The Deleuzian Century II: Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Let's start with a few more words about parallel montage and Eisenstein's reservations towards it, taken from the master director's book Film Form. First, an interesting deconstruction of Griffith's all-American idea of montage, seen from an ideological standpoint: "But montage thinking is inseparable from the general content of thinking as a whole. The structure that is reflected in the concept of Griffith montage is the structure of bourgeois society. And he actually resembles Dickens's 'side of streaky, well-cured bacon'; in actuality (…), he is woven of irreconcilably alternating layers of 'white' and 'red' - rich and poor. (…) and this society, perceived only as a contrast between the haves and the have-nots, is reflected in the consciousness of Griffith no deeper than the image of an intricate race between parallel lines." (Film Form, 234)

Eisenstein's viewpoint however: "For us, the microcosm of montage had to be understood as a unity, which in the inner stress of contradictions is halved, in order to be re-assembled in a new unity on a new plane, qualitatively higher, its imagery newly perceived." (236)  What Deleuze calls une grande spirale (L'image-mouvement, 51) that expresses a genesis, a scientific progression "finds its internal logic in the section d'or (literally "golden section") which splits the lot into two unequal but opposable entities." (51) With section d'or, Deleuze means the mathematic Golden ratio. Incidentally, Section d'Or was also a group of French cubist painters active at the beginning of the 1910's, centered around the Duchamp brothers.

In Eisenstein's agreed upon masterpiece Battleship Potemkin the section d'or, of course, corresponds to the moment after the uprising on the ship when we leave the water for the land. At that point, writes Deleuze, the movement reverses, meaning that the prosecutors become the prosecuted, so to speak. If until then Battleship Potemkin told the story of the little people rising up against the powers that be, the Odessa Steps sequence inverts this movement and we get a full-blown representation of cruelty from the rulers against the oppressed.

Contemporary screenplay theoreticians would object that this section d'or is nothing more than what's commonly known in Hollywood as the "mid-point" of a screenplay. The moment when the story kicks into high-gear and gathers steam because a new information is revealed that changes the parameters of the plot. Hell, the entire Battleship story loosely follows the typical Hollywood three act structure: the workers' indignation over the rotten meat is the "inciting incident", the revolt aboard the Potemkin the "Act 2 break", Vakulinchuk's death the "mid-point", and the ship's getaway the "act 3 break".

The difference is that for most anglo-saxon cinema, forward-motion of a story is necessary because the hero is always on some sort of quest. Take James Bond for example. Strictly speaking, none of these movies make much sense from a plot point of view. Things happen because Bond acts on them, but logic or organic growth are two variables that almost never come into play. There is a lot of complacence, a lot of formula. Every James Bond movie has to have its under-water chase, it's thrilling skiing chase and its gadget-filled luxury cars. But there is no real need for that in terms of story.

Eisenstein, however, builds stories organically, lets the laws of cause and effect play out. If the recruits of the Potemkin revolt, it's because they are not treated with enough consideration by their superiors. If Valuchenko is killed, it is because of that revolt. If the people of Odessa rebel, it is because of Valuchenko's death. If the ruling power employs deathly force against the people of Odessa, it is because of their rebellion. If the Potemkin tries to flee, it is because of said deathly force. The difference is that we have no individual quest here, no specific goal, no pre-conceived journey. As described in last week's post, Eisenstein is interested in process, not ego.

But Deleuze doesn't stop at the big cesura that is the Potemkin's landing. Built into these two opposing sequences are a multitude of smaller sections d'or that constitute individual cells, symptoms of the greater condition of Eisenstein's montage. We are talking about one man standing up in front of the many (on a story level: the ship's captain raving against the recruits; on an editing level: the innumerable white caps of the recruits filmed from a bird's eyes view intercut with the plain uniform of the ship's captain), the dichotomy between light and shadow, forward against backward motion, rhythmic cutting against tranquil assemblage. Deleuze describes it in mathematical terms: if one starts from an origine O, element A is to B what element B is to C (52). Or in Eisenstein's own words, describing the Odessa steps sequence: "The final pull of tension is supplied by the transfer from the rhythm of the descending feet to another rhythm - a new kind of downward movement - the next intensity level of the same activity - the baby carriage rolling down the steps. The carriage functions as a directly progressing accelerator of the advancing feet. The stepping descent passes into a rolling descent." (74) More concisely, we're talking about "movement as change." (76) And that is, very ruffly, in accord with Deleuze's concept of the movement-image.