ABSTRACT
Cinema language is still poor and simple but powerful and assured, promising enormous opportunities for the future. Its pioneer is Sergei Eisenstein.
At the first performance of Potemkin in 1926, when at the end of the fourth reel those now famous shots of the granite lions rearing up appeared, the audience burst into applause. I was extremely excited and moved and I applauded too. After the performance, examining what I had seen, I was surprised to realise that what I remembered about the end of the fourth reel was that the Odessa theatre was destroyed by a shot fired from a gun, I remembered the enthusiasm felt by the audience and by myself - but I was unable to recall how the author of the film had achieved this. As a specialist, I was very ashamed. I had obviously been caught unawares like an ordinary straightforward member of the audience. The blow aimed from the screen had fallen with such force and accuracy that it had set off an emotional explosion that drowned any chance of an objective critical assessment. It was only after a repeat viewing, when I was expecting the places in the film that were already familiar and straining my attention in those places, that I managed to unravel the essence of the method.
