Battleship Potemkin

ALL NEW 35mm RESTORATION! ► Eisenstein’s revolutionary masterpiece is one of the cinema’s touchstone works and immortal classics. This beautiful new restoration, first presented at Pacific Cinémathèque in September, returns the film to its original glory, and includes a new recording of Edmund Meisel’s rousing 1926 original score. Commissioned to mark the 20th anniversary of the failed Russian revolution of 1905, Battleship Potemkin centres on a mutiny launched by the crew of a naval vessel against their Tsarist officers. The film’s “Odessa Steps” sequence — complete with bouncing baby carriage careening perilously down the stairs — is one of the most celebrated, analyzed, and imitated in cinema history. The power, excitement, and impact of Eisenstein’s artistry are astonishing. Potemkin is a sensational showcase for the director’s legendary genius at montage — at imparting ideas, emotion, rhythm, and tone through the juxtaposition of images. It is also, like most Eisenstein works, too full of visual, aesthetic, and intellectual derring-do to have ever passed muster as the mass art it was intended to be, but its great international success, which helped put Soviet cinema on the map, did allow Eisenstein to dodge the charges of “formalism” that would otherwise dog him throughout his career. A 1958 jury of international film experts voted Potemkin the greatest film ever made; Charlie Chaplin called it “the best film in the world.” “Its place in the pantheon is deserved” (The Rough Guide to Film). B&W, 35mm, silent with musical score and English intertitles. 69 mins.