Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

[ellipsis7]

See this

It's the sort of solid news that would suggest the Silent Years Set could be upcoming in 2005!

[manicsounds]

from imdb:

The Berlin Film Festival plans to screen a digitally restored version of Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 classic The Battleship Potemkin, including scenes ordered removed from the original theatrical version by the Soviet government following the premiere, the festival said in a statement on Wednesday. Calling it a "reconstruction" of the original, the festival said that it will include an opening quotation by Stalin rival Leon Trotsky that was cut from the film before it was released in what the festival called "one of the most spectacular cases of censorship in the 1920s." (Trotsky was expelled from the Politburo within months following the release of the film.) On Feb. 12 and 13, the silent movie will be accompanied live by the German Film Orchestra Babelsberg playing a revised version of the original score by Edmund Meisel.

[ellipsis7]

Report on the Berlin screening...

http://film.guardian.co.uk/festivals/ne ... 59,00.html

[Martha]

We've been through this a few times already.

[ellipsis7]

Sigh! No we haven't actually - stop for a moment and read the article....

The news of the screening was announced in advance and reported in my first post in this strand, but this is an report of the actual screening of the restoration with live accompaniment at the Berlin Film Festival currently running...

I know this has been 'announced' several times since my first post, but you will see this new article is fresh information, a first hand witness account of the screening rather than a rehashed newsagency report...

The nature of the new version of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN surely is of interest for those who await the Eisenstein Silent Years boxset...

[Arn777]

According to the Pet Shop Boys website, the release of "The Battleship Potemkin" on DVD and CD (with the PSB soundtrack) is being planned for a September release this year. I doubt it will be based on the new restored version, the show they did in London last year was using a fairly old print.

[Gofter]

German DVD will be released on July 16th

[Argonaut69]

It would be nice to see a restored version of Potemkin, particularly if it approaches in visual quality the amazing Criterion disc for Ivan the Terrible.

Eisenstein's homoerotic orientation is so clear to me that it all but bit me on the nose the first time I saw Potemkin many years ago. Granted, there are films I find homoerotic that are not necessarily directed by gay men (L'Atalante, C.R.A.Z.Y., Das Boot, Midnight Express or Chasing Amy for example) but since Eisenstein is pretty much accepted as having been gay I feel comfortable in viewing the film as the product of a gay sensibility.

[ellipsis7]

Tartan's imminent Eisenstein Collection #1 boasts the 3 films including POTEMKIN are 'restored and remastered'....

[dustybooks]

I hate to lower the level of discourse, but I Netflixed Potemkin recently (really loved it, not at all the stale film school staple I'd been led to expect) and they sent me a pretty generic-looking disc from "Westlake Entertainment" (same company as the disc of The General they sent me); when I pulled the DVD out I had a fairly good laugh.



carry on.

[David Ehrenstein]

I would go so far as to state that the only interesting aspect of Eisenstein is his blatant homoeroticism. Wihtout it he's just another propagandist for Stalin.

[jsteffe]

I would go so far as to state that the only interesting aspect of Eisenstein is his blatant homoeroticism. Wihtout it he's just another propagandist for Stalin.

Granted, people conveniently ignore the extent to which Soviet filmmakers like Eisenstein often enthusiastically served Stalin and the State. But don't you think his contributions in the areas of editing and mise-en-scene count for anything? And what about his voluminous theoretical writings, which were not always political?

Still, all those luscious male bodies and exuberant phallic symbols are what make difference for me between respecting Eisenstein as a "great" filmmaker and truly loving his films.

By the way, I loved your L.A. Times editorial on Obama as the "Magic Negro." You really nailed it.

[David Ehrenstein]

"But don't you think his contributions in the areas of editing and mise-en-scene count for anything? "

As Anna Magnani says at the end of The Golden Coach, "A leeetle."

"And what about his voluminous theoretical writings, which were not always political? "

In his essential Fun in a Chinese Laundry, Sternberg dismisses Eisenstein's writings as just so much idle scribbling. Entertaining as they often are I'm inclined to agree.

