Sergei M. Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets
Potemkin) is one of the most influential films ever made as well
as one of the finest examples of film art. On its release, the
film brought immediate worldwide fame to Eisenstein and the new
Soviet cinema and made an important contribution to the language
of the cinema – the concept of montage editing. After the
Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 the new Soviet government assumed
control of the film industry, denounced the capitalist cinema of
pre-Revolution Tsarist Russia, and decreed that the Soviet
cinema was to be used for education and propaganda – to
indoctrinate the Russian masses and to promote class
consciousness throughout the world. Battleship Potemkin was made
in order to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the unsuccessful
1905 Revolution against the Tsar. Although the film was
originally supposed to chronicle the entire rebellion,
Eisenstein decided to limit the story to just one representative
episode – the mutiny on the Potemkin and the subseque