Alex from Film Forager, Allison from Nerd Vampire’s Film Blog, Sasha from The Final Girl Project and I discuss the oeuvre of Edgar Wright, including Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and of course, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.
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Image from here.
Battleship Potemkin has been in release for roughly 90 years, and in that time frame I suspect hundreds of people have spilled ink on what makes it such an important piece of film. Ebert, the critic who I tend to point to most often, has a review here that I think is very good.
So what to write about in the context of Potemkin? Well, why not the actual Potemkin? OMG HISTORY!!1!! 1
In the movie, a group of sailors on board the infamous battleship are frustrated at their treatment by the naval officers. The meat is rotten and crawling with maggots and they feel frustrated that even the most basic needs can’t be met. The term “jerks” probably isn’t adequate for these officers, but those in charge really don’t care. The irate sailors, led by a stirring revolutionary named Vakulinchuk, rebel and mutiny aboard the ship. Vakulinchuk is killed and after other sailors are asked to execute the mutineers, they refuse and take over the ship.
Vakulinchuk’s body is taken back to the city of Odessa, where Potemkin is in port. The locals mourn him – there is much sobbing and mourning at Vakulinchuk’s martyr-like demise. The people of Odessa begin sending supplies to the mutinous sailors and protest against their treatment, leading to a confrontation where the Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessa residents in the infamous Odessa Steps scene.
Odessa Steps scene – Battleship Potemkin
I will leave the discussion of Sergei Eisenstein’s use of montage in this film to the serious film scholars, but I think the important thing to note is that Potemkin is a powerful piece of propaganda. It is, quite possibly, the finest piece of propaganda ever produced.
Potemkin was so powerful, in fact, that it was banned in many countries, including the Soviet Union under Stalin, believe it or not. 2
Ebert noted in his review of Potemkin that the propaganda images of the movie have become so universal, so well-known that no one remembers what actually happened. (The Odessa Steps sequence as shot above never actually happened; the scene is an invention of Eisenstein.)
In fact, the real Potemkin incident was planned in advance but instead for one ship, all ships to mutiny. When Potemkin was at sea, the rebellion broke out earlier than expected due to events portrayed in the film (bad rations), but most of this was organized by Social Democractic parties in the area. The sailors ended up killing seven of the ship’s officers after they believed they were going to be shot, commandeered the ship and sailed into Odessa.
Social democratic parties were trying to organize workers to rebel, but couldn’t really get the Potemkin and their ground-force workers all together under one banner, so the Potemkin sat in port while Russian authorities sort of stuck their heads together and tried to figure out what the hell to do with a battleship full of angry Russian sailors. 3 The authorities sent forces to try and get the sailors off the Potemkin, but the sailors just said, “Hey, whatever,”4 and took the ship away to another port, then eventually to Romania.
While there were clashes between protesters and police forces in Odessa, there was nothing on the scale of the Odessa Steps. And it should be noted that Battleship Potemkin leaves off at the Odessa Steps, but the crew of the Potemkin was not quite finished. They attempted to seek refuge in Romania, but the Romanians turned the ship over to the Russian Navy. Some of the sailors were inevitably lured back to Russia with the promise of amnesty, but arrived back in the motherland to be arrested and executed or imprisoned for quite a long time. 5
Surprisingly to me, Vakulinchuk is not an Eisenstein invention. He was a real person and his real title was Able Seaman Vakulinchuk. 6 He really did die in the mutiny.
The last known living survivor of the Potemkin was Ivan Beshoff, who moved to Dublin, Ireland of all places, opened a fish & chips shop and lived to the ripe old age of 102. Beshoff gave an interview shortly before he died regarding the events on the Potemkin which is linked at the bottom.
The Potemkin was renamed several times, but White Russians eventually scuttled the ship in 1919. By that time, the Bolsheviks had come to power and a short year later, Eisenstein would make Battleship Potemkin and thereby make one of the one of the most incredibly moving, most effective pieces of propaganda (as well as being one of the most imitated) ever made.
Poor Sergei Eisenstein had a sad life after Potemkin; to say that he didn’t mesh well with Soviet authorities, particularly under Stalin, is an understatement. Stalin ordered some of his films (Que Viva Mexico and Ivan The Terrible, Part III) destroyed. Eisenstein seemed to spend most of his creative life on the defensive against Soviet authorities, and from what my admittedly slight research has discovered, Alexander Nevsky was primarily made to perhaps swing him back into favor with the government.
