The music of silent cinema

Battleship Potemkin is absolutely brilliant!

In the Italian popular imagination, “Battleship Potemkin” (1925) by Sergei Eisenstein is a heavy, boring, unbearable film: a torture inflicted by sadistic, phony intellectuals on a people already victimized by abuse. At least that's what most people who only know “Battleship Potemkin” through the distorting mirror of the words of Paolo Villaggio's Fantozzi tend to believe — a character who, partly in jest and partly with pointless malice, ended up unjustly slandering one of the most important and revolutionary films in the history of cinema. And yet, borrowing the words of Francesca Badalini of I Sincopatici and turning Villaggio's (however satirical) insults on their head, it must be said without hesitation: “Battleship Potemkin is absolutely brilliant!”

Damn you, Fantozzi

The mythical, ultra-rare eighteen-reel version lasting five or six hours, which director Guidobaldo Maria Riccardelli forces his hapless office workers to sit through, obviously doesn't exist: it's purely a product of Villaggio's imagination. It's strange that such negative fame — a distortion entirely peculiar to Italy — should have befallen precisely “Battleship Potemkin”, a film barely seventy-five minutes long, marked by frenetic, rapid-fire editing that was radically modern and avant-garde for its time: in a word, revolutionary, just like the events it depicts. And perhaps it's no coincidence that Italy is one of the countries with the most film scores written for it, many of them among the finest available.

“Battleship Potemkin” commemorates the real events of 1905 aboard the battleship Potemkin at Odessa, which marked the first, failed Russian revolution, but which paved the way for the second, ultimately successful one. Undoubtedly a work of propaganda, but one with a technical mastery so far ahead of its time that it remains an enjoyable and strikingly relevant film even today. The filming of the famous Odessa Steps sequence is so realistic that some tourists present in Odessa, unaware that a film was being shot, believed a new revolutionary uprising was underway. 

The premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre

The premiere took place in Moscow on the evening of December 31, 1925, at the Bolshoi Theatre. When the flag colored red appeared at the end of the film, the audience rose to its feet, moved, and burst into applause. The original score was composed by Austrian composer Edmund Meisel, later supplemented with pieces drawn from Symphonies No. 5 and No. 11 by Soviet composer Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich.

Since then, countless new soundtracks have been written by musicians scattered all over the world. One of the earliest is by American pianist Chris Jarrett, who in 1985 released a solo-piano version that is hyper-technical and fast-paced, a far cry from any notion of a symphonic film score. At least that's what emerges from the videos available online, since Jarrett, despite having performed his version live countless times, has never released his recordings on CD or vinyl. 

The four essential soundtracks 

Pet Shop Boys (UK) – 2004 post synth pop

Released for the film's eightieth anniversary (credited to Tennant/Lowe), the British duo's version is one of the go-to references for anyone approaching silent film scores. Their mastery, their melodic touch – never trite – and the palpable passion in every instant for the power of Sergei Eisenstein's images make their soundtrack extremely convincing. The synth-pop of Pet Shop Boys is stripped of vocals and the usual verse-chorus structure to become definitively post. The relentless rhythms and post-minimalist repetitions pulse through much of the film like so many calls to arms, as in “Nyet”, which perfectly underscores the sailors' rebellion, or in “The Squadron”. At times it reaches moving melodies (“Odessa”) which, with the addition of vocals, turn into ballad-like pieces of real class (“No Time For Tears”). Score: 7.5

Edison Studio (Italy) – 2017 avant-garde, musique concrète

One of the chief merits – among many – of the Cineteca di Bologna is the release of the new 2017 DVD edition, containing the restored version of “Battleship Potemkin” accompanied by an alternative soundtrack composed by Edison Studio, a Rome-based avant-garde music ensemble founded in 1993. The collective – made up of Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi and Alessandro Cipriani – crafts an extremely incisive sound score, in which electroacoustic music and musique concrète intertwine to the point of, in several passages, literally giving voice to the characters in the film's most brutal moments. Striking a rare balance between experimental rigour and the ability to converse with the images, this soundtrack stands out as one of the most accomplished and significant ever made for Eisenstein's masterpiece. The music is available exclusively on the Cineteca di Bologna DVD. Score: 7.5

