The Spectre of Eisenstein

Cinema’s real potency to harness the power of enchantment might want to militate against its use as a servile, conformist propaganda vehicle

- Sayandeb Chowdhury

 

MOSCOW, 1925. In a forlorn theatre, with minimal acoustic support and without any publicity, a film is being exhibited once a day. Inside the theatre, there is hardly an attentive soul. None care for it outside either. Very soon, the film is taken out of theatres, marked to be shelved in the 'cinema morgue' a forgotten corner of Sovkino, the institution that bankrolled Soviet Cinema.

Same year. From Berlin to New York, critics and audiences freeze in awe and exasperation. Exactly when did cinema become so visceral? Who taught the young Kiev-born director how to make such eye-popping use of montage? When did this new art become a weapon? Was this history as cinema or was this cinema as history?

Early 40s. The Calcutta Film Society is at its infancy, even if its members include arch film critic Chidananda Dasgupta, and a very tall, and lanky young cinephile, whom his peers would refer to as 'orient longman'. It was Satyajit Ray. In a dingy, rented room, they decided to show, to a very handful of co-enthusiasts, an avant-garde specimen of cinema that is said to have embodied the Soviet situation, telling its story to the world. But before they could, the local police arrived. Of all films, why this one, they asked? Do you have any plans to trigger a revolution? The said film, in all three cases, is Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. In any discussion of cinema's potency for political mobilisation, it is the urtext. But let's not draw our conclusions too soon.