>Battleship Potemki
Terribly nauseating, insipid piece of Soviet propaganda. Maybe it influenced all the other nauseating, insipid propaganda films, who knows? In that case, I despise it even more. Battleship Potemkin is so caricatured, overblown, and heavy-handed as to be comical. Hardly the intended effect, I think... Am I supposed to be impressed with the editing, when what I came to see, namely the story and the actual shots, are uninspiring garbage? Sorry, but I am a viewer of movies, not a filmmaker, and I like to be entertained when possible. Technical breakthrough alone is not enough. Unless you're an avowed communist (lol) or a wannabe "revolutionary", this film holds little merit.
Personally, all I could think about was the farce of Soviet ideals when fattened sailors are willing to die a glorious death for "tastier borsch." Not a decade after this film, millions died in Ukraine (much of the action here takes place in Odessa) during the Holodomor famine, shriveled in the streets with nothing to eat thanks to Soviet ideals... You know, actual starvation, instead of discontent with military rations and disrespect from superior officers (i.e. the story of every soldier ever). Now THAT is a story which could and probably should be told with revolutionary intent.
There are dozens of better silent films out there, some earlier and some later. Only two years later we have Metropolis, which intelligently addresses issues like economic inequality, and definitively puts this Bolshevik travesty to shame. The Swedes, yes, even the tiny nation of Sweden, had already progressed far beyond this. They combined technical progress with subtlety of atmosphere and storytelling. It's unfortunate, because the Soviets produced many beautiful, iconic films. This just isn't one of them. It's not even Sergei Eisenstein's best film, because I watched Ivan the Terrible, and that film is powerful, emotionally captivating and inspiring.