The Battleship Potmekin Viewer's Response
1. If The Battleship Potemkin is a propaganda film, what is it promoting?
2. Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, Third Reich said:
“This is a marvelous film without equal in the cinema. Anyone who had no firm political conviction could become a Bolshevik after seeing the film.”
Speech to Film Industry, 28 March 1933.
Considering the source, does this quote matter when teaching the film?
3. Did you enjoy the film? If so, which parts impressed you most? If not, what was it about the film that failed to capture your attention? Is this to do with age? Maybe it didn't involve you, but it impressed you. If so, can you say why?
4. Find oppositions you can trace in the narrative (not only the story but the way it is told) of the film. What do these opposites tell us? How do they act as storytellers?
5. Eisenstein avoids the central hero/heroine of the typical Hollywood film and the use of a professional star to play them. Why did he make this decision? What about this film makes this a strong or a weak decision?
6. The other important groups we see are the people around the Odessa harbor. What parts of the social organism -chat groups - do they typify, where do they fit in the larger conflict?
Questions taken from www.filmeducation.org/pdf/film/potemkin.pdf