Summary
After the opening credits, we open on several shots of waves crashing against rocks on the shore. A title card explains how, in 1905, people all across Russia are foregoing their individual interests in favor of a mass movement for collective interests. We then cut to our first view of the titular ship Potemkin. Two sailors, Vakulinchuk and Matyushenko, are discussing workers’ rights and what the crew of the Potemkin can do to help the cause, including joining the revolution. Below deck, we see a number of sailors sleeping in hammocks in close quarters to each other. An officer walks around, trying move through without causing a disruption, but he accidentally trips on something. Frustrated, he strikes one of the sleeping sailors and admonishes him for some unfounded reason. After the officer leaves, the sailor cries into his pillow and is consoled by some of the other sailors. Vakulinchuk gets up and begins delivering a prepared speech to the sailors advocating support for the revolution. There is some argument, but the sailors generally seem attentive and receptive to what Vakulinchuk has to say.
The next morning, the sailors are being handed large slabs of meat for their food while a senior officer watches from a higher deck. Vakulinchuk walks behind the senior officer, looking at him suspiciously. The sailors complain about the quality of the meat, pointing out rotten parts and the presence of maggots. The senior officer comes down, bringing the ship’s doctor, Smirnov, to inspect the meat. Smirnov examines the meat with his glasses and we see a close-up of maggots crawling around it. Speaking to Vakulinchuk, Smirnov rationalizes that the meat is safe to eat because the creatures are not worms but in fact dead fly larvae (via close-up, we can clearly see that the maggots are still alive and moving) and that they can be washed off with brine. Vakulinchuk rejects this, saying that Russian prisoners-of-war held by the Japanese army (the Russo-Japanese War was ongoing at this time) received better food than this meat. Smirnov leaves, once again asserting that the meat is perfectly good. The senior officer gives Smirnov a nod of approval.
The sailors continue arguing with an officer named Giliarovksy, but to no avail. A cook examines the meat with some disgust, but begins chopping it anyway. Some sailors ask him to stop, but he continues. We cut to a series of shots showing sailors cleaning parts of the ship, from the decks to the insides of cannons. We see that many sailors are talking amongst themselves as they clean but we do not know what they say. Boiling water is prepared for the meat to be cooked into borscht and several sailors put out tables for food serving. We see more shots of cleaning and sailors talking. This time a title card informs us that the sailors are getting angrier. An officer examines the food serving area, where no one is currently stationed. He looks amused and walks away. The sailors receive bread and canned food from the storeroom, having apparently refused the borscht. The officer walks by and sees this, going to inform the senior officer. The senior officer is furious. He examines the empty food serving area, still angry. The senior officer then speaks to another sailor, though it is not clear what is said. Several sailors wash dishes, one of them seeing a plate on which the phrase, “Give us this day our daily bread” is engraved. He thinks for a moment, then smashes the plate in frustration.
Analysis
Right from the opening shots, we begin to see Eisenstein’s abstract and elemental way of using images to bring political ideas to life. In the context of title cards explaining the political situation in Russia in 1905, the waves crashing against rocks come to represent the people who are rising up against the entrenched Tsarist government. More abstractly, they can be seen as the forces of change fighting against the established historical powers. This is the beginning of Eisenstein’s personification of non-human objects, from ships to buildings to statues and so on.
We are introduced to the sailors when they are all asleep, metaphorically implying that they are all in a state of complacency and unawareness of the oppressive conditions they live in. Their sleep is broken by a disgruntled officer who beats a man out of frustration for his own clumsiness. Immediately after, the sailors are unsure of what to do, left only to commiserate with each other. They do not get angry about the situation until Vakulinchuk gives his speech advocating that they join the revolution. This is meant to represent the idea that the proletariat in an oppressive society is able and willing to rise up against the status quo, but that they need leaders to show them the way forward. Workers take for granted that their situation cannot be changed until they are offered an alternative. This idea is a core principle of Vladimir Lenin’s interpretation of Marxism: that a “vanguard” of adept and class-conscious individuals is necessary to radicalize the proletariat into revolution. Vakulinchuk, and to a lesser extent Matyushenko, represent this vanguard and are the primary instigators of most of the film’s early action as well as two of just a handful of characters to be named in the film. Despite Vakulinchuk’s centrality to these early parts, we also spend a significant amount of time with people who are barely characters in the story, from the beaten sailor to a cook to random members of the crew. Eisenstein wants to emphasize a sense of collective action; his scenes showing the anguish of the cooks and dishwashers, as well as the impassioned conversations between sailors, show that the revolution will be the result of a collective movement, not just the individual actions of a heroic figure like Vakulinchuk, as we might see in a different kind of film.
Another significant point of this early section is the issue of food. Though we get the sense that there is a general air of dissatisfaction amongst the sailors, the breaking point is the inedible food being served to them. Among all commodities, food is the most fundamental need, so the fact that the high-ranking officers would see fit to serve rotten food to their crew shows a basic disrespect and contempt. The issue of substandard food was at the heart of the real-life Potemkin mutiny on which the film is based, but the food issue takes on an even more profound dimension in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union. Though there were many factors leading to this second, successful revolt, one of the most critical was the severe food shortage which affected huge parts of Russia during World War I, immediately before the revolution. One of the key ideological principles of those rebels was that all people should have a right to quality food, so it’s not a surprise that Eisenstein would emphasize the issue in this film. Indeed, this section ends with one of the sailors examining a plate inscribed with the sentence: “Give us this day our daily bread.” This is a line from the Lord’s Prayer in Christian tradition, and it implies that the basic food necessary for living is a divine right given to the people by God. The Tsarist officers see themselves in a God-like position, thinking that the rotten meat they hand out is sufficient and that the sailors should be grateful to them. The sailor is frustrated by this broken promise, which is why he smashes the plate. It shows that the old compacts, whether those between man and God or sailor and officer or citizen and government, are gone, and that the people will have to claim their rights if they want them to be honored.
