Word: potemkine
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...fact Social Realism is the aesthetic implication of a particular ideology, and its representation of events is objective insofar as you share in the ideology. One need only listen to a member of Progressive Labor--the sponsors of this showing of Potemkin--tell you what "objectively" happened at an event, as opposed say to what you thought you were experiencing, to know just how useless the word "objective" has become...
Sergei Eisenstein, the director of Potemkin, was originally a mathematician an engineer. His chief artistic interest was for many years the Japanese theater, perhaps the most stylized of all artistic representations. And in Potemkin Eisenstein made one of the few triumphs within the prescribed Marxist form. Potemkin does not deviate one iota from the social realism formula. It is propaganda, and yet it is compelling. It transcends its message and endures not just as a chapter in art history, but as a still fascinating work...
...story is of the uprising aboard the ship Potemkin. The sailors revolt against the abominable conditions in the Czarist Navy. their comrades of the ship's guard refuse to fire on the mutineers, turning on the officers instead. When news of the uprising reaches Odessa, thousands of supporters rush to the waterfront to send aid or to salute the men of the Potemkin. These supporters are slaughtered by the cossacks who have been ordered to suppress the demonstration. They march ruthlessly down the great flight of stone stairs leading to the waterfront killing anyone before them: men, women, cripples, infants...
There can be no heroes in Potemkin, in fact no real individuals. Courage here isn't a human trait, but an idea begin embodied in a class. Potemkin ends triumphantly as history itself will. The other ships of the Czar's Navy refuse to fire on their brother sailors. And as the prow of the Potemkin cuts through the water towards freedom one shares in the exultation...
...feels Eisenstein's intelligence at work in every frame of the film. What is most fascinating about Potemkin is ultimately very individualistic. It is the virtuosity of the director. The drama of Potemkin is of an artist making a masterpiece out of his raw materials as we watch. Motion is created before our eyes, from still shots, as in the montage on the steps, or the three shots of stone lions whose juxtaposition makes the Czarist lion seem to stand up and roar. The very astringency of the proletariat form seemed to bare, as in any stylized form, the sinews...