Intensity within Repetition

The Soviet montage-style film, Battleship Potemkin, is well reputed for its iconic status in the history of film making.从巧妙安排的重复使画面上的动作更为延长，从而造成了一种夸张的效果，使观众有了更深刻的印象。我将从多个方面来分析重复在电影中的影响。

The Soviet montage-style film, Battleship Potemkin, is well reputed for its iconic status in the history of film making. The director, Sergei Eisenstein, experimented various montage techniques in the film, creating powerful impression and breathtaking experience for the audience. I was especially taken by the intensity of the repetition of certain scenes. The skillfully arranged repetition prolongs the actions on screen, thus causing an exaggerated effect, which leaves the audience with deeper impression. 

In the last scenes of the first episode, “Men and Maggots”, feature three sailors cleaning kitchen utensils. One sailor, while washing the plates, noticed the print on a plate says, “Give us this day, our daily bread”. At that point, the sailors had been ill-treated, provided with poor quality food. Therefore, seeing such words caused a stir of emotion to the sailor. The music went from uneventful, rhythmic melodies to a sudden rise. The sailor then raised the plate in rage and smashed it into pieces. The smashing motion was shown in three shots, tripling the time of that specific action. And the camera cuts back and forth from the plate to the sailor’s facial expression, calling the viewers’ emotion to resonate with the sailor. 

The sailors’ rebel invigorated countless civilians, leading up to the classic scenes of “The Odessa Steps”. In the approximately quarter-hour-long act, Eisenstein painstakingly placed over 150 shots, emphasizing on the traumatic incident (Morgan). One scene that struck me in particular was the young mother trying to escape with her son. The entire crowd were fleeing from Tsar’s army, among them were the woman, with her son running alongside of her. Then a trail of shots fired, and the boy fell to his feet with a gunshot wound in his back. It was only a moment later that his mother, hearing the boy screaming out “mama”, realized that her son was no longer by her side, but getting trampled by the running crowd. The scene then cuts between the moving crowd, stepping on the boy from time to time, the dead boy’s body and the mother’s face several times. The swift alteration between the scenes, the repeated image of the dead boy and the mother’s horrific expression, accompanied by the intensified music, make it extremely difficult for one not to empathize with the mother. 

Civilians’ response eventually led to bigger scale of military action. The final episode, “Meeting the Squadron”, depicts the response from Potemkin crew to the massacre in Odessa. Soon, Tsar’s fleet was sent out to suppress the rebel of the crew, and a blood bath battle seemed to be imminently inevitable. The screen showed the raising of canons on Potemkin multiple times, multiplying the sense of urgency. Once again, it is the masterful repetition that guided the audience’s emotional swing.

 

The Battleship Potemkin is definitely a piece of brilliantly crafted montage classic. The director managed to take his audience to experience the rage, the horror and the urgency of the film characters with his ingenious repetition techniques, with the soundtrack and the rhythms making the film viewing a holistic experience. 

  Work Cited
Morgan, Stephen. "Battleship Potemkin: A Revolution on Two Fronts." Suite. 22 Apr. 2009. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. <https://suite.io/stephen-morgan/1p0a20p>.




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