Battleship Potemkin : Dialectics & Socialist Realism:

- Kunal Deshpande

We will explore the Socialist Realism and Dialectics used in a 1925 film By Sergei Eisenstein, called Battleship Potemkin. For exploration of these two terms, we first need to understand what these terms mean. These two concepts are essential elements of Eisenstein’s body of work.

The term Socialist Realism means the kind of artistic expression that was used (especially in the Soviet Union) to forward the aims of socialism and communism. This was used largely in the Soviet Union after the end of the Tsarist period for propaganda of communism and the idea that everything was in the ownership of the proletariat (common people).

The concept of dialectics has its roots in communism and Marxism. The concept, in essence means that anything in this world (called the THESIS), comes into being with an opposite (called the ANTITHESIS). The conflicting nature of the Thesis and the Antithesis leads to a Synthesis, which is either an alternative remedy to the clash, or is an entirely different approach to achieving the desired result. According to Marxist Dialectics, the society is the thesis. The problems in society are the antithesis and the new social structure and form that emerges from the clash of the existing society and the problems is the Synthesis. This is an endless triangle of the clash between the thesis and the antithesis in society or economy, and the synthesis also has an antithesis and then leads to another synthesis and so on.

The film battleship Potemkin [N1] is a socialist realistic film, as has been said earlier. The film portrays how sailors on a ship by the name of the movie mutiny the autocratic and torturous leadership on the ship. This leads to a conflict in a town called Odessa where the people gather in large numbers to greet the ship, and they are indiscriminately fired upon by the Cossacks, who were the Tsarist guards. The struggle between the people and the Cossacks at the Odessa Staircase is what is going to be the focus of our study here. We will study the Soviet Socialist Realism used here along with the dialectic frames used by Eisenstein in the Odessa Staircase sequence. [N2]

THE ODESSA STAIRCASE:

The sequence of the Odessa staircase is the 4^th act in the film, which is made of 5 parts or acts. [N3] The sequence begins with text telling the viewers that the town of Odessa was with the sailors (in spirit). The sequence then shows a lot many boats streaming toward the ship with food and supplies. Following this is the portrayal of many people standing on the massive staircase and waving out to the ship. Here, in one shot, there is a lady who looks well to do by her attire, which is a white gown, standing on the staircase with one foot on a higher step and one on the lower. The frame only shows her gown below the knees, with an umbrella touching the floor. There is a woman wearing a similar BLACK gown in the right mid edge of the frame. Between these two ladies, a disabled, haggard looking man comes into the frame from the right. This is an indicator that Eisenstein has used to establish the social stratification in Soviet Russia. This also indicates, according to Marxist / Hegelian dialectics, that the women and the man are the thesis and the antithesis, and that the class-driven clash will yield a classless society, which will be the synthesis. There is a very notable distinction between the attires of the ladies and that of the man, by which one can infer that the classes of these people are apart, but even then they are together in that space to greet the people controlled ship Potemkin?. This unison for the cause of the ‘control of the people’ is an example of Socialist Realism as it puts forth the idea of control being in the hands of the people, as important[N4] .

The next dialectic is found in the sub-sequence of the Cossacks shooting indiscriminately at the people gathered. Here, the framing and continuity editing used here is replete with dialectics and propagandist realism. The shooting begins with a woman’s mid shot, where she is shown to be screaming and writhing in pain as if somebody stabbed her in the back. The shot is taken from a low angle, letting the woman cover the whole frame. Then there is a shot where there is a statue pointing ahead, in the left of the frame, in the foreground. Below the statue, the Cossacks are marching toward the starting point of the massive staircase, slowly taking space in the frame. People are shown running away from them, on the staircase. The camera position gives the viewer a feeling of being in control, or being the higher authority as we look from a higher point of view, looking at the scene as something that is happening at a level below us. This is because of the framing and the mise en scene, which is the arrangement of elements in the frame to put forth what the filmmaker wants to convey to the viewer. [N5] The sequence then shows a mother and son running down the seemingly endless stairs. (Eisenstein has used a verytypical semiological “signifier” in the Mother who is a very typical character. The “signified” here is the typical helplessness of women[N6] , especially the ones from the lower classes in the Feudal Heirarchy, and their struggle against it.[N7] In keeping with James Monaco’s article on How to Read a Film, the film, as mentioned above, also does not have a vast difference between the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signified’.) [N8] The son gets shot and falls behind. The mother, upon realizing that her son has fallen back and is dead, gets very upset and angry, and starts walking back up the stairs. While she is walking back, she picks up her son and carrying him in her arms, proceeds towards the Cossacks. The shots that follow are taken from the side where the Cossacks are seen entering the frame from the left top and exiting from the right bottom. Here there is a suggestion that the Cossacks are the ones higher in the social order, wielding more power, and they are descending upon something or someone with deadly force. The mother is shown in the same way, from the side, walking up the stairs looking upwards. She enters the frame from the right and exits from the left. Thus Eisenstein establishes the eminent clash between the Cossacks and the mother.

