100 Years of "Battleship Potemkin": Censorship & Pop-Cultural Reinterpretation

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Almost exactly 100 years ago, on Christmas Eve 1925, "Battleship Potemkin" by Sergei Eisenstein premiered in the then young Soviet Union. The film tells the story of a mutiny on a Russian warship near the city of Odessa, which escalated into a revolutionary mass movement in 1905. The film has always been considered politically explosive and was therefore heavily censored and repeatedly re-edited, not only in Germany.

However, the film was not only revolutionary in terms of content, but also technically and narratively, so it has always been analyzed and cited as a prime example in cinematic circles. The score by Edmund Meisel played a special role in this, opening up entirely new possibilities for the then-young film discipline. Most recently, the Pet Shop Boys composed an electronic version that gives the film a completely new statement and framing.

Hardly any other film of the 20th century has had such a vibrant history and has been repeatedly reworked and reinterpreted up to the present day. In the following pages, we shed light on the film's genesis and significance, its various versions, and the spaces for interpretation and discourse that the film still fuels today. Which silent film can claim that after a hundred years?

In the following, we will focus in particular on the restoration of the German versions, which were released on DVD in cooperation with various film museums by film & kunst GmbH, as well as on the Blu-ray version with the soundtrack by the Pet Shop Boys, which the British Film Institute released together with the Deutsche Kinemathek.

From Mutiny to Revolution

Eisenstein divided "Battleship Potemkin" into five chapters. The first act shows the poor conditions under which the crew lives. Officers and the ship's doctor insist that the sailors accept spoiled meat infested with maggots. The soldiers refuse to eat, and the mood turns. To enforce discipline, the officers order a group of rebels to be shot. However, the firing squad refuses to fire on their own comrades – the situation escalates, and a mutiny breaks out. The sailor Grigori Vakulintschuk is killed and becomes a martyr of the uprising.

His body is brought to the nearby port city of Odessa, where the population mourns him. Out of grief, anger, and dissatisfaction, a mass gathering arises, increasingly directed against the Tsarist regime. However, on the famous Potemkin Stairs in Odessa, Tsarist troops strike back and perpetrate a massacre. Eisenstein shows this sequence with a strict editing rhythm that follows the soldiers' marching tempo. The viewer follows, for example, the baby carriage rolling down the seemingly endless stairs after the child's mother has been shot – one of the most iconic scenes in film history.

The crew of the Potemkin, anchored in the harbor, joins the people and opens fire on positions in the city. But the admiral's fleet is already alerted and is supposed to sink the Potemkin in the grand finale. On the other ships, the order to fire is given, but the crews refuse. For a moment, it seems as if the Tsar's power order has actually shifted.