text: Battleship Potemkin is a celluloid masterpiece. The direction of<br /><br />Eisenstein is truly a sight. The film chronicles a ship of disgruntled<br /><br />sailors who are tired of being mistreated by their superior officers.<br /><br />Eventually, the sailors finally have enough of the abuse and send the<br /><br />officers packing. During this time period, there was a shortage of film<br /><br />stock in the Soviet Union. The goverment wanted to get their message<br /><br />out to the people so they started a National Film Company and one of<br /><br />the members was Sergei Eisenstein. The films were shot on miniscule<br /><br />budgets and the shortage of film stock forced Eisentein to be careful<br /><br />and selective with the footage that he shot. In the end, Eisenstein had<br /><br />to reuse footage in order to make a feature length picture.<br /><br />The most famous of the action set pieces in this film is the much<br /><br />talked about massacre on the steps. This scene was spoofed in Bananas <br /><br />and most recently in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables. If you want to<br /><br />learn film-making, I strongly advise you to watch Battleship Potemkin.<br /><br />It's one of the essentials.<br /><br />A+