Cinestesia (Italy) – 2018 post-rock, alternative

Cinestesia is a collective of musicians who have spent years accompanying silent films live. Their music, poised between cinematic post-rock and alternative rock with psychedelic overtones, works perfectly as a soundtrack, exploiting post-rock's potential to the fullest to charge the images with tension, power and emotion. The sound is often pared down to a minimum, working by subtraction, but when the tension builds – as in the guitar-driven surge of “The Odessa Steps” – the group reaches the expressive peak of a post-rock conceived and tailored to cinematic language.

The lengthy “One Against All” (ten minutes) pushes the psychedelic soul of their compositions to yet another extreme, opening up a dilated, hypnotic space that sets the stage for the finale of “Red Flag Of Victory”: just two minutes of essential yet intense post-rock, which accompany the arrival of the famous red flag and bring the listener to the very brink of ecstasy. Score: 7.5

I Sincopatici (Italy) – 2026 post-rock, prog, neoclassical

I Sincopatici are a Milan-based band founded by Francesca Badalini, who have spent years reinterpreting through music the great masterpieces of silent cinema. Their discography includes several landmark titles from the period, among them “Nosferatu“, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “Metropolis“, up to their most recent 2024 scoring, that of the pioneering Italian silent film “L'inferno“, inspired by the “Divine Comedy”. The quartet – made up of Francesca Badalini (piano, electric guitar), Silvia Maffeis (violin), Andrea Grumelli (bass) and Teo Ravelli (drums and electronics) — breathes new life into Sergei Eisenstein's work through a stylistically solid and highly cinematic blend, in which classical music, post-rock, progressive and avant-garde openings coexist with total naturalness.

The tight rhythms that accompany the most dynamic sequences – far from sporadic – amplify the narrative tension without ever overpowering the images. Revisiting the famous Odessa Steps sequence with I Sincopatici's music underneath thus proves a powerfully impactful experience, one capable of renewing the film's emotional force. Score: 8

Other soundtracks from around the world, in chronological order

The Paradox Trio, founded by New York clarinetist Matt Darriau, grafts jazz language onto klezmer coordinates (traditional Jewish instrumental music), Celtic folk and Balkan suggestions. A deliberately jagged and counterintuitive sonic blend, which as a soundtrack proves strongly cacophonous and experimental, at several points clashing openly with the images. And yet, notwithstanding a result that isn't always effective on a synesthetic level, the project stands out for its audacity and expressive tension: the layering that builds up energy toward brief, sudden explosions, as well as the choice to venture into such rugged territory, testify to a radical, uncompromising approach that certainly deserves attention. Score: 6

Jackson Del Rey was a key figure on the Los Angeles post-punk scene of the 1980s, as a member of Savage Republic. After leaving the band in 1989, his new artistic life saw him, among other things, scoring silent films, including, fittingly, "Battleship Potemkin" in 2007.

We're now a very long way from the Savage Republic sound, and Del Rey opts for a particularly repetitive brand of electronic music that could be described as a meeting point between Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno. Emotional and reasonably in step with the film's narrative, Del Rey's work finds its most ambitious moments in the opening twelve minutes of "The Men And The Maggots", a kind of post-rock for strings, and in the martial-rhythmed noise of "The Ship Guns Roared" and "Squadron Sighted – Prepare For Action". Score 6.5

ATR is a Brazilian musical project formed by Juliano Cesar Parreira, Eduardo Cordeiro da Silva Porto and Gustavo Spineli Koshikumo, and the creator of one of the most original alternative soundtracks for "Battleship Potemkin", in which electronic music and instrumental hip-hop fuse together in surprising fashion. Although the genres involved might suggest a lightening of the film's tragedy, that's far from the case. A track like "Funeral" (split into two parts) fully conveys the sense of suffering carried by the images. And when the rhythm needs to be pushed, the electronics turn into a hypnotic pulse that effectively evokes the Tsarist police marching down the Odessa steps ("Staircase's Battle"). Score 7

