Sergei Eisenstein's account of the 1905 mutiny aboard the Russian
battleship Potemkin, in which the crew rebels after being served
maggot-ridden meat and the uprising spreads to the port of Odessa.
The Odessa Steps sequence — tsarist troops firing on civilians as a
baby carriage rolls down the stairs — remains one of the most
studied and imitated passages in film history, and the picture is
the foundational text of Soviet montage editing. Aleksandr Antonov
plays the mutiny's leader Vakulinchuk, with Vladimir Barsky and
Grigori Aleksandrov. Made as a state commission to mark the
revolution's twentieth anniversary, it was banned in several
countries on release and is still ranked among the greatest films
ever made. The film is in the public domain.
Drama · History · Silent · War
