In 1925, the Soviet Union celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first revolution. It was the first commemoration of the noble prologue to the October Revolution. In March, an ambitious film project titled 1905 was launched, and the 27-year-old Sergei Eisenstein was called on to direct it. The idea was to create a broad and complex narrative featuring various episodes related to the events of 1905; however, the time available was extremely limited – only nine months in total: the film was scheduled for release on the last day of the year … Hans Richter recalled an interesting memory of how Eisenstein created his film, condensing the year 1905 into a few vivid, dramatic elements: “The sea, the city of Odesa, the battleship, the monumental staircase, the townspeople, the Cossacks. ‘I unleashed the conflict between these elements,’ Eisenstein told me. ‘And so, starting from these places and these objects, I built the story – simply by standing at the top of the staircase.’” Films are not only what they appear to be. There are hidden layers – cinema is intrinsically also the art of the invisible. Eisenstein had witnessed the violence of 1905 with his own eyes, at the age of seven: he wanted to convey that physical sensation. The child’s perspective is one of the keys to accessing the deeper emotional landscape of Potyomkin – a landscape governed by threat, irrational terror, and an immense curiosity about the human condition. Twenty years later, standing atop the staircase, Eisenstein could experience a sudden, electric identification with what the people of Odesa might have felt in the decisive moments of 1905 – on that very staircase – if they had truly been there … As in the texts of the best writers who described Odesa – Babel and Paustovsky – Bronenosets Potyomnkin shines with the magical ability to make us feel the air, the warmth and the world filtered through human senses. Perhaps here lies a real contradiction between Eisenstein’s later theoretical reflections and the vivid, passionate vitality the film communicates.

Peter von Bagh, In cima alla scalinata, in La corazzata Potëmkin,Edizioni Cineteca di Bologna, Bologna 2017