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Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Posted on April 30, 2013 | 4 comments

Battleship Potemkin (“Bronenosets Potyomkin”)
Directed by Sergei M. Eisenstein
1925/USSR
Goskino
Repeat viewing
#27 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

Opening Intertitle: Revolution is war. Of all the wars known in history it is the only lawful, rightful, just, and great war. . . In Russia this war has been declared and begun – Lenin, 1905.

The sailors of the Battleship Potemkin are fed up with their diet of rotten, maggoty meat and refuse to eat their borscht. The officers threaten to kill them for insubordination and the sailors revolt. The citizens of Odessa rise up in support of the rebel sailors and are slaughtered on the Odessa steps by tsarist soldiers. The rest of the squadron closes in on the Potemkin and the crew gets ready to fight. At the last minute, victory! The sailors on the other ships allow the Potemkin to pass safely.

Battleship Potemkin 1

While this movie does not exactly make my heart sing, there is no arguing that it taught the world a lot about how to tell a story and manipulate audience emotions through editing. The famous Odessa steps sequence is still one of the most powerfully horrific scenes in film history. This time around I noticed some pretty exquisite cinematography in this film at well. The restored print brought out the ethereal ships in the harbor when Vakulinchuk’s body is brought by boat to the docks at dawn. The sequence of the fleet of little sailing boats taking provisions to the battleship is also lyrical and quite lovely. It is easy to forget such interludes in a film that seems to determined to brand shocking images on the brain.

2011 Kino High Definition release trailer

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Posted in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Movie Reviews

Tagged 1925, Eisenstein, silent, USSR

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Posted on April 1, 2013 | 4 comments

The Phantom of the Opera
Directed by Rupert Julian
1925/USA
Universal Pictures
#26 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
First Viewing

This is another of the movies from The List that I had never seen before and was available from Netflix streaming.

Erik: Feast your eyes! Glut your soul on my accursed ugliness!

Erik (Lon Chaney), a self-taught musician and disfigured, criminally insane fugitive, has taken refuge in the cavernous cellars of the Paris Opera House. There he has been taken for a phantom that haunts the opera house. He develops a passion for rising opera singer Christine and promotes her career by writing threatening letters to keep the star diva from singing and by killing the audience with a chandelier when that doesn’t work. Eventually, he lures Christine to his realm where she soon learns of the hideous countenance hidden by his mask. He agrees to allow Christine to return to the opera on the condition that she stay away from her lover. Naturally, Christine cannot resist and all hell breaks loose.

The Phantom as the Red Death

I must say that this is much creepier and more gripping than the 1943 Claude Rains version. The print I saw had quite a bit of tinting, two-strip Technicolor sequences, and a specially composed score that heightened the effects. Chaney was spectacular and, while I could have lived without some of Mary Philbin’s posturing, I really enjoyed it.