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The Battleship Potemkin is one of the most famous and
influential films in the history of cinema and containing one of
the best known sequences ever filmed. There is an amazing
catalog of events that detail the brutality of the tsarist
regime, with the famous massacre on the Odessa Steps being the
most notable (referred to in many other movies such as Brazil,
Bananas and The Birds). Stylistically, The Battleship Potemkin
is revolutionary film not only in its subject, but also in terms
of its unique use of montage. Eisenstein made an entire new
purpose for cinema, he proposed a "kino first"
approach to filmmaking, one in which the film attacks the
viewer's senses with symbolic metaphors, rhythmic editing, and
highly-charged melodrama. Eisenstein also experiments with the
effect of film editing on audiences, and his use of editing
tries to produce the greatest emotional response, so that the
viewer will feel sympathy for the rebellious sailors of the
Potemkin and disgust for their cruel overlords. His cinema also
called for an active audience, who must participate in the
creation of meaning by putting together the broken pieces of
montage, and assembling them into a new reality. With is
effective and manipulative techniques, Eisenstein was one of the
few who helped develop the film language we recognize and know
today. If we only look at a few, such as "Psycho"
(Hitchcock) or "The Godfather" (Coppola), we can see
Eisenstein's influence and its power. Dispute of its excellence,
"The Battleship Potemkin" failed to attract masses of
viewers. Even though it received more positive responses in a
number of international venues, in both the Soviet Union and the
overseas, the film shocked audiences, (not so much for its
political message, but) for its use of violence which was
considered graphic by the standards of the time.
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