Battleship Potemkin

Battleship Potemkin Literary Elements

Director

Sergei Eisenstein

Leading Actors/Actresses

Aleksandr Antonov

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Vladimir Barskiy

Genre

Drama, History

Language

Russian

Awards

Date of Release

December 21, 1925

Producer

Jacob Bliokh

Setting and Context

1905 Russian Revolution aboard Battleship Potemkin and streets of Odessa.

Narrator and Point of View

The sailors on board the Potemkin and the people of Odessa.

Tone and Mood

Serious, Violent, Dramatic

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonists are the sailors on Potemkin and people of Odessa; antagonists are the commanding officers and Tsar.

Major Conflict

The sailors of the Potemkin mutiny against their commanders for poor treatment and join the Russian revolution

Climax

The sailors on the Tsarist ships refuse to fire on the Potemkin as a sign of comradery.

Foreshadowing

The "Daily Bread" plate being smashed foreshadows the sailors not being able to take their treatment any longer and their ensuing fight with the commanding officers.

Understatement

The suffering of the people of Russia is left unseen and only alluded to during the film; we are instead meant to infer their status based on the microcosm of the sailors.

Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques

Shots are juxtaposed against each other to create new meanings rather than simply showing the sequence of events (see “Soviet Montage Theory” for more)

Allusions

“Give us this day our daily bread” is a line from the Christian Lord’s Prayer

Paradox

The film treats Vakulinchuk as a protagonist/martyr figure while also espousing the value of collective action and power of the masses.

Parallelism

The two instances of distributing food— bread and canned food from the ship's storeroom, and the Odessa citizens bringing food by boat—both position the sharing of food as an act of defiance.

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