the distracted gaze
by Douglas Messerli
Nina
Agadzhanova (writer), Sergei M. Eisenstein (director) Bronenosets Potemkin (Battleship
Potemkin) / 1925
It
has been decades since I first saw Sergei Eisenstein’s renowned film Battleship Potemkin, and I now no longer
even remember what my childhood impressions of film might have been. But
watching it again yesterday, I was struck my certain elements of the film that,
surely given the years of commentary on this 1925 work, has been described
before; but since I have not read any such commentary, I thought I might at
least proffer my own (perhaps unoriginal) perceptions.
Skeptical of his prognosis, many of the
sailors refuse to eat the soup served up for their dinner, relying instead on
fish they have caught from the boat and canned rations bought from the ship’s commissary.
Eisenstein brilliantly reveals the significance of this seemingly small act by
centering his camera on the swaying tables, unattended by human presence, the
fact of which infuriates the Chief Officer Giliaroysky (Grigori Aleksandrov).
Soon after, the men are called to the top deck where the ship’s Commander
Golikov (Vladimir Barsky) demands that those who did not enjoy the borscht to
step forward. The few that had been chosen to represent the other sailors, do
so, while the remaining sea men retreat to the fore-deck. Golikov orders a tarpaulin
to be thrown over the offenders and orders his military guard to shoot. At the
last moment, Vakulinchuk steps forward to demand of the gunmen, “Brothers! Who
are you shooting at?”—a question which will be silently reiterated at film’s
end, when the Battleship Potemkin, in a face off with the Russian squadron,
will win over their would-be enemies.
Yet Vakulinchuk’s direct confrontation with
his opponents and the last scene of the film are exceptions in Eisenstein’s
work. The Bolshevik’s appeal for reason and empathy, for the brotherly-love
represented by the revolutionary song “The Internationale,” stands against the
actions of the much of the rest of the work. Soon after, the sailors mutiny,
sending most of the ship’s officers overboard into the depths of the sea, and
at the very moment they perceive that their actions have succeeded Vakulinchuk
is killed by Giliaroysky.
With
eyes shifting to the left, right, and down of the film’s frames, the sailors of
Battleship Potemkin stare off into spaces that permit no human
interrelationships.
Nowhere in this film is this fact made
more apparent that when the action shifts to the harbor of Odessa in Ukraine.
With the dead Vakulinchuk laid out in a small tent like a Russian
saint, the citizens of the city, who
have all seemingly heard rumors of the ship’s mutiny, descend upon the harbor
to pay their respects to the new hero. Eisenstein makes little attempt for
these admirers to speak to one another. Through an occasional inter-title, we
gather that some speak to the general group, but visually these pilgrims are
once again represented in complete isolation, eyes looking into the burial tent
with open wonderment, faces distracted, temporarily at least, from the world
surrounding them. Once more, the director presents them as looking everywhere
except into the faces of one another.
We now observe the actions not from the
viewpoint of the Odessa citizens but from the automaton-like troops marching
behind them, returning us to the world of the distracted gaze of beings who
refuse to face one another in open communication. The result of this inhuman
situation is so horrifying that, when the ship reacts to the slaughter of
innocents by shooting into the city’s grand opera house, even the sculpted
lions surrounding its entrance
appear to rise up in absolute outrage.
Given what we have just witnessed, it is no
wonder that the sailors of the Potemkin, now moving back to sea in order to
face a “stand off” with the squadron of vessels under Czarist Russian control,
are now portrayed again as looking off into space, independently standing on look-out,
sleeping. It is only when the squadron is sighted that, as the ship’s figures
move into position, we recognize that we are now moving toward the longed-for
direct confrontation of the other. But it is presented by Eisenstein less in terms
of the sailors in control than in the forward-facing cannons and by the direct
confrontations of the ships themselves, as they have become, somehow, stand-ins
for what has failed on the human level. The language these leviathans speak
comes in the form of a waving flag: Join us!
The refusal of the other ships to fire is
greeted with cheers by the mutinous sailors, who have won the day if not the
battle. The actual story is far more complex, and, alas, far more similar to
events that happened in the central portions of this film. Ultimately, the
Battleship Potemkin, after wandering for some period of time, was surrendered
to the Romanians
Los Angeles, July
25, 2014
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