Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Sergei Eisenstein’s greatest achievement of the silent era has long been recognized as a world cinema masterpiece.

Originally commissioned to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1905 Socialist uprising, Eisenstein’s film focused on the mutiny of the crew of the armored cruiser Potemkin. In the process, Eisenstein continued his boldly-conceived filmmaking style of close-ups and rapid cutting that he explored in his first film Strike (1924) for his telling of the crew’s human-rights struggle.

The film was recently restored as close as possible to its original finished state, including all of Eisenstein’s intertitles and 1374 original shots, as it was before Eisenstein was required to censor his own intended version before the film’s December 1925 Russian premiere. The excised material survived the years in untouched original prints struck by German distributor Prometheus from the original German negative before it was also censored and edited in 1926 and again in 1928. The restoration was a 20-year-long collaborative effort of Deutsches Kinemathek in Germany, with support from the Gosfilmofond film archive of Russia, the Bundesarchiv film archive of Germany, and the British Film Institute.

— Carl Bennett

This Blu-ray Disc edition of the definitive restoration of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) includes the restored film transferred in high-definition, including all of the footage edited from the film before its premiere in its original and intended sequencing with all of the original Russian intertitles in their correct order.

The film is accompanied by a 5.1 surround sound presentation of the German premiere music score composed by Edmund Meisel (which was overseen by Eisenstein), arranged by Helmut Imig and performed by the 55-piece Deutches Filmorchestra.

If you have made the leap to Blu-ray Disc, this one will be the home video edition for your collection.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 Blu-ray Disc edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

This exciting two-disc DVD edition of the definitive restoration of Sergei M. Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) includes the restored film transferred in high-definition, including all of the footage edited from the film before its premiere in its original and intended sequencing with all of the original Russian intertitles in their correct order.

The results are very impressive for a reconstuction, with a reasonably consistent range of greytones and image quality throughout, despite being conflated from a number of 35mm negatives and prints. All restoration work was performed optically on filmstock rather than digitally. We do not know whether any digital clean-up was performed on the natural-speed HD video transfer. While there a sections of footage with moderate print wear, the majority of the film has a normal amount of dust, speckling, filmbase and emulsion wear that would be present in material of this vintage. The overall image quality is very-good to excellent.

As is detailed in the included documentary on the film, the shorter running time of this reconstruction is due to the natural-speed video transfer, while previous source prints (actually shorter in print length) were actually slowed down and reedited to fit the accompanying music. None of the jerkiness seen in those earlier sound-film prints is present in the restoration print and, thus, in this edition.

Two versions of the film are presented in the set. First, the reconstructed film with Russian intertitles (with optional English intertitles). Second, the reconstructed film with English intertitles. Our preference when watching the film alone is for the Russian intertitles, and the English intertitles version when sharing a viewing with others.

The film is accompanied by a 5.1 surround sound presentation of the German premiere music score composed by Edmund Meisel (which was overseen by Eisenstein), arranged by Helmut Imig and performed by the 55-piece Deutches Filmorchestra. Also included is a 42-minute German-language documentary (with English subtitles) on the making and restoration of the film with Enno Patalas, Naum Kleeman and Helmut Imig, and three photo galleries.

If you still collect films on DVD home video, this one will be the one for your collection — especially given the reasonable cost of this definitive two-disc set.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.

The film is presented with the 1926 Edmund Meisel score.

The supplemental material includes Drifters (1929) John Grierson’s acclaimed film that follows a herring drifter, from departure in Scotland to market in East Anglia; Granton Trawler (1934) John Grierson’s follow up to Drifters, one of the GPO Film Unit’s first experiments with sound; Trade Tattoo (1937) Len Lye’s celebratory animation made from off-cuts of EMB and GPO films, including Drifters and Night Mail; North Sea (1938) Harry Watt’s dramatic reconstruction of sea farers battle with the elements, produced by the GPO Film Unit.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

United Kingdom: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 2 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.co.uk. Support Silent Era.
This Region 2 PAL DVD edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is accompanied by a music score performed by the Deutschen Filmorchester Babelsberg, conducted by Helmut Imig [German release version], and a score composed by Alois Johannes Lippl [1930 German sound version].

Supplemental material includes texts and documents about Edmund Meisel and the films (accessed as ROM features); and a 24-page insert booklet with writings by Thomas Tode, Richard Siedhoff, Stefan Drössler and Petr Bagrov.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

This Region 0 PAL DVD edition is available directly from . . .

This early DVD edition, from Corinth Films (U.S. theatrical distributor of the film), has been transferred from a positive print struck from a 35mm Russian preservation print. The source print appears to be comprised of 35mm and 16mm elements, and some surviving shots are rougher than others, but the image generally ranges from good to very-good and is watchable. The film’s jerkiness is not the result of a subpar video transfer, but rather the result of the film’s low exposure frame rate at the time it was shot (an educated guess is approximately 12-14 frames per second) combined with its conversion to a sound film print (24 frames per second).

Our reevaluation of the disc on high-definition equipment still leaves us with an unchanged quality rating, but we note that the high-quality video transfer is only compromised by the shortcomings of the source print material.

The English language subtitles over the Russian intertitles were a part of the source print and thus cannot be turned off.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This edition features a music score by Edmund Meisel.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

France: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.fr. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

This edition likely features a music score composed by Edmund Meisel.

North American collectors will need a region-free PAL DVD player capable of outputting an NTSC-compatible signal to view this edition.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 PAL DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

We must report that this budget DVD edition has been mastered from a VHS videotape copy of the same video master as the Image edition above. There is some visual evidence of the lack of resolution common to VHS as is the inherent oversharpening of some white image edges. That being said, we have seen far worse examples of DVDs mastered from VHS. This disc will be watchable to undiscerning eyes. The video transfer has been made at a natural pace, and since the camera was originally cracked at a low frame rate of approximately 14-16 frames per second the action is a little jerky. As above, the English language subtitles over the Russian intertitles were a part of the source print and thus cannot be turned off.

The film is presented with the latter day music score composed by Dmitri Shostokovich that is common to today’s sound-projection prints of the film.

The sole supplementary material is an older documentary on director Eisenstein that is mastered from a noisy, coarse, contrasty 16mm reduction print.

Ultimately, we cannot recommend this disc when the Image edition is of higher quality. Some collectors may choose to forgo quality for value.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 1 NTSC DVD edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Nikolai Kryukov. The soundtrack includes spoken narration.

With as many better-looking editions as there are available, this is not a recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

The film is likely accompanied by a music score from the source print’s optical soundtrack.

With as many better-looking editions as there are available, this is not a recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is likely accompanied by a music score from the source print’s optical soundtrack.

With as many better-looking editions as there are available, this is not a recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed by Nikolai Kryukov. The soundtrack includes spoken narration.

With as many better-looking editions as there are available, this is not a recommended home video edition of the film.

USA: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.com. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
Canada: Click the logomark to purchase this Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition from Amazon.ca. Your purchase supports Silent Era.
This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is also available directly from . . .

Other RUSSIAN and SOVIET FILMS of the silent era available on home video.