Delayed Reaction: Battleship Potemkin

The Pitch: The Russian revolution was so great. There should be a major, epic movie about it.

The story of the mutiny on the Russian battleship, Potemkin, and the fallout from it.

I'm going to maintain my uselessness at talking about silent films. I guess I'm just not built for it. I'm actually skipping writing something up about a couple Buster Keaton movies (Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr.) I just saw simply because the write-up for them looked identical to The General.

The big thing about Battleship Potemkin is the sequence on the Odessa Steps. So many of the shots from that I've seen before. It's hard to pull up specific examples. Mainly just the obvious copy of the baby stroller sequence in The Untouchables comes to mind. It's common though. It has been built into the DNA of filmmaking at this point. Given that this film came out in 1925, I can say with reasonable certainty that this was the originator of the assorted shots and tricks. It's nice any time I can watch something that is genuinely influential.

Because of the Odessa Steps sequences, Battleship Potemkin is actually a good watch. The acting is a little too big and theatric for my taste. The limits of technology kind of required that at the time. The story is engaging enough with a brief run time. I don't know where it ranks among the silent films of importance that I've watched so far - below A Trip to the Moon and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, above The Birth of a Nation and TheGold Rush, I suppose - but it's definitely among the worthwhile ones.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend