EISENSTEIN AND THE POTEMKIN REVOLUTION 55 on the retained impression, the object's first position, the new position. Shot and montage are the basic elements of cinema. Montage is the idea arising from the collision of independent shots. We must realise the great significance of this basic step of identifying the cellular independence of each shot and its contribution towards the totality of the film. The audience should reach the resultant idea and acquire its significance. Battleship Potemkin and the abortive revolution on it took place in July 1905. The revolutionaries hoped to seize the fleet and blockade the parts to help the revolution ashore. Eisenstein saw in this event a powerful seed, an inspiration, a legendary quality enough to stand up as a motivation for the glorious socialist revolution. And like any true work of art the content of the film does not strive to fit into the form nor does the form try to accommodate the content. The film is struggle, in form and content. The film is structured on the principles of the five-act Greek tragedy to give it a compositional unity and pathos. ACT I:- Men and Maggots—exposition of the conditions aboard the battleship and the unrest among the sailors. ACT II:- Drama on the quarter-deck: 'All hands on deck'. The sailors refuse to eat the soup. The tarpaulin scene. Refusal to fire. Mutiny. ACT III:- The Grey Sequence—Vakilunchuk's body in the Odessa port. Mourning over the body. Meetings. Raising the Red flag. ACT IV:- The Odessa Steps—fraternization of shore and battle-ship, supply of provision for sailors. Shooting on the steps. ACT V:- Meeting the squadron—the squadron refuses to fire. 'HURRAH'. Each scene moves into the other and finds its dialectical opposite. In this process the conflict is totalized and interiorized instead of being represented or merely picturised. The inhuman conditions blend into mutiny. The mutiny blends into mourning. The mourning leads to fraternization and sacrifice. The sum total leads to comraderie and the uniting of forces. Two things are achieved in this manner. First, the epic form where each module or sequence, as listed out earlier becomes a self-sufficient unit and possessing an internal structure by itself {we will elaborate this later). Second, the individual hero becomes redundant, though in a different way. The particular does not exist outside that relationship which leads to the general. "The