Sergei Eisenstein was 27 years old when the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Revolution with literary, stage, and screen commissions. Assigned to make a film about the mutiny that happened aboard the Czar’s star battleship, Eisenstein used the opportunity to deploy his five theories of editing, or what the French cineastes called ‘montage.’ What resulted was hailed from its' premiere as the most popular film ever made, shown in movie houses all over Europe, and in the private screening rooms of Hollywood. The Battleship Potemkin did more than make Eisenstein a star, it put the Soviet Union on firm footing as a competitor in the world’s most popular art form. Works Cited: Eisenstein, Sergei. FILM FORM. Harvest Books, New York, 1977. Leyda, Jay. KINO: A History of the Russian and Soviet Film. Collier Books, New York, 1973 Bascomb, Neal. Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin. Mariner Books, New York, 2008.