The frame is as follows :

This clash between the mother and the Cossacks leaves the mother dead as in their quest to retain power and control, the Cossacks shoot her dead too. This was a shocking moment in the film for the viewers in the 1920s, when the film was made. Eisenstein, in his theory of filmmaking dialectics, states that any 2 shots are dialectic in nature, as the clash between the shots leads to the evoking of emotion in the viewer by creating shock for them. This sequence in Battleship Potemkin shocked the audience when the film was made. The shock was created because the film evoked the sense of Pathos (as in Aristotle’s views of dramatics) in the spectator due to the powerlessness of the mother. The fact that in the sequence, the mother, even though powerless, was still courageous enough to go against the Cossacks. By doing so, it proved the theory put forward by Eisenstein to be true.

In the following parts of the sequence, taken from the base of the stairs at eye-level, the viewer can see some Cossacks riding horseback and hitting people. They enter from the bottom left, and remain in the bottom center of the frame throughout the shot. There are people still running down the stairs through a lot many dead bodies lying on the steps. Some of them are shown getting shot and adding to the number of dead. This sequence has suggestions of how the proletariat (people) always got stuck & exploited between the power and force of the Bourgeoisie (privileged class of society).

The way some more shots have been taken is also in keeping with the socialist realist motives of the film. The common people have been shot mostly at the eye-level. The few more privileged people on some frames have been shot from a slightly lower angle, suggesting that their status and position in society is higher than that of the viewer. The Cossacks have been shot from a low angle and also from high angles. The switching angles of looking at the Cossacks suggests the viewpoints of the people, who look at them from below in the social hierarchy, and from the viewpoint of the higher placed people in society, who are above the Cossacks, in the hierarchical construction of the Tsarist Feudal social order. This portrays society in as real a way as can be done.

When the film was made, the Proletariat Government controlled the portrayal of society, and there was very little creative freedom that any director could avail while making a film. This given, the way the movie portrays the events, is very close to the real events on which the director has based his film. The real events on which the film is based are the mutiny on the real ship called battleship Potemkin while the ship was returning from a los in the Russo-Japanese war, and the subsequent clampdown on people by the Tsarist Cossacks during the Bolshevik rebellion in 1907.

Eisenstein was a supporter of the Marxist ideology and vied for a classless society. That is why he made propagandist films in this time period. The way Karl Marx had imagined a communist society was one where there was no stratification, whether vertical or horizontal. The society that he had wanted was a utopian idea. However, during the reign of Stalin, there was a certain hierarchy and stratification of the society during the ‘proletariat dictatorship’ as it was called. Eisenstein probably wanted to trigger the thoughts of the people toward breaking out of this kind of a stratified society and into a classless, utopian society.

The film carries a lot from the Semiological perspective of looking at film. As stated above, the film certainly uses the Signifier and the Signified[N9] . Also, like stated in James Monaco’s article on how to read a film- signs, the film definitely carries in it an ability to denote and connote. The connotation of power hierarchy is surely done by the angling of shots as mentioned earlier (People higher in social order being shot from lower angles, and subsequent lower classes shot from eye level or even high angles.) The Cossacks are shot from low angles and high angles, connoting the power that they have, as well as establishing the viewpoint, and drawing the viewer into the struggle by making him feel powerful by being above the Cossacks in the particular Statue shot as explained earlier. These connotations are called Paradigmatic Connotations, according to James Monaco. The arrangement of the shots and the story that they tell the spectator denote the struggle between the general peoples of Russia and the Feudal order of the Tsarist era.

This sequence that we have seen is a part of this film that has the most dramatic shock and a fast pace of events happening one after the other. That is the reason for choosing the sequence for the study of the historically important film Battleship Potemkin.

Night And Fog :

Reflecting on Night and Fog by Alain Resnais :

In Night and Fog, Resnais deals with the holocaust. He does not, though, deal with it in the institutionalized manner of the Jewish memory of the event. He chooses instead to use the world impact of the horrifying events of the holocaust, and construct a common memory for the viewer in the film. Except for one sentence, the film never uses the word “Jew”. The film follows an intellectual montage style throughout, using the juxtaposition of two images next to one another to create a meaning out of them. Jean Cayrol, who was a survivor of the concentration camps, has written the text for the film. The vocal narration of the film has been done with a very dry and seemingly emotionless voice. This was done on purpose by Resnais to make the viewers feel more of the cold brutality of the memory of the concentration camps and the atrocities perpetrated. Holistically, the film carries a very matter-of-fact view about the whole event and its horror. Michel Bouquet, who has narrated the film, was specifically asked by Resnais to have a very matter-of-fact voice in the film so as not to create a feeling of alignment with anyone in the film.

