side of the stairway, a funicular railway from 1906 transports people instead of walking. At the top of the stairs is the Duke de Richelieu Monument. The Russian sculptor Ivan Petrovich Martos designed the Roman-like statue. Richelieu, although French, served in the Russian Imperial Army and became the first governor of Odessa. In the eleven years of his administration, Odessa grew in size, prospered and became the third-largest city in the Russian Empire by population.
The influence of the Odessa Steps sequence
In addition to being a significant event in the history of film, the Odessa Steps sequence continues to have a significant impact on contemporary filmmakers. Numerous films directed by Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and Alfred Hitchcock all make references to the incident. The two most famous direct allusions are found in George Lucas’s Revenge of the Sith (2005) and Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987). Therefore, it is not surprising that the European Film Academy included the Odessa Steps to the list of “Treasures of European Film Culture by the European Film Academy” and placed a commemorative plate on the stairs at the 6th International Film Festival of Odessa in 2015.
If you love cinema you should put the unique Odessa Steps on your bucket list.
The following two videos present the complete Odessa Steps sequence and the references to the scene in popular movies:
Read also our article on Riesenrad in Vienna, another celebrated location in the list of “Treasures of European Film Culture”.
