Battleship Potemkin

In viewing Battleship Potemkin, I was struck by how much the film served as a form of revolutionary propaganda for the time period. Eisenstein favored the montage technique, the idea that narrative is a product of specific sequencing of pictures, and this is apparent in the way he uses the camera to evoke an emotional response from the audience. In the Odessa Steps sequence in particular, the camera focuses on close ups of the people in the crowd. The scene begins in a joyful tone with happy faces and children with their parents. However, the mood quickly changes when there is sudden chaos and panic as the czar and his army disrupts the happiness. I felt this scene was a particularly good example of realist narrative. Although I felt it was very graphic and perhaps too overdramatized, the images were presented within the film for a particular reason. In my opinion, it depicted the army as a cruel and merciless group of people. However, this was the ultimate objective of Eisenstein. While I was taken aback by some of the images, I understood his motives for them. In the scene where the little boy and his mother are ruthlessly killed and trampled without hesitation, Eisenstein excellently evokes emotional sympathy from the audience through his use of the montage technique. Eisenstein directs the audience's sympathy to the civilians, turning them against the Czarist regime.

In the scene we watched in class involving the mutiny of the sailors, Eisenstein also uses the montage technique by displaying images in order to graphically show the shifting power between the sailors and officers. I think this is clever as he parallels the events that occur within the scene by cutting the camera to show what the sailors are looking at, cutting to the flag waving above the ship, and foreshadowing the fact that a rebellion is about to unfold.

In addition, King Vidor's The Crowd is another example of a film that was used as social propaganda to portray a particular message. While the propaganda may not have been politically based within this film, the ideas that are presented to the audience serve to influence. I think that for the most part, the goal of this film is to not only tell a story but for the audience to gain some type of message through watching it. In The Crowd, King Vidor hovers between melodrama and social realism, using certain tropes or recognizable patterns. Throughout the film, he portrays John and Mary Sims who struggle with their marriage and hard economic times. John Sims is introduced in the movie as a man with a goal - "all he wants is an opportunity." John attempts to rise above the crowd as an individual and stand apart from the others when he first arrives to New York City. I found it ironic that John acts like a snob in the beginning of the film, but soon finds out that he is no better than anyone else.

The camera techniques that King Vidor utilizes are interesting

...