After suffering ill health for some time, Eisenstein passed away in 1948, with piles of work left unfinished and he never achieved another film that stands in the same league as Potemkin.
SOURCES
The ever-popular Wikipedia, entries for movie and real-life ship
NY Times article re: Ivan Beshoff, interview with Beshoff translated from the Italian at this site
Biography of Sergei Eisenstein
Ebert’s review of Potemkin
Article on history through cinema in Potemkin
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?
Dysfunction junction!
Image from Wikipedia.
Vera (played by Natalya Negoda) is a young woman growing up in the late ’80’s in Russia. Her life consists of arguing with her family, hitting up rock shows, drinking and smoking. Vera is aimless and ambivalent about the future; her mother and father are constantly yelling at her about her lack of ambition and every other thing under the sun they can think to argue about.
The family lives in a small apartment, where fights reach into extremely close quarters. When Vera’s behavior gets too much, Mom and Dad call brother Victor, who is a doctor in Moscow, to talk sense to Vera. Her family despises Vera’s best friend Lena, who they view as a bad influence.
In the midst of all the fighting and bickering, Vera meets the “handsome” Sergei and is smitten. She quickly decides to marry Sergei and lies to her mother, telling her mother she is pregnant by Sergei. Sergei moves in with Vera’s family, leading to a clash between the generations that goes down an ultimately tragic and senseless path.
Alex from Film Forager has a great review here and she pointed out to me (which you will hear later on in a podcast) that Malenkaya Vera is historically significant. It was one of the first Russian films to point out the bad parts of Soviet life, which is true. Vera’s family could, I suppose, be viewed as a microcosm of Soviet society. The failings of Soviet life are readily apparent in Vera’s own life; while Vera’s not perfect, she looks positively well-adjusted and her behavior understandable given the situation she’s in. It’s even more heartbreaking (spoiler alert!) when, in a scene in the last third of the movie, Vera discovers that her mother and father essentially decided to have her in order to get a bigger apartment.
Malenkaya Vera is exhausting to watch mainly because the constant arguments of the family, the attitude of the youngsters and the behavior of the parents are much akin to watching a Russian film version of a trashy American daytime talk show. (Maury Povich would’ve had a field day with Vera and Sergei.) The whole film is an increasing mess illustrating the destructive power of a dysfunctional life (and society), which I understand is important in a historical and cultural context. For that, I appreciate Malenkaya Vera but I have to say, it’s not one of my favorites just for the fact of how tiring it can be.
Also, I suppose to the average American viewer, Malenkaya Vera would not seem to have aged well. The DVD copy I have looks positively ancient, with the film transfer looking grainy and old. Even the subtitles look outdated.
This is a film that’s worth the time to watch, but not multiple times. Interesting, but ultimately not rewarding to watch, Malenkaya Vera is a film that makes its point clearly and this is one family that definitely does not need to be revisited.
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?We discuss Man on Wire, our favorite documentaries and what we last watched in this episode.
Sadly, Sasha from the Final Girl Project could not be there in voice, but she was there in spirit!
Download Episode Three here at Podomatic, where you can also subscribe via iTunes! Send us ladies feedback via e-mail at somecastithot (at) gmail (dot) com!
The ladies of Some Cast It Hot are:
Alex from Film Forager;
Sasha from The Final Girl Project;
Allison from Nerdvampire’s Film Blog;
and me!
(Apologies for the text cutting off in the thumbnail. Picasa hates me and wouldn’t fix it.)
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?Harrison Ford!
Now bear with me, guys, because I know Harrison Ford hasn’t aged all that well. Han Solo made some big slip-ups, what with that earring in his ear and Hollywood Homicide and all that. But I keep coming back to Ford for this category because, really, who out there can deny the hotness that was Indiana Jones?
Image is from here at Cinema Roll.
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?
In an effort to draw this back around to movies, have y’all seen anything good lately?
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?You can now find the podcast here at Podomatic! In this episode, we discuss sci-fi movie recommendations, random randomness, and Duncan Jones’ Moon.
The ladies of Some Cast It Hot are Alex from Film Forager, Allison from Nerd Vampire’s Filmblog and Sasha from the Final Girl Project and, well, me!
If subscribing to the podcast through iTunes is your thing, Podomatic should have a nifty button where you can set that up. Go here to listen to Episode 2!
