«Battleship Potiomkin»

Sergey Eisenstein was not born in Ukraine and it wasn’t here where he started his career as a film director. But the movie which brought the director world fame and which became a classic of world cinema was shot at the Odesa film studio and tells about historical events which took place in Odesa.
It?s June, 1905. The crew of a the Russian battleship “Kniaz Potiomkin Tavrichesky” has risen in defiance because of the poor living conditions and brutality of the officers. The ship is anchored at the port of Odesa. The captain calls in marines who fire at the rebels. The people of Odesa decide to help the sailors and rush to the port. But soldiers loyal to the tsar are waiting for them on the steps leading to the port. It’s here where the massacre begins. The soldiers fire at unarmed people, including women and children. The panic-stricken crowds run down the steps. There is a young mother with a baby carriage among them. She gets shot and falls down. The carriage with the baby inside, now abandoned, keeps on rolling down the steps, jumping up and down…
Even if you’re not a movie freak, you might have seen this particular scene – most probably, in Sergey Eisenstein’s silent classic “Battleship Potiomkin”. It’s a long time ago since the film has become a world cinema classic and gained its glory as the first “coloured” film in history. However, there was only one element in the film that was coloured – the red revolutionary flag. The film director colored it himself with special paint.
The steps on which Eisenstein revived in 1925 the massacre of the Odesites are called Potiomkin Steps now and are considered one of Odesa’s main tourist attractions. Meanwhile, the memorable scene from the movie has been borrowed numerous times by many film directors worldwide. Recently, for instance, Odesa was visited by Sylvester Stallone’s mother Jacqueline who wanted to see her former motherland in order to make sure that the Potiomkin Stairs were in proper order, since here she is planning to shoot a remake of the legendary film.