battleship | German battleship Tirpitz | German battleship Gneisenau | German battleship Scharnhorst | German battleship Bismarck | Battleship Potemkin | Russian battleship Rostislav | German battleship ''Bismarck'' | Russian battleship Tri Sviatitelia | Russian battleship Potemkin | Russian battleship Andrei Pervozvanny | pre-dreadnought battleship | Potemkin | French battleship Iéna | Japanese battleship Kongō | French battleship Jauréguiberry | battleship ''Kongō'' | Space Battleship Yamato | Russian battleship Tsesarevich | Russian battleship Dvenadsat Apostolov | Royal Sovereign-class battleship | Majestic-class battleship | Japanese battleship Yamato | Imperatritsa Mariya-class battleship | Imperator Aleksandr II-class battleship | Grigory Potemkin | French battleship Provence | French battleship Liberté | Ekaterina II-class battleship | Courbet-class battleship |
J. Hoberman reviewed the film for The Village Voice, and wrote that "Marker begins by evoking Battleship Potemkin, and although hardly agitprop, A Grin Without a Cat is in that tradition—a montage film with a mass hero. Unlike Eisenstein, however, Marker isn't out to invent historical truth so much as to look for it."
Animator John McGrew borrowed much of the staging for the cartoon from Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin.
The film, inspired by The Battleship Potemkin, portrayed the event as part of the class struggle and was also directed against the then-disgraced underground party activists; the role of the traitor Lucan was based on Vasile Luca (who participated in the preparations for the strike), fictionalised as the embodiment of human abjectness.