BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN at THE CITY HALLS

Amazingly , this was the first time ever in Scotland we had the all time lauded classic Eisenstein film featuring the original score by Edmund Meisel written for the Berlin Performance in 1926 , a thunderous , piercing , relentless piece composed in only twelve days, about an year after the film originally come out in Moscow.

The propaganda film has achieved legendary status from many varied admirers from Goebbels to the English painter Francis Bacon.It is sometimes easy to forget in our glib times just how innovative , pioneering and emotionally sweepingly engaging it was to audiences barely prepared for such an interactive media onslaught of moving intensity.

It is a wonder to the passion and radical outpourings the film generated that it was an "X" rated film in the UK until as recently as 1978.The film was banned in many places including the US authorities fearing it would encourage rebellion in the ports and naval bases as it 'gives American sailors a blueprint as to how to conduct a mutiny'.France ; Nazi Germany and the UK until 1954 also banned the film.

In pre-Nazi Germany itself the film was banned in many places owing to Meisels musical score rather than any overt content in the film itself, this prompted Edmund to lament "This, generally speaking, is the first time that political charges have been brought against a musical composition."

Guest principal conductor Ilan Volkov expertly conduction a hard driven ; thunderously relentless piece of music with suppressed tones of the Marseillaise at points of glory in the revolutionary fervour.The New York herald tribune quite rightly described Meisels score as "powerful, as vital, as galvanic, and electrifying as the film".Once one has seen it like this it would be a disingenuous travesty to view Battleship Potemkin in any other way.Which , considering this was the first time the film has played in Scotland to Meisels accompaniment by a live Orchestra , may not be something that is seen around these parts for a generation to come.


For what its worth the full film can be viewed below):