The 1920s was the most glorious period of Soviet silent films, and the rich theoretical explorations laid a solid foundation for the subsequent development. The classic "Battleship Potemkin" in the history of Soviet cinema is a tribute film directed by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925 to the 20th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of 1905. It consists of five parts that make up the entire Potemkin uprising. the process of. The "Odessa Staircase Massacre" in the film has become one of the classic climax clips. The entire clip is about 130 seconds, and there are about 147 shots in total. It has successfully used rhythm montage, cross montage, juggling montage and other techniques to greatly mobilize and improve the performance. Extending the audience's emotional feelings, it shows the brutal massacre of the people by the tsarist army, and its significance has developed to the height of a huge artistic summary of the epic conflict between the people and the tsarist system. Artistically, it not only extends the scale of space and time, but also gives some deeper coherence to the shots that are interconnected by the logic of the plot. The painting tradition has been developed in the arrangement of space and crowd scenes, giving the people a vivid personality, and the contrast of elements in the space and the arrangement of rhythms show a strong feeling similar to the works of the Romantic painting school.
Filming location: The Odessa Steps is located in the capital of Odessa Oblast, Ukraine . It was built in the 1830s and 1940s. There are 192 steps in total, and the steps widen from top to bottom, which echoes the statue of the city founder Rishlier on the semicircular square in the center of the city. The stairs lead to the sea, so you can get a bird's-eye view of the port of Odessa from the highest point. The content of "steps" as an important scene often appears in movies, and is often used to continuously deepen contradictions, explain the relationship between characters, and play the role of turning points. For example, in the 1940 American film "Gone with the Wind", the stairs are the protagonists in the three important scenes, because of its rich positional relationship and the diversity of scheduling, it is more conducive to the performance and performance of the actors. In this film, the overall action trend is constantly and rapidly developing downward along the Odyssey ladder, which essentially shows the change of the situation from one quality to another, and it is also the process of the whole chapter from oppression to resistance. A decisive part, and the steps are also the syllables rich in rhythm and rhythm in the epic tragedy at this time. Due to the objective existence of the shooting location, when conceiving the set, you should be good at listening to what the objective things suggest to the creator's unpredictable angle, so as to give full play to the unique and precious modeling life on the screen. The steps in reality are not very long, but in the movie, the soldiers only walked about half of the entire steps, and the time required is about one minute at most. Possible spaces and details, such as the soldier's view, the stairs from the fleeing crowd's view, and the side of the stairs (hiding the crowd), the statue on the stairs, the tree, the platform under the steps, and the non-negligible light and shadow: the soldier casts long on the ground black shadow. This ever-changing perspective, the way in which the spatial structure is fully displayed, is one of the reasons for the fast and exciting rhythm in this segment.
Since the full use of space promotes rhythmic integrity on the one hand, composition and movement within the space are also essential characteristics. The movements in the space within this segment are complex and varied. The rhythm was suddenly accelerated from the sudden flight of the crowd. On the other hand, the soldiers' steady, tidy and relatively slow footsteps formed a contrast between two diametrically opposed movements, creating a chaotic, terrifying, and restless atmosphere. The same steps convey two Different emotional feelings, the panic and denseness of the crowd and the neatness and emptiness of the soldiers, when the two contrasts are intertwined, have an exaggerated effect. When photographing a large long-range view of the crowd, you will find that some people are running vertically and some people are running horizontally. In the composition of the picture, the internal order of the picture is lost, and there are contradictions in the movement. In the middle of the development, more contradictory movements appeared: the mother holding the dead child and the old woman who stepped forward to persuade moved in completely opposite directions against the crowd. Except for the contrast in direction, the lonely figure of the mother and the There is also a contrast between the empty space and the crowded and dense space of the people. These two situations promote the rhythm and show several different possibilities of space utilization. There is also a contrast between the static state of the old man who fell and the crowd who ran and stepped on him. In the latter part, the movement of the baby stroller is used to "connect" the shots showing different groups of people. Complicated and contradictory movement patterns are constantly interspersed and combined, and the combination of partial segments constitutes a unified overall theme. And the rhythm pushes up to its peak.
Close-ups and detailed close-ups did not appear until a long time after the film was born. The crowd scenes in the previous pictures were a very important part. For example, the enthusiastic crowd scenes in "The Birth of a Nation" and "Party Dissent" are in the overall picture. The visual effects left a deep impression on the audience. The crowd scenes in this film did not "win" in terms of quantity, but focused on "quality". The images of the masses in this film have different appearances with their own characteristics. In the chaotic scenes, the identity and character of some people can be clearly judged. This rich image of the people inherits the historical themed scenes of the people in the Russian Touring School of Painting. , and used the unique means of film expression to find a corresponding art form for the revolution and the people's modeling, giving momentum to make the people's portraits more vivid, and each individual with differences and characteristics has shaped the overall image of the people. At the same time, using the different movement forms and rhythms of the people in the space, on the basis of showing the scale of the scene, the space vision of the crowd scene is expanded, showing different perspectives under the same setting, thus extending the space.
Film stretches the boundaries of the plastic arts, creating visual illusions that are easily accepted by the public and willing to be deceived. However, the improvement of the means of plastic art is not achieved overnight, and new possibilities for space are discovered in the constantly moving pictures. At the stage of silent film, Eisenstein had already broken through and expanded the real set space from the inside of the picture.
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