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?What a brilliant movie.
Inception follows Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who is skilled in the art of corporate espionage via entering a subject’s mind through their dreams. After a job on crafty businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) goes awry, Cobb and his protege Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sign up to do a job for Saito in exchange for Cobb’s safe return home to his family.
Cobb assembles a team that utilizes Arthur, a dream-forger named Eames, and a young dream architect named Ariadne (Ellen Page) to enter the mind of Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), a man who stands to inherit a massive energy company from his father. Fischer’s awkward, dysfunctional relationship with his father is his Achilles heel. Saito doesn’t want the team to extract information from Fischer; as Saito’s main rival in business, Saito wants the team to perform inception, a nigh-impossible task that involves planting an idea into the subconscious so that the subject can believe it was their own true idea.
Ariadne realizes how insurmountable the task seems after she comes to realize that Cobb’s former wife Mal has taken over in his subconscious. Cobb’s wife met with a tragic, terrible end. His grief is subsequently eating away at him, pervading every aspect of his subconscious mind. Ariadne is fearful of the danger that Mal presents, especially given that to perform inception, the team that Cobb has assembled will face extraordinary danger aside from any interference from Mal.
Inception is very, very good at maintaining a deeply layered world while making each layer apparent to the viewer. Christopher Nolan’s special effects are top-notch and the scenes with Joseph Gordon-Levitt suspended in weightlessness are impeccable. The sets are rich and beautiful, the actors nearly flawless and the score is amazing and intense.
Most of all, Inception is a cerebral film. Christopher Nolan is very up front about what this film is about and much like his previous film Memento, deals with the some heavy mental aspects of human existence.
I don’t know if everyone would be into Inception, but I have a feeling philosophy teachers will be slobbering over it.
While DiCaprio is good, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a beautiful standout in this film; he does the best job in the film. I hope he gets more recognition for his film career now, because he’s very good here. I suspect Inception is going to get nominations for awards out the wazoo and those will be very much deserved. It’s a genuinely sharp, sharp film that is rooted in some interesting concepts.
Inception is worth seeing twice in a theater if only to pick up what you missed before. There’s lots of delicious spoilerrific delights I could talk about here, about the ins-and-outs of Inception, but I think it is worth it for someone to discover that on their own. No spoilers here, and keep it kosher in the comments.
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?Two things:
1. Simon/Ripley requested the film they show in the prisoner camp in Red Dawn for my Russian film series. IMDB tells me that movie is Alexander Nevsky, so consider it done, Simon/Ripley.
2. I am prepping for a podcast and above all else, I am lazy, so instead of typing all this out again, ahoy, Caitlin’s trusty whiteboard! Away we go:
That’s after I made cuts to the list, because I didn’t think you guys needed me to write about roughly 15 Russian documentaries.
Looks good, yes?
(Also, I have True Blood & Russian Empire coming to me in my Netflix queue, so I shall have to ponder ponderously what to watch next that’s non-Netflix to review…)
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?First and foremost: The ladies behind Film Forager, Final Girl Project and Nerd Vampire’s Film Blog as well as myself have teamed up to make a podcast called Some Cast It Hot. I would love you forever if you would like to take a listen. The link should have a button that will let you subscribe through iTunes, if you’re interested in subscribing. We would love to have you listen! I think the first episode turned out fairly well and forgive me my insane ramblings. You guys know how I am.
Secondly, I started my new job this week and I am very excited! It seems like a great place to work. This is most likely the last time I’ll ever discuss work but I’m thrilled to be there, enormously happy to have a job and nervous all the same. The hard part is sort of getting used to all of the change inherent here, so it may take me a while to just internally equalize. This is why I’ve been absent from Twitter/blogging the past week as by the time I get home, I’ve been exhausted.
Third, I’ve been thinking for ages about doing a Russian film series for the blog, provided no one gets too burned out on the Russians. The problem is the sheer amount of Russian films available to me; I think I had a list long enough from my Netflix queue to exhaust anyone. I know Alex left some suggestions on another post, but if you have any that you’d really like me to review, let me know. That might be helpful in tipping the scales. (I’m highly irritated that The Irony of Fate, the one movie I was absolutely going to do, is no longer available on Netflix. I have no idea where I’m going to find another copy.)
I'm like public radio/television just without the annoying pledge drives and all that classical music. Buy me a fake-internet beer and help keep me fed. Please?
