One Battleship After Another

Some critical thoughts about the 100^th anniversary of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.

Frequently elected among film critics and scholars as one of the best films of all time, Sergei Eisenstein’s BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Bronenosec Potemkin, 1925) celebrates its 100^th anniversary this year and remains both influential and controversial. Plenty of analyses of the film have been published over the past century – its masterful use of montage, camera, acting and music have been described and interpreted in great detail^[1].  The reception history of the Soviet classic has contributed at least as much – if not more – to the notorious reputation of the film. Indeed: film screenings do not take place in a vacuum.

“Decolonizing” Soviet history

The context of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has changed the perception of Soviet cultural heritage all over the post-Soviet sphere as well as in Central and Eastern Europe. Monuments have been removed, biographies rewritten and within cultural institutions as well as within academia attempts have been made to “decolonize” departments of Slavic philology and Eastern European history, which to this day are heavily dominated by Russian culture. Among film scholars that include production and reception histories in their research, a decolonial reassessment of Soviet film heritage and the state of national cinema in the post-Soviet states today, has led to new insights. ^[2] These efforts find support within film institutions in Central Europe as well as the post-Soviet countries, most of all, of course in Ukraine, where upon the start of the full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian Film Academy immediately called for an international boycott of Russian cinema^[3]. Protests against screenings of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN and other Soviet works can be understood in this context: they do not focus their anger at what’s on screen per se, but more at the film’s language, its symbolic value as well as the fact that as a Soviet propaganda film, it also represents an imperial sentiment that inspired the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine.

It is no wonder that the Western perception of all things Soviet is still predominantly Russian: the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin considers itself to be the USSR successor state. Apart from that the Soviets (as well as the Russian Empire, which vastly expanded its territory before that) pursued an active policy of Russification, presenting Russian culture and language as the dominant and most “elite” one. Especially under Stalin’s reign (1927-1953), Ukrainian, Baltic and Polish nationalism as well as the wish for autonomy of various smaller ethnic groups like the Chechens or the Oyrat-Kalmyks, was punished by mass deportations or – as was the case in Ukraine – punitive collectivization and starvation in the Holodomor^[4]. At the same time: almost all Soviet states had their own regional film studios and produced films in their own languages.  But it was common practice to produce a Russian-dubbed version of these films as well (or in the case of silent films, with Russian intertitles), and these versions were usually sent abroad via SovExportFilm – the state distribution company for world sales of Soviet cinema set up in 1925. The Russification policy was thus executed both internally and externally.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was a film production from the USSR and predominantly shot in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic which at the time, had its own thriving film industry organized within VUFKU (Vseukrainske Foto-Kinoupravlinnya / All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration). Dziga Vertov’s classic THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA was produced by VUFKU, for example, as well as Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s EARTH.  Indeed, the mass scenes in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN shot on the stairs in Odesa, as well as in the port, required highly professional film infrastructure and a well-organized production department on location. To make things more complicated from today’s point of view: some scenes were shot in the port city of Simferopol as well as in Alupka – both located on the Crimean Peninsula, which only became part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 when it was transferred by a Soviet government decree. Since 2014 Crimea has been occupied by the Russian Federation.

We mentioned the multi-ethnic make-up of the film team behind BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN before: Director Sergey Eisenstein was born in Riga (now Latvia, in the year of his birth part of the Russian Empire) – his father was of German-Jewish origin, his mother came from a Russian merchant family. Cinematographer and frequent collaborator Eduard Tisse – born in Liepaja (now Latvia) to an Estonian-Swedish father and a Russian mother, scriptwriter Nina Agadzhanova-Shutko was of Armenian descent. Not even the story can be called purely „Russian“ – at the center of the drama is Hryhoriy Vakulenchuk – a Ukrainian officer in the Russian Imperial Army fighting poor treatment of his crew, and the injustices of the oppressive tsarist empire. Summarizing, one can say: BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN is a product from the multi-ethnic Soviet Union, intended to arouse revolutionary sentiment against the Russian empire.

