Music review: Alabama Symphony captures 'Battleship Potemkin' film's essence in performance

As Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's restored film "Battleship Potemkin" played on a giant screen at the Alys Stephens Center, Chris Confessore and the Alabama Symphony captured connections between the film and the music of Shostakovich that goes with it.

But the connections are more along emotional lines than formal ones. One of the best matches is found in the chapter of "Potemkin" that introduces the peasants of Odessa. Funny, kind, some missing limbs and teeth, their daily comings and goings underscore Shostakovich's humorous, heroic scherzo from his Symphony No. 5.

Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's story for "Battleship Potemkin" is simple, his sympathies unmistakable.

The film's protagonist is a collective one, a group of sailors who stand up to czarist and religious authority and save the peasants of Odessa from Cossack oppression.

The tale begins at sea, on the miserable Potemkin, where the sailors' rations consist of maggot-infested meat. When the sailors refuse to eat, they are rounded up for execution. An uprising breaks out, led by the sailor Vakulinchuk. An officer shoots Vakulinchuk, and his lifeless body lies in the ship's rigging. Sailors carry his body to Odessa, where peasants see what the czarist officers have done.

When Odessa's peasants rebel, Cossacks ruthlessly subdue them. Women and children are killed in scenes that were, in their day, shockingly graphic. The film's most celebrated scene is of an infant in a carriage rolling down a flight of steps as soldiers continue the slaughter.

The imagery in "Potemkin" is designed to bypass the intellect and head straight to the outrage bone. Czarist military forces are ruthless and faceless, the Potemkin officers are cowardly, and the ship's priest is a cross-wielding maniac whose demise Eisenstein especially savors. It is widely considered the most successful piece of propaganda ever created.

Eisenstein is also perfecting the syntax of film, employing dynamic montages of images that, individually, are little more than still photographs. This montage effect, with its combination of stasis and movement, was also a hallmark of modern music and perhaps its most direct analogy is found in the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky.

In contrast, this score to "Potemkin," culled from various Shostakovich symphonies and adapted by a committee after the composer's death in 1975, consists of broad, continuous lines that are more akin to Beethoven than Stravinsky.

In concept and in execution, ASO's "Battleship Potemkin" project was a memorable, rare event, and a triumph for audiences seeking unique immersive experiences outside of the movie theater and away from the Xbox.