At the press screening of There Will Be Blood I got a chance to talk to Paul Thomas Anderson briefly and mentioend to him that if he's really interested in doing something more with Upton Sinclair there's a teriffic movie in the making and unmaking of Que Viva Mexico. When Paramount proved disinclined to take up any of Eisenstein's movie ideas (which included Sutter's Gold and An American Tragedy) Sinclair stepped in to try and keep SME's American sojourn from being a total loss by offering to back whatever he wanted. What he wanted was to make a film in Mexico. There was no script, no budget and no planning. Sinclair was clearly in over his head. He had no idea of how movies were made as a rule, much less the kind of free form project Eisenstein was devising. He kept sending him money and seemed to be expecting a finished product in a few weeks time. When nothing emerged he sent his brother-in-law Clinton Kimbrough to oversee things. Kimbrough discovered a whole mess of delightful pornographic drawings SME had made of Mexican youths with enormous cocks. Then he discovered SME and company had been fucking Mexican youths with enormous cocks. Well that tore it. Production was halted, all the shot footage was shipped back to Sinclair and the result was edited into various travesties.

Esiensetein meanwhile, threatened with Termination With Extreme Prejudice by Stalin went home to Russia with his tail between his legs.

He never saw, much less edited, the Que Viva Mexico Footage.

Paul Thomas Anderson was taken aback by what I told him. Too rich for his blood, I expect.

[MichaelB]

Kimbrough discovered a whole mess of delightful pornographic drawings SME had made of Mexican youths with enormous cocks. Then he discovered SME and company had been fucking Mexican youths with enormous cocks. Well that tore it. Production was halted, all the shot footage was shipped back to Sinclair and the result was edited into various travesties.

Totally tangentially (aside from the persecuted-Soviet-filmmaker connection), Sergo Paradjanov apparently spent much of his time in prison drawing pornography by request for his fellow inmates.

Now THERE'S a gobsmacking exhibition in the making - "Eisenstein and Paradjanov: The Porn Years"

[jsteffe]

Kimbrough discovered a whole mess of delightful pornographic drawings SME had made of Mexican youths with enormous cocks. Then he discovered SME and company had been fucking Mexican youths with enormous cocks.

Now there's cinematic potential for ya! It's a shame Paul Thomas Anderson isn't making it his next project.

Incidentally, did you see the photo of Mikhail Romm in drag as Queen Elizabeth that was done in conjunction with Ivan the Terrible?

Now THERE'S a gobsmacking exhibition in the making - "Eisenstein and Paradjanov: The Porn Years"

I'm totally on board with this exhibition! Where can we apply for funding?

Paradjanov, by the way, drew pornographic pictures for his fellow inmates because he was already an avowed aficionado. The prosecutors even cited a pornographic pen in his possession as evidence at his trial. (You know, the kind where the lady undresses when you turn it upside down.)

Two of my favorites among his lesser-known pornographic works: a sketch of him fucking a llama (with splayed legs) that he drew while working on The Color of Pomegranates, and a sketch entitled "Map of Armenia," in which we see an act of pants-around-the-knees sodomy performed in front of Mount Ararat. These both belong to private collections, and as far as I know they haven't been reproduced anywhere.

[Cold Bishop]

Dare I say Judd Apatow must be an Eisenstein fan?

[David Ehrenstein]

Where did you find that drawing?

[Cold Bishop]

Where did you find that drawing?

This site from whom appears to be the chair of the Russian Department at Middlebury College. And he mentions some of the drawings were published in Literaturnoe obozrenie: Erotika v russkoi literature.

[MichaelB]

For those who don't yet know (or who need reminding), today's Guardian is giving away a free copy of Battleship Potemkin.

