![]() ![]() ![]() But in its 75 minutes the film started a revolution of its own within cinema and Eisenstein's quick, expressive editing and eye for montage still feel fresh. Nina Agadzhanova's original screenplay was, to be fair, commissioned as a piece of propaganda to celebrate the 1905 uprising on said battleship which spilled out into wider Russian society. It was considered so inflammatory and socialist it was banned by the BBFC in 1926, and only granted an 'X' rating in 1954 after Stalin's death. Sergei Eisenstein's opus is one of the cornerstones of cinema, but for many years you couldn't see it in the UK. ![]() Universal History Archive // Getty Images It's extraordinarily rich and visually intoxicating see the opening one-shot sequence where the killer sets the time bomb, and the camera sweeps around town, letting the tension gradually tick and tock up and up. But the version which finally saw the light of day in 1998 – reworked by The Godfather and Apocalypse Now editor Walter Murch – sticks to what Welles wanted, and turned it into the movie it could have been. Welles' vision was hacked about by four different editors, and reshoots and extra scenes were forced upon him by the studio. Welles ended up helping with the script too, and wanted to make a thriller which didn't let up for a second: a taut, riveting thing which melded his visionary instincts with pop clout. Welles signed on to direct and star alongside Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh in the story of a special prosecutor who's trying to enjoy his honeymoon when an assassination by time bomb brings him back to the day job. For decades this was one of the great lost Hollywood classics. ![]()
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