Morricone Youth (Us) – 2023 italian soundtrack

Clearly inspired by the music of maestro Ennio Morricone, the New York band Morricone Youth has an extremely long list of soundtracks to its name, ranging from the ever-present "Nosferatu" by Murnau to the more unusual choices of Hitchcock's "The Lodger" and Murnau's own "Sunrise", all the way to non-silent films like David Lynch's "Eraserhead", George A. Romero's "Night Of The Living Dead", the original "Mad Max" (released in Italy as Interceptor) and even Mario Bava's "Diabolik". Beyond the evident Morricone-esque influences, detectable pretty much everywhere, it's clear the group also looks to Italian soundtracks of the 1970s, a reference plainly audible in "Cossacks Charge", which accompanies the Cossacks' charge down the Odessa steps, and in "Tsarist Battleship", the moment the Tsarist ships arrive. Score 6.5

Ensemble Modelo62 (Nl) – 2023 avantgarde

The Ensemble Modelo62 is an international contemporary music collective made up of musicians from various parts of the world (Spain, the Netherlands, Serbia, South Africa, Argentina, Greece, Canada, etc.), operating as a genuine experimental laboratory, strongly conceptual and radical in nature. In 2023 the ensemble released an extremely avant-garde reinterpretation of the soundtrack to "Battleship Potemkin". A sequence of improvisations unfolds across a long stretch of non-music, favouring dark, abrasive atmospheres and standing in stark opposition to any classical or illustrative notion of film accompaniment. A rigorous, uncompromising undertaking, more geared toward research than enjoyment. Score 6.5

Gene Pritsker & ensemble kONTRASTE (Us) – 2024 chamber music, electronic

Gene Pritsker is a highly eclectic New York musician and producer who has recorded and produced a wide range of very different albums, spanning classical, electronic and even hip-hop. That cross-pollination is clear in his musical take on Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece, essentially a bizarre marriage of classical chamber music (violin, cello, flute, clarinet, bassoon, piano and trumpet) with electronic interludes and occasional hip-hop rhythms. The mix feels overly ambitious at times, and there's a perceptible risk of ending up with a kind of sonic mishmash lacking structure. Despite these limitations, it's hard not to admire the courage of such an unconventional undertaking. It therefore seems only fair to encourage a work that could also serve as a possible starting point for more mature, fully realised efforts down the line. Score 6

The Pit Orchestra (Uk) – 2025 post-rock

It's now a given that post-rock is a language particularly suited to the cinematic dimension. It's no surprise, then, that scores for silent films are often entrusted to acts rooted in that scene, as is the case with the British group The Pit Orchestra. Boasting an imposing lineup — a full eleven musicians — the collective delivers five lengthy suites, each roughly fourteen minutes long, conceived to accompany the five chapters of "Battleship Potemkin".

Guitars, violins, folk-music touches and female choirs merge into a genuine sonic maelstrom, which reaches its peaks in the distorted crescendo of "Act IV – Song For Odessa" and in the slow, gradual build of the opening track "Act I – Waves". A coherent, cinematically effective reading that leans on the emotional pathos typical of post-rock sonorities. Rating: 7

Nicola Manzan & Bruno Dorella (It) – 2025 avant-rock, noise

The unusual duo formed by Nicola Manzan (Bologna Violenta) and Bruno Dorella (Bachi da Pietra, Ovo, Ronin) embarked in 2025 on a short tour devoted to a live scoring of "Battleship Potemkin". At present there's no audio-video documentation of the performance, but those lucky enough to have witnessed it clearly recall a set of remarkable intensity: Manzan's violin, worlds away from the abrasiveness of the Bologna Violenta project, engaged in dialogue with Dorella's percussion in a constant balance between experimental tension, rhythmic drive and melodic openings, always in service of the film. The finale — with the audience on its feet applauding both the Eisensteinian masterpiece and the two musicians — remains emblematic of a truly unrepeatable evening, suspended between cinema, music and collective ritual. Rating: 7.5

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