Michael Mann on Battleship Potemkin

JUL 19 2025

A filmmaker discusses Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 Battleship Potemkin, the film that made montage a persuasive technique rather than a stylistic one. Eisenstein's method was collision: two shots that mean little separately produce an emotion in the cut between them, most famously on the Odessa steps. Potemkin was itself a commissioned commemorative work, which is exactly why it is studied.