Film versions and restorations

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN was commissioned as a work of agitprop commemorating the 1905 revolution, its highly successful premiere took place in Moscow in 1925. Then, as early as 1926, the only existing negative of Potemkin was sold to the German distribution company Prometheus Film, after which neither Eisenstein nor the Soviet state film monopoly Goskino had any control over the dissemination of the film. Director Phil Jutzi (MOTHER KRAUSEN’S JOURNEY TO HAPPINESS, Germany 1929; BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, Germany 1930) was assigned to produce a German version titled THE YEAR 1905 – BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN that would comply with the strict regulations of the German censorship board. Jutzi re-edited and shortened the film, working mostly with the original negative which later made it complicated to reconstruct the film as it premiered in 1925. After Eisenstein’s death the film was re-edited at least twice in the Soviet Union, the Trotsky quotes were replaced with Lenin quotes, for example. Eisenstein scholar Naum Kleiman began in 1976 trying to piece together Eisenstein’s intended sequence of the film. In 1986, Enno Patalas of the Munich Filmmuseum, also began reassembling the film, a process that resulted in a new restoration by the Deutsche Kinemathek, which premiered at the Berlinale in 2005. This new version includes all the material that had been cut by the German censors in the 1920s and had been missing ever since, also adding the original soundtrack by German composer Edmund Meisel.

In 2025, a version of the film with a new soundtrack by none other than the Pet Shop Boys is launched for international distribution.

Symbolism of images and places

The battleship image can be triggering in 2025. During Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian army also took hold of several Ukrainian naval bases, confiscating Ukrainian battleships. In February 2022 the Russian Federation started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and since then Ukrainians all over the world associate the title BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN – the main action of which takes place in Odesa – not just with a cinematic work of Soviet propaganda, but also with the battle phrase „Russkiy voyenniy korabl’, idi na khuy“ (Russian warship, go fuck yourself“). The phrase is a quote taken from the final communications of Ukrainian border guards off of Snake Island in the Black Sea on 24 February 2022, as they were under attack by the Russian Navy missile cruiser Moskva. It has since then become an international resistance slogan and was even commemorated on a postage stamp by Ukraine’s national postal service^[5].

Only a few years ago, the famous Odesa steps [one of the Academy’s Treasures of European Film Culture] on which Eisenstein staged the massacre scene by the Russian Imperial Guard, were used as an audience tribune for spectacular open air film screenings for the Odesa International Film Festival. The screenings in the summery city on the Black Sea coast were hugely popular with local audiences and often took place in the presence of international guests such as Catherine Deneuve. In 2022, the festival had to stop its operations, until today the port city of Odesa is regularly bombed by Russian forces. Odesa’s film studios have had to endure Russian air attacks as well.

How to deal with Soviet film heritage?

Deutsche Kinemathek brings decades of experience with controversial film heritage – among our archive collections are various films and materials from the National Socialist era. Our staff manage these carefully and with the highest levels of scrutiny. Soviet or even Stalinist film heritage, on the other hand, is dealt with differently. The confusion starts with sloppy classifications: It is still quite common to classify Soviet films as „Russian”- in the Deutsche Kinemathek publication accompanying the 2005 restoration, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN is called a „Russian film”^[6]. Indeed, the action of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN takes place in 1905 in what was formally the Russian Empire. However, as we have seen above, the film was made in the Soviet Union by a multi-ethnic team in what is now Ukraine. The Soviet Union consisted of territories and peoples with their own identity, language and heritage. It is difficult to categorize works from the Soviet Union through the lens of modern nation states. Calling it a “Russian” film in 2025 simply seems inaccurate.

The Deutsche Kinemathek continues to distribute the restored version of Eisenstein’s classic. However, we also understand that sensitivity is called for and screenings do not take place in a vacuum. We can be grateful that there no longer is a German censorship board as there was during Phil Jutzi’s times. After his re-editing assignment for Prometheus Film Jutzi continued his career as a director in Germany. In 1933 he became a member of the National Socialist party and dedicated his filmic work to Nazi ideology from then on. Proving once again that film history and ideology have been closely connected throughout history. A critical analysis of films, their production history as well as their reception history, is part of our task as film heritage organizations.

Heleen Gerritsen, Artistic Director Deutsche Kinemathek
Berlin, November 2025