Episode 15: SHHH! Silents
Some people mimic Rocky, others want to toss baby carriages down the Odessa Steps
“I have to admit, my favorite scene in The Battleship Potemkin is probably everybody’s favorite scene.”
Not too long ago, I was in Philadelphia. So naturally I visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s a big impressive building. Peaked roof, roman columns, and massive steps. Those steps. were the site of one of the most famous scenes in movie history. Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, bounding up to the top, strong and optimistic as trumps soared. As I approached the muesum’s steps, there were signs telling me the entrance was actually around back. In other words, don’t climb all of these steps for no reason because we’re not letting you in through this very impressive entrance.
Still, at the top of the steps, I spotted a man in sweats, bobbing back and forth in a very boxer-like way. Would that man have been up there, working out, if it hadn’t been for the Rocky movie? Unlikely.
On this episode, we dive into another iconic movie moment. Radio producer Jared Manasek loves The Battleship Potemkin so much that a couple of decades ago he traveled to Odessa, the port city where Sergie Eisenstein filmed another iconic movie scene on a massive staircase. But this scene is far from optimistic. At the top of the steps, Czarist troops attack innocent civilians. A sea of people run for their lives. A legless man hobbles down the steps. Another man is shot in the back. And most famously, a mother with a baby carriage is shot in the gut. As she collapses, she nudges the carriage and it tumbles downward, step after step, with the baby still inside, crying.
After arriving in Odessa, Manasek did what any film freak with a microphone would do. He tried recording the sound of a baby carriage clanging down the Odessa steps. His story originally aired on The Savvy Traveler in 2002.
Also on this episode: Minneapolis musicians who compose new scores to silent films: Dreamland Faces, Rats and People Motion Picture Company and the Poor Nobodys. All three bands were featured in Sounds of Silents, a radio documentary I produced for KFAI’s MinneCulture.
— Todd Melby
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