Visual Treatment:

Resnais takes the montage forward when he uses tracking shots to introduce the viewer to a space in the film. From the opening sequence where he tracks down to reveal the barbed wire before the pristine pastoral beauty of a vast open field, to when he tracks around the ovens / furnaces that were used to burn the bodies, to the last shot, where he tracks over the muddled swampy water over the graves, and along the dilapidated electric chair, and then around the ruin of a building of the camp complex. He makes the viewer feel the space by using an eye level camera height, and the track pace is of a slow walk around the space. The way he places the camera close to the fences of the camp compounds makes the viewer feel trapped inside. The light used to shoot the buildings would be considered a very “perfect” light, however, it gives the spaces a certain duality of emotion. It is common memory of what transpired inside those buildings of the concentration camps, which gives the duality of emotion along with the light. There are a lot of still images from the time used in the film, which help the viewer in visualizing the ghastly horror of the camps. These images, in combination with the film footage of the bulldozers pushing heaps of dead bodies into large pits dug as common graves for the millions who were killed in the camps. The images of the victims of het camps standing naked in large numbers, shows the viewer how they were humiliated. The voiceover narration over these images remains very matter-of-fact, lending it coldness as mentioned before. In the shot where the train comes into the camp in the night and fog, and the following shot of the same tracks in present times, the viewer can feel like a victim of the camp because of the camera angle and movement used. The camera keeps tracking forward, looking down at the tracks, and then gradually tilts up, revealing the main building and entrance of the camp. The narration over this bit gives the viewer the context to imagine. With the description of the barking dogs, fallen bodies on the sides of the tracks, and the massive searchlights etc, the viewer can very well imagine what the situation could have been at that time. In addition to the aforementioned points about the visual treatment of the film, there are other points as well like the shifting from black and white images of the found footage, to the colored images of the footage that he shot while making the film. This also lends a temporal passage of time in the narrative without mentioning it in words. The film never tells the viewer about the time that it is engaging the viewer in.

Temporal spaces:

Resnais in this film does not follow the exact chronological order of events. He was of the opinion that he was not interested n representing reality. Therefore he does not follow the exact chronological order of events in the film, while depicting the concentration camps. The film successfully establishes different temporal spaces by using color and black and white images for the depiction of the past and the present for the film. The film also shows the concentration camps in the present first, in the opening sequence and then it goes to show the processes that were followed in the times when the concentration camps existed. The film then also goes to show the unified and machine like way in which the German “Fatherland” used to function. In the scenes where Michel Bouquet says that “ The machine goes into action”, there are shots of hundreds and thousands of people doing the same action together, in the militarized fashion that was the mark of the third Reich. He then uses another shot, taken from a low angle, from the triumph of the will, where soldiers with Deutschland banners walk in a line to separate left and right near the camera, in a mechanical fashion, echoing the words of Bouquet. The temporal connections are also made by Resnais by using the common memory of the Second World War that people all over the world have. He uses this fact to create the ‘internal cinema’ or experience in the viewers’ minds. When he talks about the nail marks on the ceiling of the gas chambers in the camps, the viewers’ mind immediately begins to imagine how low the ceiling must have been. More so because to make a mark on concrete, person needs a lot of force, which makes it imperative that the ceilings were very low.

Creating Associations:

Resnais uses the natural tendency of people to his advantage to tell his story of the camps in Auschwitz. He never shows video footage of the torture that transpired in Auschwitz. But he shows images of men and women being paraded naked through the camp, trains getting filled to the brim with people and reaching a station with many dead in them already. As said before, he has married these images to a narration that is almost emotionless. This lends the coldness needed for the human mind to make an association of the dehumanization and the cold horror of the camps. He creates the association of the people in the camps being tortured and treated like animals by juxtaposing the images of them being packed into halls and buildings like animals, being paraded naked, and then the images of the latrines where one can easily imagine the way they must have had to sit right next to each other to perform daily chores. This way, the mind has the capability of manufacturing a memory for itself, by which even if a viewer is not completely acquainted with the details of the holocaust, he can construct a memory of the holocaust for himself while and after watching this film. However he does not use the technique of creating illusions at all in the film. All through the film, he only uses real images from the times when the genocide was perpetrated, juxtaposes them and creates a meaning out of them.

New Course, New attitudes....

