Sergei Eisenstein, the Odessa Steps, and the Last Survivor of the Battleship Potemkin (Preview)
by Kevin Brownlow

“We tried to take the historical events
just as they were and not to interfere
in any shape, manner or form with
the process as it actually took place.”
—Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1935

I wouldn’t blame you if you dismissed all this as pure fiction. The man who made the film, after all, was accused of distorting history. But what a film he turned out! Whereas the man this article is about actually served on the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905. And I was convinced he’d have startling revelations to impart.

Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925), far more famous in my youth than it is now, was regarded as the pinnacle of cinematic achievement. Douglas Fairbanks Sr. called it “the most powerful and the most profound emotional experience in my life.” It was called “the greatest film ever made” by an international jury in Brussels in 1958 and voted Number 4 in the 1952 Sight and Sound Critics’ and Directors’ Poll of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The sequence filmed at the Odessa Steps—actually the Richelieu Steps in Odessa—was the most astounding and upsetting few minutes any of us had seen. Not surprisingly, the film was banned in England for nearly thirty years, showings permitted only at the Film Society, which was patronized by an elite membership, although The Daily Express accused it of being a Communist front organization “bent on riot and revolution”!

Is it a comment on present-day critics and directors that in the latest Sight and Sound Critics’ Poll, Battleship Potemkin has sunk to No. 54?

The plot is quickly told: “In the wake of Russia’s defeat by Japan in 1905, discontent is rife among the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet. Forced to eat maggoty meat, a group of sailors revolt under the leadership of Matyushenko and Vakulinchuk. Captain Golikov forces the issue on the quarterdeck and decides to execute the mutineers. Marines of the ship’s firing squad refuse to shoot their brothers, who are collectively covered by a tarpaulin. In the ensuing fracas, officers are killed or thrown overboard. Comrade Vakulinchuk is shot, and his body displayed on the quayside, where the sympathetic citizens of Odessa come to pay their respects, showing their solidarity by replenishing the Potemkin’s depleted supplies. Suddenly, soldiers appear on the Odessa Steps and the real massacre begins. The ship then opens fire on the Odessa Theatre, the HQ of Military Command. But the Black Sea Squadron is on its way, and the ship prepares for battle. Instead, the Squadron’s crews make common cause with their rebellious comrades, the Red Flag is raised [the only color in the film] and on a wave of jubilant solidarity, the Potemkin steams into a golden future.” [Wim van Leer, The Jerusalem Post magazine, May 27, 1982] 

Ever since I’d seen the film at London’s National Film Theatre in the 1950s as a schoolboy, I’d been obsessed by it. I first heard about the “Last Survivor” when I encountered my friend cinematographer Chris Menges and his assistant at Euston Station, surrounded by camera equipment. “We’ve been in Dublin, filming an old man from the Battleship Potemkin,” said Chris. He knew me well enough to expect I would respond with amazement and respond I did—as if struck by a bullet. His filmed interview was made for Italy’s RAI-TV, but when I inquired about it, they said it had been discarded.

The news propelled me to further research. I was startled to find numerous accounts of 1905 depicting the mutiny and the massacre more or less as they occur in the film. Here, for example, is the British historian Orlando Figes, in his The Story of Russia (NY: Metropolitan Books, 2022).

At the head of the steps a party of Cossacks dismounted and formed up with rifles raised. At the command of an officer, they aimed the barrels and fired point blank into the panic-stricken fleeing crowd of men and women. Then they drew back the bolts of their rifles, descended three steps, crouched on one knee, all in perfect unison, and fired again.

Highly dramatic, highly impressive, except that none of it actually happened. French film historian Bernard Eisenschitz, a specialist in Soviet film, writes that he was surprised at the presentation of this as an actual incident—“It’s been common knowledge for a long time that it didn’t happen that way.”…

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Kevin Brownlow, a silent film enthusiast since the age of eleven, is author of The Parade’s Gone By, The War, the West, and the Wilderness, and Behind the Mask of Innocence, among other books, and, with Andrew Mollo, made the independent features It Happened Here (1964) and Winstanley (1975), followed by a series of documentaries with David Gill on film history, including the thirteen-part series Hollywood.

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Cineaste, Vol. XLVIII, No. 3