‘Language is much closer to film than painting is.’

Sergei Eisenstein, A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO FILM FORM

 

We are watching a subtitled crime series

taking place in Central European Time,

and set in the three Slavic, post-Soviet

cities of Odessa, Prague and Warsaw –

though when the three protagonist detectives

meet they must speak in English, entertainment’s

international lingua franca.

 

It is the usual tale of murders

and mobiles, of kidnapping and corruption,

where we may find, in the last reel, that we had

already spotted the villain in episode three

– that sinister photographer with sunken eyes,

and a Germanic surname, perhaps?

 

It is a series using stock shots like Warsaw’s

Palace of Culture & Science and Prague’s

Charles Bridge, and action taking place in cut-price

locations – except for this current scene

taking place on the Potemkin Stairs:

two hundred steps cut from grey-green sandstone

bordered with granite, forty feet at the top,

seventy at the foot, built in the reign of Tzar

Nicholas I, giving the Odessa

elite gracious access to the harbour,

and its cosmopolitan cargoes;

famous for the collage in BATTLESHIP

POTEMKIN of the baby carriage bouncing

down the steps through the carnage wrought by the Tzar’s

soldiers in their white caps and tunics;

a paragraph of silent terrors and distress,

each sentence an icon of horror.

 

In the scene we are now watching a witness

is being interviewed half way down the steps

by a Ukrainian detective.

Behind and above is a group of what

appear to be co-educational

sea cadets posing for selfies. Judging

from the manner of their movements they have been

recruited from a school of physical theatre.

The director presumably thought this

scene shot from at least two camera angles

a suitable homage to his predecessor,

the master, the maestro of montage,

one of its Soviet begetters.

 

The crime series was made, of course, before Russia

invaded Ukraine. However, and

nevertheless, by chance or design, the stairs –

with their iconic place in Russia’s public

memory – have remained untouched by war.