Responding to Odessa Steps scene from The Battleship Potemkin is a bitter sweet thing for me to do. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, and considered to be one of the most influential films of all time, this film is, like most silent films, dated and hard for me to understand fully. The film was done 20 years after a failed revolution against tzarism, and Eisenstein, based on historical recollections of the event, used expressionism to build the movie and story into a way he saw fit for the film. Even though this, still, after seeing it several times, is hard for me to understand and really grasp, I will do my best to break it down and try to understand the meaning behind the sequence.
Before delving too deep into the specific, Eisenstein was huge on aesthetics, and use montage shots as one of his greatest tools. There are different types of montage shots used, which we spoke about in class, so I will not go into them. These are metric montage, rythmic montage, tonal montage and intellectual montage.
In regards to te aesthetics, we learned Eisenstein rebelled against the western narrative conventions. He did this by using natural locations (the Odessa Steps are real, and are an on location shot). He did not use professional actors. As easily seen in the Odessa Steps scene, the men, women, and children used are very real, they are not glamorous, or "pretty" by any means. Eisenstein understood the effect that these non-pro actors would have on his scene. There is real emotion, they are real people, and it worked very well. Another aspect to his aesthetics was the social group over the individual. Overall, this is another easily seen concept in this scene. There are huge amount of people that flee down the Odessa Steps. The is no one person whose voyage you follow. It is pure chaos that is demonstrated beautifully through this aspect. The only slight two exceptions to this is the lady whose son was shot by the soldiers and the lady who is shot and her carriage falls down the stairs. Momentarily, we follow the woman pick up her wounded son and plea with the soldiers to stop shooting. She is then shot and the scene continues. The same thing happens with the lady and the carriage. She is focused on momentarily, shot, and falls. This leads to the montage of the carriage making its way down the steps.
We were asked to look for certain aspects within the scene. These are:
Mise-en-shot:
The mise-en-shot in this sequence is pretty straight forward, and assists the ideas that Eisenstein had on aesthetics. The camera is always stationary, as it gives the feel of documenting the actions taking place. The shots range from long range, to mid range. The long range shots are effective in Eisenstein's case because it ties into the ideas of aesthetics properly. There is rarely a focus on an individual, and these shots allow the viewer to see an entirety of what is happening. There are countless people frantically running down these stairs, and the pass the camera as quickly as the enter it. He focuses on the group for a majority of the shot. He also uses the mid range shots where a smaller number of people are shown, but still not focusing on any one individual, although certain characters are shown more often than others. Another interesting aspect of the mise-en-shot was how Eisenstein would flip to a camera view from the top of the stairs where you see the Russian soldiers, in a line, walking down the steps toward the citizens, dropping guns and firing. This omniscient view, in association with the Russian soldiers, shows where the power of the characters lay within the shot.
Contrast:
While there is many aspects of the different uses of contrast seen in this scene, one of the ost glaring to me is the contrast of light used in viewing the faces of the citizens, running terrified for their lives, and the faces of the soldiers walking down the steps at them. In a "faceless enemy" type of way, the soldiers faces are covered and darkened so that the viewer can not see them. They are the dark and evil bad guys to the scene. The light saved for that of the citizens fleeing, as that you viewer can see the emotion and terror that is everyone within the group.
Symbols:
Symbolism has always been one of the more difficult aspects of critique for me. I don't know if my knowledge level is not up to par, or what it is, but it is hard for me to get what symbolizes what. From what I got the different parts of the scene that are used to symbolize something else are the actual steps, the three lions, the carriage, and the lady who is carrying her son. What exactly these mean are unclear to me.
Elevation:
Understanding the fact that even though this is a tip of the hat to the failed rebellion that actually took place in 1905, the actual battle portrayed on the steps of Odessa actually did not occur in the same place in real life. It occurred on a nearby street. The steps were a way that meaning could be given to the scene. The soldiers start off at the top of the stairs, or in other words, on top of the citizens. As the citizens try to work up to them, they stop them and force them back down the stairs where they came. They did not have the ability to get all the way up to the top of the stairs, or in other words, they did not have the ability to successfully rebel against the tzar. Any time someone would fight the traffic running down the stairs and head toward the soldiers they were killed. In addition, as mentioned above, the elevated nature of the soldiers was a power position, being above them, making the citizens appear weaker and below the soldiers.
Typage:
This is one aspect, that even though already mention, Eisenstein was very impressive at using. The people chosen to be in this film were not professionals. They were real. This was a real situation, and only real people could portray it as such. This is done by looking at the people used. They are rugged, rough, and you can easily tell they are working class people. There is one man who is shown several times who has no legs. He moves around with his arms. This is exactly the way typage is used here. This shows that this is a true representation of the people involved, and because the people used are normal people, they have the emotions involved in the situation, because they, in one way or another, really were involved in it.
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