We have started with a new course about mobile filmmaking and its very very interesting. We are going to make collective films about the city. For this, we are interacting with some really interesting people and trying to understand what we are looking at. I have to talk to Street Vendors and ask them about their life and what they face in their lives. We are working with a few people who are trying to understand the city from an academic, but still involved perspective. They are trying to study it sociologically and in other "academic" ways. Yesterday was a very very pleasing and rewarding day as I felt a resurgence of my sociological self, as we were talking about different things from communalism to the caste system, Ambedkar, and the Nehru-Gandhi debate about nation building. There were some interesting points that came up in the discussion, and it really pleased me to even think that people in my department have had to learn to look at filmmaking with a different perspective. I hope they realised yesterday that filmmaking is not only an art, but an art with a purpose. So you can always have a film that creates a feeling in the viewers mind to build an attitude of a certain purpose to people's lives. People can feel hope when there is very little of it in their lives. The jobless can feel empowered, awareness can be raised through films and there are so many other things that one can write.....

This course is sure turning out to be interesting... it is genuinely very nice... It is making us think on some line which are not figments of our imagination, but are deeply rooted in the Indian society and have their context clear. The expression of this is what I am looking forward to in the next few weeks....

The Mumbai Trip and the learnings....

We recently went on a trip to Mumbai from Bangalore, to attend the Mumbai International Film Festival for Short, Documentary and Animation films. We went there with quite a lot of excitement, but there were only a few films that made a mark for us. The other films, for me, were also very important to see, as watching them made me realise that we are really doing a good job. We have a great teaching staff, who are showing us the right path, and we are creatively growing so much more than some of our counterparts from other film schools. Yes, we might not have the best equipment like dolly tracks, jimmy jibs and all, but we are learning to function without them, and that is what is the greatest thing about us...

The other learnings that I had in Mumbai, after visiting the city after so long, was that you have to have a great ability to keep your cool when you are there in the city. For one, the local trains are so so Jam Packed that you have to let go of all those "pretty" ideas about yourself and learn to get stamped on your feet, and get squeezed between two people who have huge baloons as bellies. This was also a great learning experience.

The fact that me and few of my friends were living in Panvel, which is quite outside the city, also gave us the opportunity to see so much more than the others who were staying really close by to the NCPA, where the MIFF was happening.

In all, was a great trip.....

Thinking of the camera ,or rather Off it........

I have been doing some redundant thinking of late... That is what quite a few people would call it.

Is the point of creating imagery, whether still or motion picture, creating works that are technically correct or is it communication. Should we call something that is communicative in nature but does not necessarily meet the highest standards of technical perfection a good work or should we call something that is technically correct but does not say a thing, a good work?

What is the role of the camera? Is it that instrument which enables us to create images and partake in the various activities around us and where need be, say something through the work we do? Or is it "just a tool" that we can ignore in the supposedly "intellectual processing" of ourselves? I believe that the camera is that tool which enables us to communicate, stimulate a thought in another human being, or just simply make them believe in something. I can take a picture of something and make someone believe that it is something totally different from what it actually is.

In the realm of the moving image, that is films, I have always believed that the point of making a film is to say something to others. It is visual storytelling. So point is not whether one makes the perfect frame or not, or whether one crosses the Line of Action, but whether one can create the image that is necessary for the mood of the scene to be developed in the viewer. Why are low shots used to show a dominant character in films? Because the placement of the camera makes the character look a certain way. When RGV decides to shoot Sarkar from a low angle, it does create a certain mood in the viewer. In addition to that, there are other factors which affect the film. the yellow tone used in the film also adds the feeling of power and money to the film. I think it also lends it a little violent feel.

When we are in institutions where we learn art, there needs to be a freedom given to our minds from ourselves. We very quickly get drawn into a certain "herd" tendency and try and do what has been done before, better. Or else we try and be one up with our peers and do something on similar lines as they are doing. What one needs to do is find for himself what he wants to do, and then work towards that no matter who says what. When a person enjoys doing commercial work, there will be a lot of purists who will say that that is not the right way to photograph or make films. It is not necessarily that way. When one makes a Bollywood commercial film, it can still be very well shot and well conceived and a well told story. There is enough room for experimentation in the field, so no matter what anyone says, one should look to do what they really want to because the school is the only place where one can get the chance to experiment.

What I want to say is that generally we find people doing short films which have serious undertones and a serious story to tell. Rarely do we find people who try and do Comedy, or plain and simple Action films in the short films that are created in film schools. I might be wrong, but I am talking from the perspective of what I have seen till now. I hope someone proves me wrong... It will be so cool to wrong for once.... I would love to prove myself wrong...

So now, scripting time!!!

A New Life....

I had been dormant or rather in a coma like state on blogger for quite a while now... I have now got the urge to write again... I want to share.. I want to tell. I was afraid of telling stories earlier. Too conscious of everything I was... I have vowed not to be now... I will not be afraid anymore. not of what Mom and Dad would say of what I write, not of what ANYONE says of what I write. I will just write.

Thanks.

Now, Welcome to my new blog. Here I will write about me and my life at regular intervals... I will also share my work online as a portfolio.... Let us see where this goes now... :-D

Thank you so much if you are reading this...