Battleship Potemkin (The Special Edition)
by Sergei Eisenstein
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DVD details
Director: Sergei EisensteinBrand: Kino International
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); Russian (Original Language); Japanese (Dubbed)
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Silent
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 70 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-23
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: 5582
Studio: Kino International
Product features:
- BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (DVD MOVIE)
DVD Reviews of Battleship Potemkin (The Special Edition)
DVD Review: A LEGENDARY FILM BY A LEGENDARY FILM MAKER gets top treatment!
Summary: 5 Stars
The Battleship Potemkin uprising happened in June, 1905, when the ship's crew rebelled against their oppressive officers. It is usually regarded as one of the first leading events to the 1917 Russian Revolution.
This legendary film was produced in 1925 by Mosfilm, at the height of the silent cinema period and is, perhaps, the most famous example of the Soviet school of editing whose style and theories are deeply influential even today!
The film is divided in five episodes: "Men and Maggots" (showing the sailors revolting when forced to eat rotten meat), "Drama at the Harbor" (which shows the revolt being smashed and its leader killed), "A Dead Man Calls for Justice" (showing the people of Odessa crying the loss of the revolt's leader), "The Odessa Staircase" (showing the Army marching over the people - and killing them) and the final episode: "Rendez-Vous with the Squadron" which closes the film.
Now, the problem with BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN is that, being regarded as a masterpiece (like METROPOLIS, BIRTH OF A NATION, PANDORA'S BOX, INTOLERANCE and CABIRIA), it is also a work with a high degree of political content (like TRIUMPH OF THE WILL) and, like many of those films, it has been censored, cut, re-cut several times... until virtually none of the several circulating versions of it (most in public domain and lousy shape) meets the version made by Eisenstein.
Kino joined forces with the Deutsche Kinematek, the Russia's Goskinofilm, the British Film Institute, Bundesfilm Archive Berlin, and the Munich Film Museum in order to present this all new restoration. Shots have been replaced, and all 146 title cards restored to Eisenstein's specifications.
Edmund Meisel's definitive 1926 score, magnificently rendered by the 55-piece Deutches Filmorchestra in 5.1 Stereo Surround, returns Eisenstein's masterwork to a form as close to its creator's bold vision as has been seen since the film's 1925 Moscow premiere. In fact, a funny story goes that BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN opened in Moscow alongside ROBIN HOOD (the 1922 version with Douglas Fairbanks) and the Soviet government expected it would earn more money than the American film... representing the power and revitalization of Soviet cinema. It lost. (laughs) :p
Featuring on this double disc edition are:
1) "Tracing Battleship Potemkin," a 42-minute documentary on the making and restoration of the film.
2) The restored film with newly-translated English intertitles.
3) The restored film with original Russian intertitles (and optional English subtitles).
4) The original 1926 Edmund Meisel score, performed by the Deutsches Filmorchestra, presented in 5.1 Stereo Surround.
5) Photo gallery.
This film is a landmark in Film History and deserves to be seen by anyone who's serious about film making.
Description of Battleship Potemkin (The Special Edition)
For eight decades, Sergei Eisenstein s 1925 masterpiece has remained the most influential silent film of all time. Yet each successive generation has seen BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN subjected to censorship and recutting, its unforgettable power diluted in unauthorized public domain editions from dubious sources. Until now. Kino is proud to join the Deutsche Kinematek in association with Russia s Goskinofilm, the British Film Institute, Bundesfilm Archive Berlin, and the Munich Film Museum in presenting this all new HD Transfered restoration of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. Dozens of missing shots have been replaced, and all 146 title cards restored to Eisenstein s specifications. Edmund Meisel s definitive 1926 score, magnificently rendered by the 55-piece Deutches Filmorchestra in 5.1 Stereo Surround, returns Eisenstein s masterwork to a form as close to its creator s bold vision as has been seen since the film s triumphant 1925 Moscow premiere. Odessa 1905. Enraged with the deplorable conditions on board the armored cruiser Potemkin, the ship s loyal crew contemplates the unthinkable mutiny. Seizing control of the Potemkin and raising the red flag of revolution, the sailors revolt becomes the rallying point for a Russian populace ground under the boot heels of the Czar s Cossacks. When ruthless White Russian cavalry arrives to crush the rebellion on the sandstone Odessa Steps, the most famous and most quoted film sequence in cinema history is born.Sergei Eisenstein's revolutionary sophomore feature has so long stood as a textbook example of montage editing that many have forgotten what an invigoratingly cinematic experience he created. A 20th-anniversary tribute to the 1905 revolution, Eisenstein portrays the revolt in microcosm with a dramatization of the real-life mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. The story tells a familiar party-line message of the oppressed working class (in this case the enlisted sailors) banding together to overthrow their oppressors (the ship's officers), led by proto-revolutionary Vakulinchuk. When he dies in the shipboard struggle the crew lays his body to rest on the pier, a moody, moving scene where the citizens of Odessa slowly emerge from the fog to pay their respects. As the crowd grows Eisenstein turns the tenor from mourning a fallen comrade to celebrating the collective achievement. The government responds by sending soldiers and ships to deal with the mutinous crew and the supportive townspeople, which climaxes in the justly famous (and often imitated and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre. Eisenstein edits carefully orchestrated motions within the frame to create broad swaths of movement, shots of varying length to build the rhythm, close-ups for perspective and shock effect, and symbolic imagery for commentary, all to create one of the most cinematically exciting sequences in film history. Eisenstein's film is Marxist propaganda to be sure, but the power of this masterpiece lies not in its preaching but its poetry. --Sean Axmaker
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