Harry Alan Potamkin
{{Short description|American film critic}}
Harry Alan Potamkin (April 10, 1900 – July 19, 1933) was an American film critic and poet.
Biography
Potamkin was born in Philadelphia, to Jewish parents who had immigrated from Russia.{{Cite magazine |last=Brody |first=Richard |date=2018-02-08 |title=The Prescient, Essential Film Criticism of Harry Alan Potamkin |url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/prescient-essential-film-criticism-harry-alan-potamkin |access-date=2025-02-17 |magazine=The New Yorker |language=en-US |issn=0028-792X}} His sister was the mother of composer Milton Babbitt.{{Cite book |last=Kostelanetz |first=Richard |title=A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes |date=2013 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781136806193 |pages=489}} Potamkin received a BS degree from New York University in 1921 and worked as a social worker at Smith Memorial Playground in Philadelphia.{{Cite book |title=Dictionary Of Modern American Philosophers |date=2005 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=9781847144706 |editor-last=Shook |editor-first=John R. |pages=1955}} On his 1925 honeymoon to France, Potamkin discovered film in Paris and was inspired to become a film critic.{{Cite book |title=The Cult Film Reader |date=2008 |publisher=Open University Press |isbn=9780335219230 |editor-last=Mathijs |editor-first=Ernest |pages=25 |editor-last2=Mendik |editor-first2=Xavier}} Potamkin visited the Soviet Union in 1927,{{Cite journal |last1=Andrew |first1=Dudley |last2=Jacobs |first2=Lewis |date=1979 |title=The Compound Cinema: Film Writings of Harry Alan Potamkin |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/430811 |journal=The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism |volume=37 |issue=3 |pages=387 |doi=10.2307/430811|jstor=430811 |url-access=subscription }} where he met with Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov.{{Cite journal |last=Andrew |first=Dudley |date=April 1974 |title=Critics: Harry Alan Potamkin |journal=Film Comment |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=55}} In 1930, Potamkin traveled to Kharkiv for the second Congress of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers, in the American delegation along with Joshua Kunitz, William Gropper, and other members of the John Reed Clubs.{{Cite book |last=Homberger |first=Eric |title=American writers and radical politics, 1900-39 : Equivocal commitments |date=1986 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=0333391764 |pages=132}}
Career
His film criticism was published in a wide variety of publications, including The Daily Worker, American Cinematographer, and Hound & Horn. {{Cite book |last=Roberts |first=Jerry |title=The Complete History of American Film Criticism |date=2010 |publisher=Santa Monica Press |isbn=9781595809438 |pages=45}}In his writings, Potamkin compared Hollywood films unfavorably to Soviet cinema, though he distinguished between movies produced in Hollywood and ones made in New York.{{Cite book |last=Koszarski |first=Richard |title=Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff |date=2008 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=9780813542935 |pages=239}} Hollywood, for Potamkin, was "the pimple of the American process, just as America is the pimple of the capitalist process"{{Cite web |last=Van Schilt |first=Stephanie |date=November 22, 2011 |title=A Portrait of Harry Potamkin – Screening the Past |url=http://www.screeningthepast.com/issue-32-first-release/a-portrait-of-harry-potamkin/ |access-date=2025-02-17 |language=en-US}} In several articles, he criticized Charlie Chaplin's films, arguing that they placed too much emphasis on Chaplin's fictional persona instead of class dynamics.{{Cite book |last=Mellen |first=Joan |title=Modern Times |date=2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing |isbn=9781838717193 |pages=25}} Due to his political viewpoint, Potamkin has been described as the first American film critic to recognize as a medium that "played an active role in shaping the society that produced it".{{Cite web |last=Schenker |first=Andrew |date=2010-11-01 |title=Marxism Goes to the Movies: On Pioneering Activist Film Critic Harry Alan Potamkin |url=https://brightlightsfilm.com/marxism-goes-to-the-movies-on-pioneering-activist-film-critic-harry-alan-potamkin/ |access-date=2025-02-17 |website=Bright Lights Film Journal |language=en-US}} He proposed a plan for a Marxist film school and library, which was never realized due to his death in 1933.{{Cite book |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.14170605 |title=How Film Histories Were Made: Materials, Methods, Discourses |date=2023-11-27 |publisher=Amsterdam University Press |isbn=978-90-485-5457-7 |editor-last=Hagener |editor-first=Malte |pages=182 |doi= 10.2307/jj.14170605|editor-last2=Zimmermann |editor-first2=Yvonne}}
Potamkin was also active as a poet, though Kenneth Rexroth wrote that "the character of the Left press at that time prevented him from being widely published".{{Cite book |last=Rexroth |first=Kenneth |title=World Outside the Window: The Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth |date=1987 |publisher=New Directions |isbn=9780811210256 |pages=2}} A collection of his poetry, titled In the Embryo of All Things: The Poems of Harry Alan Potamkin, was published in 2017.{{Cite book |title=The Routledge Companion to American Film History |publisher=Taylor & Francis |year=2025 |isbn=9781040303979 |editor-last=Wojcik |editor-first=Pamela Robertson |pages=88 |editor-last2=Massood |editor-first2=Paula J.}} He was the author of the operetta Strike Me Red, performed posthumously in 1934,{{Cite news |last=Gannes |first=Harry |date=June 25, 1934 |title=Y.C.L. Meet Maps Program to Win Workingclass Youth |url=https://archive.org/details/per_daily-worker_daily-worker_1934-06-25_11_151/page/n1/ |work=The Daily Worker |pages=3}} and directed by Will Lee.{{Cite book |last=Hodgson |first=Jack |title=Young Reds in the Big Apple: The New York Young Pioneers of America, 1923-1934 |date=2024 |publisher=Fordham University Press |isbn=9781531508135}}
Death and legacy
After his death, his funeral was held at the New York Workers School, due to his "revolutionary activity in the workers' struggles".{{Cite journal |last=Campbell |first=Russell |date=August 1978 |title=Potamkin's Film Criticism |url=https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC18folder/HarryAlanPotamkin.html |journal=Jump Cut |issue=18 |pages=23}} Potamkin's writings inspired experimental filmmaker Stephen Broomer's 2017 feature film Potamkin, which uses footage from the films he reviewed (e.g. Battleship Potemkin, The Passion of Joan of Arc and Metropolis).{{Cite web |last=Nicholson |first=Ben |date=December 6, 2019 |title=Stephen Broomer discusses his first feature, 'Potamkin' |url=https://www.altkino.com/writing/stephen-broomer-on-potamkin |access-date=2025-02-17 |website=ALT/KINO |language=en-US}}{{cite web|url=https://artlitlab.org/events/potamkin-by-stephen-broomer|title=Potamkin by Stephen Broomer {{pipe}} Arts + Literature Laboratory {{pipe}} Madison Contemporary Arts Center|website=artlitlab.org|date=29 July 2022 |access-date=2024-08-02}}[https://filmint.nu/carriage-broomer-potamkin/ The Carriage Set Upright: Stephen Broomer on Potamkin - Film International][https://canyoncinema.com/2018/02/14/canyon-cinema-50-begins-now/ Canyon Cinema : Canyon Cinema 50 — February & March Events]