Watching Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece through modern eyes, it's surprising to imagine it could inspire anything other than a respectfully stifled yawn. The 1925, 75-minute silent film nonetheless did a lot to establish a lot of the film editing and photography grammar that would be used for years to come, with directors like Martin Scorsese citing it as an influence. A dramatised version of the real-life mutiny that occurred ten years before the production when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers of the Tsarist regime, Battleship Potemkin was written as much as a revolutionary propaganda film as it was to test Eisenstein's theories of montage. The latter certainly worked, and he managed to nail the former as well. A little too well, in fact, as it ended up being banned in France, Germany, South Korea, Spain and Finland, for fear that it might inspire audiences to rise up in their own Marxist revolution.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
