Mikhail Gomorov

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

Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov's silent epic about rural collectivization — also known as Old and New (Staroye i novoye). Marfa Lapkina, a real peasant, plays Marfa, a poor farmer who leads her village in forming a collective and is rewarded with the arrival of a tractor, a moment Eisenstein turns into one of the most famous montage sequences in silent cinema. Made for Sovkino on the eve of Stalin's forced collectivization campaign. The film is in the public domain.

Drama