So yeah, I'm a dirty copycat and I had writer's block on another article I was working on earlier and it's still not come out, so I've instead decided to rip off two of our members (handsome lamb and Bunnymilk) to bring people the best stuff in the world: free movies.


Being a communist, Eisenstein would approve of free movies!

Since Monday evenings are boring as crap usually, I've thought it'd be a good idea to introduce you people to some great and free movies. Each week, I'll post a new article, with a new movie for your enjoyment. Those movies usually won't require you to download anything, and they're either released directly into the public domain (yes, there are some movies made with a public domain license, as weird as it sounds), or that have had their copyright expired (tho, as a result of this, a lot of the movies will be pretty old, but they're what we could consider to be timeless). In a way, this is a continuation of Bunnymilk's film club and a sort of long-lost cousin to handsome's Freeware Fridays series. To keep in the spirit of the former, discussion in the topic is welcomed and encouraged about the movie: what you liked, what you didn't like, what you thought were the underlying themes of the piece and so on.

The Battleship Potemkin

One of the ex-USSR's earliest filmmaking export, The Battleship Potemkin was Eisenstein's original claim to fame and still stands strong as one of the director's most powerful film. It tells the story of a riot breaking out near the Odessa Place opposing a battleship's crew and their royal-blooded leaders. Although the film is obvious revolutionary propaganda, what it does tell is loud and clear and Eisenstein's masterful editing of the action is so powerful that you can't help but rally yourself to the crew's and civilians' common cause for its entire duration.

Eisenstein had this way of looking at the montage of a movie as the way to create the entire film. Though that might sound a little stupid and obvious at first, you have to remember that Eisenstein's earliest outings were in the 1920s, when filmmaking was still learning how to walk. And it's very obvious that he had an excellent grasp of editing, The Battleship Potemkin feels just as contemporary today as it did nearly a century ago. The action is fast, the camera moves rapidly and the film never drags on at any point, keeping you interested until the very end. It's a shame that Eisenstein was from a socialist society as encroaching as Russia, after a few years he was heavily criticized for not keeping to socialist doctrine and instead focusing on experimentation and he ran away to continue his career outside the country.

Anyway, here's the movie in its entire embedded Google video beauty. Enjoy the movie, thanks for reading and remember to post if you have any comments!