Battleship Potemkin

I made a serious emotional mistake. This silent film from Sergei Eisenstein (1925) was assigned by my professor for a discussion of montage in film, and Eisenstein's abrasive montage style. Watching the film was not any kind of mistake; it's an intelligent film, if you overlook the broad propaganda. Eisenstein uses several different cutting techniques to create different kinds of montage, all for the purpose of Attractions; of shocking the audience with defamiliarization, and a quick sequence of synnergistic images (images which seem unrelated, extra-narrative, but combine inside the viewer's experience to indicate a third, further idea). Eisenstein wrote about his theories, and of course I got to read it.

Battleship Potemkin was often difficult. Images of raw meat, violence, and long, geometric cuts all make the experience somewhat less than full of wonder. Also, the montages often felt like a mental assault. But it was clever, and artistic.

Totally coincidentally, a film I'd been putting off for months arrived via Netflix. Josef Sternberg's The Last Command (1928) sat on the nightstand for a week. But last night I decided I should watch it and get it into the mail right after the holiday. So I stuck it in, and started watching. It took ten minutes for the American melodrama to reach my tear-ducts. I cried like a baby for an hour and fifteen minutes (I fast-forwarded, for the sake of sleep). It's a silent film, also about the Russian Revolution (the 1917 one this time, instead of the 1905 Odessa incident). The lead actors gave brilliant performances, and the editing was smooth, and narrativistic. I'm afraid the sight of a sad, old man being victimized just breaks my heart.

These two films contrast each-other brilliantly. You get a strong sense of the differences between these early editing theories. But they're both a bit much. Maybe watch with a half-gallon of ice cream?