BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN SERGEI EISENSTEIN

When: 1925 What: Film Where: Finland, France, Germany, Spain, UK

This famous silent film about the 1905 mutiny aboard a Russian naval ship was very nearly lost to the dustbin of history. In the Soviet Union it saw political infighting to gain distribution (despite being a propaganda film) and only after a successful run in Berlin did it get shown again in Moscow. It then launched internationally, but in many nations it was banned.

The key reason for this appears to have been the violence in the movie, which was often cut even in countries where the film could be shown. There was also a fear among some that Battleship Potemkin could inspire social unrest given its themes of regular people (the sailors in this case) rebelling and being met with extreme violence by their upper class rulers (the tsarist officers in the story).

In the UK the movie couldn’t be distributed until 1954, and even then carried an X-rating until 1987. Still, the British Film Institute named it the 11th greatest film of all time in a 2012 list and it was named the greatest film at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair.