Revolution in Russia

A mutiny on a Russian warship becomes successful. The crew helps revolutionaries in town fight knout-wielding Cossacks, turning their guns on government buildings.

Edison also had a film recounting the mutiny on the Potemkin. Western film makers were sympathetic to the plight of the Russian underclasses; see THE NIHILIST (1905) or RUSSIAN ANTI-SEMITIC ATROCITIES (1905). This version, with several camera set-ups, is a very advanced film for the year. However, as large as it loomed in revolutionary mythology, it became an article of faith that the West did not care. Take a look at this movie and make the claim.

It all washed away in the face of Eisenstein's version. If you wish to accept the claim that the apAcademicians invented everything they use, that's another useful myth.

This film is all about an uprising that occurred aboard the Imperial Russian ship, Potemkin, and how the uprising spread ashore. This is a very early telling of the true story, but it was re-make so much better by Sergei Eisenstein a couple decades later (as a propaganda film for the new Soviet government). In this early version, the sets are pretty poor (though not really bad for 1905) and the story is VERY, VERY rough and confusing--unless you saw Eisenstein's movie first. In fact, the true story is very interesting and it's amazing to see just how UNINTERESTING and confusing this all became with this Pathé Brothers film. My advice is see the Eisenstein one and if you want to see a GOOD older film, try those of the French genius, Méliès.

This is an interesting dramatization of the Odessa revolution, an event which is more familiar to movie fans through Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin". This much shorter film was made with the events still fresh in everyone's memory, and thus it does not explain much of the action, assuming that the audience knows most of what is going on. For that reason, if you watch it now, you probably need to be already familiar with the historical events in order to follow what is taking place. While quite brief and relatively straightforward, it does create a decent sense of action, especially given the cinematic limitations of the time.

While lacking the grandeur and narrative technique of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, this French film from Pathe makes a decent job of recreating key moments from the Russian revolution of 1905 in Odessa.

The film opens with sailors aboard a ship complaining to officers about the condition of their food, a situation which the ship's captain handles by shooting the leader of the unhappy diners. This proves to be a big mistake because before you can say 'dummy double' the Captain finds himself turning all floppy and being thrown overboard. There then follows scenes of the sailors taking control of the ship, the grieving family and friends of the dead sailor and the beating of peasants by cossack soldiers.

While the lack of any narrative structure means the film is simply a disjointed collection of scenes, it is worth acknowledging the effort that has gone into making this a believable recreation by the film's makers.

A fascinating French film that came many years before the more famous version of the Odessa uprising and massacre. Made at the time of the events, the film does assume a lot of knowledge of what is happening (as the viewers then would have had) as it is a recreation rather than a story being told for the first time. In this way it is a bit much for the casual viewer because it doesn't really explain very much to you in a clear way but it is still interesting.

Technically the film is interesting in use of other footage, "point of view" filming of scenes and the structure across several different sets. Modern viewers will not be impressed but watching it with the knowledge of what else was happening in the industry at the time makes you appreciate this for what it was doing and trying to do.