Not to my (or, I suspect, anyone else's) surprise, it's a pretty bog-standard edition - it looks to me as though it's a clone of the old 1960s Soviet version, complete with shoehorned Shostakovich on the soundtrack (he's not credited anywhere, but the eleventh symphony still underscores the film's middle section). The source print is riddled with damage, the transfer is interlaced, the sound is muddy, and there are no chapter stops.

On the upside, though, it's certainly the cheapest edition to date - I can think of quite a few distributors who've charged a fair bit more for something very similar!

[agnamaracs]

The titles on the restored version (the Kino set) lists this as being from the series "The Year 1905." The accompanying documentary says that Potemkin was one of a series of presentations for the 20th anniversary of the Revolution and was not originally intended for theatrical release.

Does anyone know what the other components of this series were, and if any of them still exist?

[markhax]

As best as I can tell from Richard Taylor's book on Potemkin, none of the others exist, and it's not clear that they were to involve other directors. It seems that Eisenstein got the commission for the whole film project. And as Eisenstein said in a 1925 interview, "The production of 'The Year 1905' should be on a grandiose scale like the German film ''Die Nibelungen,'" of which the Potemkin incident was to be but a single episode. He spoke of a cast of 20,000 and 250 days of shooting. In part because of time pressures (it had to be finished for the anniversary celebrations in December 1925) and uncooperative weather, the project got drastically scaled down, and as Taylor writes, less than one month before its premiere "'The Year 1905' finally became 'The Battleship Potemkin'."

[zedz]

That's how I understand it as well. 'The Year 1905' was an impossibly ambitious multi-film project that never happened. If I recall correctly, Battleship Potemkin became more elaborate and complicated than was originally intended, leaving no time / opportunity / resources for any of the other components to be made in time for the anniversary (though it's doubtful whether the project as originally, vaguely conceived would ever have been deliverable in time). The other elements of the project would have, logically, celebrated other aspects of the failed '05 revolution. It's generally been treated as an abandoned Eisenstein project (rather than involving lots of other directors), but the scope and detail of it seem to be pretty vague: it's hard to say exactly how it would have been delivered.

[Ruby]

Forgive me my frivolity ... but has anyone else seen the very brilliant Looney Toons episode on the failed revolt and the 'making of' Eisenstein's film?
The Simpsons gets all the praise but the Toons were always working hard for film fans.

[Saturnome]

Huh? Never heard of a Looney Tunes about Eisenstein..?
Isn't it Histeria! ? I read a episode showcased Eisenstein but I've never seen it.

[markhax]

As best as I can tell from Richard Taylor's book on Potemkin, none of the others exist, and it's not clear that they were to involve other directors. It seems that Eisenstein got the commission for the whole film project. And as Eisenstein said in a 1925 interview, "The production of 'The Year 1905' should be on a grandiose scale like the German film ''Die Nibelungen,'" of which the Potemkin incident was to be but a single episode. He spoke of a cast of 20,000 and 250 days of shooting. In part because of time pressures (it had to be finished for the anniversary celebrations in December 1925) and uncooperative weather, the project got drastically scaled down, and as Taylor writes, less than one month before its premiere "'The Year 1905' finally became 'The Battleship Potemkin'."

I just happen to be reading Mike O'Mahony's excellent new monograph on Eisenstein, and since posting the above have come across the following:

"In March 1925 the State Jubilee Committee, established to oversee the commemoration of the 1905 revolution, approached Eisenstein to make a film entitled 'The Year 1905'. Together with Nina Agadzhanova-Shutko, screenwriter and member of the Bolshevik Party since 1907, he began work on a scenario, conceiving the film as a vast panorama of the events of 1905. These were to include, in six parts: The Russo-Japanese War; the massacre of innocent workers in St. Petersburg, subsequently known as Bloody Sunday; popular uprisings throughout the city and countryside; a general strike and its suppression by the state; counter-revolutionary pogroms; and the emergence of a political movement in the worker's district of Krasnaya Presnya. One small episode within this historical overview would address the mutiny on the Russian naval vessel Prince Potemkin."