 Both "The Times" and the resident British Consul reported that troops fired on the crowds; deaths were reportedly in the hundreds.Roger Ebert writes, "That there was, in fact, no tsarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene ...It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened."